Title: A Public Affair - Monday, August 17th
Show: A Public Affair (WORT 89.9 FM)
Date: 2015-08-17
URL: https://soundcloud.com/wort-fm/a-public-affair-monday-august-17th
Duration: 52:00

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[00:00] Welcome to a public affair and WRT 89.9 FM. This is Monday edition of the program hosted by Yuri Rashkin. Today the subject of our conversation is torture. It is not a subject that is pleasing and it's a difficult conversation, but I think one that needs to be had when we

[00:32] have good reason for it. Here's the situation. We're going to be spending today's program reviewing, doing something unusual that I don't think this program or most programs ever really do. We're going to be concentrating not necessarily on a book, but on a review of a book. And so here's the situation. Well, the Navy Institute has published a book called The CIA Response to the Senate Intelligence Committee's Study of its Detention and Interrogation Program. With such an exciting title, this includes contributors,

[01:09] include former CAE Director George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, former Deputy Director John McLaughlin, and Michael Morrill, former Counterterrorist, Center Deputy Director Jay Philip Mudd, former Chief Legal Counsel John Rizzo, and former head of clandestine service Jose Rodriguez, Jr. Well, that sounds like an interesting book right there, doesn't it? At this point, I'm excited to welcome to the program my guest is today for this hour is John Kuriyaku. And it's nice when you have a Wikipedia page dedicated to

[01:41] your guest so that you can look up exactly, see, you know, who you are speaking to. And so I will read a little bit from John's Wikipedia page. He was a CAE analyst and case officer, senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and counterterrorism consultant for ABC News and author. He was the first year as government official to confirm in December 2007 that waterboarding was used to interrogate Al Qaeda prisoners, which he described as torture. On October 22nd, 2012, Kuriyaku pleaded guilty to disclosing classified

[02:14] information about a fellow CAE officer that connected the covert operative to a specific operation. He was the first person to pass classified information to a reporter, although the reporter did not publish the name of the operative. John Kuriyaku, welcome to a public affair. How are you doing? Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing very well. Thank you. It's really exciting to have you on the program. So we have a book coming out and the book basically is just if it is their response to a Senate report that says there was torture and was it, you know, there were no results to show

[02:49] its effectiveness. Yeah, and I would remind listeners as well that the Senate report, whether or not it had Republican support, was irrelevant. It was based solely on primary source documentation. That is contemporaneous CIA reporting from the field. This was information that came from the horse's mouth. And with that in mind, do you feel that the information is reliable? And what are your thoughts on the book that's going to be put out here

[03:21] shortly by all the CAE directors? Well, I do believe that the Senate report was reliable and it was entirely consistent with the CIA Inspector General's report that was written in 2005 and released in 2009. That report also found that torture did not work, that actionable intelligence was not collected, and that no attacks were disrupted and no American lives were saved by torture. How can we prove the opposite, you know?

[03:53] Right. How do you prove a negative? And so because of that, we have this book that's come out written by three former CIA directors, as you said, and a bevy of other senior, former senior officials. But my position is that the reason that they've written this book is not necessarily to refute the Senate torture report, but to try to save their own reputation. The torture program is their legacy. It's what history will know them by. And I think that they think that if they keep

[04:26] repeating the lie that torture worked over and over and over again, that the American people will be either too gullible or too stupid to appreciate the truth. Is that a matter of public perception or legal liability, do you think? I think it's really a matter of public perception because for many of the crimes outlined in the Senate torture report, the statutes of limitations have expired. So I think this is really about these men's place in history.

[04:58] Listeners, give us a call. What your thoughts are on torture. Do you feel this is something that is justified and something that ever works? Give us a call. 608-256-2001. And frankly, I think considering our guest, I'd like to specifically hear from people who feel that torture is justified and is effective in certain situations because it's always nice to have a couple of different points of view. John, can you talk a little bit about your background with CIA? Sure. I spent just under 15 years with the CIA. I spent the

[05:32] first half of that career as an analyst working on the Middle East and primarily on Iraq. Served overseas in that capacity as well. And then in 1997 I switched to counterterrorism operations, working to recruit spies to steal secrets and to infiltrate groups like Al Qaeda to disrupt future terrorist attacks. After September 11th I became the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. And I led a raid, I led a series of raids in March 2002 that

