Title: How to Avoid a Honey Trap: A Spy’s Guide to Seduction. | Ep. 2
Show: John Kiriakou
Date: 2026-07-16
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk7IWpbbMcU
Duration: 2608

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[00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome back to John Kuryaku's briefing room. I'm John Kuryaku. Before we get started and we have a bunch of things to tell you today, I want to say thank you so much for the success of our first episode which came out uh a couple of days ago. It's only because of you that we are able to do this and to do it successfully. So, if you don't mind, please like, subscribe, share, comment, talk about it with your friends and family. Whatever you deem appropriate and fit, please go ahead and do it.

[00:32] Thank you very, very much. We're all grateful. So, today I wanted to start off by talking about something called honeypotting, also known as a honey trap. This is one of the oldest tricks in espionage. An intelligence service will send a spy, usually it's usually a beautiful woman, to charm, to seduce, to romance a target, usually another spy, until they start giving up secrets that they never intended to share. Before we go any further, let me be clear. I am not

[01:04] accusing anybody of being caught in a honey trap. I am not accusing anybody of sleeping intentionally with foreign intelligence officers. But I want to say that honey traps are very real. The CIA used them in the past. The CIA does not use them now as a as a practice because most of the time they don't work. But the KGB uses them. The Chinese use them. The Israelis use them. The the French use them. The old East German

[01:35] Stazzi used to use them. You name it. intelligence agencies have been using honeypotss or honey traps for decades because frankly they work. So I want to tell you about uh well two things. I worked with a guy, older guy, divorced multiple times, 20, 30 pounds overweight, chain smoker, his teeth were all yellow, losing his hair, like a typical

[02:07] 50-year-old guy, and all of a sudden, this gorgeous woman starts paying attention to him. Gorgeous. Now, in Washington, it's not unusual for men who look like trolls to have beautiful w women on their arms because oftentimes, I hate to say it, don't criticize me in the comments, but oftentimes women are attracted to power. But why would a woman who's, you know, 25 years old and good enough to be Miss

[02:38] America be attracted to a 55year-old diplomat who's fat, balding, and has rotten teeth? That doesn't make any sense. And of course, it turns out my colleague was being honeypotted. And the woman turned out to be Russian uh when he finally mentioned to headquarters in a cable, which you have to do whenever you establish what's called a um an ongoing sexual relationship with a foreign national. You have to report it

[03:09] to headquarters. And he reported it. And they were they were like, "Whoa, wait a minute. What are you doing? are you that blind to not see that this is a honeypot operation? And he, you know, realized, you know, what what's she doing with me? This is all a trick. And he ended up just cutting her off before he turned over any uh secrets. But I worked with an with another uh case officer. This was a woman and um she had recruited a foreign

[03:39] national and against all CIA regulations, she immediately started sleeping with him and um she of course reported herself to CIA security and they said, "Okay, you can't be a case officer anymore. We're going to we're going to switch you over and you're going to be an analyst." That was very generous because the protocol should have been that they fire her. They give her the opportunity to resign. You can't sleep with your sources. So, she became an analyst. She married the guy. She brought him back to the

[04:11] United States with her. As soon as they arrived, he divorced her because he had only been sleeping with her so he could get citizenship papers. It wasn't a full-blown honeypot because he wasn't reporting back to uh to a foreign national. but he used the CIA to essentially get American citizenship. Um, she ended up being fired from the CIA. That life was not for her if she couldn't keep a secret and couldn't stop sleeping with her sources and then was so stupid as to bring a guy who was

[04:41] faking his way through the relationship back to the United States. Anyway, we've also all read um articles about uh former Congressman Eric Swallwell, also a former candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of California, who apparently was dating a Chinese spy. She was honeypottting him. Now, we don't have any idea if he gave her sensitive or classified information. The FBI says apparently not, but it should serve as a warning that these honeypot operations

[05:13] um happen. I have never been honeypotted. Um I think that an attempt was made one time. I happened to be in Dubai at uh at a hotel called The Address. It's the tallest hotel in the world. It's like 102 stories and it's directly across the street from the Burj Khalifa, the the tallest building in the world, at least for the time being. And uh they have a bar on the very top floor that has the

