Title: The CIA spy who blew the whistle on torture
Show: TRT World
Date: 2023-03-20
URL: https://youtu.be/SBCSSQ0bpBA
Duration: 27:00

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[00:00] [Music] foreign this is John kiriaku a retired American spy his 14-year career as a CIA officer was impressive by any measure the agency deployed kiriaku all over the world in Pakistan a year after the 9 11 attacks

[00:32] he led in operation to capture a high-level Al-Qaeda official known as Abu zubaida the cia's treatment of suveda and other detainees would eventually lead to kiriaku's falling out with the agency beta was the first person to be subjected to the cia's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques the U.S government would later acknowledge the practice was torture in the immediate aftermath of 9 11. we did some things that were wrong we did a whole lot of things that were

[01:02] right but we tortured some folks the torture is depicted in a series of sketches by abusiveda detainees were subjected to physical attacks they were put in various painful stress positions for long periods of time waterboarding was a common practice that involves choking a victim by filling their throat with a steady stream of water making them feel as if they're drowning in slow motion journalists had long sought official admission that these practices were taking place

[01:32] it wasn't until John kiriaku's 2007 interview with an ABC news reporter that Washington's Open Secret about government sanctioned torture was finally confirmed if the American public was to see somebody even abusabeta being waterboarded what would you guess I think it would be objectionable it's it's sort of a violent thing to to see or to go through kiriaku who had retired nearly four years earlier had become the first CIA official to confirm that the agency used

[02:04] torture the personal consequences form since have been enormous after the interview kiriaku lost his lucrative corporate job it became the subject of a lengthy FBI investigation in 2012 he was charged with multiple counts of revealing classified information to journalists he faced the possibility of 35 years in jail part of a deal with prosecutors kiriaku pled guilty to a single count and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison

[02:34] eight years after being released he maintains the case against him was political and that his decision to speak out will forever be on the right side of History basil rahan the interview only one person ended up doing any prison time over the cia's torture program and here's the rub it was not a torturer it was the man from the CIA who ended up exposing the program and confirming that the orders came from the very top I am delighted to tell you that

[03:07] he's joined us today on the interview John kiriaku joins us now really good to have you on the program John it's been quite a ride for you over the past couple of decades are you comfortable with the with the term whistleblower when people Google you when they think about you you're the CIA whistleblower guy it actually took me a long time to get to that point uh I in the beginning I never called myself a whistleblower I didn't think that I was a whistleblower

[03:37] I was just a normal person who saw an illegality and went public with it it was my attorneys who had to finally convince me that I was a whistleblower when you did that interview in 2007 while you were while you were sitting there and revealing what you had revealed saying that yes waterboarding was policy yes it came from the top yes this is what we did in the so-called War on Terror at that moment in time did you think my life is going to change now I'm

[04:08] going to end up in jail or was it somewhat nonchalant did you it was it only the overreaction of of the CIA and the FBI and everybody else which then made it Dawn on you that this could be big and you could be in big trouble I really do you get done anything wrong in fact my wife went with me that day to ABC News and sat just off camera and when I finished the interview I said how did I

[04:39] do she said great I said I didn't say anything classified did I she said no you did great I had no idea that it was going to be a major International story uh that it became in the next day or so and in fact the say reported me to the FBI the very next day for having committed the crime of revealing classified information the FBI investigated me for a full year from December of 2007 until December of 2008 and then elected to not charge me with a

[05:10] crime they said that that the information was the worst kept secret in Washington and that I would not be charged with a crime what they eventually came after you with or what had eventually stuck when you when you had the plea deal was that you had disclosed an undercover CIA operative's name to a journalist so it wasn't about whistleblowing in terms of torture and all of that even though we know that that's the reason why they were alerted to you being a possible threat when you when you made that deal tell me

[05:42] a little bit about the thought process and and how it felt right that's something that I think about all the time something that I'll never forget you know I thought these charges against me were so ridiculous I was charged with finally I was charged with three counts of Espionage and of course I hadn't committed Espionage uh but I was also charged as you note with revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative that identity was never made public and at the same time that I

[06:13] was being charged uh General David Petraeus the director of the FBI was revealing the identities of 10 CIA covert operatives to his girlfriend and I said to my attorneys at the time why isn't he being charged with crime and my attorney my lead attorney said because he didn't blow the whistle on the cia's torture program so in the end I actually decided to go to trial I actually decided that I I hadn't done anything wrong and I said once I get in front of