[06:03] resulted in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who at the time we believed was the number three in Al Qaeda. That turned out to not be correct, although he was a very senior logistician and he created and maintained Al Qaeda's training camps in southern Afghanistan. I left the CIA in 2004, went into the private sector for five years, and then I became the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Everything changed for me at least in

[06:34] 2012. In 2007 I went on ABC News and I gave an interview to Brian Ross and I said three things. I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved of and signed by the president. And so the FBI began investigating me. The investigation lasted four years. I didn't know I was under investigation. And in January of 2012 I was charged with five felonies, including three

[07:07] counts of espionage coming out of that interview. Four of the charges were finally dropped and I took a plea to a lesser charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I was sentenced to 30 months in prison. I served 23 those months and was released earlier this year. What is your opinion of the Obama administration and its efforts on dealing not just with terrorism but with torture? Well, I think the Obama

[07:37] administration really has done very little to address the torture issue. It wasn't until just this past spring that Diane Feinstein, the senior senator from California and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, joined together to sponsor a bill that was very quickly passed into law that would finally and definitively ban torture by U.S. government entities. What President

[08:08] Obama did when he was elected president is find an executive order banning torture, but that didn't necessarily have the effect of law in that any future president could have just signed an executive order re-implementing the torture program. So what we really needed was a law and the impetus for that law did not come from the White House. It came from the Congress. And now we have a law. Are people going to be held responsible? Well, that's really the $64,000 question and I think the answer

[08:43] is clearly now no. No one will be held responsible. As I said a few minutes ago, the statute of limitations on many of these crimes have expired and the president has made it clear that he wants to, as he put it, look forward not backward and nobody involved in torture. Even those officers who killed prisoners during the course of interrogation, even they will not be held responsible for their crimes. What message do you feel the sends? Well,

[09:15] it's just so hypocritical of us. The State Department is mandated every year with writing a human rights report on every country with which we have diplomatic relations. And I was an embassy human rights officer when I was serving in the Middle East and we would go to the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior and to the office of the Prime Minister and we would complain about human rights abuses that we had documented. And we would tell them, look, you risk having a cough of American aid. You risk having

[09:48] military aid cut off if you don't improve your human rights practices. Well, in fact, we were doing things that were much worse than most of these other countries did. So it's very hypocritical of us to talk about human rights and to profess to be this shining beacon on a hill, you know, who's supporting and demanding around the world respect for human rights when we don't respect human rights. And I'm talking here only about torture. I'm not talking about things like solitary confinement or the death penalty or other

[10:24] domestic issues. I'm talking specifically about torturing prisoners in secret prisons overseas. See, this is the thing that... The thing that I think most of us human beings who live in a lot of comfort don't think about is I think how little it takes for a human being to feel tortured. And that's legitimate. I mean, you can leave a light bulb on in a room with no windows 24 hours a day. That's torture. I agree with you.

[10:55] You know, in fact, we talk so much about waterboarding. And certainly waterboarding is a terrible thing. But the CIA was using techniques that I believe were even worse than waterboarding on prisoners. One of those was sleep deprivation. And as you say, they leave bright lights on 24 hours a day in a windowless cell. They bombard the cell with hard rock music. I'm not talking about forcing a prisoner to be awake for 24 hours or 48 or 72.

[11:25] I'm talking about forcing a prisoner to remain awake for 10 days, 12, 14 days even. We know now that some prisoners lose their minds to the point where they're not able to participate in their own defenses. And to me, that's torture. And another thing that we were doing, and this actually resulted in the death of two prisoners, was what's called the cold cell, where we strip a prisoner naked. We chain him to an eyeball in the ceiling so he can't sit or kneel.

[11:57] We chill the cell to 50 degrees, and then every hour we throw ice water on him. Well, that kills you. Your body can't take that kind of hypothermia. And how George Tennant and Mike Hayden and Porter Goss and their minions think that this is torture is just a mystery to me. You're listening to WRT, Monday edition of a public affair. This is Yuri Rashkin and my guest is former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriako.

