Title: CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou on Impeachment, Assets, and the Deep State
Show: Useful Idiots
Date: 2019-10-31
URL: https://usefulidiots.substack.com/
Duration: 92:00

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[05:19] So do you go out together? Who picks up the check? I don't know. I'm clear. That's a good question. Well, hopefully the husband, because I would like him to suffer as much as possible. So they were in a thrupple and somebody got cut out? Oh, maybe the husband. I don't know, honestly, but the husband's very mad. Maybe it's because of that. But the reason we know about this is because Red State Org, that heinous right-wing website and the Daily Mail, which is a heinous, just like apolitical website from England. You mean like a British Daily Mail?

[05:50] Yeah, the British one. I have written for the Daily Mail. Which gives us hope. You have? Yes. Wow. Yeah, a long time ago, though. Well, besides your piece, a heinous... I mean, that was from Russia. I was just sending them stuff. Secrets about the United States. So they published these photos of her and she has accused the husband rightly, I think of a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation. And sure enough, you have people at Red State now tweeting, like, so she resigned, right? And now you have people at Red State who are tweeting about how people should vote

[06:20] for her opponent. So the journalist at Red State who wrote about this said, she tweeted, if you wanna help us flip Katie Hill for CA's former seat back to Red, please learn about Mike Garcia 2020 and contribute to his campaign. She's an editor at Red State, the person who tweeted this, which is like a little bit, I mean, way to where your agenda on your sleeves, I guess I kind of almost admire. I just hate this kind of politics. This is just disgusting politics. Like, let's just do whatever we can

[06:51] to get this person out of office and then we'll put our person in there for whatever disgusting political reason they wanna do that. And also, she should have stayed, she shouldn't have resigned. I don't blame her, though. I kind of blame the party. So this is one of those Republicans suck but also kind of dem-suck because if they despise, yeah. And also, I mean, you almost don't have to deal, you almost don't have to deal with the relationship thing because it's so shrouded in the revenge porn that all they could do, all they needed to do would be defend her on the revenge porn front. And then the other thing is kind of taken care of.

[07:23] Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing you can say is that technically speaking, one a boss has a relationship with somebody that who's working for him or her that it's never just clearly a private matter, right? So you can make that argument, but that's not the argument they made. Right. The argument they made is there's just like a tawdry thing and that you should bow out because it's like ugly or something like that, which I totally disagree with. Yeah, and this is where we could take a page from Trump, honestly. Yeah, oh.

[07:54] Be like just too, like, you know, I mean, not like hate immigrants and Muslims. I mean, take a page from Trump as in like whatever. Right, yeah, exactly. Put it on the list of 9,000 other things that have done wrong, like get in line. Yeah, and it's not comparable at all, you know, and he's, you know, whatever. He has extramarital affairs and... Well, I mean, you're actually, you're making a joke about that, but that's actually one of the things that people like about Trump. Right, I know. So maybe we could get into that area. Yeah. The Dems could try to catch up there. I think people actually should go out of their way to do something.

[08:24] Me too, they should make it up, even if it's not true. Right, I did something really obnoxious and I'm gonna stay in office no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, so for Democrats suck, we have... Too much. There was a lot, but the editorial by Rahm Emanuel in the Washington Post, which I think was, first of all, he's just a classically terrible person, Rahm Emanuel, he's just unlikable. Didn't he put a dog head on someone's doorstep? Did he? A dog or a fish? Okay. I'll look into it, yeah. Yeah, we should look into that.

[08:55] So he writes an editorial for the Washington Post. Someone needs to say it, Medicare for All is a pipe dream, which is just a, you know. Someone needs to say it, like it's never been said before. Yeah, it's like it hasn't been said by five, 10 million people in every major press organ, but there's a couple of annoying things. He says, when it comes to healthcare reform, Democrats need to mind three basic rules. First, experience teaches us that as much as Americans hate the status quo, they're not too excited about change either. So this is the person who was the right-hand man for the change candidate.

[09:26] Yeah, you're right. He's basically telling us that, yeah, so let's not go overboard with that change thing, because actually when you get right down to it, Americans don't really want change. I guess he would know because he's on that campaign, right? Yeah, I guess he would know. And so the other thing about this that's really obnoxious is, and so he goes through all the reasons we shouldn't have Medicare for All and, but he, you know, both he and the Post lead up the fact that, you know, Rahm Emanuel now has gone to work this year with a bank called the Center for You Partners.

[09:56] I think it's a private equity firm. And they advise, is a series of healthcare companies. There's the Oris Health, the Ray Biopharma, RA Pharmaceuticals. So he has a direct stake in all of this, right? And this is just the classic thing that you see constantly now in the press where we're not telling you what the other person's affiliations are, right? They might work for a think tank, like the Atlantic Council. A lot of Atlantic Council people aren't TV lately or nobody's being told about that. But this is just really bad. It's a classic sort of campaign faux pas to do this.

[10:29] And someone needs to say it. See, this is what people should get. I know, that's so stupid. I know, it's crazy. Like, at least be like, look, I'm gonna repeat the tire talking point. Right, yeah, that you've already heard 50 million times already, but... See, that's the type of thing Democrats should get in trouble for. Not the Katie Hill thing. Yeah, exactly. Let's make people who do that resign. Disgusting. And this is the thing with the Democratic Party is that they feign social concern or they talk about it a lot. But then they also have somebody putting a whole bunch of money either into their campaigns or into their personal pocketbook

[11:00] and that just affects the decision-making. And then the media doesn't reveal it. That's like the worst part. They don't really enable it. So less lobbying, more throuples. Right, more throuples. That's my advice for the Democrats. Throuples are great. Yeah, this is a pro-thruple podcast. Right, right. So terrible, we have kind of a key thing. Oh yeah, so my Isn't That Terrible is actually about Elijah Cummings, who is a congressman who died earlier this month. And it's nice that Obama spoke at his funeral and was actually very moving.

[11:31] And he was only 68 when he died, Elijah Cummings. And he was someone who, like Trump said, really disgusting racist things about because he's from Baltimore. Right, yeah. And that's the district he represented. But you know, someone- That was one of the, was it Shithole City? What would he say? I don't remember, like rodents or something. Rodents, right, that was the rodent thing. Shithole was the other thing. So yeah, Shithole is the country. Country, right. Yeah, he's very, he has different geographical systems. But another guy died, another guy, another congressman died, John Conyers. And I feel like he didn't get enough love.

[12:02] Cummings got a lot of love, which he deserved. Wasn't crazy about his politics. He was a bit of a Hilarian. Hilarian? A Clintonian. But he was a very nice guy. I know this because I'm a nerd who watched the Democratic Platform Committee hearings. You watch that? Yeah. Like voluntarily? Yeah, Jim Zogby's amazing. Ben Jell is amazing. Nina Turner, great performances. So Cummings was pretty nice. Even though he was in this terrible position where he had to oversee this terrible people like Neera Tanden and, I mean, that's enough. But other Clintonians.

[12:32] Like Neera Tanden and Neera Tanden. Yeah, exactly. Like just pretending that they're four things. Like we all agree, but we all agree that we want health care. It's just that we have different ways to get there, which is no, we don't agree. You guys don't want university. Somebody just died on set. Yeah, someone just died on set to show us the importance of health care. But we're gonna move on. But we're gonna, yeah, we gotta put, because we're so committed to getting the word out of there. That's right. So anyway, Elijah Cummings, RIP, and his father was a sharecropper. He has a really interesting bio, but I wanna give some love to John Conyers,

[13:04] who was the longest serving African-American in congressional history. Now he did die at 90. I feel like this is a maybe like, isn't that terrible, which is more terrible. We could do a little calculation, although maybe that's not very, that's a little gauche to do with people dying. Yeah, I mean. All right, we don't have to make it that way. But what about if we just make it, isn't that terrible that John Conyers isn't, isn't that terrible that Elijah Cummings died and John Conyers died and that John Conyers isn't getting more love? Yes, okay, that's terrible. Okay, that's terrible. So he was a real leftist, by the way.

[13:34] He opposed Vietnam. He opposed the Iraq war, the Persian Gulf. He was not your run of the mill dim. He fought tirelessly to make Martin Luther King day a thing and not later on. Like literally he started the day after he was killed. That's like very industrious. He did then resign in 2017 because he was accused of some sexual misconduct, harassment of AIDS. He denied it, though. And so it's sad because that is kind of,

[14:07] I think, shrouding his, overshadowing his career. It's casting a pall. Thank you, that's what I meant. Yeah, and he was just, he was really great and very progressive and much more progressive than anyone. He also got, he was famous for how he dressed and he's one of these guys who I think got better looking as the years went on. Uh-huh, really? So, yeah. There's like some stuff coming out in this show. What else did I say? I don't know, the thrupple, you're... Oh yeah, I'm not, I'm just, I'm just trying. Oh, he was called the district dandy. Dandy?