[06:43] a jury they'll see how ridiculous these charges are and my lead attorney was very angry with this decision and he he got right in my face and he said do you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about Justice and it's not about Justice it's about mitigating damage take the deal and so when you spend two years right yeah yeah you spent two years instead of 35 or 45 and you're spending time with your kids now exactly so ultimately was it the correct

[07:14] decision yes and it was my kids that motive motivated me to finally take the uh the deal because you're right it was 23 months or 45 years what was it like in federal prison well you know the judge recommended that I go to a minimum security Work Camp uh no bars on the Windows no fences no guard towers uh and they ignored that recommendation

[07:45] and they put me in the actual prison with child sex criminals with Mafia Leaders with International drug kingpins and I decided that I was trained for this kind of thing I was going to rely on my CIA training to keep myself safe and at the top of the social Heap I made strategic alliances with different gangs or groups in prison and I ended up getting through the 23 months incredible I think we can do

[08:16] an entirely different interview just talking about your time in prison and maybe we'll do that someday uh which which sounds really fascinating there's a lot of potential there I wonder that would be fun after after all of this right when all is after all is said and done you you blew the whistle you said well they were lying about the fact that they didn't know about waterboarding and and some of those other uh processes that they called enhanced interrogation techniques um it came out you paid a heavy price

[08:46] for it when you reflect back on this entire Journey do you think that all of it was rotten or was it only the fact that the CIA was crossing the line on certain instances so for example you were the counter-terrorism chief in Pakistan immediately after 9 11 a very explosive time in the world right the United States um desperate for Revenge a lot of anger

[09:17] among the Bush Administration and the U.S really flexing its superpower muscle from the stuff that you did going after Al Qaeda going after you know suspected terrorists was all of it wrong or was it just the fact that you crossed the line when it came to the the specifics of how you try to extract information out of detail needs that's a great question actually um I I do not think all of it is wrong I believe that our immediate response

[09:48] after 9 11 was a righteous War we had to destroy Al Qaeda because it had sought to destroy us now Iraq was wrong it was wrong to stay in Afghanistan for for 20 years certainly uh but the the torture issue the torture program to me was very wrong we we like to go around the world we Americans like go around the world and profess to be a country that is governed by the rule of law a country

[10:19] that is a Guiding Light a Beacon of Hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties and that's just simply not true you know on the one hand we tell countries what they can and can't do when it comes to civil rights and then we run a torture program we run an archipelago of secret prisons we kidnap people off the streets and send them to third countries to be tortured we're either going to be that shining Beacon of Hope or we're not but we can't have

[10:51] it both ways um in looking into the details of your time in Pakistan you were Central to the capture of Abu zubaida and he ended up being waterboarded 83 times and he was in all sorts of terrible stress positions sleep deprivation food deprivation and like you were you were there with him at the beginning but you weren't involved in his torture which seems abundantly clear however interestingly from the testimony that came out of Abu zubaida U.S government officials White

[11:23] House officials DOD officials and the like use this testimony to build a case for the Iraq War making that connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda and saying well we've got to go into Iraq so when you when you think back do you do you feel a sense of almost personal responsibility that you nabbed this guy and they instrumentalized him and used him to build their case to invade Iraq in part this is a very complicated issue

[11:54] in that there were parallel sources of intelligence uh there was the Intelligence being the Intelligence being provided by ahmatellabi and the Iraqi National Congress that those of us at the CIA knew was being fabricated but even though it was being fabricated and we were telling the White House that it was false uh the office of the Vice President Dick Cheney at the time elected to use that phony information to justify the Iraq War one of the ways

[12:24] that Abu zabeta was very very helpful to us well two of the ways were that um we really didn't know anything about Al qaeda's wiring diagram we didn't know anything about its structure and he's the one who told us how the organization was structured more importantly he told us about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and we we had never heard the name Khalid Sheikh Muhammad before we had heard the num degair we knew that there was this very bad man out there who meant us harm and who was trying to come up with these different

[12:55] uh plans to use planes as as weapons but we had never heard the name Muhammad and so it was I was a beta that allowed us to focus our investigation now with all of that said I'm on record as saying that I believe abusive should be released from Guantanamo he has been he has been in our custody for almost 21 years now and he's never been charged with a crime he never will be charged with a crime because the information

