Title: John Kiriakou - CIA, Blackmail, Whistleblowers - Bulwarg
Show: Bulwarg
Date: 2024-10-30
URL: https://youtu.be/oNxH86ZdeSE
Duration: 47:00

---

[00:03] all right three two one hey folks we've got another episode of the bullar disclosure podcast here um we're going to talk to somebody today that I really have a lot of respect for you know anybody who uses their position in life and the things that they've seen to expose injustices or evil is is someone that I really have a great deal of respect for and today we are joined by someone uh who who that applies to more than anybody else I can think of we have Mr John kyaku here thanks for joining us

[00:34] John my pleasure thanks for inviting me for anybody who doesn't know uh John is an author and other things but probably most famously known for you know being a very famous CIA Defector and uh John is actually the one who exposed the enhanced interrogation techniques that were being used you know in during the Iraq War he he has the unique honor of being the only person ever prosecuted over the cia's enhanced interrogation programs and not for participating in

[01:04] them but for exposing them yeah I'm the only one after all these years you would have thought that somebody somebody at some point would have been prosecuted and never yeah they all went on to to Great riches with multi-million dollar book advances and you actually spent some some time in prison for yeah I spent uh 23 months in a federal prison for for um for my Revelations and uh I was facing 45 years I ended up having to take a

[01:36] plea I have five kids and uh just to make the sentence as short as possible but that hasn't stopped the FBI from raiding my house even after I got out of prison it's uh it's contentious yeah what was it like after after you got out of prison you were correct me if I'm wrong but you were technically a felon after this oh yeah I'm very much a felon yeah you know it's funny in in some ways it is

[02:08] um it's liberating I guess is the word that I could use it it has opened up a a new world to me that I would never have had exposure to you know there's this joke uh that everybody in prison is innocent right the truth is there are a lot of people in prison who are innocent this has become a real um issue for me according to propublica the government wins 98.2% of its cases almost all of those

[02:42] 98.2% wins are a result of plea Bargains well when you have you know 20 30 50 years hanging over your head and they say look we'll dismiss all the charges but one if you just take a plea to this one felony and then you do a year or two you're going to take the deal even if you're innocent you're going to take the deal because you can't roll those dice knowing that they have a 98.2% chance of winning I in fact I told

[03:15] my lawyers at one point look I didn't do anything wrong I'm going to trial and one of the lawyers said think of it this way every time you walk into a room you flip on the light switch would you go into the room and flip on the light switch if you know that 98.2% of the time it's going to electrocute you no he says take the deal and so I took the deal and that's what most everybody does what did that feel like after you got out of prison I I assume it kind of

[03:46] precluded you from ever working in the same area that you did before in government yeah what was your mind what were you even looking to to do after that yeah that's a that's an important Point uh and it's not just unique to me it's it's you know every everybody who's been in prison um experiences the same thing I'm lucky because I've got you know a master's degree and I've got 25 years of White Collar experience I was one of the government's leading experts

[04:18] in the Middle East so I could build something but I could never work for government again I could never get a corporate job again I could never get a security clearance again so I had to make something for myself right so I ended up um I ended up with I started at a think tank uh it it was the institute for policy studies the the oldest left-wing think tank in Washington so they they gave me a job as soon as I got out and it it wasn't you know I wasn't

[04:49] going on to like greatness or anything it was a minimum wage job to write a syndicated column so I did that until I could find something better I got a radio show that led to another syndicated column that led to a TV show and now I I've actually patched together a decent living but again I'm unique what if you you know you've done five years or 10 years on a on a drug charge and there are there are

[05:20] no like training courses in prison they're not going to teach you Plumbing or electrical work or mechanical work or anything so you get out of prison and you go back to your neighborhood with what skills the only thing you know how to do is sell drugs and so you're going to sell drugs again and then we sit there and we wonder like why is our recidivism rate so high it's because we prepare people for failure in our system yeah yeah what would you say to