[12:29] On a lighter note, I think one of the forms of torture is to listen to talk radio and not be able to participate. On that note, I'm excited to welcome to program a caller. Thomas, what's your question or comment for our guest? Hello? Yes. My name is Thomas. Yes. Okay. When you called up, you said you wanted to hear from people who think torture works. Absolutely. And I'm going to give you my opinion on that. The reason torture works is because it puts fear into all the other prisoners

[13:05] and it puts fear into the American people so it's easier for them to go to war. And the second reason that works is because then we can say we have prevented, we have prevented espionage in this country or we have prevented an attack by terrorists in this country and therefore in order to preserve our way of life,

[13:36] we have to get all the information on everybody that lives here and that's how we're keeping you free. And so torture works in that sense. Thomas, it almost sounds a little like you're being a little sarcastic here, I guess, to me. I am not being sarcastic. I'm trying to tell you that's the way it works on the general population and even some of the people who do the torturing. So I'm not being sarcastic. So you're saying it has a certain effect and that's the effect that it has?

[14:08] Yes. Right? It's easy to do and thank you for the program. Thank you very much for the call. John, what are your thoughts? Well, you know, that's, in a funny way, I have to agree with the caller because it does have a way of cowing the American people. You know, when former Attorney General Eric Holder went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was asked by, I think it was Senator Rand Paul,

[14:40] does the President have the right to murder American citizens with drones? And Attorney General Holder said yes. And then the Senator asked, does he have the right to murder American citizens with drones on U.S. territory? And the Attorney General wouldn't respond to that question. Then I think that what the caller is saying is probably true. We are frightened into following our leadership like Lemmings right off the edge of the cliff.

[15:10] And I think that many of our leaders probably want that to be the case. If we presume that torture doesn't work to get information and you worked for Central Intelligence Agency, what is an effective way of getting information out of people in your opinion? Well, as much as CIA officers hate the FBI institutionally, going back to the creation of the CIA in the 1940s, we have to give credit where credit is due. The FBI really is the federal government's elite interrogation force.

[15:41] They really know how to do it and to do it successfully. And the way you do it successfully is to build a rapport and a relationship with the person that you're interrogating. This takes time, but the FBI and military interrogators succeeded wildly with this method in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War with German scientists and German military leaders. We should have done that in the so-called war on terror. Instead, we were impatient and we believed that we could get the same kind of information

[16:15] through torture that we could have through rapport building. And frankly, we didn't. All right, we have a caller on the line. Keith, welcome to the program. What is your question or comment for our guest? Oh, hi, yes, it's a great honor to speak with John. Thank you. I'm wondering if you had decided whether you actually thought about going public with this very long and did you ever imagine that you would be prosecuted for actually revealing this information?

[16:49] And did you ever think about doing what Edward Snowden did and leaving in... You know, I did not give this... I'm embarrassed to say I did not give this a lot of thought before I did it. Brian Ross called me in December 2007 and said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubeda. I said that that was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubeda. I sat with him next to his bed. I held his hand. We talked about our lives.

[17:20] I never laid a hand on Abu Zubeda or on any other prisoner. And Brian Ross said, well, you're free to come on to the show and defend yourself. And I was weighing whether or not I should do this. And at that same time, President Bush gave a press conference in which he looked right at the camera and he said, we do not torture. Well, I knew that that was a lie. We had been torturing people for years. And then later in the week, President Bush said, if there is torture,

[17:50] it's the result of a rogue CIA officer. And I thought, oh my God, they're going to pimp on me. So I called Brian Ross and I agreed to the interview. And when he asked me a direct question about whether or not we were torturing prisoners, I gave him a direct answer and I said yes. When I was first arrested, I went to see an attorney, Jeff Lynn Radak, who specializes in whistleblower defense. And I said to her, listen, I should tell you off the bat, I'm not a whistleblower.

[18:20] And she said, oh yes, you are. She said, no whistleblower thinks he's a whistleblower. But there's a legal definition of whistleblowing. And it's bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse or illegality. She said, you're the poster boy for whistleblowers. So I decided to fight. And I made a decision that I was going to go trial, which I ended up not doing. But I fought for an entire year. I didn't know it at the time, but Ed Snowden was closely following my case. And then after I took a plea and went to prison, Snowden made his revelations.

