Title: CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: The CIA Has Co-opted American Journalists
Show: Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
Date: 2024-09-29
URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4qB-w5eAU7E
Duration: 36:58

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[00:00] good afternoon this is Demitri laras coming to you from camata Greece on September 28th 2024 on September 13th the Biden Administration issued a statement alleging that RT Russia's state-owned broadcaster is essentially an arm of Russia's intelligence Services the administration claimed that its allegations were based in part on information provided by RT employees but it didn't name any of them nor did it provide any objective credible evidence to back up the allegation that did not prevent other Western governments from embracing the claims immediately for

[00:30] example within hours of the US government making the allegation Canadian foreign minister Melanie joli leveled the same allegation against RT but she too provided zero evidence to back up her claim what in fact does the available evidence show about allegations that Russia's government covertly interferes in the politics of Western States now here to unpack this with me is John kiraku John is a former analyst and case officer for the CIA he was first he was the first US government official to confirm that water boarding

[01:01] was used to interrogate Al-Qaeda prisoners which he described rightly as torture in 2012 he became the only CIA officer to be convicted for exposing the cia's torture program he was sentenced shamefully to 30 months in prison he's now an author and a journalist and is a founding member of the veteran intelligence Professionals for sanity and it's my great pleasure uh to welcome him to reason to resist today thank you for coming on the show John thanks for the in invitation Demitri it's a pleasure so John before we turn to the

[01:32] uh us government's latest allegations about Russian interference and RT I'd like to talk to you about some claims made before this most recent set of allegations from the bid Administration by Canada's parliament and specifically the National Security and intelligence Committee of the parliament and in June of this year that committee released a heavily redacted report on alleged foreign interference in Canada as I explained in a recent oped the report was almost completely devoid of any real evidence it largely relied upon unsubstantiated claims made by the

[02:04] Canadian Security intelligence service or cisus notwithstanding repeated findings by Canadian courts that cus misrepresents the facts to judges in this country and in a recent decision the finding was that the failures to tell the truth were systemic that's the word that the court used so John one of the passengers in that report that stood out for me it concerned alleged Russian interference in US elections even though the report was supposed to be out Canada and here's what the report claimed on page 35 quote Canada's strategic

[02:36] response to foreign interference and Democratic processes and institutions must be understood in the context that brought the issue to the four so I just want to pause there John and point out that what the committee is telling us at this part of its report is that they're about to identify the thing that started the whole controversy around alleged Russian they go on and they say as noted earlier Russia carried out an influence campaign aimed at the United States in the 2016 presidential election with the

[03:08] goal of undermining public faith in the US Democratic process and discrediting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton it did so by leveraging social media to provoke and amplify political and social Discord in the US this influence effort was complemented by targeted cyber hacks and the release of materials damaging to the Clinton campaign the US intelligence Community was was aware of Russian efforts during the presidential campaign but the central challenge for the US government during those events was how to inform the American public of

[03:38] Russia's interference without appearing to unduly influence the course of the election Russia would go on to employ similar hack and leak and disinformation campaigns in the UK France and Germany so John in a September 17th 2024 oped in Consortium news you talked about the allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election could you summarize for us your view actually please be as detailed as you'd like to be because I think so well what what's your allegation th this isn't

[04:10] just John talking right this is this is the result of an exhaustive FBI uh investigation into these allegations and the FBI found in the Mueller report which everybody is perfectly free to read online for free uh that there was no uh Russian interference in the 2016 election now the the government keeps repeating that there was as well as in the 2020 election and now in the upcoming 2024 election but the government position is

[04:41] take our word for it we can't tell you the details because they're classified but oh boy if you could see what we see you would know well listen I've been there I lived there it's just a lie right so in the 2016 election they're talking about two things one they're talking about Julian Assange and the DNC uh email uh uh tranch that ended up being published by Wikileaks Bill Benny who was the

[05:11] technical director at NSA the the fourth ranking official in NSA and arguably one of our country's leading technical thinkers has said on the record that the Russians were not involved in the DNC uh email hack and the reason he knows that is that he's analyzed the speed with which the documents were uploaded and he said that it is