[14:37] Yeah, GQ called him one of the district dandies. And he was a lover of the music of John Coltrane. He hosted a jazz program on a Washington radio station in the 1970s. He got Congress to pass a resolution designating jazz as a national American treasure and he played the cornet in high school. Excellent. And so basically you're upset that people were mourning Lagic Cummings more than Congress. I want both. I'm not, you know, it's not a zero sum game, but yeah, I would like some. You think there should be like... The ratio wasn't good. More equity, mourning.

[15:08] Right. Morning equity, yeah, exactly, yeah. That's fine, okay. Isn't that weird? And again, this is just for you, even though you deny that this is something that really matters to you. Cats are killing otters. I hate cats. You hate cats. Today is National Cat Day and I was upset about that. That would have been my, isn't that terrible, but I didn't want to seem too cataphobic more because I'm, as a dog ally, I don't want to make that PR move. Right. I need to build more canine allies. But okay, yeah, tell me about this. Basically there's a rash of sea otter dust in the Pacific and this is turning out to be associated

[15:40] with Toxel Plasmosis. So I'm gonna, that's poop, right? So that's cats and bobcats are pooping and cat poop is now getting into the ocean somehow and killing otters and which is just disgusting and terrible and I thought that would make you sad. So that's why this is an, yeah. Thank you, yeah. Does it? I love otters. You love otters? Yeah. Are they the only animals that use tools? Do they? What do they use? The things, right? They use rocks to open shellfish.

[16:10] Don't they? I didn't know that. Yeah. Do they wear little bibs? No, they don't wear little bibs. Oh, that would be cute. Like when we eat lobster. Right. That's really, that's cool of them but cats are killing them. They're just too many cats. Yeah, I know we should kill, I wanna get rid of cats. If this story went the other way of otters were killing cats. I'd be very pro, pro cat aside. Yeah, on the part of otters and they could use tools on them. It's just remarkable to me that there's enough cat and bobcat feces to have this phenomenon actually be observably happening, you know? Yeah, you're right.

[16:40] They're very prolific I guess. Yeah, yeah. When it comes to bowel movements. Yeah. They're so gross cats, sorry. Are you a cat person? Cats are great. Oh, yeah, me too. Which is why I think it's so funny that you. So to hell with cats and Pots Save America. Yeah, to hell with both of them. Raid us because you wanna give a big F you to Pots Save America. And cats. To cats and sharks. And sharks. I hate sharks. Right, they should all be thrown into a. And Anderson Cooper is a big. Shipping container together. Yeah. Yeah, filled with cat feces. Right, right.

[17:10] Exactly. Sorry, John and John. They should all get Toxoplasmosis. Yeah. All right, so that's. That was from Kale Fisher. He gave us that heads up. Yeah, I think readers, readers are. Tweeters are becoming more helpful. Obviously we're slacking on the work departments. They're helping, helping both of us. So that's good. We're just trying to expand the media democracy. Right. We're trying to democratize the media. All right, well, thank you to Kale Fisher. And that was the four food groups. Let's move on to discussion this week. Before we move on though, because I always like to back up my attacks on people.

[17:41] You're unsupported live statements. Yeah. Yeah, well, they are supported right now. I mean, the shark stuff, that's a deeply held belief that I don't have to justify. They are sociopaths, we all know that. But I referred to some kind of animal head or animal carcass that Rahm Emanuel left. And it's true that he did send an enemy a dead fish with a card that said it's been awful working with you. So is that like a sleeps with the fishes thing? Or is that fish and visitors think in three days?

[18:11] What is that? I don't know, but he sent it to veteran Democratic pollster Alan Seacrest. What's the, is there like a theme with the show of politicians killing animals? Wait, what else? Oh my God. Yeah. But you know, Rahm is such a coward. I bet he got it killed. He didn't kill the fish with his own bare hands. You didn't catch the fish for sure. He didn't catch it, yeah. Right. Yeah. Also Rahm Emanuel looks just like Christopher Columbus. That is true. It's very weird. So Matt, you had a tweet that went kind of viral.

[18:42] Yeah, I mean it was like an offhand thing. I noticed I was watching a CNN clip last Friday and I just tweeted out something that I thought was interesting and it got like, I don't know, 20,000 likes and it was rocketing around right wing media, which is always a little odd. But so basically this is an interview that CNN did with James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence who I incorrectly called the DIA, which is the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. So that's no fun.

[19:13] I made a little error in the tweet. Don't feel too bad because it's not like you were involved in droning people. That I haven't graduated to that yet. But Clapper, who was one of the four senior intelligence officials in the Obama administration, he's being asked about the investigation by John Durham into the origins of Russiagate and he says this very interesting thing at the end. OK, so you want to play that? The then Commander Chief, the President of Obama,

[19:43] told us to do, which was to assemble all the reporting that we could, that we had available to us and put it in one report that the President could pass on to the Congress and to the next administration and while we're at it, declassify as much as we possibly could to make it public, and that's what we did. And it's kind of just concerning now to be investigated for having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president. So there were some people who were upset and said, oh, you took this quote out of context.

[20:14] Well, yeah, what's the significance of the quote? So what he says at the end there is it's disconcerting to be investigated for doing our duty, for having done our duty and for having done what we were asked to do by the president of the United States, right? And my observation was, boy, I bet Barack Obama's going to love that James Clapper is basically saying we're being investigated for something we were told to do by the president, right? And there were some people who were saying, this was taken out of context. He's talking about writing a report to Congress

[20:44] and delivering it to the next administration. And he's just talking about investigating Russian interference. And so you're basically implying that Barack Obama ordered him to do something illegal. No, that's people who heard the quote that way are misinterpreting it because all that other stuff that he's talking about is window addressing. James Clapper is not being investigated for doing his duty or for preparing a report or for investigating Russian interference. They're being investigated for manipulating the FISA court, for illegal leaking, for improper use of informants.

[21:17] And so when he says it's disconcerting to be investigated for something that we were asked for having done what we were asked to do by the president of the United States, he's not saying Barack Obama ordered me to do something illegal, but he is saying, whatever we're being investigated for falls under the general category of something we were asked to do. So he's setting up a future sort of line of argument or a defense and I'm sure no matter what the truth is, Obama's not gonna like that, because it's pulling Obama into a scandal

[21:47] that currently is sort of localized. And so that's what I was talking about. And people got all bent out of shape about it and saying that it was taken out of context, but it really isn't when you think about it. And what are just so listeners know and viewers know, what are some of Clapper's greatest hits? Clapper's greatest hits? I mean, so he was, he and Brennan both have a history of both lying to Congress. They were both sort of senior intelligence officials

[22:18] who were on board with the drone assassination program, warrantless surveillance, there was an episode, this was more Brennan than Clapper, but there was an episode involving monitoring members of Congress who were looking into some of these things, torture, so he's been one of the key sort of war on terror officials who spanned a couple of different administrations. But this thing now, he's a central player in what they're looking at and you're gonna hear a bunch of people talking about whether they're upset

[22:52] or not about the direction of this investigation. There was a lot of stuff that came out last week about this investigation and a lot of it has to do with, I think, the lawyers of the people who are being investigated complaining to reporters and they're all saying things along these lines, like we resent being investigated for something that we were just kind of told to do. Yeah, so. Make him clap. Right, yeah, cause he's Clapper, right, yeah. Yeah, all right. Now let's talk about our mutual acquaintance, Max. Max Blumenthal, a friend of my show,

[23:25] at least friend of the Katie Helper show, he's been on the show. And Max is someone who gets a lot of hate. He's pretty brave and he's a really good journalist. The thing about him is people hate him for lots of different reasons, but they smear him because he doesn't get the facts wrong, so you can disagree with his analysis or his takeaways or what he thinks should be done based on this stuff. But no one can really, and he has a lot of critics and a lot of people just go after him for like, that he's toxic.

[23:57] Anyway, so Max on Friday was, I think, awoken at 9 a.m. by DC police officers who threatened to break down his door and he was hauled into a police van taken to a DC central jail where he was held for two days. He was shackled by his hands and ankles for over five hours. His request for a phone call was denied by police and corrections officers. So he didn't have access to the outside world. And he was told that he was informed,

[24:28] that he was told that he was being accused of simple assault by a Venezuelan opposition member. He says that the charge is totally fabricated and he claims, quote, it's clearly part of a campaign of political persecution designed to silence me and the gray zone for a factual journalism exposing the deceptions, corruption and violence of the far right when Venezuelan opposition. The gray zone is a really great website that Max is the, of which Max is the founder and editor. The warrant, the arrest warrant was five months old.