[05:43] most incredible spectacular view. So I I go up there and um and I order a double kari on the rocks, which I'll tell you about in a second. And I'm sitting there and what am I? I'm 50 years old. Um, I had been 15 years with the CIA. Now, at that point, I'm with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I'm clearly an American. And, uh, I'm not a businessman. Um, and the most beautiful woman I've ever

[06:14] seen comes over to me. Hi, how are you? Ah, fine. How are you? To make a long story short, was she a thousand a night prostitute or was she targeted against me? I have no idea. I don't care. I told her to go fly a kite. Um, people at the CIA, however, are trained to [cough] to be able to spot honeypotss and to avoid them.

[06:45] The problem is, you know, at the CIA, most men are a horny lot and they all think they're Don Juan, Kasanova types that, you know, would naturally attract the most beautiful women in the world. It was always nuts to me. Even in training, we used to talk about it. I'm like, "You guys think you're that goodlooking?" or it's the KGB that's, you know, running honeypotss against you and they

[07:16] be they would be like, "No, no, I'm I'm that good-looking." It's like, "Ah, yay." So, anyway, yeah, there's training. The question is, is the officer going to pay attention to the training in terms of the countries that do this? I mentioned uh at the start of this segment that uh the United States does not do it. The CIA does not do it. and it does not do it because in mo most cases it just simply doesn't work. And what I mean is sure people are going to get laid. But that's not the point. The

[07:48] point is, is it better is it easier to develop a source as a partner where there's mutual trust or is it better to develop the source through coercion saying, "Well, we honeypotted you and we have these photos of you with this prostitute or with this woman or whomever, and if you don't give us the information we want, we're going to tell your wife. We're going to tell your boss." That doesn't work. That just breeds resentment. [cough and laughter]

[08:19] One of my instructors told me something in training that he may have made up. It may be apocryphal, but it's a good story. He said that in the 1970s the CIA targeted uh an Iranian mulla and they honeypotted him and they they ran a prostitute against him and he went back to a hotel with a prostitute and they had sex and of course the CIA had the whole room um filled with cameras,

[08:50] hidden cameras. They took pictures of them doing the deed from every angle. And afterwards they laid out the pictures in front of him and they said, "You're going to work for for us now." And this mulla said, "Ooh, I'll take an 8 by10 of that one and two 5x7s of that one and do you have wallets of this one?" He's like, "Get out of here. What's the matter with you guys?" And so a determination was made that this honeypotting just doesn't work. It didn't work for us.

[09:20] It apparently works for the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the French, and others who continue to use it. Money uh is an issue, too. Money and frankly the the the ethics and the legality of doing something like this. Can you imagine? Can you imagine going to a college and you're a CIA recruiter and you're like, "Hey, come and work with the CIA. see the world

[09:51] and we're going to make you into a prostitute. What woman in her right mind would say, "Oh, you know what? I'd like to be when I graduate with my advanced degree in international affairs. I'd like to be a prostitute." Because that's really what it comes down to. So, this is just not something that's going to work. There's also a lot of risk to it. Uh there's a risk of course to the the target panicking and running to the police or the FBI itself and making this major international incident.

[10:23] And then you also run into the problem of of the target actually falling in love with the woman that's been uh sent against him because then you just wreck the personally and that's not going to be a cooperative agent. Anyway, I wanted to talk about honeypotss because I get so many questions about them and um it does pop up in the news every once in a while and I wanted to lay it out there. What if the way money works is about to change?