[18:54] Well, he told The New York Times in 2014 that Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower, and I inspired him to go public, that he saw evidence of waste, fraud, abuse and illegality. And he decided to say something about it. So in that respect, I'm very proud that I had at least that influence. And to tell you the honest to God's truth, I like to think that I have had a small role

[19:25] in the abolition of torture in the United States. And so if you asked me if it was worth it, it was worth it. And I would do it again. John, do you feel that there is torture going on now by CIA? You know, I want to say no, but I know the CIA. I was there for 15 years. And I know that some members of the CIA's leadership are what I think many of us would call sociopaths.

[19:58] So because there's... often disagreement over what exactly constitutes torture i'm going to say yes i think they're probably still is torture going on somewhere in the world uh... at the hands of of american officials do you see or situation scenario where there is central intelligence agency that does not engage in torture i do you know we we had a period of that briefly from uh... from around nineteen seventy six

[20:28] with the church uh... committee hearings uh... until september eleventh and uh... as jetlin redacted says uh... i want my september tenth country back you know i remember at the c i a in the nineteen ninety uh... there were very hard and fast rules in place dealing with with human rights and if if we were targeting for recruitment an individual who had uh... a personal history of disrespect for human rights we were not allowed to recruit him

[20:58] it didn't matter the kind of information he had but we had to respect human rights and not just u s human rights laws but international law that all came down to september eleventh and i don't think it changed for the better can that you know we need to go with another caller but i wanted to ask you can you just to follow your line of thinking is if you have uh... you know the c i a that doesn't take people with uh... torturous past well you know and then we are attacked in nine eleven can argument be made that we should have

[21:30] uh... paid more attention to that information maybe there wouldn't be nine eleven i don't think so i think an argument can be made that we should have focused uh... more intensely and concentrated uh... our our budget and our manpower on developing human source intelligence the root the reason why we didn't disrupt the september eleventh attack is because we have no sources inside al-qaeda and al-qaeda had been around for years and we had never been able to infiltrate the group so if we had focused more on infiltrating the group

[22:02] i think we could have disrupted the attack you're listening to w r t public affair monday edition this is your iraskin my guest is former c a counterintelligence counterterrorism officer john kiriako and uh... scott welcome to the program what is your question or comment for a guest thank you uh... and i'd like to thank uh... your guests uh... for his courage coming forward uh... i think people like tom strake edward snowden and your guest today are true american heroes and i let everyone know what that i speak to about this topic

[22:35] i'd like to go back to the senate intelligence report i believe it was just about exactly a year ago how prior to the first uh... real uh... release of any information in the report it became known that the c a a had been hacking into senate intelligence committee staff computers spying uh... in the words of uh... uh... set then senator mark u dot they like to come this the c i a like to

[23:06] congress they like to the american people uh... they destroyed evidence in the senate intelligence committee uh... investigation and they threatened the senate intelligence staff and uh... nothing is actually nothing has come of this uh... five-person panel including i think former senator dornan was uh... put together to investigate what should be done with the idea that there are almost uh... investigation said yes three agents and two lawyers

[23:39] in the c i a responsible for this uh... the five-person panel uh... convene for a while and said i think and uh... i have contacted senator balman's office it's starting a year ago and said what do you think about the c a buying on the senate and uh... you know breaking laws and what are you gonna do about it and to this day a year later on my the response from senator balman has been absolutely nothing

[24:11] zero and uh... you know people like your guest today are a hundred uh... people with snone was a little five they claim he was a spy and he was going to sell the information to the soviet and whoever he could get you know top dollar from these people are vilified they're prosecuted and incarcerated and the criminals in the c i a are scott free any comments please but thank you thank you so much for your comment you know this is this is perfectly

[24:43] i i i i i i i i i i i honestly don't believe that we've seen this kind of behavior and then lack of response uh... since the nixon administration what you've described really uh... is a series of crimes against the american people for the c i a to by on staffers cleared senate staffers for them to act into the senate uh... computer system for them to The elite information that had been provided to the Senate in response to a subpoena.

[25:16] These are all felonies. This is obstruction of justice, it's wire fraud, it's probably espionage. But this is something that I've learned the hard way. And believe me, I believed in the whole hope and change thing back in 2008. I proudly voted for Barack Obama, I went to the inauguration, I held up the signs. But this is what the Obama administration has become. It's become an administration of hypocrisy.

