Title: My interview w/ whistleblower John Kiriakou
Show: Arn Menconi
Date: 2015-12-14
URL: https://youtu.be/7tXTtCHZs0g
Duration: 38:00

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[00:11] hey Arin how you doing good how are you good thanks um that good it's great we got uh we got you on camera right now great so it's great to see you uh happy holidays how's all the kids getting ready for everything yeah yeah um both Heather and I have some travel um from London yesterday she's got to run to Saudi Arabia in a couple of days and then I'm going to go to I'm going to go to Austin tomorrow come back on uh

[00:43] Thursday for a speech so it's been busy well good busy and you've been traveling a lot been traveling a lot uh Seattle Minneapolis New York Cincinnati Los Angeles that was a big one well let me introduce you to the people who are watching this this is John kyaku who's a former CIA agent who was stationed in Pakistan uh during um up and with the

[01:16] CIA until 2005 or 2006 four four and uh one of his uh greatest moments was capturing Abu Abu Abu Zaba which was he was number three uh on the terrorist list under uh Al-Qaeda and I may have time to ask you a little bit about that and then in 2007 did an interview and gave information about the CIA torture uh and

[01:47] consequently was arrested and served uh almost 3 years in jail and was released earlier this year so he's a hero he also has multiple degrees uh he speaks mult M languages both uh Arabic and Greece Greek and English he's traveled through many of the countries in the Middle East in Europe has served our country both in uh Greece uh Pakistan um during the uh Gulf War he was stationed uh or his his

[02:18] job was managing the information uh with uh Iraq so he's a wealth of information we could talk to him for hours but uh you know where I would like to start John is where is your head right now what are you thinking about what are you seeing and paying attention to um as an analyst and as a person working for the institute for uh public U studies policy studies um you know to tell you the truth I'm I'm trying to get

[02:50] away from the whole whistleblower thing um that has I think a finite life to it and I spent so many years uh in government working on the Middle East and on terrorism I mean to tell you the truth I was one of the government's leading experts on the Middle East I have um Eastern studies I I concentrated on Islamic theology I speak the language I know the the

[03:20] religion um and I I'd like to get back into U Middle Eastern um analysis uh so with with the Advent of Isis and and other problems frankly that we're having in the region whether it's Syria and Iraq or Libya or Iran I'd like to I'd like to focus more than I have over the past several years on the Middle East great because that's where I

[03:51] wanted to go in the interview so I'll just get right there um we have a president that has indicted more whistleblowers than anyone in the history of the United States most people don't know that uh we're B he's bombing uh seven countries he's uh pretty much perfected the use of drones every week and we've communicated over the past couple of weeks we're seeing a new turn of event in the Middle East um I contacted you a couple weeks ago when turkey took down the plane in uh the

[04:24] Russian uh jet in uh right before Thanksgiving a lot of information has come out since then as to what might beis of selling oil both to Assad and to Turkey so could you pull pull away uh some of the layers of the onion here and tell us what what do you think's happening in the yeah sure but first I think there are no good guys in this in this entire uh situation um what what Isis is doing Visa V oil sales is really very typical of what extremist groups

[04:55] have done um over the past 15 or 20 years if they control any territory they exploit the natural resources in that territory or not even natural but the resources in that territory or they conduct highlevel kidnappings it's it's really quite a lucrative way um of uh of financing your movement so one of the things that Isis has done uh really from the get-go is once they began capturing uh parts of Northern Iraq

[05:27] and oil they kept those oil facilities running so that they could surreptitiously um ship the oil across the border into turkey and then from Turkey onto the gray Market uh the Iraqis used to do this during the sanctions regime between 1991 and and 2004 2003 Isis knew that it worked uh Iraqi Military Officers who now largely make up isis's leadership already had the

[05:57] relationship with um with Turks who on the other side of the Border who could take the oil and so this is really the main way in which Isis um earns its money there are other groups though al-Qaeda in um the Islamic mreb for example that's active in North Africa and and the Sahel and they tend to favor uh kidnapping because there is no no oil um in the Sahel or there's very very little oil in the Sahel so what they'll