[05:45] impossible to upload documents remotely using that speed that the only way those documents could have been taken was inperson downloaded put it on a thumb drive okay with that in mind Ambassador Craig Murray is the former British ambassador to usbekistan he's a torture whistleblower who was thrown out of the the British Foreign Service because he blew the whistle on torture in

[06:16] usbekistan he came to the United States in 2016 to present me with an award that was actually a cover trip he was actually in the United States on behalf of WikiLeaks to meet with the Whistleblower and to take possession of the thumb drive which he then flew back to Iceland and gave to WikiLeaks so this notion that the KGB or whatever the KGB calls itself today

[06:47] remotely excuse me remotely hacked the DNC stole emails from John podesta and others to embarrass Hillary Clinton it's just simply not true it's factually incorrect that's number one before you if you're are are you about to leave the question of the hack because I want to ask you a question about that oh sure please go right ahead okay so my understanding is that those emails first of all I think we can say safely that they weren't disinformation they

[07:18] revealed valuable information no they they they were primary source emails correct they're authentic they really are the yes and one of the things they showed as I recall is that uh BAS basically Hillary Clinton and the DNC were cheating you know Bernie because they were yeah yeah yeah that's that's an important Point that's an important Point somebody in the DNC who was sympathetic to Sanders would have had a motive to to the public so is correct is all of that fair yeah okay sorry that is one that is 100% accurate that's 100%

[07:50] and it's far more believable that somebody at the DNC said hey wait a minute how can Bernie Sanders win 60% in the Wyoming and West Virginia caucuses and win zero delegates right Hillary Clinton gets 40% in both of those races and wins literally every single delegate that's more believable than some remote Russian Hack that we don't fully understand right right okay so please you were gonna talk about the next part yeah I was gonna make a make a second point the

[08:21] second point was and this is straight from the uh from the Mueller report the Russians spent $50,000 on on Facebook ads uh in the runup to the 2016 election now when you say Russians are you talking about the government or somebody no and thank you thank you for pointing that out no it's well to to hear the US government say it is it is an organization with ties to the Kremlin what the heck does that mean

[08:52] either it's a governmental organization or it's not either it's an intelligence organization or it's not right but you know I've met Joe Biden twice does that mean I have ties to the White House no depends on your agenda I guess exactly exactly it depends on your agenda right so they spent $50,000 on Facebook ads and then run up to the 2016 election half of that money $25,000 was spent after the election was over okay so it

[09:22] played no role in anything right the other $25,000 was spent in states that were either completely red or completely blue and what were these ads they were mostly cat emojis right or jokes so maybe the Russians were just testing it to see can we do this how hard is it can we establish these relationships that will allow us to to

[09:54] buy ads who knows to the question did the Russians influence the 16 election the answer is a resounding no they did not the truth of the matter is that Hillary Clinton was probably the only Democrat in America who couldn't beat Donald [Laughter] Trump it's hard to find anybody else who's that bad I I have to admit so so let can we talk about the 2020 election

[10:24] because they're also you know you you addressed this in your piece in the Consortium in Consortium news which I thought was quite interesting what you had to say there well think of it this way Bill Clinton I'm sorry uh Joe Biden spent over a billion dollars on his election Donald Trump spent over a billion dollars on his election you have Super PAC spending more billions of dollars and then Mark Zuckerberg testified before uh Congress that the Russians spent $100,000 on Facebook ads and again you

[10:57] know we we get to this point where you say well what were the ads uh what what were the accounts he said they were Russians posing as Americans okay show us oh can't show you it's classified but if you could see what I see you would know no when billions and billions of dollars are being spent on Advertising $100,000 worth of random ads not

[11:29] targeted at any specific voters in states that are already completely blue or completely red are not going to influence the election period you know this is th this is more historical than we give it credit for being in that here in the United States and I know that you've studied this kind of thing as well we always need an ism to Rally against you know it was it was bolshevism at the beginning of the 20th Century then it