[05:52] other people um you know who maybe were working in somewhere in government or somewhere where you know they were PR to the types of things that you were and they're unsure about you know you know coming forward with those types of things what what would you say to those people you know having that experience yeah that that's a good question too you have to come forward you absolutely have to come forward you won't be able to live with yourself if you don't but don't do it the way I did it I went straight to the media first get the best whistleblower protection attorney that

[06:24] you possibly can don't say a word unless that attorney is sitting next to you and then with the attorney go to the oversight committees and then if the oversight committees don't give you satisfaction then you go to the media with the attorney but you've got to have I I was reactive in that I had to hire an attorney after I blew the whistle I would encourage everybody to hire the attorney first and then blow the whistle it's a very Bleak thing because if you think about the high-profile cases of

[06:56] whistleblowers whether it's Julian Assange or snow or you know people like Gary web you know it's very people are very disincentivized to come oh yeah listen there there are no good stories here there are no good outcomes right you know you remember in Kill the Messenger Gary Webb the movie ended with Gary Webb putting a gun in his mouth in a in a motel in Colorado um I'll give you another example that you may not know of of Tom Drake at NSA Tom was an Air Force Colonel and

[07:28] then joined NSA on on the morning of September 11th 2001 as a senior intelligence Service Officer as soon as 911 took place uh NSA implemented a plan to begin intercepting the communications of Americans that is patently illegal it's not just illegal it's also prohibited in nsa's Charter so he did it the right way he went to the um to the Inspector General the inspector General

[07:59] was not read into the program told him I don't know what you're talking about then he went to the general counsel they said buddy this is over your head you need to shut your mouth then he went to the Pentagon Inspector General who actually ratted him out to the FBI then he went to the Congressional oversight committees so everybody he spoke to was clear for the information yet they charged him with nine felonies including seven counts of Espionage and two counts of theft of

[08:30] government property with the property being the information that he walked out of the building with in his head now the case ended up falling apart but not before he lost his pension his job his security clearance his wife and he ended up working the rest of his career in an Apple store in Bethesda Maryland incredible it REM you know the just the the good guys ending up taking

[09:01] the brunt of the Wrath of the government you know it reminds me of um the Franklin Scandal and I don't know if you're familiar with John de camp and you know or the case of Gary kadori you know who was also kind of working on this whistleblower level and died in a in a plane accident with his son you know yes and obviously that whole thing was investigating uh you know a trafficking Network that kind of has parallels with things like Epstein and and Galen Maxwell do you think there are some cases or some some topics that it's

[09:32] just impossible for justice or truth to ever see the light of day I hate to say this but I think that's most cases involving National Security organs yes you know I gave a speech at American University several years ago and I used a hypothetical situation but it it for some reason took on a life of its own I said part of the problem with the CIA is there is no training whatsoever in

[10:05] ethics right you have to go in there with your own set of moral values of ethical ethical guidelines and I said and again this is purely from my own imagination but it's true to life I said let's say you're a CIA case officer in the Middle East and you have recruited a Bonafide terrorist somebody from Al-Qaeda Isis Hezbollah doesn't matter you meet with this guy

[10:36] once a month in a hotel let's say in Cairo or Aman and the information he has given you has been 100% accurate and that information you have used to disrupt attacks and save American lives so this guy's the real deal then you go to meet him one day and he says to you you know I've been good to you and everything I've given you is true so now you're going to do something for me you're going to get me a prostitute and if you don't get me a prostitute I'm not

[11:06] going to talk to you anymore so I ask the crowd do you get him the prostitute show of hands and usually about 90% of the hands go up and I say yeah you get him the prostitute it's ugly it's dirty but this is the job we've chosen right and you want your source to be happy what if he asks you for a child proc itute and people kind of look around to see what their neighbors are going to do and then like a tenth put their hand in

[11:38] the air and I say absolutely not look we all want to serve our country in one way or the other we can't lose our Humanity it's a child for God's sake now the problem is there are no rules your job as a CIA case officer is to break the law in whatever country you happen to be serving in your job is to collect information to supply to the government so that our elected leaders can make