[24:59] So that's sketchy and as Max says, if the government had at least told me I had a warrant, I could have voluntarily surrendered and appeared at my own arraignment. I have nothing to fear because I'm completely innocent. And what's interesting is that Max actually, he and other people at the gray zone like Anja Parampel and Alex Rubinstein who contributes to the gray zone, they were embedded in the embassy with peaceful activists, peace activists and peaceful activists. And Max I think was involved with their accusing him of is helping get food into the embassy,

[25:31] which they did because these, now look, I don't really care what you think about Maduro and Venezuela, the people outside the embassy are bad, they were bad people. They were abusive, they called people racist slurs, they called them sexist slurs. There's footage of a guy that I think someone got that Max tweeted out where he calls this woman a little bitch. They're really like scum, these people. They're reactionary, someone else who was arrested, Ben Rubinstein, the brother of journalist Alex Rubinstein,

[26:02] he also was in the nonviolent legal food delivery. He was arrested by secret service police officers. He had spent 20 hours in jail alongside Jerry Condon. Now Jerry Condon is president of Veterans for Peace and he was arrested after being brutalized by secret service officers for attempting to toss a cucumber inside an embassy window. That's probably a first. Has anyone ever been arrested for throwing a cucumber before? Cucumber, penetrate, cucumber assault. There's a joke in there somewhere. There's a joke that I cut out, yeah. I don't know what Max did,

[26:33] maybe he like smashed an arepa into someone's face or something. Yeah, the thing that's troubling to me about this is the, he don't like that joke. What? My arepa joke, it was a good joke. Oh, you had an arepa joke? Yeah. He smashed someone's face in with an arepa. Like the cheese thing? The meal, yeah, the food. It's a Venezuelan food. Right. I just want to, yeah. You just wanted to show me you could pronounce it. Oh, no, not that. I do that all the time, but I wanted to. It's like saying Nicaragua. Nicaragua, yeah, Venezuela, yeah. The thing that troubles me about this is that

[27:06] normally you're not gonna have an arrest five months after the fact, especially over something like this and especially when a member of the press is involved, like the police normally won't go there. It's just too much of a hassle, usually dealing with arresting a journalist unless there's something real there. Right, yeah, of course, yeah. And we're in an environment now where I think it's becoming more and more acceptable to start putting pressure on members of the press in different ways, whether it's,

[27:38] you know, we're gonna talk to John Carriaco today. He was one of the people who was charged with violating the Espionage Act for talking to a journalist, right? And so the next step in this progression is going to start, is going to be leveling charges that reporters you don't like. All right, that's just gonna be a thing. And I mean, you know, Max is kind of, he's the kind of person that would be one of the first people who would be a victim of this kind of thing if that was gonna start happening.

[28:09] Because so few, I mean, because he's so... He doesn't have a whole lot of institutional support. Yeah, and he's annoying. He's got, he doesn't have institutional support. Annoying is the best way, yeah. Right, right, yeah, no, in all ways. And he was also, by the way, he was arrested literally hours after the Grey Zone published an article on USAID paying the salaries of Guaido's team as they lobbied the US government. Guaido was the coup, how would you call it, the opposition's president of Venezuela. Right, so if there's even a hint that this was because somebody doesn't like his politics or his reporting or anything like that.

[28:39] Yeah, why is that been five months later? Yeah, and we're, I mean, other reporters should just be like, hey, this is terrible, let's all make some noise about it and make sure this doesn't have nothing. Because he's not, you know, Max is in the like... Because he's persona in Angrada. He's not a member of the team, so let's, you know... I mean, if it was Jim Acosta, you know, like if he had to spend 10 minutes standing next to a vending machine in a police station, he'd be like, you know, a Nobel committee worried about it. But this is the kind of thing that, it's just troubling. I wish there was no more people saying something about it.

[29:10] Well, it's a bit like the Assange thing, right? No one will, I mean, who's like, rotting away and insane and, I mean... Well, forget about even Assange as a person. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no, no. It's personal suffering. That whole incident is so relevant to journalists because they're criminalizing basically the normal communications that we would have. Yeah, as nothing of 2016 is what he's getting in trouble for. It's like forgiving someone a password, right? Well, for even, it's agreeing to look in

[29:41] to try and get a password. And that's, you know, I think any reporter would tell you that, you know, counseling somebody on how to avoid being detected... Yeah, when they're a whistleblower. When they're a whistleblower, like that's something, you know, this is the kind of sort of normal stuff that goes on. I wouldn't actually get the... password for them, but but you would just tell them you would and that's only yeah you might yeah no and but but there's also that's not the only count in the Assange thing a lot of it the other counts are things like receiving

[30:13] defense national defense information which which anybody who does reporting on national security like we see classified or stuff we're not supposed to see all the time and if you if that that becomes criminalized then they can charge any of us at any time and so that's but nobody cares because Julian Assange and also what I was reading from was an article at the Grey Zone published by Ben Norton and it's interesting that Kevin Gastola is the only other person who I saw right about this at Shadowproof oh really I mean I

[30:45] googled Max Blumenthal Google News you know I and there was one this which was reprinted some places luckily thankfully but yeah I mean it's it's you think that this would be a story well look maybe to be fair yeah Max has taken shots at a lot of reporters and maybe they don't like that I mean he's taking shots of me in the past but it but he's forgiven him look you're talking about him here yeah I mean this is a this is a collective thing we have to worry about yeah you don't just defend people what because you like them right I mean yeah no it's just there's no there's no sort of institutional self pride you

[31:20] know in the business anymore the same people who hate Max by the way well often hate us and they are very overt and open about they're just like shut him down Rolling Stones shut him down they don't even pretend to you know there's no tolerance whatsoever right but we're gonna have Max on we should have and you guys can have like a rapprochement you can like pass up well you guys can pass the pillow I'll I'll mediate it right right yeah we'll smoke the peace pipe yeah exactly yeah so yeah Max I'm glad you're out of jail and we're gonna follow this story but again if we only defended people who agreed with us

[31:53] that would be a very scary and even scarier world right so listeners may know I mentioned that Max is a friend of the show of my show the Katie Halper show which I have it's okay that I'm mentioning it because I always mention useful idiots on my show so I think it's okay and I this week I released an interview idea with Chesa Boudin who is running for the DA's office in San Francisco now there's something called the Katie Halper show bump it's happened a couple times and it's happened again because I released the episode yesterday and right after I'm a Bernie endorsed Chesa Boudin

[32:28] Wow incidents I don't know I don't think so maybe but she's Bermuda triangle level stuff I know yeah I'll go through a list on another episode I'll have my list of Katie Halper show bumps anytime a guest who went on wins an election that's the Katie Halper show bump when they don't win it it's a moot it's kind of a relevant mm-hmm or is that they didn't come on early enough right Tiffany Caban came on a little late I think if she'd come on earlier right that makes sense make sense yeah so Chesa Boudin it's really fascinating his parents were in

[32:59] the weather underground mm-hmm and his parents were convicted of driving a getaway car in a robbery that did kill three men so it was very tragic and it wasn't like part of the plan right but it's called felony murder which is which you know yeah so when you're committing another crime and then a murder happens so the mom was in jail Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert the mom was in jail for 22 years the dad is still in jail and as of now will die in jail mm-hmm and he this guy this kid Chesa was a public defender which makes a lot

[33:31] of sense because he was kind of on the side of the incarcerated and but now he's doing that thing that Caban did or tried to do that Larry Krasner did which is they go from the public defender's office to run for DA mm-hmm and very sketchily the San Francisco DA left a month early to this was going to be the first open seat election for the DA's office in over a hundred years but the guy the DA Gascon left early to move to LA where he's going to be the DA and the

[34:03] mayor appointed one of the candidates to be interim DA mm-hmm a move that the ACLU condemned because it's basically like you're tilting the scales but you're also kind of creating an air of the of incumbency by putting someone or actual incumbency even anyway it gives the impression that you're running against someone but Chase is a decarceral progressive candidate he's the best if you care about decarceral justice so and the interesting thing about decarceral progressive justice is that and this is a reason it's becoming even more popular is you don't have to be a touchy feely kumbaya person

[34:35] you can like not care about criminals and still think that and realize that recidivism rates are better go down when you have less punitive the less pen punitive criminal justice system mm-hmm so yeah that makes sense makes sense absolutely so chase a boutique calm if you want you didn't tell me the felony murder part when you told me that the weather when the oh you thought they were just in jail for for like I don't know for organizing a peaceful yeah I don't know what that was wow he's still in jail but yeah yeah I was I was moved by that I was like wow Matt that's it's true it is a travesty

[35:08] he shouldn't still he shouldn't be sentenced to die in jail for driving a car though I mean it's murder it's felony murder which you don't believe in felony murder charge yeah no absolutely so if you break a law if you're giving someone a ride and you have no idea yeah but I think that's not just because a friend of the show chase a boutique the concept is if you break the law you should you should have to take into account all the things that could happen when you know I did not prepare to debate this I'll have to come next age old legal concept but it's bad a bank robbery somebody gets shot

[35:39] you're responsible for that well that is what's really scary about it though is that when you're like you are picking up someone there are lots of stories where it's really egregious where you have somebody who gets into a car with a bunch of friends and they go to they go to a bodega and the friends jump out and rob the place somebody gets shot like that's a little that's that's a little different because he didn't then you're dealing with did was the person fully aware where they where they are a hundred percent like on board with the whole thing do they know what was gonna happen but you know someone