[06:29] do is kidnap it Italians or French or belgians or South Africans knowing full well that their governments will pay a ransom very quietly and then that's how they raise their money so this is really nothing new and the reason why these groups are doing it is because it's so successful but you said there are no good guys in any of this uh turkey is a NATO Nation the United States is selling weapons to Turkey the United States is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia Saudi

[07:00] Arabia is financing al-nusra possibly Isis uh do you think that Isis is somehow doing some of the dirty work for any of our allies or the United States in order to top bu Assad I I do I do the the Turks really have no inherent uh beef with Isis Isis hasn't really directly attacked uh turkey as as a country or the Turks um but they have a common enemy in the Kurds and so you know the United

[07:32] States begged turkey to to get involved in this fight and to allow us to use inic air base and the Turks you know played hard to get for a little while and then announced that they would indeed come in on the side of the allies and immedi Kurdish positions along the border so really turkey's not doing much of anything to help uh the Allies Isis the Turks actually like the status quo where they're making money from the trans shipment of the oil and

[08:02] they have Western permission to bomb uh the Kurds as well well you have no love loss for the CIA nor do you for President Obama so what involvement do you think that they have in in Syria and Iraq I think CIA involvement in Syria has been a absolute debacle uh they created this this ridiculous organization called the free Syrian Army spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to train almost no body and then announced at the very end that it was an utter failure and it just fell

[08:33] apart with no plan to do anything beyond that um really the White House's only plan is to encourage our so-called allies involved and when I say so-called I mean allies like you pointed out Saudi Arabia that frankly um uh funds Isis Andra uh maybe not the Saudi government but CER certainly wealthy Saudis uh businessmen and even Royal family members we've seen this for for decades where Saudis were were financing Afghan

[09:05] Arabs during the Soviet uh occupation of Afghanistan and even during uh the US's war with uh Al-Qaeda and the Taliban we see Saudi Nationals funding um al-Qaeda in the Islamic mreb they're funding al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula this is an ongoing thing with the Saudis and it's something that that neither the White House nor the CIA um have ever really addressed with the Saudi government you broke up but you said the

[09:35] United States role is to encourage is that the word you used allies to to encourage our Arab allies to do something but we're encouraging the wrong Arabs we're encouraging the Saudis in fact the Saudis are on the wrong side of this issue there's a lot of Scholars that are writing that the United States might be having an ulterior motive that's not a very uh healthy one for our uh our best interests in the Middle East are you seeing any of that do you think that there's a a desire to have uh Syria

[10:06] destabilized for oil interests with the the the buying between the two pipeline negotiations that have been going on for the past year I I don't think we're that smart uh to be perfectly honest with you I think that um that we've got a stupid policy and it's stupid because it's stupid not because there's an ulterior motive um we don't learn from our mistakes historically and anytime there's trouble in the Middle East our knee-jerk reaction is to send troops um if if we decide we don't like somebody

[10:36] we decide to overthrow that person whether or not there's a plan for a transition to a peaceful government afterwards look at Saddam Hussein we provided Saddam Hussein with top secret intelligence during his War uh with Iran now this was a war of Iraqi aggression against Iran but we provided the Iraqis with intelligence to keep that War uh going when we decided we didn't like Saddam Hussein anymore we decided to overthrow him so we attack Iraq we overthrow Saddam Hussein who was the

[11:07] only bull workk in the in the region against uh Iranian expansionism and now we've got a a Shia government in Iraq that is friendly with the Iranians and that is hostile to many of the the Region's uh Sunni U uh kingdoms and and Emirates and we can't figure out why the Iranians feel empowered well you say you we didn't like um Saddam it was also he was nationalizing

[11:37] the oil and so was well no then the oil had been nationalized many years earlier the the the oil had been um nationalized by President Bacher after the 68 Revolution so it wasn't Saddam nationalizing Iraqi oil it was already nationalized when he was vice president got it okay so it was just merely we didn't like what he he was doing and so we went in there and what he was doing at the time was he uh there was a u a conflict with Kuwait and there's