[12:10] policy so there's no rule that says hey man you can't you can't get a child prostitute and so some do or some would and that leads to situations like we saw with Jeffrey Epstein and galain Maxwell and a whole host of other people who have no right to live in civilized society yeah I think that's what's really hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around they they're used to the idea of intelligence agency that's been purported by Hollywood and Tom

[12:41] Clancy and stuff for so long it's hard for them to rap to understand that there are people out there that would do that that will do whatever it takes to in their mind you know serve their country or whatever yes so that's that's you know um it kind of It kind of brings me to something I wanted to talk to you about there's a couple things just going on right now you know as the time at the time that we're recording this that I'd love to talk to you about and one of them is uh Donald Trump and the the assassination attempts you know for the

[13:12] most part I tend to believe that if an intelligence agency wants somebody dead they're they're going to die yeah they're going to be in the ground right right yeah and with the you know some of the things we've been touching on blackmail and uh and and things of that nature I think people don't realize that there's quite a bit of that in Trump's history you know and people look at him as this guy you know drain the swamp and you know going to end the Deep State and stuff but Trump had very much his opportunity to end the Deep State you know he appointed Gina haspel for the C

[13:45] there's there's a million John Bolton it's yeah it's it's unbelievable that people still believe in that narrative yes but can you talk a little bit about that you know um what's the deal with that why why is he you know how do people still believe this this kind of narrative on him yeah you're you're exactly right Donald Trump made some very significant mistakes in his dealings with the intelligence Community but I'll back up I'll back up to the to the period just after he won the election in 2016 and before he took

[14:15] office I was asked uh by CNN to to go talk about a comment that Chuck Schumer had made Chuck Schumer being the Senate Majority Leader so Trump was talking about draining the swamp and and the CIA is out of control it's a rogue organization all of which is great I I I was with him on those issues and then Chuck Schumer said that's not the way it works uh they can make your job harder

[14:46] than you can even imagine they he said they have nine ways from Sunday was the term he used to make your job impossible so CNN wanted me to go on and explain what that meant and I said okay first of all let's say what it doesn't mean it doesn't mean a repeat of November 22nd 1963 that's not what Schumer was talking about what Schumer's talking about is this presidents come and go every four years or every eight years but Cia

[15:16] leaders are there for 25 30 35 years sometimes longer they're not going anywhere and no president's going to push them out and they know that no matter who the president is if they don't like that guy they can outweight him so you go to the White House and the President says I want you to do a b and c you say yes sir Mr President you go back and you say [ __ ] you and you do nothing that's what they do if there's

[15:47] one thing that the CIA loves it's a newly elected president with no experience and intelligence now Trump was the exception and I'll tell you why in a minute but look at Obama Obama was in the senate for two years he was utterly unqualified to be president whether you like the way things turned out or not the man was unqualified to be president and so the rule is the day after the

[16:18] election the president-elect gets his first day of CIA briefings it's called The pdb Briefing the president's Daily Brief okay once that guy sees his first blue border report or black border report six levels above top secret and his briefer says Mr president-elect just wait until you hear the cool things we're doing all over the world they've hooked him

[16:48] they've hooked him and they brought him in and he's one of the gang now now Trump wasn't like that and so they decided they could disrupt him I wonder wondered if he thought he could get around that by naming Gina haspel Who was the The consumate Insider the Godmother of the cia's torture program he named her as CIA director I you know I the the the morning that she was named I got a call from The Washington Post and they said can you write an oped on

[17:19] Gina haspel we'll we'll hold it for the Sunday edition that they have like five times the circulation on Sunday that they do during the week I said absolutely and they gave me an unlimited number of words which is highly unusual so I had like the whole it's called the Outlook section in the Washington Post for that Sunday as soon as it's published I get a call from Rand Paul the senator from Kentucky and he says can you come up here and help us