[36:10] goes different if you get into a car with someone the plan is like okay we're just gonna rob these people and use but if you do it with a gun then you maybe it's to scare them what it's to scare them I'll find out I'm not making light of the I'm not making light of this three men did die but I don't believe in it not even because of the chase a bootie and thing anyway so we're chases getting a split endorsement okay useful idiots although you may endorse them anyway yeah yeah yeah we're gonna have to we're gonna have to get a

[36:41] good this would be a good guess actually a constitutional lawyer or something about this yeah so we have a little bit of time left quick saying so Matt you wrote a piece over the weekend there was a huge story it started with Donald Trump tweeting something something big is happening nobody really knew what was what was taking place and then it turns out that we find out that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who is the head of ISIS was killed in a in a essentially a giant raid like he he was there was a huge American helicopter attack in the

[37:12] Idlib province Syria and as he's running away he gets chased into a tunnel by I guess dogs and blows himself up there that's that's the story that's come out and I should prefer preferences by saying it's very very common for Americans to announce that they've killed a terror suspect and then have a turn out that that didn't happen but but in this case it appears to have happened and the entire press landscape went completely crazy like the like within 10 seconds the only important thing was who was getting credit for and this this

[37:46] one had this happened on both sides you know Trump starts he gave a long rambling press conference where he said it was like watching a movie and he died like a dog like a coward and said it was even bigger than Osama bin Laden being dying me it was it was ridiculous my favorite part is that he prays the beautiful dog talented dog so Trump yeah I wonder if he's gonna adopt a dog what yeah I have a move into the White House oh my god yeah be his running mate yeah

[38:16] exactly yeah but then it's sort of equally insane was the the reaction in all those kind of like mainstream sort of blue-leaning media like the the issue of what happened and who this guy was and why this was important and all that it was it was instantly not important the the first things that came out were everybody was upset because he didn't inform congressional Democrats which like imagine if that story of if when the bin Laden really happened and

[38:47] Republicans that he didn't inform us people would have thought that was nuts but that was one of the first things that came out then there was the Washington Post ran a I guess it was technically an obituary and it says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi comma austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic state comma dies at 48 that was the most insane thing I've ever seen this week right yeah exactly or this month I mean that was insane what editor looked at that and said I mean that well done right the front of mine was

[39:19] like today did they lift that from the text of Gandhi's death or something like that right I mean it or from like a fan of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi right yeah exactly I mean it would have it would have fit if he had PR man that's what they would have done yeah like a cleric who died in his sleep or something like that this is two things first you're saying kind of nice things about a guy who's got genocide in his record crucifixion sex slaves yeah then there's also the sort of passive construction dies at 48 like what of

[39:51] natural causes I know yeah yeah like Cummings and Conyers no very different and that was crazy and then they you know there was a public uproar and they they changed the headline but they kept that construction in the lead. It's still there. The whole thing about the australia austere religious scholar with the wireframe glasses that's still in there. Is that just because they are so upset about Trump being able to use anything? This is the whole thing though is the only question that matters anymore in american politics

[40:22] is who gets who's getting the win on the day's headlines right so the the story didn't have any meaning for for reporters on either side except for whether it was good for Trump or bad for Trump. Trump is going to milk the political benefit of Baghdadi because he needs to because of impeachment and other problems. Yeah Yahoo that was one of their stories. Trump is going to milk this. The New York Times did. Baghdadi raid was complicated by Trump's plans to withdraw from Syria. There was another one that happened in spite of Trump not because of him. Trump's

[40:53] loading tone contrasted with the more measured tone of Barack Obama after he's been lawed in operation. That's I guess kind that is true. It's true but it's not like the shouldn't be the headline right yeah it shouldn't be on that day. Is that a story you do? Then there was a whole thing about somebody some guy who was the photographer for when Obama's thing happened suggested that the whole thing that this the photo of Trump in the situation room was faked because the timestamp suggested that the operation couldn't have been going on when

[41:26] Trump was in the and then later on he backtracked but by then the cat was out of the bag and we have more cats on the show and it was all over media that Trump had staged his photo. Then there were people who were saying was quote more staged than Obama's photo and there were people who were worried about the fact that the ethernet cables and the picture weren't connected. They were like oh they they weren't really you know tuned in while they were like who cares it's a PR photo the president like he's not actually. Yeah exactly I mean it's it's just I'm

[42:00] actually almost impressed by the Trump is going to milk the political benefit of Baghdadi because he needs to because of impeachment other problems because that's the type of thing that we would critique the media for focusing on like but they're actually saying that like our critique is like look at how the media is only concerned with how Trump will use this politically right but you don't usually admit that like they shouldn't they usually pretend that there's something else besides their concern over Trump's using it politically you know what I mean yeah they're they're doing it while they're criticizing it like if you if you're worried

[42:31] about the guy getting play out of this just don't cover it you know or or right or everything is seen through the prism of how Trump will use this or not use this like there is there are things that just happen right and also this makes again you've made this point a lot which is that this just feeds into the idea now Trump would would like vilify the media no matter what but this feeds into it it's like why is this a relevant headline right for this guy being captured why why does anyone care about I mean I have progressive friends who are like upset about Trump's you know handling of North Korea because they don't want him to be able to

[43:03] use it during the elections right but don't we care about war and yeah this is the biggest the biggest like like I feel like divider you know Edward Snowden talks about how it's not left or right the poles of left or right but it's north and south or it's vertical like between authoritarian and whatever the opposite is I feel like the biggest divide now is what is how anti war you are like it's just not a thing for lots of people even people I think it's the Trump derangement syndrome yeah no Trump has superseded almost every other issue for a

[43:41] whole sect of people and a lot of them are in the media yeah you know Trump is just he has he's over important to them right like they can't conceive of news stories that yeah where Donald Trump is in the center of everything right so we don't they don't look at institutionally what's going on they don't care whether whether this is a positive or negative development globally like you know with the North Korea thing yeah you do probably want us to negotiate with North Korea even if it's Trump like you know who knows well what's the alternative you

[44:11] want him to be belligerent like you say he's has dementia is cheeto Mussolini and you want him to be a tough guy with him and Putin the people that you say are evil and can cause like a nuclear holocaust right what is the end game there yeah like when he says he wants to withdraw from a couple years ago when he started talking about withdrawing from Syria like good like you know the last thing I want is this guy you know anywhere near a military conflict which is like I think that oh I always go back to that because it's like don't they get how incoherent their position is right but it's just because it's so reactive so whatever Trump

[44:44] does and makes me I'm tired of disclaiming or declaiming that I'm not a Trump fan which I'm not I really don't like Trump right but like it's not good organizing to just oppose whatever he does because he does it because bad people will do the right thing for the wrong reasons or every now and then for the right reasons maybe because the way political things happen but yeah just reacting to that is not how you do it and if you want I mean there are a lot of arguments that could be made and should be made Spencer Ackerman had a great piece on this at the Daily Beast about how we create these people so like we kill these people

[45:17] of course you know that is something that we could focus on and you could criticize Trump for failing to recognize because of course Trump just vilifies these people not that I'm like a fan of this guys but he was in Abu Ghraib they say and we know how much the U.S. military intervention radicalizes people right that should have been a big theme like what is is this really that big a deal because actually that what this what this whole episode shows is that we're going to be doing this forever because we create this exactly yeah so that's the way the left or even like blue digital you know blue media could go after

[45:48] Trump and make a good argument a coherent argument and also a moral argument which but of course they can't really make that argument either because they've been supporting these wars right so they're hawkish but progressives out there who are good people and to have a little bit of Trump's arrangement syndrome I'm not chastising you I'm just giving you a tip you could if you want to go after Trump that's what you should be doing yeah and and and conversely this kind of behavior it just it redounds to his benefit ultimately right if you if you view everything as being about Trump right that's good for him

[46:22] exactly yeah you know and and this kind of stuff like just tell us who al-Baghdadi is and you know probably objectively it's not a negative thing for him that for him to have this happen you know what I mean well I mean it's probably not good either the way he will see what happens but it's not very good strategy to it's not surprising but it's not great for Trump to talk about how he died like a whimpering dog oh no no that's that's that's that's terrible and and and it's going to perpetuate this whole thing and and you know the children

[46:52] died in this episode yeah and so you know that that's going to be a recruiting tool it's funny how it's not funny but it's interesting and this is another thing you could talk about but like how he blew himself up and Trump clearly was upset that because because he's Trump that like they didn't get to kill him kill him I mean they cornered him and he blew himself up but that's why I think he's he's going into such detail about this because he has to make it less about this guy blowing himself yeah no that just shows the sadism of Trump right like and like insecurity too insecurity totally he's upset that they didn't get to kill him and that

[47:24] this guy kind of like you know right I'm not trying to I'm not like all those things are true but just like so what you know what I mean like he's that's who the Trump it's Trump is Trump just like you know this also this could have been isn't that terrible because the but the dog survived the dog survived right I mean look I don't want I don't it's terrible because the kids died too right that part is terrible isn't that terrible his kids but also my dad told me he was like don't worry the dog's okay anyway anyway crazy episode yep yeah I'm really excited to talk to