[25:47] If you have four shiny stars on your shoulder, or if you're a friend of the president, or if you are a senior official, for example in the CIA, and you commit a crime, no problem. But if you leak information, especially to the press that embarrasses the administration, you're going to be charged with espionage and your life is going to be ruined. Let me tell you, from two weeks after I made my revelation on ABC News, I have been audited

[26:18] by the IRS every single year since 2007. I ended up being charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage for going on ABC News and talking about torture. The federal government took my pension, I had a million dollars in that pension, 19 plus proud years of federal service. I lost my home, I lost my job, I lost everything. I had to sell my personal possessions to pay my attorneys and I still owe them $880,000.

[26:54] That's what happens if you leak information that embarrasses this administration. But if you're General David Petraeus, you get off with a slap on the wrist. If you're General James Cartwright, who allegedly leaked classified information about the Stuxnet virus to the New York Times, you get off scot-free. Don't forget that he was always known in administration circles as the president's favorite general. So there really are two standards in this administration.

[27:27] Those who are with them and those who are not with them, and the ones not with them, are going to be ruined. It sounds like you're with us or you're against us, you know, was an approach that was adopted by both Bush and Obama administrations, but it seems like Obama is almost more effective about enforcing it. I think that's true, and there are a lot of similarities and consistencies between the Bush administration and the Obama administration. I remember giving a speech about two years into the Obama administration when someone

[28:01] asked me about foreign policy, especially as it related to counterterrorism. And I said, listen, President Obama is even bloodier than George W. Bush was. President Obama killed more people overseas with drones in his first two years as president than President Bush killed in eight years as president. So instead of saying that President Obama is weak on foreign policy and weak on counterterrorism,

[28:32] on the contrary, he's even bloodier than George W. Bush was. You're listening to WRT, a public affair. Gary, welcome to the program. What is your question or comment? First of all, thanks for having such an informative guest. I applaud his courage to come on and say these very truthful things. My question to this esteemed guest is several. First of all, to what extent do you think Israel is driving our foreign policy to?

[29:05] I think you're going to confirm my idea that Obama was a Trojan horse put in by the elites because the way they ran him against Hillary, a lot of the progressives drank the Kool-Aid and, of course, he was a Trojan horse. And lastly, other people, entities that are getting off, Scott, free are the bankers who have bankrupted the country and the military industrial complex taking all the

[29:39] wealth out of the country. So we have no high-speed trains, no decent roads, and no decent future. Thank you. Wow, thank you for those excellent questions. And I'm essentially just going to agree with you. There really is no country in the world that has as much of an effect on U.S. foreign policy as israel we have of course uh... a very long and deep and abiding relationship with israel but the israeli's really have a lobby in washington that is

[30:10] that is unparalleled by any other country the world and we have a lot of elected officials in the congress who uh... really way what a policy is going to do israel before weighing what that policy that united states i i i think that that's true now i will say that the israelis that the israeli of uh... the coup party at least uh... is is stridently opposed to the president some uh... agreement with iran and he continues to push forward on that rightly so i believe

[30:43] uh... it's going to be a lot tougher convincing congress because israelis have been working on congress for so long to oppose this deal at the trojan horse issue i think the president himself essentially confirmed that he was a trojan horse uh... in a book written uh... after the last election by mark halperin all when i forget his writing partner uh... anyway it was a book that that recounted sort of the blow-by-blow of the of the obama

[31:13] romney rate and he quotes the president and saying two things that were there were utterly to me he said first of all uh... i never told anybody i was a progressive which it was just stunning to me because obama was supposed to be the progressive alternative to hillary clinton the other thing that he said in that book that that was so so terrifying i never thought i'd be so good at killing people i mean is that really what we want our president to to to be thinking is

[31:44] that is that the kind of president we want to have an office somebody who's very comfortable killing people and someone who's very comfortable campaigning on a lie and then showing his true colors once he's elected i was very disappointed on that note let's take a little break you're listening to w r t public affair this is your rashkin and uh... for sure break we're going to continue conversation with john karyakou former say analyst and case officers in a senior investigator for the senate foreign relations committee

[32:14] and account of terrorism consultant for a bc news and author will be right back

[32:54] at the We're back, you're listening to WRT Public Affair.