[17:49] strategize about how to block This Woman's nomination I said I'll be right there I jump in the car I go up to Rand Paul's office on Capitol Hill he's got this white board we're writing ideas on the white board a week later he voted yes to confirm her that's Washington yeah the CIA is in charge here Donald Trump's not in charge Rand Paul is not going to throw a wrench into the works the intelligence Community the Deep State and you don't

[18:20] have to call it the Deep State you can just call it the federal bureaucracy if you want they're the ones in charge because they're not going anywhere yeah that that word kind the Deep state that phrase is almost kind of Tainted at this point or it gets that response that you know other things you know like uh during the JFK when they when the CIA pretty much created the the term conspiracy theorists yes you know to discredit people who didn't believe in this lone nut uh Theory or whatever um

[18:50] it seems like there's always a doubt that Trump was one of them but it seems like there have to be kind of wild cards every now and then kind of Rogue people and you know hearkening back to what we've talked about a few times here already seems like one of their main methods for dealing with those instances are you is blackmail of some sort whether it's sexual or you that tends to be the main MO is is sexual blackmail I I I would disagree if you let me interrup no please please um I

[19:21] was taught when when I first entered CIA operational training I was taught that that blackmail is the last resort because you don't want your relationship to be to be one of distrust or resentment if you can convince the person to do whatever it is you want him to do because you're his best friend or absent that you're paying him ridiculous amounts of money or giving him whatever it else whatever else he wants you know in the Middle East it's it's porn or

[19:51] pork in uh I I had a I had a station Chief who said he could recruit a Saudi with a pound of bacon um you just never know if none of that works and you have something that you can hold over this guy's head then that's when blackmail comes in the Russians use blackmail a lot and so do the Iranians but um we try not to unless we have to kind of as a last resort but that nonetheless that nonetheless that's right does exist there you know when it needs to be

[20:21] procured do you know much about um this guy Roy Cohen he was kind of this very famous McCarthy era also one of Trump's mentors oh yeah what was his what was his deal with you know the whole blackmailing ring and J Edgar Hoover what can you tell us about that I know there's been a lot written but wow yeah oh there have been movies made even Roy Co Roy Cohen was one of the one of the darkest ugliest figures in modern American history Ru Cohen he

[20:55] was also a notorious gay man in a period where he was the one in charge of ruining the lives of gay men so he was you know as as out as you could be in the in the early and mid 1950s but he was very very close to Jay Edgar Huger who was also a gay man okay uh a deeply you know deeply closeted gay man and uh and to senator Joseph M Mary

[21:29] the the junior republican from Wisconsin where we get the word McCarthyism yeah so the thing about con was he was virulently anti-communist if you weren't a right-wing Republican you were a communist and as a communist you were an Enemy of the State and you had to be dealt with uh locked up preferably if not locked up ruined professionally and he ruined the lives of countless people whether it was Hollywood writers or

[21:59] directors uh journalists other politicians uh you know there there was a famous story where there was a democratic politician in the House of Representatives who uh whose vote they wanted on the FBI budget and he was going to vote against the FBI budget well this guy had had an affair and so they blackmailed him and they said we're going to we're going to hold this over your head um and go public we're going to not just

[22:31] tell your wife that you cheated on her we're going to tell the papers in your District well as a matter of principal he said I'm not afraid of you and so they told his wife and they released the uh the information to the press and so he decided that every day between the election and the swearing in of the new Congress he was going to give a speech on the floor of the house saying that jedar Hoover and the deputy FBI director Clyde Tolson his words live

[23:04] as man and wife wow yeah in in uh uh Hoover's home which was true they actually owned houses next door to each other but they actually lived in in Hoover's house and that they had had sexual relations with Roy con W and so um and so that's what he did now this was 19 you know 50 3 54 but he was ruined he was the only one who ever fought back well con learned

[23:36] lessons remember con was in his 20s at the time and so he learned lessons from the likes of of Joe McCarthy and Jed G Hoover and he carried those lessons into business and connected with Donald Trump in the 1970s and was a mentor an advisor and an attorney to Trump and many many people say that it was trump it was con rather that taught Trump that ruthlessness that we see today now con