[12:00] was anarchism then it was socialism right Eugene V Debs oh my God a socialist is running for president then it was communism or Nazism and then communism and now it's this we we always have to have some kind of enemy that we can rally the American people against and you have to ask why why don't we just clean up our own Act and improve our country I why does it

[12:32] have to be negative I want to come back to that primordial primordially important question why are they doing this but before we get there I want to uh address the September 13th allegation this most recent set of alleg what do you understand uh the allegations of against RT to be those that were articulated by the state department on September 13 and what is assessment of those particular allegations yeah so the the state department is alleging that RT Russia to

[13:04] formerly known as Russia today which is the Russian International media Outlet um is uh has been subordinated to Russian intelligence okay just factually it's ridiculous listen if if I was going to use the media to either conduct intelligence operations or to to influence a foreign election or to collect intelligence information I would use your media I

[13:36] would put people at CNN and MSNBC and fox not in my own media organization they're not going to collect anything there especially after RT has been disbanded in the United States disbanded in Canada disbanded in the European Union the only places you could watch it are are China India Africa and Latin America that's it but I'll I'll let you in on a little secret um I worked with a former CNN

[14:10] Anchor Man Named uh Rick Sanchez and Rick got an odd call from a contact of his at the state department before this all happened a couple of weeks before this all happened saying hey man what are you doing what are you doing working for the Russians why are you doing that oh it's a bad organization it's a propaganda organization but one of the things that this guy said and I think he probably said it accidentally was that RT is very very

[14:41] popular in Africa and Latin America and RT is presenting its side of the story in the Ukraine war and it's beginning to change public opinion there that's what the administration is objecting to they're losing International public opinion and people are less likely to support Ukraine now so I think this whole nonsense about RT being an intelligence organization it's just so silly and it's backward in its logic I think we should ignore it I think that

[15:12] the truth is that RT has been successful in changing some Minds um outside of that US Canada Australia European Union Nexus and that's a problem for the state department right I think that's really what it is now I I'll add another thing too um I have a radio show at Sputnik radio every day I have for the last seven and a half years when the Russians first approached

[15:43] me and offered me a radio show I said no I didn't really want to work for the Russians and then they came back six months later and they said listen we we have this radio show and we'd like for you to to be the anchor and I said well you know the truth is I had always wanted to get into radio so I saidif I was to work for you guys I would want the freedom to say anything I want and to criticize anyone I want including Vladimir Putin they said done I said

[16:14] yeah are you willing to put that in in the contract they said done and they did and so in seven and a half years I have never been asked to say something or to not say something and on the morning of the the uh Russian invasion of Ukraine I opened my show by saying I unreservedly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I call on Russian troops to withdraw immediately another thing

[16:45] is in Russia in all the Russian media they they call the invasion of Ukraine the special military operation I said I'm not doing that I'm calling it The Russian invasion of Ukraine and nobody ever objected mhm so somehow we're we're a propaganda Outlet may may I offer one more anec by all means every Thursday uh on my show I devote 30 minutes to criminal justice issues and I call it criminal Injustice and I have two guests one is a a

[17:17] journalist who covers criminal justice issues and the other is H the founder of a group called The Human Rights defense center which publishes prison legal news and criminal legal news magazines so we talk about crooked cops and crooked judges and crooked prosecutors and terrible prison conditions we all this stuff one day The Washington Post assigned a journalist to listen to the show and they focused on the criminal

[17:48] Injustice segment and they wrote in the post the next day that John kiraku is weakening our democracy by talking about about these issues I'm weakening our democracy by saying oh a judge in Pennsylvania got arrested for taking a bribe to put children in prison a bribe from a private prison company oh uh there was a uh there was a prison in Mississippi that is so full of rats that even in the

[18:21] in the big container of milk they found a dead rat and the state shut it down I'm the one who's weakening our democracy it's not the corrupt system that we have right so this is what we're dealing with we're dealing with this irrational anti-russian uh opinion not just in government but in the media here and listen I have no love of the Russians I really don't I don't like them any more than I like anybody else I don't dislike them any more than I dislike anybody else it's a job but