[12:08] discrepancy as to whether or not um Kuwait was starting to drill uh cross borders into Iraq and whether or not Kuwait uh provoked Assad I mean Sadam yeah well I I think that there really wasn't a any confusion about whether or not the Iraqis were slant drilling I mean the quades were slant drilling they were slant drilling U and they were they were frankly stealing Iraqi oil but they had been doing that many years and the Iraqis knew that they were doing it I mean I'm not I'm not trying to I'm not

[12:40] trying to paint a revisionist picture of Saddam Hussein this was a very bad man this guy was a was a he committed genocide um and there were some some just human rights Horrors that were committed by's command in in Kuwait but with that said strategically over a long term it the United States better to allow a contained Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq then it would have been to

[13:11] overthrow him and to allow to exert influence in the country right what I'm trying to get to without uh trying to give uh take up too much of your time is that since Kosovo the United States has started to go into foreign countries with the we'll say under the offices of humanitarian interests and it's picking and choosing which countries to go into obviously we're not trying to help Yemen uh with thousands of people being killed

[13:43] by Saudi Arabia in in uh in Yemen uh we're not in certain countries in Africa so all of a sudden in the last 6 months the rhetoric is built up very high on why we're in s in Syria and it's become increasingly more apparent that we're there to get Assad out of power because we and what's being said and Senate hearings as of last week is because Assad is a bad guy he's killing people obviously there is a lot of wrongs going

[14:15] on Assad Isis those type of things however what what is not clear to me and other people is why would we try to bring troops into Syria when we don't have authorization to bring troops into Syria when what looks apparent is we're not necessarily going after Isis you know Isis is in seven countries we're only bombing two an example like uh um

[14:47] um what's the the the city in in Syria raqqa in raqqa it's a city of 20,000 people you're an analyst there's 2,000 Isis fighters in raqqa and and four countries are bombing the heck out of raqqa well there that just doesn't make sense to somebody like me because you can only bomb so many targets before you've exhausted everything that you could be doing so what's really happening on the ground in Syria and Iraq are we really trying to degrade and

[15:18] Destroy Isis or is this just something we're telling the American people so they feel like we're trying to do something about it and tomorrow night's Republican debate is going to work we should put troops on the ground we should have a safe Zone and all these things that aren't going to work right you know when you look at the Genesis of of the problem with Isis uh cre because of American policy failures Isis was created in in an American Military prison in Iraq in

[15:51] 2005 when abubakr Al baghdaddy uh and um and friends and cohorts formerly of the Iraqi Army together and decided that they would launch a Sunni um military and opposition group to fight the the Shia government in Iraq um the Iraqis weren't equipped to uh to fight something like that uh especially an organization militarily led by some of Saddam Hussein's top former generals and then they began capturing

[16:21] thousands of pieces of American Military Hardware uh and and they're that's what they're using in this fight it's it's American uh military hardware provided by the United States to the Iraqi government that was very easily captured by ISIS um that's point one point two you make a very important point in that Isis is in seven countries we're only bombing or we're only fighting them into and we're we're bombing really I think indiscriminately uh if press reports are

[16:51] be to be believed uh but I but I'll go one one better uh there are a lot of countries in the world despotic uh leaders there are a lot of countries in the world where governments don't respect human rights we didn't intervene in Rwanda for example uh we didn't intervene in East teamour I mean the there are there are dozens of examples around the world where if we really had this respect this this this overarching respect for human

[17:23] rights that we profess to have we should have been intervening all over the place but these other countries don't have oil and these other countries aren't tied to the Middle East and tied Tod East uh like Iraq and Syria are now my final point would be um this is a situation where there's no good outcome but you can choose an outcome that's less terrible than other outcomes and the

[17:55] only outcome that's less terrible that is available to us I think is that we need to start talking to Bashar al-assad and we need to start negotiating with the Assad government and we need to start working with the Russians to make sure that there's a viable government in Damascus that can help all of us to work together to fight Isis and I don't see that ever happening while this administration's in power the the thing that the news isn't