[24:06] ended up dying of AIDS in the uh in the 1980s Alone um unloved no family and was buried in the uh in the family Vault of a of a family friend that took pity on him because nobody even bothered to go to his funeral uh so uh but I mean here we are 40 years later and the lessons of Roy con are still being played out every day in the campaign of Donald

[24:38] [Music] Trump all that is uh pretty fascinating that you told us about Roy Cohen and I I didn't actually know that he died of AIDS um yeah but that reminds me also I know I've heard you talking about some other things with uh with Jay Edgar Hoover The Plaza Hotel and some of these other kind of blackmail locations to me one of the most interesting one is uh the kogi brothers and and Adan kogi's you said he had a boat that was kind of famous for blackmail procurement uh back

[25:09] in the day yeah that's why we went to Adan koki when when we wanted to transfer arms to the Iranians in exchange for the money then being transferred to the contras in Nicaragua yeah um what do you know about the Roy Raiden murders and Robert have you have you heard of those at all no adenan kogi was kind of tangentially involved in these murders and they basically involved a high level of like

[25:39] uh trafficking and there were these movie producers in New York in like the 50s and 60s and you know drug trafficking human trafficking things like that but a lot there's a lot of parallels kind of in in that case with other ones like uh the Son of Sam murders that were kind of simultaneous and and then Charles Manson um which we now at least to some degree have quite a bit of evidence that Charles Manson in that whole scene that was going on there

[26:10] in Los Angeles was pretty directly related to the cia's Mind Control programs and MK Ultra the LSD research and jolly West and and things like that um I've also just noticed that this theme of blackmail pops up a lot in those in those circles you know yes even with Charles Manson you know it was found out that the prosecutor Vincent buosi was hiding videotapes that they found at the Tate house of Sharon Tate being raped by multiple multiple

[26:41] different people um so do you have any you know do you have any kind of theory as to why that uh why that theme would pop up so frequently in these high-profile murder cases that also have this you know kind of spooky overlap with intelligence well I think that MK Ultra this the CIA mind control program was Far deeper yes than than people realize and it wasn't just MK Ultra they were there were there were sub operations of

[27:11] MK Ultra right uh MK pwit for example artichoke MK Arch choke uh it it started off actually before the CIA was even created the the office of strategic Services uh can convinced President Truman to allow them to recruit Nazi scientists to bring them to the United States now every American knows that that many of these Nazi scientists ended up

[27:42] creating what we know today as NASA right it was it was these German scientists that that got us to the moon for example what most Americans don't know is it wasn't just rocket scientists that we brought here it was scientists who had worked in the concentration camp uh experimenting on mind control and the Nazis had convinced themselves in the um in the early 1940s that it was possible to brainwash a person to the point where he would carry out any operation you

[28:12] instructed him to carry out and would have no ability to resist and then no memory of it once it was done so the CIA decided when the CIA was created in 1947 with passage of the National Security Act the CIA decided that this was something that they wanted to continue experimenting on they did that at Fort Dietrich Maryland everybody thinks Fort dietr was just for um explosives research that's where the mind control research was being conducted at the same time they were there was this perfect

[28:46] storm that you've got the Nazis coming over the creation of the CIA the appointment of Fort Dietrich as the place where experimentation can take place and the invention in Switzerland of LSD MH so it all came together and the CIA thought oh my God this new lysergic diethylamine 25 or whatever it's called um this is like a miracle for us for mind control and so they just

[29:16] started dosing people without even telling them they were being dosed to the point where they killed a bunch of people including several CIA officers several um enlisted men in in the US military right uh and then they decided Well rather than experiment on our own people we're going to do it in a couple different ways and they ended up going to San Francisco and buying a house there that they used as a safe house a CI safe