[10:53] Not someday, not hypothetically, but right now, China and the United States are both making moves that suggest we could be heading toward something the world hasn't seen in more than 50 years. a return to goldbacked money or something very close to it. China is shutting down paper gold trading at four of its biggest banks all on the same day. And they're building a new system that settles in physical gold instead. On our

[11:23] side, the government is sitting on over 8,000 tons of gold, still valued at just $42 an ounce on the books. legislation to fix to fix that has already been introduced in Congress. If both superpowers start anchoring their currencies to gold, what happens to the price? And more importantly, what happens to every dollar in your retirement that isn't backed by anything at all? That's the question that a free

[11:54] report from American Alternative Assets seeks to address. It's called the day money changes forever. And if you have an IRA or a 401k, you need to read this thing right now. So get your free copy at johnlovesgold.com. That's johnlovesgold.com or call 1888gld053. There was another development in the news that I think uh bears some

[12:26] conversation. Congressman Ro Kana, who is a progressive Democrat from Northern California, went to Israel this week and immediately ran into trouble. When the US gets back into negotiating in good faith with Iran, the the biggest hurdle is likely to be getting Israel to to cease its military operations in Lebanon as well as Syria. there was this major development around that issue u that included Roana.

[13:00] I want to say before I talk about Roana that Donald Trump has been surprisingly consistent in his opposition to the Israelis continuing military operations in Lebanon and Syria. Trump just doesn't understand why the Israelis are doing it, at least not on the scale at which they're doing it. I've said in podcasts in the past that if the Israelis want to target one single target, let's say there's a Hezbollah leader uh who lives in some apartment, the

[13:30] Israelis will blow up the entire apartment complex. They'll take out the entire city block, kill hundreds of people if they believe they're going to be able to get this Hezbollah commander. That's a long-standing Israeli policy. It's also a war crime. you can't specifically target civilians and that's essentially what they do. Well, not only are they doing the same kind of thing in Syria on a smaller scale than what they're doing in Lebanon, but they're

[14:01] doing something else in Syria that runs in conflict with American policy. Now, American policy was to force Bashar al-Assad out of power. That happened. Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow and he's living privately, secretly in Moscow with as much as he could steal. So the new president of Syria who used to be, you know, he was one of the co-founders of ISIS. He was an al-Qaeda commander.

[14:31] He was probably a CIA source. He was definitely a Turkish intelligence source. He's now the president of Syria and the US immediately recognized his government. We are in the process of reopening our embassy in Syria with the idea that everybody's going to live happily ever after. One of the things that is important to the US, whether it was during the Biden administration or the Trump administration, is that minority communities in Syria be protected. And what that primarily means

[15:02] is Christian communities in Syria. There's a large number of um Syrian Orthodox Christians. There's still a small Jewish community and there's a huge Drews community in southwestern Syria. And the new president uh Galani has promised to protect them. He has had some problems keeping that promise. But on top of on top of the trouble of just, you know, uprisings across the country and continuing to fight ISIS and and to

[15:33] fight uh um other insurgents, he has to worry about the Israelis bombing or the Israelis crossing the border with ground troops. And Donald Trump has repeatedly told the Israelis, "Stop attacking Syria." And they won't stop attacking Syria, just like they won't stop attacking Lebanon. Now in Lebanon, of course, there is a real Hezbollah threat to the Israelis, but the Israelis, you know, as is their want, tend to

[16:05] overreact and they kill a lot of civilians. Okay. Enter Roana. Roana, as I said, is a progressive Democratic congressman from Northern California. He went to Israel uh this past week and ran into some trouble. So, let's take a look at his tweet and then we're going to look at a very short, it's only a 3 second video. He tweeted, "Israeli settlers brandishing Americanmade M4s detained me and other Americans on my trip to Palestine.

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[23:25] Tactical, you can get this militaryspec site for under $200. And it gets better. For my listeners, you're getting 67% off and they are covering shipping. It's no secret that I've applied for a presidential pardon. I really hope I get it because I want my guns back and I'm already accumulating gear from MCG Tactical. It's the highest quality stuff on the market. So, just scan the QR code

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[24:29] going to be in Washington uh for the next couple of weeks, but then I'm starting another long trip to to Vietnam, Germany, Greece, and Egypt. And uh I'll be gone for three weeks, but we'll continue to do the show. Well, last week I was in Sweden and Norway. And odd as it might sound, um I had never been to either Sweden or Norway before. both absolutely lovely countries, lovely places, but boy was I wrong about what those countries uh are like. Um I was also for a brief period