[18:28] covering and that is not happening in Congressional hearings with foreign relations armed services is with last week I watched three and a half hours of asash Carter present to John McCain what is shocking to me is the lack of details that a secretary of defense gives in any now forget what is confidential information or that I'm

[18:59] just something doesn't smell right here okay he is uh saying he has everything that he needs being provided by the president in order to De degrade and Destroy Isis okay he has said on the one hand that they've made advancements where people uh where the chairman of the joint Chief of Staff I believe has said that they they aren't making advances it doesn't matter all right what what what doesn't smell right to me

[19:31] is there's clearly not a military strategy and there's really not a political goal so what they're doing and what has happened since Vietnam is they just don't want to look like they're weak they don't want to look like they're backing off as you said it's a very complicated issue and therefore they have to look like they're attempting to do something Meanwhile we're in an election year and we have Republicans stirring the pot by saying we could do more the only other

[20:01] opportunities that are presented in order to do more is to put more troops on the ground and the Delta between how many we have and what they are uh crying out for is 5 to 10,000 troops which during 2007 there was 180,000 troops so we know that's not going to make all that much of a difference right right okay the other thing they're now calling out for is a safe Zone which is a buffer between turkey and and Syria so that Isis isn't getting arms back and forth

[20:33] across the Turkish border correct and but what they for the Syrian refugees to not go into Europe and to be able to be staying there and the military is saying it take 30,000 troops in order to protect a safe Zone and make that operational so that yeah this is this is it see all of our plans include the commitment of ground troops so you can have people like ash Carter or the president um promising

[21:05] that there isn't going to be an uptick in the number of of ground troops we send and that's just not that's just not possible there the only the only ideas that the administration is floating at least the ideas that are reaching the the press include ground troops so I I just don't see how the administration expects to accomplish anything um if there's no overall plan and now you you've made another important Point here too and that is

[21:37] that there doesn't seem to be coordination between the Allies well in fact in the press the only coordination that's even being discussed is um coordination of what targets to bomb so what is the plan what is the strategy I don't think I don't think there is a strategy well the most recent twist to this plot is the Iraqi prime minister is stating that he does not want Alli ground troops in this came out on Friday

[22:09] does not want uh Allied ground troops in Iraq so you have a a government that we supported for 13 years saying that they this is very similar to what has been going on in Afghanistan they want control they obviously cannot do anything to stop Isis in their country because they don't have a very organized military and so what that again if you you know I'm going to bring it to two points first this one that that kind of

[22:41] says that the only place that we could play War Games is in Syria and the common denominator is people want Assad out of power who are in the allies and the reason well first of all we did that to Gaddafi and that was a disaster it's been chaos ever since right and now they're trying to put a peace agreement together and that's coming out in the news today and over the weekend the other issue is that why would we want Assad out of power we're not do I I feel

[23:13] as though we're not doing this because we're the great humanitarian in police state um we want am out of power because there's oil interests that are going on and I'm not sure I'm that I'm that cynical because there there's really very little oil in Syria I think we want him out of power because he won't do what we tell him to do I think that's really what it is and what would we want him to do whatever it is anything we say I mean look look back over over the last um 15 years or so or or even going back

[23:45] earlier to 1991 when his father was in power H as alas said uh Secretary of State James Baker made a trip to Damascus and said look we're going to attack the Iraqis in Kuwait we're going to push them out we have the Saudis we have the the GCC we have the Egyptians we have the Turks we want your help the and the syrians helped us to push Iraq out of Kuwait fast forward I think President George W bush went to Bashar al-assad after the death

[24:16] of his father he became the the leader of Syria and we said we're going to attack Iraq we have your Arab allies we have the jordanians we have the GCC we have the Egyptians we have the Turks we want your help he told us to go fly a kite and on top of that he would not allow us overflight clearance to supply U the Kurds from Jordan so we had to fly from Jordan across Israel out over the Mediterranean loop around cross

[24:49] turkey and come south from Turkey okay it made the trip much longer it made the trip very dangerous well never gave him for that so he wouldn't it stand to reason that we would want to install who Not only would do what we told him to do but would end this decades long close relationship with the that makes sense to me with a decade long relationship