[29:47] house to be used in the M MK Ultra experiments right and they recruited a a group of prostitutes to go out on the streets get their Johns bring the JNS back to the back to the um Safe House dose them with LSD and then see if they were pliable and whether or not they remembered anything at the end of it and what you're talking about is Operation midnight climax correct correct with George Hunter white that's exactly

[30:20] right those experiments didn't work um they believed at the time that they had learned a lot but they couldn't actually get to the point where they could control people so then they they did it in France um now this was only revealed in the late 1990s they decided to dose the delivery of rye wheat in in a baker's shop in a village okay

[30:53] he made the morning bread for the whole village it's several hundred 500 people whatever it was in the village everybody goes on a trip right a couple of people died um and scientists studied this for years and they said well it looks like there was there was mold in the Rye and the mold is akin to the kind of mold on magic mushrooms and it was only in the late 1990s that they realized no this was this was likely a CIA MK Ultra LSD experiment

[31:26] right that didn't work and so they decided in the 1960s to go to universities beginning with Harvard University this is where Ted kazinski the unibomber the unibomber was dosed um well he was he was actually a confirmed participant in yeah yeah MK Ultra triy he signed up and and some people speculate that sign contract yes yeah they signed contracts and everything thinking well it's we're going to run into legal problems if if people realize

[31:57] if the government realizes we're just doing this out you know in the open there there was one terrible uh experiment where they decided to just blow it into the fog in New York Harbor like an aerosol deliver like an aerosol just to see what would happen and what ended up happening was 11 people went to the doctor with this very rare strain of urinary tract infection um and the CIA was able to confirm yeah that was us but but it

[32:28] didn't brainwash them or make them pliable just gave them a urinary tract infection so that didn't work that's when they decided to go to the universities make it official draw up a contract the students sign the contract the CIA doses them tries to control their minds that didn't work now this went all the way from 19 you know 45 until the church Committee in 1975 yeah countless people dead

[32:59] countless people mentally ruined and the CIA never paid any price for it a couple other interesting things that I think like you said that people don't know about it you know when it was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in in Switzerland the company that he was working for Sandos I believe that the LSD research was being funded kind of you know on the down low by the CIA through this massive German uh conglomerate called IG farbin IG farb

[33:30] true and they famously you know uh made the the zeyon B the zeyon B Gas yeah another weird connection with with that and with Nazi Germany is that one of the most infamous and you know infamously cruel of the MK Ultra doctors was this guy Dr Yan Cameron who worked out of a hospital in Montreal in Canada and he was he was very famous for his just exceeding cruel experimentation but he

[34:00] was actually I just learned this recently that he was actually one of the key people during the nurburg trials that kind of brought to light uh Joseph mingala experiments so you have somebody that works directly you know for the CIA under CIA funding doing very similar types of you know human experimentation and also being the one to you know kind of expose the Nazi atrocities and you know what what mangalo was doing so I that kind of blew my mind when I

[34:30] found that out it it really does Boggle the mind just incredible where maybe me and you might disagree a little bit on the MK Ultra you know officially on paper it ended in 1974 right that's the that's kind of and you know like you said a lot of the early experimentation with the drugs and LSD kind of failed or at least it didn't established it didn't give them the ability to just you know directly go in and control a person against their will that they might have wanted where what I kind of believe was

[35:02] you know more the hidden aspect of MK Ultra or the real goal was not necessarily to just create these programmed assassins or couriers you know that's what they told that's what they were willing to tell us with the church committee and movies and Manchurian Candidate and stuff like that you know that's to me that's very much the the surface Narrative of MK Ultra yeah I think what and I think what a lot of a pretty commonly accepted view of it at this point is that it was more of a social uh social engineering kind of project you know introducing these drugs

[35:34] at the same time that a lot of different popular culture was being introduced you know the hippie scene in Laurel Canyon and these things that we now know were a little bit more manufactured than they were organic so or the Grateful Dead you know I mean that one is pretty much de we know at this point you know that they were a LSD trafficking ring you know with extremely abundant ties to to intelligence uhuh but it seems to I I feel like MK Ultra more than anything was probably a way to subvert or or divert