[18:51] they've been good to me they've never ever ever asked me to propagandize anybody and I'm free to say anything I want I must say for the record John I don't know if you're aware of this but I appear fairly regularly on RT myself I I did not know that that's great I I'm off I've often been on Cross talk uh sometimes I come on live they always ask me to talk about issues that matter to me which are effectively foreign policy and particularly Western foreign policy they have never imposed any constraint

[19:22] whatsoever on anything that I can say and uh and and one thing I wanted to talk to you about in particular like you and I think might have had a similar sort of trajectory in terms of our interactions with the media when I was um doing the practice of law much more than journalism I was uh bringing large class actions against major Canadian corporations and these tended to attract the attention of the financial press uh you know salacious I mean they were well-founded allegations of Securities fraud and other forms of corporate

[19:54] manipulation against well-known corporate Executives in this country and so I was regularly uh interviewed by the corporate media and then in 2016 all of that changed what happened then was I began to publicly criticize Canadian and American foreign policy and Canada support for Israel and then I be so um the reason why I and I i' I've tried to explain this to people who ask me why I go in RT the reason why you see me nowadays much more on RT than you do in

[20:24] the Canadian corporate Medias because RT invites me on and they don't it's as simple as that now I say the same thing I I used to be on CNN correct go ahead talk about that I used to be on CNN and MSNBC with regularity and they they dropped me inexplicably now I go on Fox a lot which is causes me no end of problems with my with my most of my friends because I consider myself to be very much a part

[20:54] of the left but um but Fox is the only organization that's willing to criticize the CIA and so of course I'm going to go on and talk about intelligence issues they're the only ones with the guts to talk about them just like RT and they've got a huge audience and if they're not constraining what you can say why the hell wouldn't you take the invitation it makes no sense exactly crazy exactly and you know I'm I'm proud I'm proud to be able to speak uh my mind and speak freely with the

[21:24] Russians I was invited to lunch with the Russian Ambassador a year ago uh he had read something that I had written in Consortium news and didn't even know that I was an employee of Sputnik so he invited me to lunch it was at the Russian Embassy and I go over there fantastic lunch and he wanted to talk about ways in which he could try to improve relations with the United States even in a time of war and I said actually I have three thoughts um number one is

[21:55] counterterrorism right we should be in lock step on terrorism issues number two is counter proliferation none of us want Rogue organizations to uh end up with nuclear or file material and number three is um counternarcotics I said I'll tell you the truth when I was the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I went to Afghanistan to do a study on heroin poppy production and Afghanistan at the

[22:25] time was producing 93% of the world's heroin Poppy and when I came back I wrote all this up I interviewed people from DEA I interviewed academics I interviewed journalists and Afghan veterans and the report ended up going nowhere why because the policy is that we that all that heroin goes to Iran and Russia and we want them to be addicted to heroin it makes their societies weaker

[22:58] so no we're not going to do anything to stop the heroin trade but you rais a you raise a vitally important point which is that there are common interest between the American people and the Russian people and I I'd like to highlight two others that are of the utmost urgency both the American people and the Russian people and all human beings and forms of life on this planet have an interest in avoiding nuclear war absolutely right so I mean there couldn't be a more important common interest that we all share as human beings and another thing is if

[23:29] there's a state of belligerence between our countries this is going to inevitably provoke an arms race and we're going to see more and more money going into uh in both countries and we're seeing this happen in both countries the military budgets are increasing rapidly and money is being diverted away from socially beneficial uses which is bad for Russians and Americans and Canadians yes yes so we need this mindset that we have no common interests that's BS and it is BS and you know just yesterday uh a senior member

[24:00] of the Senate a Republican senator uh gave a statement to The Washington Post saying that he's going to propose in the next federal budget that um that the Pentagon receive 5% of GDP as its budget now we're currently at 3.2% and we're bankrupting ourselves but now they want to spend 5% of GDP the Pentagon couldn't even spend that kind of money but this is this is exactly to your

[24:31] point we're very much in an arms race and not only are we in an arms race we're the ones promoting the arms race there there's also another presumption John which I like your thoughts upon which which I think is underlying this whole hysteria I call it the foreign interference scam and all sometimes I refer to it as the foreign interference hysteria and that presumption is that the Russian government never tells the truth so if you are aligned with the Russian government on some so for example that there was a coup in Ukraine in