[25:20] with who the Iranians okay decades multiple decades and Russia cuz Russia has a naval base there the Russians have been friendly with with the with the syrians since the 1950s it's it's pretty much Russia's only Ally in the Middle East and I'm I'm not trying to be cynical I'm I'm referencing many different articles but you're probably familiar with Pepe Escobar uh a journalist who writes who's written an article that this has to do with also with the issue of the pipelines uh one

[25:52] is benefiting would benefit the Soviet I mean Russia and Iran and the other would benefit Qatar Saudi AR Arabia and turkey and and so um because you're run because we don't have a lot of time I want to jump to one other piece of the puzzle Syria borders the north northern Israel one of the buffers one of the areas between that is the Golan Heights which Israel took in

[26:23] 1967 took or however you could clarify that for me because I'm I I I'm um I'm not clear on that point but Israel has been um very very silent sure on the conflict in Syria yeah very silent Israel is not known for being quiet on anything right why is this happening because the Israelis support Assad it's very simple the devil you know is better than

[26:55] the devil you don't and the the Israelis have had um a very long period of peace with Syria it's a deao peace they're still arguing about the Golan Heights I mean not really but in public they are but the syrians know that Assad is no threat to them he never has been his father really wasn't a threat to them after the 73 war and so they like things just the way they are now if Isis takes

[27:27] over control of Syria all bets are off and I think the Israelis would probably be wise to assume that Isis would attack them soon after taking power and that's why the Israelis haven't played a role in this whole thing because they don't want to be drawn in they don't want to turn um otherwise neutral players against them and for Isis by really taking a public stand they just quietly

[27:58] support ass said all right well it seems as though with what NATO has been doing and encroaching further east into Russia that this has a lot of similarities of what's going on between this almost and I don't want to say it's a proxy war between the US and Russia in Syria but it is it is uh has a lot of similarities

[28:28] to that and um we now have S uh Russia saying that they have not taken nuclear weapons off the table as a threat to Isis they're now ramping up the type of military uh operations that they're doing and none of what they're doing is going after Isis they're going after some asymmetrical uh tactics or strategies

[28:58] towards either turkey NATO or the United States yeah this is a brilliant opportunity for the Russians to test out their new equipment and to give their pilots um real life training in in air battles this is something that the Russians have been looking forward to for for many many years and frankly it's something that we do all the time I mean when when we launch these you know no fly zones or um bombing runs these are these are really training exercises

[29:29] using live weapons and and this is how we ensure that our Pilots are the best in the world well the Russians have been left out of that over the last few decades and now this is their turn to train their pilots and to test their weapons wow okay to shift gears so I can let you go in a recent interview with Jared Leto that I'm going to post and I'm going to post other things that you've done and I've got up here on the screen how people could support you um through through your different funding because you have uh uh John's given up

[30:03] um so much for the United States in order to let us know about how things are really working he doesn't want to be considered the torture guy anymore and then it what's really important about what John has said recently is that we're losing our civil liberties that the CIA since 2001 has been lying to us as his exact words and he wants to get this information out so John what could you say to people who are listening

[30:34] about how critically important it is for us to stand up and speak out to protect our civil liberties and how would they do that I I'm very pained that most Americans seem to have been willing since the passage of the Patriot Act in October of 201 2001 to just give up many of the civil liberties that they've enjoyed really since the since the ation of the country uh without so much as a debate we're not seeing demonstrations in the streets we're not seeing rallies

[31:05] on Capitol Hill and in fact it seems like every time the government wants to pass uh legislation it it includes um something that strips us of some of our our personal freedoms this is something that Americans really have to oppose now whether it has to do with with torture or with privacy privacy is a very important issue right now especially as it relates to to cyber privacy we need to ride our elected officials and we

[31:36] need to force them to understand that we are not willing to give up these rights without a fight we should tell them that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional it needs to be changed and that Americans have an inherent right to privacy it's something that we haven't done yet and it's very important to me so the way they do it sometimes is nibbling around edges and the most recent one is encryption explain what how they're going uh how they're using encryption now to take away our personal freedoms