[36:08] uh you know legitimate counterculture or legitimate anti-war Pro oh I you you get no no argument for me I could absolutely see that absolutely just think just think of how much of a threat Jay Edgar Hoover thought counterculture was it had to be worse than the CIA at the time yeah so makes it only makes sense that they would want to either co-opt it or neutralize it from the ground up you know um I know that there's uh there's lots of books written on this and there's

[36:39] I've read articles you know talking about uh intelligence agencies working with Hollywood or you know war movies and different things where they want to make sure they're portraying this very you know doctored version of of of of the CIA for you know public consumption do you think that a can you tell us anything that you know about that hand and B also what do you think about I don't know if you're familiar with uh David McGowan and his his books about uh the music industry

[37:10] and kind of the overlap there he wrote a book about the L like Laurel Canyon in in California in the 60s and that almost without fail almost every one of those very famous stars you know zapo or Jim Morrison or whoever that almost all of them came from families of you know military intelligence backgrounds yeah that's true that is true um I can tell you that the CIA uh in the last 20 years created um a branch inside the office of public

[37:40] affairs whose job it is solely strictly to cooperate with Hollywood film studios um this is something that the FBI has been doing since the early 50s where no Studio even had the guts to even pitch a show about the FBI unless it had the approval of jedar Hoover that's why we only had Pro FBI TV shows and films in that whole period Well the same is true now at the

[38:11] CIA like for example just one example zero dark3 yeah zero dark3 perpetuated that lie that the torture program led to the killing of AMA Bin Laden absolutely 100 % not true great analysis led to the the killing of Usama bin lad so the CIA belatedly learned a lesson from the FBI that if you want to influence Hollywood you

[38:41] whine them and dine them again let's look at uh at Zero Dark 30 in violation of federal law the acting director of the CIA Mike Morell and other senior intelligence service officials gave Katherine Bigalow the director and producer and Mark bow the writer classified briefings over a classified mockup of the bin Laden compound they gave them classified

[39:12] briefings from uh analysts in the cia's counterterrorism center and then when the film was made also in violation of federal law uh Bigalow and bull gave those analysts that had provided the briefings tickets to the premere in Westwood uh the night the movie came out and for those analysts who couldn't make it they gave them

[39:43] watches it's just it's just it's a felony to do something like that on both sides right right what business does this does a Hollywood director have being debriefed on on classified material you know and tell something else I was sitting in my office one time and I've said this publicly in the past but it Bears repeating sitting in my office I was the executive assistant to the cia's deputy director for operations so it's a pretty big job important job yeah and I had just finished something and I sat back like this at my at my

[40:15] desk and I had a direct line of sight out to the hall past the secretary and Bob Woodward walks down the hall and I said to the secretary was that Bob Woodward that just walked past the office and she said yeah I said Bob Woodward walk in the Halls without an escort like he owns the place and she said oh you didn't see the director's memo and I said no she said

[40:45] he's writing in the book he's writing a book and we're all ordered to cooperate with him I said what the [ __ ] is going on now you know everything's supposed to be classified we got a Washington Post report Walking The Halls and we're supposed to just open up to him I'm not talking to Bob Woodward but that's how it is now wow that's unbelievable uh last last question on this kind of MK Ultra and that type of things do you believe that it's true that they that it was a failed

[41:16] experiment and that they discontinued it or do you believe that it still persists in different manifestations today uh you know I think the answer is kind of yes and no I believe it failed it failed because at least internally the stated the stated goal was to try to uh direct it against the Russians and the Chinese and they they were never able to do that right no in that I mean does anything really end at the CIA or does one experiment

[41:49] build on the last experiment you know the CIA has a it has four directorates operations intelligence Science and Technology and uh Administration and then there are others like you know security and whatever that report directly to the director but who knows what goes on the Science and Technology directorate they're always doing crazy experiments that don't come out for 30 and 40 and 50 years so I I wouldn't bet money on the