[33:39] This is Yuri Rashkin and my guest is John Kiriakou. And one of the subjects of today's program really is this book that is published by the Navy Institute, Rebottle, the say a response to the Senate Intelligence Committee's study of its detention and interrogation program written by, the essay is contributed, I guess, by three of the last say directors and lots of others, second, third in command in at CIA. John, do you feel that they're trying to assign blame somewhere else where they're saying

[34:11] there is no blame or what are they're saying? Yeah, I think that they're saying there is no blame to go around that, well, George Tennant has always maintained that the torture program was not torture, that it just didn't rise to the level of torture, even though people died during the interrogation, that it didn't result in torture. Another thing that they're denying, and this is really just so puzzling to me, I don't understand their explanation, the Senate torture report did not dwell on the handful

[34:44] of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that had been approved by the Justice Department. What the Senate torture report focused on was instances and evidence where CIA interrogators went over and above what had been allowed by the Justice Department, things like rectal rehydration using hummus, which I would call sexual assault, things like obstruction of justice, things like the cold cell that had not been approved where Huff and Gould died

[35:19] of exposure. I'd like to know why that doesn't constitute torture to George Tennant, and I would like to know why the people who carried out these techniques have not been prosecuted. John, you were talking about the different values that existed in the 1990s and up until September 11th. How do we instill those values back into CIA so that should another command come down through political channels, people just, I don't know, quit in mass?

[35:50] Or is that what happened in 2002, 2003, and they were replaced with more pliable operatives? No. You know what, it's not really about the operatives, it's about Congress and congressional oversight. The CIA, I mean, the average CIA employee is an automaton. He'll do what he's told by his superiors, and his superiors will do what they're told by the Congressional Oversight Committee. So if the policy is to respect human rights, they'll respect human rights. If the policy is to institute a torture program, they'll start torturing people.

[36:21] So what we really need is congressional leadership, and we don't have it. Diane Feinstein, until just, you know, the last two years, was probably the CIA's greatest cheerleader on Capitol Hill. Whether it was during the Obama administration or the Bush administration before it, she was a great, great friend to the CIA, and she essentially approved of anything the CIA wanted to do. What do you feel was her motivation? Well, I believe you are the likes of Frank Church or Paul Wellstone. I'm sorry, what do you feel were her motivation, Senator Feinstein's motivations for such

[36:55] strong support of CIA? Well, I've always been a believer in the idea that the CIA is very, very good at informally recruiting the people that it needs, especially on Capitol Hill. You kind of make it sound sinister, you know? Well, it is. I mean, the CIA, every CIA operations officer is trained in manipulation, and the only way that you can get ahead in life at the CIA is to recruit people, recruit them over to your

[37:29] side. So you've got a new senator who's on the House or Senate, I'm sorry, a new member of Congress who's either on the House or Senate Intelligence Committee, they've never been on the committee before, and then they see their very first blue border report, or they get their very first classified briefing, or their very first look at a sensitive operation overseas, and you know you've hooked them. You've made them a part of the team, and they want more. They want to be part of that club, part of that exclusive group that knows the country's

[38:01] darkest secrets. And so you draw them in on this way. I mean, the CIA... You know, even if the secrets were elicited, you know, through torture and are probably conceivably erroneous to begin with, people still are seduced by that sense of power and being, you know, having the key to the executive bathroom, you know? It is the key to the executive bathroom. And don't forget that the torture regime, the enhanced interrogation techniques were

[38:33] all approved by the Senate and House Oversight Committee. So the members of Congress who were serving on those committees at the time are in this up to their necks just like the CIA leadership is, even though they may deny it. They knew about it. They did nothing to stop it. They approved of it. It sounds a little bit like still you are absolving CIA itself off the responsibility by saying that the employees are, you know, automatons, as you mentioned, as you said, refer to, but their responsibility is with Congress.

[39:05] What about the employees? Yeah. You know, one of the great disappointments for me is we signed the Senate torture report that there were CIA officers in the field who were cabling back and saying, this is torture. I don't like it. I don't want to do it. I want to come home. Okay. And then those officers were allowed to come home, but nobody ever talked. Nobody ever went public and said, this is wrong. We shouldn't be doing it. I fault them for that.