[47:57] John Kiriyako Kiriyaku Yashu John when you're about to be watching this John by the way is a CIA analyst yeah he was in the CIA for 14 years started off in the Iraq desk which he was originally told incidentally was something a place that nothing ever happened right yeah yeah and was he at the Iraq desk or the Kuwait desk I think it was Iraq slash I'm not mistaken we should look that up yeah he exposed the Bush error torture program became the only official jail in connection with it he's the author of reluctant spy my secret life in the CIA's war on terror and his latest

[48:27] book is doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison and you can find out more about him at John Kiriyaku.com or John Kiriyaku on Twitter and that is K-I-R-I-A-K-O-U just an unofficial bio I want to give people this info as an eight-year-old he was a volunteer in the McGovern campaign which I mentioned which I will mention because you feel a secret kinship with him because yeah right right over politicized this person and he over politicized maybe your kids are underpulled maybe you were under politicized Matt

[49:00] and maybe that's what it is but he also he was recruited to the CIA by a psychiatrist to convince him to quit his job yeah no that's very interesting and he ended up being I believe I'm not mistaken he was Saddam's biographer within the intelligence community so that was another thing his star was attached to that yeah the only person I can't believe it and his story so we'll get into it but his story so odd because what ended up happening was he was out of the CIA for a while and reporters started coming after him because they were looking for evidence of a torture

[49:32] program and they thought that he was involved and he sort of inadvertently sort of confirms some things yeah and that and that ends up like sort of sucking him into this crazy situation where he's he's prosecuted so it's it's a it's a little bit different from a traditional whistleblower story but that's out to do it right yeah exactly but you know he he didn't back down right yeah he spoke out against and apparently they were like he you know they asked him at the CIA if he wanted to be trained and enhanced interrogation, which is what they call the torture stuff, right?

[50:03] Right, yeah. And like everyone else was like, yeah, sure. And he didn't. So without any further ado, let's talk to John Kiriakou. John Kiriakou. Wow, look at that rhyme. I am. John, welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Matt Taibi. This is Katie Halper. And you are John Kiriakou, right? I am. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. So really looking forward to speaking to you. There's a couple of things that are in the news that are kind of relevant to your story and your experience that I want to ask about.

[50:33] You might have heard recently Bernie Sanders came out with a statement that he would end the practice of using the Espionage Act for people who talk to journalists. And that seemed directly related to what happened to you. Can you talk a little bit about just give us the background of what happened with you and how you came to be charged with the Espionage Act, even though that wasn't what you went to prison for? Yeah, in 2007, I gave a nationally televised interview

[51:03] to Brian Ross, who was then with ABC News. And in that interview, I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program and I called waterboarding torture. I said that I thought that it was illegal. The FBI began investigating me within 24 hours, as you might imagine. And they investigated me for a full year from December of 2007 to December of 2008. And then they issued to my attorneys something called a declination letter, saying that they were declining to prosecute. I thought the case was closed,

[51:35] actually took my wife out to dinner that night to celebrate, and what I didn't know was that four weeks later when Barack Obama was inaugurated, John Brennan, an old nemesis of mine from the CIA, asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case. And I had no idea that for the next three years my emails were being intercepted, my phone calls were being monitored, and that there were teams of FBI agents following me, not 24 hours a day, but sometimes,

[52:07] as many as six teams following me. And then finally in January of 2012, four years after I blew the whistle, I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. So the espionage charges stemmed from the ABC interview and a follow-on interview I gave to the New York Times, to Scott Shane at the New York Times. I hadn't committed espionage, and they knew I hadn't committed espionage. One of the things that we got in discovery

[52:37] was a series of memos between John Brennan and Eric Holder. In the first one, Brennan wrote, "'Charge him with espionage.'" And Holder responded, "'My people don't think he committed espionage.'" And then Brennan wrote back and said, "'Charge him anyway and make him defend himself.'" And so that's what they did. In the end, I took a plea to a lesser count to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. I'm only the second American who's ever been charged with that as a crime.

[53:07] And that was for the, I'm sorry to interrupt, that was for identifying, you were speaking to, was it Matthew Cole, right? Yes, yes, correct. And sort of inadvertently he asked, he sort of prompts you to, just to give the background, you were a CIA officer for 14 years. And basically these reporters were after, sort of the story about the use of waterboarding and torture, especially with Abu Zubidah, how do you pronounce that, Zubidah, right? Is that, yeah. Zubidah, right, Zubidah, right, Zubidah.

[53:39] And so they were basically, he was prompting you for a name and you sort of gave it, basically, right? Is that what happened? Yeah, what he said was, he told me he was writing a book on the Abu Omar rendition, which is a rendition that's been covered in the media. It took place in Milan. We snatched this Imam and sent him to Egypt to be tortured and it turned out he was innocent. So he asked me, do you know any of these 12 names? He asked me in an email and I said, I don't know any of these guys.

[54:11] Kidnapping wasn't my thing at the CIA. I didn't participate in kidnappings. And he sent me a second list of 12 names and I responded saying, you obviously know this issue far better than I do. I really don't know any of these people. And then he said, what about the guy that you mentioned on page, whatever, of your first book? I think his name is John. And I said, oh, you're talking about John Smith. I don't know whatever happened to him. He's probably retired and living somewhere

[54:41] in Northern Virginia. I confirmed that name to him. And so he took that name, he gave it to the Guantanamo defense attorneys. They put it in a classified motion to the judge asking for permission to interview John Smith. The judge recognized the name as classified. He turned it over to the FBI. The FBI then traced the information back from the Guantanamo defense attorneys, eventually to Matthew Cole. And then I don't know if Matthew Cole

[55:13] ratted me out to the FBI or perhaps the FBI went into his emails, although he was a working journalist and I find that hard to believe. But either way, they traced it back to me and then I was arrested and charged for it. Who is Matthew Cole? Is he known as a journalist or? Yeah, he's with the intercept now. He doesn't write much, a couple of pieces a year. I understand that he married money so he doesn't need the salary. But he was briefly with ABC, briefly independent. He went to NBC for a little while

[55:45] and now he's with the intercept. The really amazing part of your story to me was the espionage charge was just predicated on the idea that you talked to a reporter, an American reporter, right? Or two American reporters basically, right? Correct, yes. You weren't the only person that this happened to, right? There were a bunch of people, especially in the Obama years that they used this trick. And it of course has a chilling effect or it has to. And obviously you had to really worry

[56:17] about the gravity of that charge. I mean, how many years would that have carried if you had been given? 45, I was, you know, on the day of my arraignment the feds offered me 45 years. They said, take a plea, you do 45 years and you might live to meet your grandchildren. And I remember like just being kind of in a fog. I was in a state of shock. And I remember saying, I'm not doing 45 minutes. I didn't do anything wrong. And then a couple of months passed

[56:49] and they came back with an offer of 10 years. They said, take a plea to espionage and you do 10 years. Get out in eight and a half. And we rejected it. That was on a Monday. They came back on Wednesday with eight years and on Friday with five years. And my lead attorney was a guy named Plato Kacheris, legendary legal figure in Washington. He said to me, you know, I've been practicing law in Washington for 53 years

[57:20] and I've never seen them come down in time. If you reject a plea, they always go up in time, right? They offer you 10. You say, no, they go to 12, then they go to 15. I said, why are they coming down? And he said, because they have a shit case and they know it's shit and we're going to trial. And so that conversation was in March of 2012. We went all the way up to trial in October of 2012 before we finally negotiated a plea. And what was the plea?

[57:51] The plea was to plead guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. And I got 30 months in prison. I did 23 months. And did you have any idea when you spoke out about this torture program basically that you would be facing potential jail time? No. And the reason why I didn't think so was because there are laws in this country that make it illegal to classify a crime. So if something is a criminal act or if it is classified solely

[58:21] because it's embarrassing to the CIA or the intelligence community, it's improperly classified, which in and of itself is a felony. And so I believe then and I believe now that the torture program was a crime. And so exposing it was not a criminal act. In my view, it was a patriotic act. You also in the book you talk about how you left the CIA in 2004. You just hadn't been following the news. You assumed that that was sort of widely known, right? Yeah.

[58:51] And they were coming to you, right? Yeah. People came to me all the time. Journalists came to me all the time for background on the torture program. And I really had tuned it out. I stopped focusing on it and went on with my life. And I just didn't think that I was saying anything that was particularly sensitive. You said that Brennan was a long time nemesis of yours. What was that about? Like what are the roots of that? You know, John was one of these alpha dogs. He looks so nice, his face, just kidding.

[59:22] Yeah, right, his face. Face only a mother could love. Probably not even that. You took the words right out of my mouth. So when I first joined the CIA, John was a GS-15, he was the deputy director of the Arab-Israeli Analysis Group, right? No big deal, not terribly busy. And there's kind of a famous story inside the CIA. He went to his boss, a woman named Martha Kessler. Martha was the director of that Arab-Israeli Intelligence or Analysis Group.