[42:19] fact that that experiments akin to what we saw in MK Ultra are not being carried out today what you said about uh you know does anything ever really end with the CIA uh it reminded me and I'm sure you've heard this saying too something like once CIA always CIA oh I hate that so much what do you I know even on videos of you you've you've done uh podcasts with this other CIA guy that uh Andrew buam and yeah and I don't know if you look at comments or things on videos

[42:50] but I consistently see people saying things like oh this guy glows or you know they say he's xcia but there's no such thing what do you is is that you know what what do you make of that kind of uh line of thinking you know I I think that's very intellectually lazy um people think I'm still CIA I went to prison for my beliefs they think Ed Snowden is Cia or Philip Agy who the CIA hunted all over the world to try to assassinate for 30 Years or or Ray McGovern who has repeatedly gotten

[43:22] arrested protesting the CIA it's just so intellectually lazy mhm just because you might disagree with somebody who says like one thing that's not in your in your personal belief oh want CIA always CIA no you're just too stupid to do the research and to come to a real analytic decision yeah now Andrew Bustamante you know I know I knew I had won that debate when he attacked me personally yeah yeah

[43:53] um but one of the things that I wish I had said when he said oh well you you've worked for the Russians and you have a Russian propaganda show no no I don't but how is it different for me to do a radio show and for you to sell for $3,000 and $4,000 depending on the course you want he sells courses in the training that the CIA gave him oh I didn't know that that's rather htic

[44:24] that's how he makes a living wow so you know what's keep the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians the Cubans or the Israelis for that matter from just plunking down the three grand and taking his CIA Secrets or his course what he sells is not legitimately what he says it is and then that just makes him a grifter you know or a liar and speaking of grifting and lying I'm I was a I was an operations officer I was a case officer I was recruiting spies to steal secrets and

[44:56] infiltrate groups it was was dangerous it was exciting it's what you see in the in the movies MH he was what is called a special operations officer they do surveillance they do the paperwork they go pick up my dry cleaning he never recruited anybody in his life it wasn't his job interesting yeah interesting does he uh does I don't can't remember if he claims that he's not with the CIA or

[45:26] does he actively is he employ CIA right now he claims that he's an independent actor now okay he never explained why he left the CIA after only seven years if you're such a highflying you know shooting straight to the top Cowboy why would you leave after seven years if you love the place so much that you want to go on podcast and and fight offend it yeah right why would you leave yeah that's a very good question Maybe

[45:57] I'll ask him that someday we'll see well I want to be respectful of your time um I know we're coming up around an hour there were a couple other couple other little things I wanted to get into but they might take a little bit too much time there was one more question if you don't mind me asking you I had heard you uh reference in in another podcast or a conversation you were having that you were trying to do a a piece you were writing a piece on a popular science fiction author from the 50s who you thought may have work

[46:27] for the NSA or the CIA and you kind of blocked on your foyer requests and whatever else you were trying to do I had a couple guesses of who that was but I wanted to know if you could tell us who who that author was oh pension or or something I don't remember to tell you the truth he had a funny name you know what let me see if I can find it my guess would have been either Robert or Robert heinan or Thomas pin no those two I know people speculate that

[46:57] they that they had some sort of Insider this guy committed suicide in 1958 okay yeah I'm sorry that I don't remember his name I did it as a favor to a friend of mine in La who wanted to write a screenplay uh and I said oh I'll do it you know it takes about a minute to fill out a foyer request yeah well that was nine years ago yeah and uh it's going to be another 20 years before I ever get a response it just caught my ears because I'm very interested in that overlap of you know science fiction and

[47:29] intelligence and NASA and stuff I'm sure you're aware of You Know Jack Parsons and Ron hubard and all this all this craziness that was going on back then so that that's just that's the word the word craziness yeah yeah well hey maybe we'll get to do this another time and and dig in a little some more things but yeah I really appreciate you joining me today John thank you pleas than so much good to talk to you take care bye bye bye bye