[25:02] in in Germany and I know Germany well. I I go to or through Germany three, four, five times a year. This time was different. Um I first went to Norway to give a couple of speeches and these are speeches to you know like-minded groups. they're affiliated with Wikileaks or with the progressive left or whatever. And um and it was an education for me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I

[25:33] simply had no idea that an extreme rightwing existed in Norway and Sweden. And when I say extreme right-wing, I mean like solidly neon-Nazi right-wing with, you know, guys with swastika banners marching in the street and calling for the uh for the execution or expulsion of of refugees. I I had no idea that that was the case. You know, NATO is not just an EU country and a NATO country. It's one of the wealthiest

[26:04] because it's swimming in oil. Then I went to Sweden and I'll tell you Sweden was a real eyeopener. I want to back up and say about 10 years ago my ex-wife and I had an Opair live with us for a year. She was a Swedish citizen but she was the daughter of refugees from Syria, Christian refugees from Syria. and she very excitedly went home after her year in uh Arlington, Virginia

[26:36] to become a police officer in Stockholm. And because she speaks fluent Swedish, fluent English, and fluent Arabic, they made her a police woman in a a minority neighborhood to kind of do community outreach. And I thought, "Oh, that's so nice. That's so progressive. Good for her." And she's had a successful career. With that said, what I didn't know was how much the average Swede hates these refugees.

[27:07] I was just under the impression that it was all, you know, milk and honey and everybody was happy and they're all going to live happily ever after. And that's not the case at all. My hosts in Sweden did something for which I am going to be forever grateful. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of the former Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palma. In 1986, I was a senior in college and I was dating a Greek girl. And when I say Greek girl, she was from Greece

[27:39] and we met up for dinner one night and uh and I saw her and she had this big smile on her face and I said, "How's your day?" And she said, "It's great." I said, "Why?" And she said, 'Because somebody finally shot Olaf Palma. And I said, shame on you. Olaf Palma was the prime minister. And because Sweden is, you know, historically like one of the most peaceful places on earth. The prime minister and his wife went to the movies one night. Just the two of them, no

[28:10] security. They went to the movies. The movie ended about midnight. They walked out of the theater and walked they went they turned right and walked about a block then crossed the street because Mrs. Palma wanted to look at a dress in a window in a shop across the street. They looked at the dress momentarily, made another right, and continued down the street for half a block when they were encountered by a man

[28:40] who at point blank range shot Olaf Palma multiple times and assassinated him in the street. A Kurd a Kurdish refugee was arrested. He was tried and convicted and the conviction was almost immediately overturned. The guy had nothing to do with it. Then they arrested a heroin addict who happened to be in the neighborhood. He didn't do it and they never even charged him with the crime. They let him go.

[29:11] But some of the people who hosted my speeches in Sweden have done deep dives on this issue. Deep dives. And we walked step by step by step from the theater to the assassination site. And they walked me literally minute by minute through the events of that night. There were literally dozens of witnesses who reported surveillance cars, usually

[29:44] with two people each in them. These people had walkie-talkies. Some of the cars were identified as being government cars or police cars, like undercover police cars. And the conclusion, to make a long story short, the conclusion that they came to was that many of the people involved in this surveillance believed that they were carrying out an exercise, practice surveillance. Ah, the prime minister's out. He went to the movies. He's walking

[30:16] down the street. We're going to do surveillance, counter surveillance. It's all part of the exercise. And we've all done similar things, you know, in the industry until it wasn't an exercise and then somebody just walked up to him and shot him dead. The shooter then ran down an alley. Now Stockholm can be very very hilly like Athens very much in that you can be

[30:46] going down a street then the street ends because it turns into steps and the steps are practically vertible vertical and then you know the street starts again. He ran down the street ran up the steps continued down the street lost in the night. There have been decades of research on this assassination and the best that they can come up with is that it was not this Kurdish refugee. It was not the heroin addict. It was not