[59:54] Martha was legendary because she was a published author, which is unusual for a CIA officer. sitting CIA officer. She wrote this book called Syria fragile mosaic of power that we all had to read because it was the definitive work on Syria at the time. So she didn't like John and John was imposed on her and John went to her and said Martha I think I'm ready to be promoted to the senior intelligence service and I want your blessing and she said not only will you never be

[1:00:25] promoted to the senior intelligence service. I don't even want you working for me anymore and she fired him. Wow. Now when you're fired at the CIA you're not actually literally fired. You have six weeks to walk the halls and find another job and if you find another job you're you're good. If you don't find another job then they escort you to your car and tell you never to come back. Well this happened the week before Christmas 1996 and there are no jobs open the week

[1:00:55] before Christmas the normal turnover is in the summer. So John started walking the halls and finally he went to the PDB staff the president's daily brief and said that he really really needed a job and so they had an opening and they gave him a job doing the PDB briefing every day for the lowest ranking official entitled to a PDB briefing and that was the national security council's director of intelligence programs who at the time happened to be George Tennant. They immediately hit it off. They're both like nasty cigar

[1:01:32] smoking, filthy mouth, cheating on their wives. They're just awful both of them. So when you know a couple of months later George gets promoted and he becomes the deputy director of the CIA. He brings John back to the CIA with him and he makes John the deputy director of the office of Near Eastern and South Asian analysis Martha Kessler's boss. Oh wow. Poor Martha. The first thing he does is he

[1:02:03] calls her in and he says now you're fired. And so Martha packed up her stuff and walked out none of us ever saw her again. George took good care of John because they were friends. John had never served overseas before but George made him the station chief in Riyadh with direct access to the king, for example. And then when he came back from Riyadh he made him the executive director of the CIA, the third ranking official in the CIA. John was in over

[1:02:34] his head intellectually but he was a terrific political knife fighter. And you know that was just never me. I was kind of the substantive nerdy guy. I ended up transitioning from analysis to operations and found that I had a knack recruiting people. Your job is to recruit spies to steal secrets for you. I had a knack for it. I have a facility for foreign languages. So

[1:03:05] John and I were on two completely different tracks at the CIA. He was all politics. I see. So we'll get back to John and Nibi but there's a couple of other things that are in the news that I really want to ask you about it. Actually, so recently there was a furor about Hillary Clinton and talking essentially about Tulsi Gabbard. There's controversy about the word asset. And you were in the CIA. What does the word asset mean? The word

[1:03:36] asset has a very specific meaning in the CIA and the broader intelligence community. Asset means that you are being paid to provide either classified information or access to someone who has classified information. In nine times out of 10, 90% of the time, you know that you were being paid by the CIA or by an intelligence service and you were providing that service for cash. So to and Hillary Clinton knows this. Right. Hillary

[1:04:08] Clinton was Secretary of State. She had a PDB briefing every day. She knew all about the terminology. So man, when I when I heard that word come out of her mouth, I thought to myself, blood's going to be spilled over this. You can't you can't just accuse someone of being a paid agent of a Russian intelligence service and not expect for there to be fallout. But they kind of fell back. Oh, my gosh. Oh, well, we're not saying the person's a spy. Like, you know, it's unwitting. Yeah, they actually

[1:04:39] mean they almost mean useful idiot. Like, yeah, yeah, which is the name of our show. But but they're pretending that asset means unintentional. Yes. Yes. That was that was some fancy footwork to cover up a major boner that she had made. Right. I agree with you. What she meant was useful idiot, something that I've been accused of being as well. But you know, I think that that that just doesn't fly. Yeah. Another thing that I think was the story where you have some expertise and are able to talk about sort of the this notion of

[1:05:10] what is a whistleblower? What isn't a whistleblower? You and I have spoken about this before. When this Ukraine story broke, the there were suddenly all this stuff in the news about Oh, this we have to protect whistleblowers. Let's, you know, they occupy such an important role in society that I just struck my ear so so strangely since we that suddenly like a newfound revelation on the part of the press. What did you think when you started seeing the word whistleblower bandied about and this person isn't necessarily

[1:05:41] not a whistleblower, but it just right. It was odd to me. I wondered what you thought. Well, first, I want to say how much I enjoyed that article that you wrote in Rolling Stone. I got more mileage out of that article than I think I have out of any other article the last five years that has mentioned me. In fact, it was your article, Matt, that that got me on to the Tucker Carlson show that night. Wow. And I repeated to Tucker what I had told you. And then sure enough, an hour later, Donald Trump tweeted it. I was shocked.

[1:06:13] Right. I've never been tweeted by Donald Trump before. But yeah, I was a little shocked, too. Yeah, it was shocked. Yeah, I'll repeat for for your viewers what you and I talked about that day. There's a legal definition of whistleblowing. It's bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality or threats to the public health or public safety. Motivation is irrelevant, right, to be covered by the law. So with that said, my initial knee-jerk reaction was, Oh, there's a CIA whistleblower and he's

[1:06:44] blowing the whistle on what he believes to be waste, fraud, abuse or illegality at the White House. But then I read the complaint and the complaint just didn't add up. The law says that if a whistleblower comes across this information, he has to report it to his immediate supervisor and then he and the supervisor go to the inspector general. The inspector general does an investigation and then goes to the oversight committee. We know that that's not what happened in this case. What happened

[1:07:14] was he went to a supervisor, the supervisor went to the IG. That's all fine and good. But then the IG went to the general council. The general council got the lawyers together. They went to the CIA leadership, then back to the IG, and then the IG went to the DNI IG, the director of national intelligence, and then to the justice department. So the system just did not work the way it was supposed to work. And then when you read this report, this is not written in the CIA's writing style. We know that the that the so-called whistleblower is an analyst. I was an analyst the first seven

[1:07:47] years of my career. When you're hired as an analyst, you go to the farm, the CIA's training facility down south. And for six months, they beat into your head, the CIA's writing style, so that when you're writing for the PDB or you're writing a paper for the secretary of whatever, no matter who's writing it, it looks exactly the same, right? The product has to be consistent. This was not written in the CIA's writing style. This was written in a legal writing

[1:08:18] style, which tells me that whatever information the whistleblower had or thought he had, it was morphed into something completely different by a team of attorneys and by the CIA leadership. And so I don't think this is a whistleblower. I think maybe he started out as a whistleblower, but I think the whole process was hijacked by the CIA's leadership and the CIA's attorneys. Right, right. And do you think that there was more

[1:08:49] than one person? I mean, it was very odd reading the complaint. It even specifically references the idea that the information came in conversations with multiple colleagues. It seems like a normal whistleblower wouldn't be able to share what was going on if you're at work. That's part of why you blow the whistle, isn't it? I mean, I thought that was an odd detail. That's right. And presidential conversations like this are compartmentalized. So

[1:09:19] even if the whistleblower had access to the transcript or to the actual conversation, he would be forbidden from sharing it with his colleagues because the colleagues aren't cleared for it. They don't have a need to know. And so that bothered me too. We know from the New York Times and we know from Mark Zade, and we can talk about Mark Zade in a minute, who's the attorney representing the whistleblower, that there are actually, there were two whistleblowers. Mark Zade apparently represents both of them. But there may have been more, and we know that there were these

[1:09:51] conversations that were taking place in the hallways with colleagues. So the whole situation is so muddy. that I think that we really don't know what happened. But what we've been presented with this report from the CIA, it just doesn't stand up. You're a lifelong Democrat. I heard your really great interview with Paul Jay and you talk about how you like joined it.

[1:10:21] Wow, that was a long time ago. Yeah, it was great. You talk about how you started out your political career at like eight stuffing envelopes from Regovern. And like that was me with the caucus, too. So we have that in common. But it's interesting how this whole, there's been this political realignment. So you're a lifelong Democrat and right now Trump may be your only hope for pardoning. You went on, you had to go on Tucker Carlson, right? And we talked about this a lot, how like what happens

[1:10:52] is the kind of there's this Democratic mainstream liberal media. And even saying that, I sound like a right winger. But like because there's no audience anywhere else, if you want to express what you want to say, you are forced onto someone show like Tucker Carlson. And do you get called a Trumpian? Like can you talk about this experience and how you deal with it? It's so bizarre to me that anybody would think that I was a Trump supporter. I mean, it's just, it's crazy.

[1:11:25] Tucker Carlson is 100% right on whistleblower issues. He's always been right on whistleblower issues. He was an early supporter of mine, and I'm deeply indebted for that support. I think he's nuts on immigration and on some other issues. But by God on whistleblowers, he is entirely correct. As crazy as things have gotten, I was invited to Pat Buchanan's Christmas party. You can imagine such a thing. But you're right, I was a third-generation Democrat.