[13:27] used to implicate him in crimes was gathered using torture and it's just simply illegal so if we can't give this man his constitutional rights uh of a trial uh before a jury of his peers we have to let him go as things moved forward and the debate kicked on in the U.S in large part due to you and others who were very bravely coming forward and saying this is this is what's happening

[13:58] we saw in 2015 the McCain Feinstein resolution in the Senate and the government taking it seriously that torture is happening and that we need to have new rules and we shouldn't be doing the things that we were doing in the immediate aftermath of the war on terror does that mean that the CIA is no longer torturing people well that's what we would all like to think and and I hope that's the case I hope the CIA is not torturing people but

[14:30] with that said you you make a very important Point here the new rules are that the CIA and every other national security organization in the United States have to abide by the rules set forth in the Army Field Manual now the Army Field Manual is an executive branch document and so all that the American government needs to do to bring back a torture program is with the stroke of the president's pen change the Army Field Manual so as

[15:01] things stand now we're told that there is no torture program I would like to believe that that's true and I would also like to believe that that is a permanent situation but we just don't really know I began by asking you if you're comfortable with the label whistleblower let me ask you about the other label that did the rounds particularly just after the government started going after you traitor how did that feel

[15:31] I think that the traders that we had in government uh were sitting in the White House we are supposed to be as I said a nation of laws uh we can't just pick and choose the laws that we want to follow and ignore the laws that we don't want to follow if there were any Traders uh in in government at the time it was the leadership at the CIA it was the president and the vice president and the the National Security advisor I would put my record up against theirs any day

[16:03] does it matter if the president is left-wing or right-wing democrat or republican whether the the house or congress is you know one side or the other when it comes to foreign policy when it comes to the CIA and when it comes to the things that the government is willing to do or the places that they're willing to go in order to take care of National Security no this is not a partisan issue at all uh we've had democratic presidents and

[16:35] Republican presidents pursuing the same kinds of policies uh Barack Obama for example who was supposed to have been a left-wing president killed four times as many people as George W bush did with the use of drones uh so this this has nothing to do with the domestic U.S politics or whether somebody identifies as a liberal or as a conservative uh they're all in this together this is a this is a unified unfortunately it's a unified policy as things stand right now with Russia's attack on Ukraine with war

[17:08] raging in that particular region and with Myriad other things going on tell me knowing how the CIA operates what would they be doing right now what would their priorities be given that the United States is not actively involved in any specific Wars on the ground they don't have ground troops right now tell me what's going on in the corridors of power in Langley I would say two things are going on one is training uh ukrainians in any way

[17:39] possible certainly there's there's defense department training we know that they're being trained on high Mars and on the use of the Abrams tank now and on uh the Patriot missile system but at the CIA they're doing two things they're training uh Ukrainian Intelligence Officers to very simply to recruit spice to steal secrets and uh and they are trying the best that they can to infiltrate Russian organizations again to steal spy to recruit spies to steal

[18:12] secrets that's really what the CIA comes down to you um have been on record as saying that you recruited I'm not sure if you said a handful of people on nine people you can you can verify the number now during your time at the CIA tell me a little bit I mean without going to jail again I don't want to get you in trouble but tell me a little bit about the recruitment processes and what those types of people would be doing right now out there might they might be keeping you in mind as well

[18:42] because you were the guy that got them in yeah that's a tough one at the CIA we have something called the uh asset recruitment cycle it is spot assess develop recruit uh you spot somebody whether it's at a diplomatic cocktail party or on the street or in a meeting you assess their access to information that you want you develop them by befriending them and making sure

[19:12] that you become one of their best friends and then you formalize the relationship by recruiting them uh you know this is something that the cia's been doing since 1947 and it works and so uh so they just keep doing it it's updated constantly because of changes in technology of course and changes in the cia's operating directives but uh this is what they would be doing against the Russians right now were you proud of your work in general over the years oh I

[19:42] was I was I was very proud of my work you know it's funny for all the complaints that I have about the ccia those complaints are really about about legality and about maintaining the rule of law but in terms of in enjoying the job I enjoy every minute of it CIA sent me to 70 countries around the world I got to meet Kings and presidents and prime ministers and uh it was the job of a lifetime I just wish that uh that they had followed the law like they were

[20:14] supposed to have followed the law does it sting that you're still in a legal sense a convicted felon you're free but you're a convicted felon and of course a lot of other aspects that come with it tangibly it affects your life you you cannot vote and and the like do you want to do you want to get that monkey off your back I do um I I applied to have my civil rights reinstated so I am allowed to vote now but when I was convicted of government confiscated my pension and as a result