[39:36] But really I placed the greatest fault on the CIA's leadership. We had people in positions of leadership, and you named them at the start of this program that I would consider to be sociopaths. I would consider to be people who are unable to operate within the confines of the law. I think that they committed grave crimes against the Constitution, and I think it's a terrible terrible slapped to the constitution to the american people that the administration won't prosecute them

[40:06] you're listening to the or t monday edition of a public affair this is your rashkin and my guest is former cia counterterrorism officer john kiri akku well john i'm trying to uh... kind of wrap my mind around this because uh... the the statement you just made basically calling the last three uh... chairs uh... you know office a sociopath uh... you know because once is an occurrence two is a coincidence and three i believe is a pattern does it mean that you need to be sociopath to be in charge of cia or just to

[40:37] work there but you know what the i a psychiatrist once told me that the cia peak to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies specifically sociopath but people with sociopathic tendencies isn't like they'll they'll finish the job on the inside yeah and you know they're comfortable walker working in legal or moral or ethical gray areas uh... you know they're comfortable breaking into people's houses or offices and planting bugs we're carrying out operations against individuals

[41:08] but it's very hard to weed out the sociopath from those with sociopathic tendencies because sociopath have no conscience they have no ability to empathize and so they can very easily pass a polygraph exam and what you end up having it like in any major corporation you know where where psychologist and psychiatrist will tell you that it's the sociopath who rise to the top and become the c e o of the corporations the same thing happened at the cia the one to keep getting promoted and promoted promoted are the ones who are comfortable breaking the law

[41:40] alright so that's what happened so then to cut you know to the bigger picture do we do you feel cia is needed in the first place i always believed a cia was needed until about five years ago the more i thought about it the more i read about it the more i realized that that former senator annual patrick moinehan of new york was right when he said in nineteen seventy six that the cia should be broken up

[42:10] that human intelligence can be done by the military which has a defense human services uh... division that analysis can be done by the defense intelligence agency and the state department uh... uh... bureau of uh... of intelligence research and certainly science and technology that the cia does can be done in any number of of federal agencies so i i've come to the conclusion that we really don't need to see i anymore now through uh...

[42:40] ever snowden's revelations one of the things that big part of the american public has learned is about the active role that and i say plays uh... in in spying on american citizens and in general involvement in spying count is that relationship work between cia ns a and if you don't need cia do you need ns a or all of those intelligence services just are are not really helpful to art really to our security you know it was illegal

[43:12] for for the ns a to intercept not just the communications of american citizens but of any uh... quote quote u.s. person that is any american or for a national in the united states on a uh... on a green card legal president that held up until september eleventh and with the passage of the patriot act ns a attorney in cahoots with the justice department office of legal counsel twisted the law to allow ns a for the very first time ever

[43:44] to spy on american citizens it's even written in ns a charter that it's not permitted to spy on american citizens and so with the passage of that ill-conceived in poorly named patriot act uh... we've created a uh... domestic surveillance monster that i believe is in violation of of our own constitution you know in a perfect world i would want an ns a

[44:14] to spy on foreign countries and to intercept you know electronic communications and that's what it did until the purple and now it seems that it is focused almost solely on dragnet collection of american communications the cia and ns a historically have had very close relationship uh... even way down at the analytic level at the working level i i assume that that still the case and i think that's very dangerous now with it though the revelations we also know that and it has brought in

[44:48] most of our major telecommunications company uh... a tnp had a very close working relationship with uh... with ns a as did you know for rising and and others that's really what we should fear if there's going to be any kind of reform in congress i think the congress should look at ns a even before it looks at cia i think that the most immediate danger alright now uh... john you speak to a lot of people who are true you know i ask you the same questions over and over and i imagine you find certain ways to

[45:20] explain certain concepts that are in your opinion are effective in trying to get the point across and and here's the situation that i ran into with with this topic is when i put out the word but that i'll be you know speaking about torture and is short torture ever appropriate or effective uh... the comment that i got which i think is really typical is if it saves lives through info gathered heck yes the problem is filtering that info i'm on the fence here rights you know for a minor social media

[45:51] how do you get over this if it saves lives when we know it doesn't work yeah it it nobody is able to point to any instances any evidence at all where torture has saved a single american life psychiatrists will tell you believe me the cia is chock full of psychiatrists but psychiatrists will tell you that a victim of torture will tell his torture absolutely anything he thinks that person wants to know just to get the torture to stop