[1:11:56] My grandfather had a framed picture of Franklin Roosevelt on the top of the TV that was there as long as he was alive. And I left the Democratic Party in 2012 only because of what the Obama administration did to me. I've come to believe that so many Democrats are so conservative in that war-loving neo-liberal way. Exactly. I just, I can't anymore. It's almost neo-carnish in some ways. It's not even just neoliberal, right? Because they actually support the war agenda, yeah. Yeah, I don't find much of a difference

[1:12:27] between the neo-cons and the neoliberals. At the end of the day, they support the same thing. Wars for oil, wherever we might find them. And so, yeah, I left the Democratic Party. I would love to go on CNN and talk about these issues, but I'm not invited. I'd love to go on MSNBC. And on rare occasions, I'm invited to MSNBC. But I have problems with MSNBC. I did the Ari Melbers show a couple of weeks ago. And he called and said, hey, we're

[1:12:57] going to have Dan Ellsberg. And Dan's a good friend of mine. I said, yeah, I'd love to be on with Dan. And so I went on. Dan had already taped his segment. So I went in, wearing my suit, freshly shaven, which I'm not now. I apologize. That's all right. He liked the authentic look. And I go on. And he introduces me as former CIA leaker and convicted felon John Kiriaki. And I said to him, can I swear on this show? Yeah. Yeah, of course. I said, motherfucker, is that what this is?

[1:13:29] Is this a setup? And I went to take off my microphone. And he says, no, no, wait, wait, wait, sorry. What happened? What's wrong? I said, you're going to introduce me as a convicted felon. That's what this is about. I'm happy to talk about what I did and the fact that I have zero remorse over what I did. But if you're going to try to undercut my credibility from your opening statement, I'm not playing games with you. And so we redid the whole thing.

[1:14:00] And leak or not whistleblower also. And leak or not whistleblower. And I'll tell you what, it took my lawyers a year to get CNN and MSNBC to stop calling me CIA leaker John Kiriaki and to start calling me CIA whistleblower John Kiriaki. CNN did it first. MSNBC didn't do it until after I was in prison. And then even now, well, I've turned down three requests to do the Rachel Maddow show because she insists on referring to me as John Kiriaki who styles himself a whistleblower.

[1:14:31] Oh my god. Styles. Yeah, so I don't need to do these interviews. I don't gain anything from these interviews. So why would I subject myself to harassment like this? Just so they can get their digs in. It's just not worth it to me. I'm not doing it anymore. And I'll tell you the truth, I just can't watch MSNBC anymore. No, they're going to wait. I mean, for comedic value, I do. Or if I want to teach them. And they weren't terribly, it turned out in the end, terribly interested in your point of view on the whistleblower story anyway, right? Yeah, they thought you were going to be like, yeah, rah-rah.

[1:15:03] But you weren't even saying negative things. You were just saying, we just have to kind of wait and see. That was the funny thing about the whole interview. The substance of the interview was him asking me nine ways from Sunday to endorse what the CIA whistleblower was saying. And I kept saying, but I don't think this is a whistleblower. You know, there really is such a thing as a deep state. You don't have to call it the deep state. You don't have to be conspiratorial about it. You can just call it like I call it the federal bureaucracy.

[1:15:33] And at the CIA, we have this thing, this leadership level called the senior intelligence service, SIS. And people who have been or who are SIS have been at the CIA for 25 years and 30 years and 35 years. And they know that they can outweigh presidents. They can outweigh this president. Presidents come and go, and they don't. They're there forever. So if you don't like Jimmy Carter, which they didn't, or Bill Clinton, or Donald Trump, you just ignore the doubt.

[1:16:03] And you wait for him to go away after four years or eight years. That's what the deep state is to me. I like that federal bureaucracy. Yeah, I know that. That'll be easier. Yeah, no, it's another thing they use, the conspiracy theorist or the Trumpian to discredit people. Yeah, and they even got to lean into the word, to the term deep state in order to discredit it. Right, they bring it up as many as many times as they can. Just to, yeah. Absolutely right. Yeah. So you wrote a book that I just finished reading this

[1:16:34] weekend, Doing Time Like a Spy. And we were talking about this off air. I don't know why. Well, apparently, there's some news in this front. But this should be a movie. So the premise of this book, it's all true, you're set to do your 30 months for the crime that you talked about. And you think you're going to go to minimum security work camp in Loretto, Pennsylvania. And you show up, and I think probably most people don't realize this, that even if you're

[1:17:04] recommended to go to minimum security prison, prison doesn't have to do that, right? Yeah, they can just sort of decide. So you show up and you end up in real prison. And basically, the book is about how you used your CIA skills to negotiate two years of hard time. And so talk first about that. What was that first realization like when you realize, oh my god, I'm going to have to do something, be in a real prison for a couple of years or more, and how are you going to navigate that?

[1:17:37] When you first go to prison, it's the oddest experience. You're in a state of shock. You can't believe that this is happening to you. And what you do is you literally just drive to the prison or have somebody drive to the prison. And you knock on the door and you say, hi, I'm John Curriaco, I'm here to turn myself in. And they say, oh, okay, come on in. They put you through the metal detector and then they process you. It's the most bizarre experience.

[1:18:08] So as you noted, the judge recommended that I go to the minimum security work camp. Camps are generally attached to a higher level prison across the street because in the event of a riot, it's the campers that do the cooking, do the laundry, mop the floors, make the prison run. And there are no bars on the windows, no fences, no locks on the doors. You're on your honor not to abscond. You can come and go as you please. And most people work in town, sweepin' floors at the local university or whatever. And so I got there and I turned myself in

[1:18:41] and the cop takes me outside and starts walking me around to the back of the actual prison. I said, no, no, I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street. And he kind of tortled. And he said, huh, not according to my paperwork, you're not. And I told myself, take it easy, there's nothing you can do if you raise a stink. They're gonna put you in solitary. So don't say anything. So I didn't, I didn't say anything. And it took me five days to get access to a phone.

[1:19:15] My first call was to my lawyer. And I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison with the drug dealers and the mafia dons and the pedophiles. What do I do? The chomos. Which was a whole other experience. Oh, child molesters, child molesters. And he said, oh my God. Well, he said we could file a motion, but it'll be two years before we get a hearing. He said, you'll be home by then. I'm sorry, buddy. You're just gonna have to tough it out. And so I said to myself, you have lived

[1:19:46] in far worse places than Laredo, Pennsylvania. And I've gone nose to nose with men a lot tougher than the clowns that I ended up locked up with or being subordinate to. So. So I decided I was just gonna take these lessons, these life lessons the CIA taught me and I was gonna use them to ensure that I remain safe and at the top of the social heap. And if that meant manipulating people, then I was gonna manipulate them. The book almost reads like a how-to

[1:20:19] of how to cope in really any environment. But you talk about the four different things that people respond to when you're trying to manipulate them to, I guess you're trying to recruit basically spies and people in informants. So there's revenge, greed, ideology, and excitement, right? And can you talk about what an example, like what's an example of how to get somebody to, for instance, steal something out of a CO's office

[1:20:49] or right like clips or something like that. Like how do you use those techniques to get somebody on your side? Well, let me preface this by saying that when I wrote the book, I asked Oliver Stone if he would write a blurb for me. I've known Oliver for a long time. He's a good guy. I consider us to be friends. He said, sure, I'll write a blurb. You notice that no blurb from Oliver appears on this book. So I sent it to him and we were coming up to deadlines. So I called him and I said, hey Oliver, I really need that blurb.

[1:21:20] Can you get it to me? And he kinda exhales. He said, all right, listen. I read this book. I think you come across as a total asshole. And I don't think I want my name associated with it. Can you pass me the book actually? So to give you an example of manipulating somebody to get something I need, you mentioned clips or these binder clips, these metal clips. Oh, that's okay, yeah. Right?

[1:21:50] Well, you're not allowed to have those in prison. They're considered to be contraband. But every once in a while you'll see one because somebody stole one out of the warden's office. Well, what you do is you identify the guy who mops the floor in the warden's office. I also needed highlighters, which are also considered contraband. And so you get close to this guy who mops the floor and you try to learn what's important to him. One of the things I learned in prison is everybody's innocent and everybody's appealing his case.

[1:22:21] Right? Even though they're all actually guilty and appealing their cases. Right. So you talk about how you were wronged by the justice system. And I bet you were wrong too. I bet they're trying to screw you so you can't appeal your case. You know what those bastards did to me? They took all my binders. I wish I could get back at them, you know? And the warden was talking smack about you the other day. I overheard him in the hall. And then you let him say, hey, you know what they have binders

[1:22:51] in the warden's office, I've seen them. Like it's his idea. Right, yeah, right. Oh man, I sure could use some of those binders and you know, we should get back at that bastard. The next thing you know, there's some binders laying on your pillow when you get back after lunch. Right, and you got a friend for the duration, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You better not go back to jail because people are gonna know about this book. Yeah, they're gonna see it coming. They'll be smart about your, yeah. I'm surprised it's not banned in jail.

[1:23:22] Yeah. I'm almost offended that it's not. Yeah, I know, it should be, yeah. This whole thing happening now with Ukraine and the sort of dueling investigations that are dominating Washington right now, there's the Durham investigation on the one hand of the origins of Russiagate and all of your former colleagues are sort of heavily talking about that. And then there's the Ukraine situation with the whistleblower and impeachment and all that.