[31:17] the Soviet Union. uh Olaf Palma was scheduled to meet with Mikuel Gorbachov, the Soviet leader, a week later that it appears to have been the Swedish extreme right. They hated that Paul that Olaf Palma was a socialist. They hated that Palma was going to the Soviet Union for talks with Gorbachov. It was just a normal diplomatic visit, but they hated it. They hated the fact that already in

[31:47] 1986, refugees were beginning to come into Sweden and they decided that they're just going to take him out. To make matters worse, at every single step of the way, the government the government in Sweden has put roadblocks up in front of anybody attempting to carry out an independent investigation. For example, um flight logs missing, police

[32:20] surveillance logs missing, uh witnesses disappeared, apparently moved overseas without any without any notice. It's it's quite impossible to do a comprehensive investigation. In Sweden, this is one of the good places, the good countries, the good guys. But much to my shock, there is a very powerful far rightwing in Sweden, just

[32:50] like in Norway and just like in Germany. And it's something that really bears watching. I wanted to offer up something in the way of um of travel tips. I'm starting a uh an audio only podcast. Well, you know what? That's not true. I already started it. We're already starting season 3. It's called John Kuryaku's Deadrop and it appears on Spotify and on uh uh Apple podcast and I'm very very grateful for the fact that

[33:22] last week we passed three million downloads. Um it's the most I've ever had, you know, anywhere, at least on my own podcast. And um and I'm very grateful. So So season one was uh based on my first book u the reluctant spy. Season two was about my prison experience called Doing Time Like a Spy. And season three we're calling A Spies Guide Two. And our first episode is about Athens. Uh and it's about how when you're a tourist, you go to a place like

[33:53] Athens or London or Stockholm or Paris or whatever. And it's like, "Oh my god, there's the Eiffel Tower. Let's go to the top of it. Oh, let's go to this restaurant on the left bank. It's so popular." A CIA officer will look at a city completely differently. In Athens, yeah, you're not going to even pay attention to the parthonon because you're worried about somebody coming out from behind this building and shooting you in the head. You're worried about surveillance,

[34:24] counter surveillance, surveillance detection, and keeping yourself safe. So, I hadn't even given Stockholm a second thought. As I said, I had never been to Stockholm before. But I came to realize when you can murder the prime minister himself on the street in the center of the city. and over the course of 40 years,

[34:55] nobody has been conclusively identified either as the shooter or as even a participant, then we're probably looking at Stockholm wrong. So, we're going to talk about uh these issues in the future on this podcast. We're going to talk about Athens. We're going to talk about London and Paris and Rome and Bangkok and Abu Dhabi and Dubai and places like that where Americans are going whether for vacations or for business and I think that they are just

[35:26] looking at these places in the wrong way. I also have a clip of something that is taking place in Philadelphia right now and then not just in Philadelphia but in other places around America. Um, a lot of Americans are panicking at the establishment or the rise of Muslim communities. Um, can we go to that clip, JB?

[36:12] Okay, it says right there, thousands of Americans Mus of American Muslims praying in Philadelphia. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. That may or may not be true. Um, but what it doesn't tell you is a couple of things. First, we don't have any idea what this event is. We don't even know if it's in Philadelphia. Who knows? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say, "Sure, it's in Philadelphia." But most of the new Muslims in the United States are African-Americans who are converting to Islam. This happens a

[36:44] lot in uh in the American prison system. [snorts] But one of the things that we see in places like Philadelphia or Detroit or all over the state of Texas and Oklahoma, frankly, is this fear. Some some people are calling it Islamophobia, and in some cases it is, but it's a fear based on either a misunderstanding of Islam or a a lack of understanding of Islam. We hear the word

[37:14] I'm going to use one. I'll give you two examples, but we hear the word jihad thrown around like, "Oh my god, it it's jihad. Jihad is holy war." No, it's not. It does not mean holy war. It's never meant holy war. That is entirely a creation of the American media coming from 1979 and the Iranian revolution and when the Iranians and when the Iranians took u American diplomats hostage in the American embassy. Jihad comes from the Arabic