[46:21] we had haleh sheikh muhammad who was really the the the leader of the nine eleven attack the the creator of the idea of the nine eleven attack we we tortured him and he admitted to things that crime that he couldn't possibly have have committed even admitted to bring daniel pearl uh... an american journalist in in pakistan in two thousand two we know that he didn't murder daniel pearl uh... so really it does nothing but it but then cia analysts

[46:51] down the wrong road looking for conspiracies that don't exist looking for for evidence of the tax that just aren't there it's just a bad policy you're listening to w r t on the issue of public affairs if you're asking we have a few remaining moments with uh... our guest today john carry out is a former say counterterrorism officer uh... john what do you feel if you well if our listeners if you have just a few minutes to give us a call we have uh... lines open six oh eight two five

[47:23] six two zero zero one john what do you feel you ultimately will learn from this because every experience is an opportunity to learn lessons what what lessons have you learned from this for yourself uh... boy a lot i've learned a lot you know i always trusted my government i i spent nineteen years in federal service and went to college here in washington got both of my degrees in washington i i really believe that in the end uh... truth always wins and that's just not that's just not the case i always believed in justice

[47:55] and that's also not the case uh... i maybe i was maybe i was naive to think that government operate the way it's supposed to operate for the for the benefit of the american people it it doesn't again with that uh... if you see something say something that's what the government always says right whether it's a backpack or whether it's government committing a crime you have to stand up and you have to pay enough this is wrong so that's another thing i learned

[48:26] is there anything going to get they did the right thing looking back do you feel that there is anything that you would have liked to have done differently you know i once again to uh... at which no one's reference you know the you know going to hong kong then to russia now of course the irony of fate is that he's stuck in probably one of the least free countries in the world and uh... uh... what do you feel you could have done differently or wanted want now to have done differently than there are two things that i that i should have done differently i should have hired an attorney before i went on a bc

[48:58] uh... especially an attorney skilled in whistleblower protection i wish i had known to do that the second thing is uh... i i spoke to the fb i and i should never ever have spoken to the fb i it was an hour and twenty minutes into that conversation before i realized that they were investigating me they weren't asking for my help in an investigation the investigation was of me and so i told it though both of those things higher the best uh... whistleblower attorney you can find

[49:29] and don't ever ever speak to the fb i under any circumstances you know there's a video i think out there on uh... in the youtube land that says and never talk to police you're adding adding to that never talk to fb i not unless your attorney sitting right there next to you all right and in you know the part of the reason that we were able to connect is your opposition to this book that's coming out so i'd like to give you one more opportunity to kind of summarize about the

[50:00] the re-bottle by the say, you know, collection of former directors, anything you wanted to say that people should know about this book. I think this book is nothing more than an attempt for a group of discredited individuals to try to save their reputations. Torture does not work. It has never worked. It has never disrupted an attack. It has never saved an American life and it has no place in American policy.

[50:31] John Caraccio, going forward, what are you looking to work on? Do you ever hope to put this behind you? Yeah, you know, I really hate being the torture guy, although that seems to be what I've become. I'm working now at the Institute for Policy Studies, a highly respected and old think tank here in Washington, looking at issues like torture and intelligence community reform and prison reform even. So I intend to stay there and I've been speaking

[51:02] around the country, mostly at colleges and universities, but also before peace groups and a couple of non-profits. So I hope to continue doing that as well. And I'm going to teach a class in the ethics of intelligence operations that I developed at the university level. And I've got two books getting ready to come out. One is called Letters from Loretto, which is based on a series of blog posts that I wrote from prison. And the next is called Doing Time Like a Spy, How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison,

[51:36] which is sort of a more fun book full of anecdotes. So kind of not your worst, you know, what to do in a worst case scenario about how to get through life, you know, how to think like Einstein or how to think like a CIA spy. That's right. You know, when you go to prison, the first thing you want to do is make sure that you stay at the top of the social heap. That sounds like most any organization, doesn't it? John, I want to thank you for being on the program today. John Kiriakou is an individual who's been through a lot and I very much appreciate his ability

[52:09] to connect with us today and share his experience and answer your calls. You're listening to WRT Public Affair. This is Yuri Rashkin and I want to also thank Holly for producing, for engineering the program and Sarah for engineering, producing. Take care.