[1:23:53] How do you see all this playing out? What do you think is actually going on here? I mean, it's a very complicated tableau. It is complicated. I think Donald Trump probably did commit impeachable acts. I think that in public speeches, he has expressed willingness to commit other impeachable acts, like on Sunday when he said he wanted to take Iraq's oil or when he said that he wanted to bring back waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse. I think those are impeachable acts.

[1:24:26] I think that the Democrats, on the other hand, may be going about this whole thing the wrong way. I know that the rules were imposed by the Republican majority when they controlled the House, but that doesn't mean that closed sessions are the right thing to do. And so I think that it's to the benefit of the American people to have literally all of the information out there. I think that we deserve the information so that we can make our own judgments. But I think Donald Trump probably has put himself in a corner that he's not going to be able to get out of. You were an investigator

[1:24:56] for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Is it normal? The thing, obviously, there's very often closed hearings, the things that go on in the skiff and the controlled, what does that stand for? I don't even remember. Secure, compartmentalized information. Facility, maybe? Facility, yeah. I guess the question is, is there anything that's odd about having an impeachment hearing out of the Intelligence Committee?

[1:25:27] Yeah, see, this is a big difference from the impeachment hearings of the Clinton administration and the Nixon administration. In those cases, there were joint committees. They were specifically impeachment committees, select committees. That's not the case now. Now, this is being handled by the Intelligence Committee, which by its very nature is going to be secret. And they're gonna have a lot of these hearings in the skiff behind closed doors with no access to journalists. I think that that's a disservice to the American people.

[1:26:00] We all remember things like, or maybe we don't remember them. Maybe we've seen video clips of Howard Baker asking a witness in the Watergate hearings, what did the president know and when did he know it? Well, we deserve to hear the answers to those questions. So yeah, I think that there should be a joint committee. If the joint committee, I'm sorry, if the Republicans don't wanna have their members serve in the joint committee, at the very least, there should be a select committee that meets in open session.

[1:26:32] Just a few more questions I'll ask you at once and then you can figure out which ones you wanna answer. First one is, did you join the Republican Party or did you just leave the Democratic Party? And then what happened to your pension? Did any Democrats defend you? And then this is kind of a long one, but Matt talks about in a piece he wrote about how people think that Donald Trump is like the worst thing that there is out there and that there's actually worse things that involves the intelligence community

[1:27:04] or the federal, and what is it federal? What do you call it? Federal bureaucracy. I was just really saying that they're potentially more dangerous than Trump is. Yes, which is why a coup isn't a good idea, for instance. So you as someone who's been in the CIA, can you offer any insight into that? Do you agree with that? And you don't have to. And you don't have to, but yeah, I thought that you would know what that would look like. Sure, I'm happy to answer all those questions. Number one, no, I'm not a Republican. I will never be a Republican. I can't be a Republican.

[1:27:36] I could see myself maybe, perhaps someday, being a Democrat again, but in the meantime, I consider myself to be part of what's called the Libertarian Left, and I'm comfortable with that. My pension, as part of my conviction, the federal government confiscated my pension. I had $770,000 saved in that pension, 20 years of proud federal government service, and the only person who ever came to my defense

[1:28:06] was John McCain. John McCain sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to reinstate my pension. It was taken out in conference committee, which we kind of expected, and he intended to re-address it, and then he got sick, and then he died. And so I'm back at square one. Did they take, was that civil asset forfeiture? How did they, I mean, or did they just cancel it? How did they do that? Yeah, it was, it's a part of the civil asset forfeiture program.

[1:28:37] Yeah, and again, I was the only person that that had ever happened to. My attorneys now believe that that was unconstitutional, and there's something called a writ of quorum nobis that we may pursue. I don't know, we'll see. If I don't get, the only reason I want a presidential pardon is to get the pension back. If I don't get the pension back, I'm gonna have to work till the day I die, and so I'm kind of stuck. Your third question, yeah, I think there are things

[1:29:08] and people that are a lot worse than Donald Trump. You know, it's funny, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? Let's say Donald Trump is impeached, and let's say that somehow the Senate comes around and he's removed. That makes President Pence, and that scares the daylights out of me, because Pence is a true believer in so many things that so many of us have fought against all these years. I don't trust Pence in national security.

[1:29:41] I don't trust him in domestic policy, in domestic security. So yeah, I think there are things that are a lot worse than Donald Trump out there. All right, John, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. And no one's been punished, right? Except for you. None of the torturers were punished, right? Literally none. The torturers, the people who can conceived of the torture, who implemented the torture, who destroyed the tapes showing the torture, who wrote the legal positions advocating torture, nobody on the only one.

[1:30:12] And nobody is defending you now, as whistleblowers are becoming apparently an exalted class. You're still not included in that. Well, sometimes, yeah. No, I mean by the people who are the Rachel Maddows, I mean to us you are, but that's what I meant. Sorry. The people who are now talking about it for the first time is what I mean. They're not retroactively putting you into it. Yeah, that's why we have to keep up the fight. You know, it's funny, we national security whistleblowers, there aren't many of us. And so we have kind of this club, like we're all friends, we all, we have dinner together,

[1:30:45] we go to events together and give speeches together and it's become kind of a tightly knit group. But that's a shame. And a lot of you aren't available, right? I mean, you're in jail or you're in Russia or what have you. Yeah. You're right. Gets in the way. John, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Take care now. Bye. All right. So that was really interesting. Yeah. That was great. I don't have a lot of CIA friends. Do you have a lot of CIA friends? Sorry, I interrupted you.

[1:31:16] Like former CIA friends? Or any CIA friends. Could I tell you? I'd have to kill you, right? Maybe you are. Yeah, it's true. Someone actually once told me I should join the State Department. Really? I was like, uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. Wish me luck on that one. I want to clarify that. I wasn't like face-shaming John Brennan. I mean his scowl. He just looks so angry. He does have a scowl. And like, yeah. I mean, he's not... Yeah. I'm not going to judge his face. I don't think it was his face that they were hiring when they made him an SMBC contributor. Oh, my God.

[1:31:46] Yeah. He's looked so... Yeah. Oh, Clapper too. Clapper looks like a little troll. You don't must like him if you were good. Yeah, Clapper looks... He's a cute little elf. Industrial light and magic would make, you know, for something like, I don't know, a movie like Willow or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. He is like a little Willow guy. And like throws out of the ground or something. Yeah. He's a very scary looking dude, actually. But if he were good, he'd be a cute, like, good creature. Yeah, he'd be like... Like a Yoda. Oh, kind of looks like Yoda. He does have a little Yoda thing. Yeah.

[1:32:17] Where is Clapper? Yoda is cute. I know, but I'm saying if Clapper were good, we'd find him cute in a Yoda way. Yeah. So now I'm imagining Frank Oz's hand up of Clapper's back. Oh, yeah. You're not the first person to imagine that. That's a thing. Just kidding. All right, excellent. Yeah, that was great. That was interesting. And I think it was worth talking to him just because suddenly we were all having to become experts in this, like, world that none of us knows anything about, right? Because these intelligence terms are becoming... Right.

[1:32:47] The impeachment is being run at the Intel Committee. None of us really knew how that committee works or any of these terms or anything. So people like him are becoming more of a resource. Yeah. And it also is really scary. I mean, it's like something that I feel like joins the whole show together, including the name of our show, is that if you are critical in a way that ever lines up with Trump, ever lines up with Putin or RT, you're... They just use that against you. Right. And it's really infuriating. And it's like you constantly kind of have to check what you're saying or how you're saying it.

[1:33:20] Right. And even when he said how he got on Tugger Carlson and thanks to your tweet, and I'm sure you're thinking like, great. Yeah, exactly. That's going to be viral. But it's not your fault. Yeah. That doesn't make you right-wing. The fact that for political reasons only the right-wing is picking it up is a failure of the left and liberals. Right. It's not because you're a right-winger. Well, the whole whistleblower thing was when that came up, all I thought to myself was, where was all this when all these other whistleblowers were coming out? Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Kirakou.

[1:33:50] And I thought that was kind of more of a progressive take, but whatever. Now it's all been kind of flipped. Yeah. I mean, as Glenn Greenwald said about Snowden, if he had come out during the Bush administration instead of the Obama one, MSNBC would have a big statue of him in front of the bill. He'd have a show. Yeah, he'd have a show. Right. And we'd hate him. Yeah. Well, I feel like he's two. No, but I feel like he wouldn't last that long. No, that's probably true. You know, he'd be like, I'm not going to say these things. I refuse to, that's my impersonation of him.

[1:34:21] I can't really impersonate him. Yeah, no, no. He's not really hammy enough for TV. No, I like him, though. Yeah. Well, thanks for tuning in to Useful Idiots and we'll see you next week. Yeah. Great review us on iTunes. Bump us up. Yeah, because Pod Save America is terrible. Because or else you let the Pod Save Americanists win. Right. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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