[37:46] word jaha which means to struggle. It does not mean holy war. It's never meant holy war. You can declare jihad against poverty. You can declare jihad in favor of, you know, women's rights. You can declare a jihad in favor of education. It just does not mean holy war. We've made that up. And thanks a lot to the American media. And I'm specifically looking at ABC, CBS, and NBC because

[38:16] that was pretty much all the media that we had back in the day, at least broadcast media. The other thing is Sharia law. For whatever reason, Sharia panics a lot Americans. What is Sharia law? Well, frankly, it's a way of life for many American Muslims. It does not mean beheadings and stonings. What it primarily means is, as an example, let's say the head of the household dies. According to Sharia law,

[38:48] the surviving widow gets 50% of the estate and the eldest son gets the other 50% of the estate. Right? or they'll divide it between the surviving sons, the daughters get nothing. That's Sharia law. You can agree with it or disagree with it. It's not going to cut your head off. That's Sharia law. Another thing that is a part of Sharia law is that Muslims may not charge or pay interest. Interest is considered to be userie, which is a sin.

[39:18] You can pay a user fee on a loan, but not interest per se. That's Sharia law. Sharia does not mean that honor killings are okay. It doesn't mean that women are going to be stoned for committing adultery. Um it doesn't mean any of those things. And so when the so when the Oklahoma state legislature passes a law banning Sharia law, you know what? It's not worth the paper that it's written on.

[39:49] A friend of mine in Texas reached out to me recently to say that um that there's a uh a little kurfuffle taking place in Texas right now. There is a group of wealthy Muslims and most of them are doctors and they decided to buy a big empty piece of land and develop this land with mansions, 25 30 giant houses to be built and it's going to have a mosque in the center. and they're they're pitching this land development to other Muslims, other doctors and

[40:22] lawyers and engineers and professionals. And again, people are panicking to the point where Governor Abbott has weighed in. Oh my god, it's going to be jihad in Texas. No, Dr. Muhammad, the brain surgeon, is not going to make a holy war against you. It's all about Muslims wanting to live around other Muslims. Okay, who cares? And they're all millionaires and they're all going to have nice houses and

[40:52] they're all going to contribute to the tax base. This is a long way of saying that this is an issue that is dividing Americans unnecessarily. It's something that we're going to continue to watch and I'm going to try my best to explain it to everybody in plain English. This is not something we should be afraid of. Finally, I wanted to thank everybody for the very, very kind and supportive reaction to episode one, which we

[41:23] released, as I said, a couple of days ago. I got so many nice comments. I hear a couple of them. Well, I didn't have former CIA officer becomes my comfort podcast [laughter] on my 2026 bingo card. 1:00 a.m. in New Zealand and here I am riveted. Thank you so much for that. I mentioned at the start of uh of this show that that I happen to be in Miami and I I took that god-awful 5 a.m. flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington to come to Miami. And as soon as I got on the

[41:55] plane, the pilot saw me. He's like, "Oh my god, John Kuryako. I just listened to the podcast. I loved it. It's great." He happens to be um Ethiopian. He came here as a child and um he said he loves the news and then when I got off the plane he was waiting for me uh outside the plane um to take a picture together. So, thank you for that support. Uh here's another one. Thanks, John. Hope you get your pardon soon. You deserve it. Thank you very much for that. I hope I get my pardon as well. Uh the third one, what a

[42:28] historic moment to be a part of. I will tell my kids I was one of the first 10,000 people to watch John Kuryaku's first episode of the briefing room. Thank you. That means a lot to me. A fourth, I really love the format of this podcast. Important news and information from someone who can really comprehend it. Then having the community section at the end really ties it all up. I think it's a perfect mix of what I like John Kuryaku for. Thank you. And I'm serious about that. We're going to begin doing Q&As's as well. So, please, if you have questions, go ahead and put them in the

[42:59] chat right there on uh on YouTube or wherever you happen to be watching this. And um and we're going to try our best to get to to all of them. Finally, I want to thank you again. So, please, please, please help us grow this podcast by by liking, subscribing, sharing, and telling your friends and family. We can only make this work because of you. Thanks again for taking the time to listen. I'm John Kuryaku. This is the briefing room and we'll see you next