[32:08] right you know encryption is such an important issue that I think most Americans don't understand um I've got my iPhone right here and on my iPhone I've got um uh some encrypted apps I have something called signal I have another app called redphone that allows me to make an encrypted phone call I have another thing called WhatsApp that's uh that's encrypted and it's encrypted because I don't want the government intercepting my communications the government has no right to intercept my communications

[32:39] without a warrant we have constitutional uh guarantees um of of uh due process and so without a warrant the government has no right to know what I'm saying in my emails or my text messages or my telephone calls now the government most particularly uh FBI director Comey argues that encrypted applications are what the terrorists are using to communicate first of all that is just simply not true if you look at the communications between the Paris

[33:10] attackers they used online gaming systems to communicate that was that those gaming systems were not encrypted uh they were out there in The Ether for anybody to intercept and in fact NSA CIA and FBI did not intercept those Communications I call that an intelligence failure not a problem with encryption now even in in San Bernardino they're talking about encryption having been used I would counter that just

[33:41] decent police work would have disrupted that attack the FBI knew that Sayed Farooq was in contact with a known terrorist overseas yet they did nothing about it they never questioned him they never detained him they never sought a warant to to go into his home or into his electronics they just let him go that was bad police work so it's not that encryption is preventing the FBI from doing its job it's that the FBI is bad at doing its job that's not the

[34:14] American people's fault and that's not a reason to ban encryption so what are the two or three things that Americans should be contacting the representatives about well number one I think we should be we should be like I said riding our elected officials to ensure that that personal encryption remains legal another thing um that we should be talking to our elected officials about is is the repeal of the Patriot Act um you know NSA AR has in its Charter that

[34:47] it is forbidden from from spying on American citizens in fact now much of what uh NSA does is to spy on American citizens so we need hard and fast laws that protect us from the long arm of the NSA and we have no such law and the third thing is you know we've never really settled on the on the torture issue uh we need to make sure that torture never rears its ugly head again well the president the day before

[35:20] Christmas signed the National Defense authorization act which was I think unprecedented 2-year budget appro approval to uh uh which I can't understand how they were allowed to do that but he vetoed it originally weeks earlier because he wanted to have Guantanamo um closed yes and now he's not going to do that and there's almost a hundred people who are uh have been

[35:50] imprisoned for 13 14 years uh without due process and they just released someone who had been arrested uh who had been in there for 13 years who they had the wrong identity on yes um would that be a fourth issue that you think and how would the president through executive orders uh release the rem or uh U Move the remaining hundred prisoners and why I've not un I've not understood the

[36:23] the cowardice of the Republican party on this issue it seems like every Republican senator and every Republican Congressman has this irrational fear of a terrorist um serving his time in a prison in these congressman's districts or Senator States as though we don't have dangerous people in our maximum security prisons right now if we're going to be Americans in the spirit of

[36:53] America and showing respect to the Constitution we will take the prisoners that we have at Guantanamo we will charge those who have committed a crime with a crime we will give them their day in court and if they're found guilty we would incarcerate them in an American prison if we're not going to do that they should be released they've not been charged with a crime they've not been found guilty of a crime they've not been able to face

[37:25] their accusers in court to me that means they're not guilty of anything and they should be released I regret that the president has not had the guts to close Guantanamo in the seven plus years that he's been president for seven years that he's been president um with that said the Republicans are at least as guilty as the President is on this issue so yeah Guantanamo is the fourth thing that we need to we need to Force action on unfortunately though I think the American people seem to prefer the

[37:57] status quote well I'm honored to have the opportunity to talk to you in detail about what's going on all of these issues lead up to uh breeding more terrorism uh spending taxpayers dollars more ridiculously instead using them domestically for things that we need here it's killing innocent people John is one of the few people who stood up for to in order to protect all this so I'd really like you to support him his book is The Reluctant spy I'll have

[38:29] links to other things John you're an amazing person thank you you're a great guy AR thanks a lot for doing this all right take care my pleasure bye byee