[25:02] 2014 right we have a recording Victoria nuland telling the US ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Patt who the next prime minister of Ukraine is going to be and he became the next prime minister but hey it's a lie that's where we've been told but in fact you know sometimes the Russian government tells the truth does it sometimes lie sure as to all governments no government that is pure as the driven snow but it's just nonsense that we we are necessarily repeating propaganda if our position aligns with the Russian government on

[25:32] some particular issue so wouldn't it be smarter if we actually invited our citizens to engage in debate and try to discern the difference between truth and falsehood when it's when issues when when we hear positions from the Russian government from our own government rather than tell us that we can never align with the Russian government on any issue I mean oh I had get that off my chest you know John yeah I think you I think you raised a very important Point here you know I I kind of humble brag sometimes that I don't just watch One

[26:03] News Network I watch literally all of them so I'll flip from CNN to MSNBC to Fox to Al jazer to BBC to RT and sometimes I'll even go to The Crazy Ones like One America Network and Newsmax just to see what everybody's saying but more importantly to see what everybody's focusing on right because it it's like living on two different planets sometimes to to watch them Side by side I can't do that now um RT is

[26:34] gone and BBC just parrots what's in the US press and uh the local cable subscriber has dropped Al jazer so now I'm able to watch only what the American government tells me I can watch it's what they want me to watch I get only their message it's very difficult to get uh to get outside opinions but you're absolutely right listen every government lies but a lot of the time I would venture to say most of the time what

[27:04] we're seeing on these other networks is the truth and we should be the ones to decide that 100 percent after all if we UST people to vote right how can we not entrust them to discern truth from falsehood when they uh oh you're you're so right yes so the last thing I want to ask you about John is this uh the why the why of all of this why why are they investing so much time in energy uh when there's so many pressing problems in our domestic

[27:35] context in getting people all worked up about Russian interference and now of course they're talking about Chinese interference and once in a while they lob a grenade at Iran they say Iran's interfering this has become uh quite possibly one of the most important themes in the corporate media today and in government political discourse what what is the motivation for all you know D Tre I think that we're in the midst of what what historians will come to call a watershed when I was in college we spent

[28:07] a great deal of time learning about what they called The Watershed election of 1932 where the Democratic party and the Republican party switch sides on the issues the Democrats had always been the conservatives the Republicans had always been the Liberals right if you were Republican you were anti-slavery going back to the 1860s you were PR labor for example um it was the Democrats that were the the conservatives especially social conservatives and that all changed with the election in 1932 of

[28:38] Franklin Roosevelt as president okay I think we're in the midst of seeing it flip back again when I was at the CIA we used to complain vifer during the George W Bush Administration that we had never seen an Administration especially a state department that worked so hard to not talk to people well that's what we're seeing now like why are we not engaged in talks with the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and Hamas and

[29:11] Hezbollah and a whole host of other countries the Venezuelans the Cubans I mean the eritreans we can go on and on and on about countries that oh as policy we we can't talk to them why not why can't we talk to them I I I made the arbitrary decision to go to Cuba last year for the very first time the Cuban uh the Cuban government had translated my first two books into Spanish and included them in the permanent collection of the Cuban national library

[29:43] this was a good opportunity I went first of all they treated me like a king secondly to a man they expressed admiration for the United States they don't like our government so much but it was more that people were puzzled as to why our government hates them so much everybody wants to work with us the only person who expressed real frustration I had a meeting with with

[30:14] one of the vice presidents there are three vice presidents of Cuba so we had a meeting with one and you know a couple of people in my group um a couple of people in my group group said well you know now that Biden's in uh maybe he'll open things up again so this was supposed to be the crown jewel in the Obama foreign policy and the Cuban vice president said no all your presidents are the same they blame us

[30:45] for everything he goes we we can't even keep the lights on every day our children don't have shoes we don't have medical supplies and medical equipment and we're somehow a threat to the United States you have relations with countries that you have far far bigger problems with than with us half of our population lives in Miami and he was right you know you you've you've caused me to want to ask you one more question because this this