[20:45] if I don't get that pension back I'm going to have to work until the day I die I have literally nothing saved for my retirement now um and so you know I've got a lot of support here in in Washington a lot of former CIA officers 70 of them signed a a letter to the president asking him to Pardon Me and so I'm going to apply for a presidential pardon and as you correctly say try to get this monkey off my back do you think that Joe Biden would be amenable to to that do you think he's if

[21:16] ever there was an opportunity he'd be the guy who might be able to do it I think so as you might have guessed from my name I'm a Greek American and Joe Biden has a reputation in the Greek American Community as being so pro-greek American that he's called Joe bidenopoulos and so I'm hoping that uh you know maybe I can make a little connection there and uh he'll take some pity on me yeah well something very deep into my research I was watching some of

[21:46] your interviews reading a bunch of Articles something that I just came across in the last half hour before I had to come in studio and talk to you was this information that you were the victim of uh I guess something that can be described as a bit of a Shakedown by some Trump officials where there was the suggestion that Trump might pardon you but you needed to pay some money into installments and you paid the first installment but the pardon never came I mean it was so crazy that I I thought oh my God I

[22:18] want to actually delay this interview so I can read up some more on it before I do the interview but you know what let's just tell us about it because it's insane tell me more about this John yeah this this unfortunately is how Washington Works uh at least under the Trump Administration pardons were literally for sale and so I hired a republican lobbyist uh she asked for fifty thousand dollars up front a fifty thousand dollars to come once I

[22:48] got the pardon and she was supposed to Lobby the president on my behalf and eventually get me the pardon uh I never got the pardon and toward the very end of the Trump Administration when I realized I wasn't going to get it I uh I secured a meeting with Rudolph Giuliani uh the former mayor of New York the close friend and attorney of the president and right to my face Giuliani asked me for for two million dollars and I laughed and I said I said first of all I don't have two million dollars I'll

[23:20] never have two million dollars but secondly even if I had two million dollars why would I spend that to recover a seven hundred thousand dollar pension and uh it turned out that the FBI at the time of that meeting was investigating Giuliani for doing exactly this trying to sell pardon and so um I spoke to the FBI I answered their questions to the best of my knowledge nothing uh nothing has come of it or will come of

[23:52] it then I never got my pardon it's completely Bonkers it's an absolutely ludicrous situation and it's another one we'll have another show about that someday um okay before we wrap up there are a few names I'm gonna throw at you and very briefly give me your thoughts on them right so I'm going to start with Edward Snowden I think Edward Snowden is a is a bona fide American hero without Edward Snowden we would have no idea that our country's intelligence agencies

[24:23] were spying on us I think he did a great national service hmm um Julian Assange I am a strong supporter of Julian Assange uh Julian Assange embarrassed the American government but again just like it's Snowden uh without Julian Assange we wouldn't know about war crimes being committed by the U.S military and we wouldn't know about uh the cia's capabilities in targeting citizens

[24:54] Chelsea Manning I have a little bit of a tougher time with Chelsea Manning why uh I know that well I know that for whistleblowers motivation is irrelevant uh but Chelsea Manning didn't provide the information that she provided to WikiLeaks because she intended to blow the whistle she did it because she just didn't want to be in the in the American Military anymore and uh and she wanted to come home and and this is why Chelsea Manning is not

[25:25] really a participant in whistleblower circles you know there are whistleblower groups I I'm looking out the window of my office right now and I can see two different whistleblower groups across the street and Chelsea Manning doesn't play a role in any of those whistleblower group she's elected to just stay away and uh and lead her own life very finely the thing that I said at at the top the people who were involved in torture didn't see any prison time The Whistleblower you you went to jail you lost your freedom

[25:56] for for two years you you suffered in many ways as a result of it from the perspective of power that's deterrence isn't it it's a lesson if anybody wants to blow the whistle oh yes you're gonna have to pay the price with that in mind your message to anyone within the CIA right now or any other arm of government in any government not just the United States if they want to blow the whistle on something that is troubling their conscience your message to them is what

[26:26] hire an attorney first you can blow the whistle should look whistle but have an attorney sitting next to you when you do it okay John kerryoku yeah I really enjoyed this conversation I thank you very much for joining us today

[26:57] [Music] oh