[31:17] notion which is so vitally important about dialogue between governments um you know peace uh requires us to see the world through the eyes of our enemies uh otherwise we if we never have any kind of strategic empathy at the end of the day we're probably doomed so in that vein I went to uh Russia for the first time in um in my life in uh May of last year and uh part of my trip was to Crea and I went there in order to uh try to establish a dialogue with Russians

[31:49] because everybody in our country seemed to be you know hostile to the idea of speaking to Russians and uh I called up the Russian Ambassador in Canada beforehand heard that he for Mutual acquaintance that he was familiar with my critique of Canadian foreign policy I asked him to set me up great people I went there while I'm there while I was in Crea I was in Moscow I went to Crea I get a call from this guy named Adam Zebo who's a columnist at a national newspaper in Canada and he's stationed in Ukraine at the time on the part that's controlled by Kiev and he's writing these intensely uh hostile

[32:21] articles about Russia and so forth and very Pro NATO and he wants to interview me um that was in 2023 in the middle of 2023 he just came out in August of this year John he said that at the time he interviewed me uh and from the late 2022 he was working for the Canadian Security intelligence services and the Ukrainian intelligence Services of course he was of course he didn't tell me this and if he had I wouldn't have done the interview uh and he never disclosed this in any of his pieces about the Ukraine

[32:51] war so the question I have for you because you come from the intelligence Community it occur one thing I should add is that the newspaper that he works for hasn't denied what he said he himself has clarified that he told his boss as the editors he was doing this work for these two intelligence agencies and the Canadian government hasn't denied it there hasn't been a peep so I recall that there was a big investigative report then I think it might have been by Bob Woodward uh way back in the 80s or something where he talked about plants from the

[33:22] intelligence community and the media so now that I have you here and you used to work for the CIA I'm C ious what what are your thoughts about this today in the world in operate do you think that this is the Zeos of this world the Adam Zeos of this world are fairly they're more numerous than we might want to want to believe in terms of yeah yeah and and you know what it's even worse than most people think because the CIA I I can only speak uh to the CIA but the CIA no longer needs to recruit uh journalists

[33:54] right they've co-opted all the journalists uh I have a friend who's a journalist for Bloomberg uh Jason Leupold Jason's an awesome investigative reporter he he's a master of the Freedom of Information Act to the point where a pentagon spokesman once called him a Foya terrorist because he was able to uncover so much information he's the one who who broke the Hillary Clinton um email server story and he did that through the Freedom of Information Act so he told me

[34:25] once that he was just kind of board one night he was in between stories didn't really have anything pending so he just kind of dashed off a quick Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA to the office of public affairs asking for all emails between the office of public affairs and American journalists from one date to another date he said he didn't have anything in mind just was kind of curious to see what was in there they

[34:57] answered the and what he found was for example Ken delanian who was the chief National Security correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC here in the United States formerly the the chief intelligence correspondent for the Los Angeles Times writes his articles and sends them to the CIA for clearance before sending them to his own editor oh my God can you

[35:30] imagine this is a guy making you know a million bucks a year he's supposed to be the goto intelligence guy and he's essentially just saying to the CIA well what do you want me to say what do you want me not to say here's what I'm proposing what do you think about it another thing that he found was a journalist who wrote something critical of the CIA who sent it into the office of public affairs for a comment saying hey this is what I'm going to say I'm going to criticize you do you have a comment

[36:02] and they said so help us if you publish this you are not invited to the Christmas party and we will never give you a quote again this was in the email oh God in the email and he and he dropped the article you know the the access yeah yeah so uh basically we should assume that um um that this problem is more widespread than one columnist at the National Post I think

[36:32] that's fair to say yes in any case it's it's everywhere thank you so much for speaking with me today John uh I hope we can continue the conversation in the future I'm sure we're GNA hear about more about foreign interference I look forward to talk to you about you know other foreign policy issues of great importance to us the the pleasure is mine I look forward to staying in touch okay and this is Demitri signing off from kalamat Greece on September 28 2024
