Title: Fortress On A Hill (Henri)
Show: Fortress On A Hill
Date: 2024-01-16
URL: https://youtu.be/6kmi7Tkpf7Q
Duration: 48:00

---

[00:00] [Music] this is fortress on a hill with Henry Danny Kagan and [Music] joanni well welcome everybody to fortress on a hill a podcast about US foreign policy anti-imperialism skepticism and the American way of War I'm Henry thank you for joining us today with me is a very

[00:31] special guest somebody we wanted to talk to for for quite a while um the the the myth the man the legend Mr John kiraku um and uh we're going to get to chat with him for a while and you know uh hear about some of his experiences many experiences um for anybody who doesn't know uh John kyaku was a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee uh John became the sixth whistleblower indicted

[01:02] by the Obama Administration under the Espionage Act a law designed to punish spies he served 23 months in prison as the result of his attempts to oppose the bush administration's torture program John welcome to fortress on Hill thanks for having me so I I'd um I'd like to give the listeners kind of a sense of um your your overall background certainly we don't have to go in everything into into great detail but I'd like to to hear a bit about your career about um how you

[01:34] came to the point that you became a a whistleblower and um what how you see that career now today looking back on it sure the second part of the uh of the question is the more difficult one the the easier part is I was recruited into the CIA when I was in graduate school at uh George Washington University I uh I had an advisor a professor whom I respected very deeply uh and and I continued to respect until

[02:05] until he died uh that was Dr Gerald post he recruited me into the CIA my second year in grad school and um I started at the CIA the first week of January 1990 as an analyst on Iraq and um uh spent the first seven and a half years of my career working exclusively on Iraq including tour overseas in the Middle East working Iraqi sanctions issues I was in an office at the CIA

[02:36] that no longer exists it's called it was called the office of leadership analysis so my job really was to be Saddam Hussein's classified biographer or his biographer for the intelligence Community I got bored with that after seven seven and a half years and so I made a very unusual switch to counterterrorism operations because at the time um I was the only person quite literally I was the only person in the CIA who was fluent in both Greek and Arabic so uh they sent me to Athens as

[03:10] the um counterterrorism representative um mostly covering Arab terrorism abun nidal organization pflp dflp ppgc all those old school communist uh and nationalist terrorist groups and a Greek group called revolutionary organization 17 November I did that until uh the summer of 2000 and then went back to headquarters I was I was uh working um I

[03:41] have to be careful of my language I was I was training Middle Eastern intelligence services and counterterrorism operations and then 911 hit and uh I was named um the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 911 um in that job I led a series of raids that resulted in the capture of Abu zubeda who we believed at the time was the number three in al-Qaeda he wasn't

[04:12] and um went back to headquarters on the strength of the Abu zua capture I got promoted to uh executive assistant to the cia's deputy director and um and then my final tour was at the United Nations in New York and I resigned from from New York to go into the private sector and then later back into government at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee um I'm curious about your time working and and again I like you said

[04:42] I'm real careful about what you what you can share but the time working on Iraqi sanctions um uh I'm curious about especially about that time because it it you know it in some ways it informs the state of Iraq to today almost as much as the Iraq War does um but is there is there anything that you can share with us about about that time just kind of the you know the maybe your overall impressions of it yeah it was it was that long period of

[05:15] Iraqi sanctions that convinced me that well number one sanctions don't work sure and number two they are cruel to the point of becoming in many cases crimes against humanity you know I remember in the very beginning of the sanctions regime beginning in August of 1990 um the state department of the White House took very seriously the notion that the Iraqi people needed to continue

[05:46] receiving food and Medicine okay so so they they wrote up a un Security Council resolution 986 and then the Iraqi said well we need you know these pipes right for our sewer system we can't deliver clean water without these pipes well then the CIA says wait a minute those kinds of pipes are used in South Africa to run fiber optic cable and you can use fiber optic

[06:16] cable for a weapons of mass destruction program so no pipes well with no pipes then you get no clean water and when you get no clean water people start to get sick and then and the US government says well you know they shouldn't be using this much uh in uh antibiotics they must be doing something with the antibiotics they're making a BW program out of it and the next thing you know thousands tens of thousands of people mostly children are dying and

[06:49] they're dying as a direct result of these sanctions and I remember a senior officer telling me sanctions are always a bad idea because they never do anything to the person being targeted Saddam Hussein didn't give a [ __ ] about sanctions no right he had a very sophisticated sanctions busting regime set up at the American em or at the Iraqi Embassy in Aman Jordan he had a a cousin who was in charge of it at the time and so it was only the Iraqi people and when I say the

[07:22] Iraqi people I mean the Innocence among the Iraqi people women children minorities you know Kurds Shia they were the ones who were suffering it wasn't Saddam or his TTI Clan or his alja family or really any sunnis in the in the power structure of the Iraqi government and Military none of them suffered at all from sanctions the Iraqi people suffered from sanctions uh you know we renewed sanctions so many times after 986 it was

[07:55] 1096 and then it was like 1234 and it was just year after year after year sanctions were being were being renewed and I remember saying to a colleague of mine a buddy of mine at the time I can't do this as a career nothing's going to change American policies not going to change and we're not serious about taking out Saddam nor should we have been because that in and of itself would have been a violation of international law as it was

[08:25] later um but I just decided I I had to do something different and more interesting and every let me tell you every Greek American at the CIA all through the cia's history has wanted to serve in Athens and so that's what we all sought to do and I ended up getting a great tour there I remember speaking to um I did I did two tours in Iraq as a as an Army MP and I remember speaking to different people it was usually TR the translators that we had because it was easier for us to to go back and forth

[08:57] but talking about just that entire ire period and both you know the Gulf War in and of itself the um the massive killings that happened to those who rose up against Saddam following George Bush's call and that was one this this particular guy I'm thinking of that that was a huge thing for him but then and then you know children dead children you know from no food from no medicine sure but in terms of trying to understand you know the the the totality of American

[09:27] involvement in Iraq and the costs that had been paid and I I I read your uh your recent article at Consortium news regarding Tony blinkin pursuing Soviet type weapons for use in Ukraine and how Cyprus is still punished by the US for refusing a similar request you know understanding the place that that Cypress had in that in terms of being stuck they were certainly weren't sanctioned but they were still being punished in a very specific way for and

[09:59] far as I can just not Towing the American line it just by by just pushing back as however however minorly they did that's the exception to the rule you know the only reason the cypriots have the great life and the great country and great economy and and honest democratic government that they have is because they're are Western for all intents and purposes they're a Western Country but you're right and 99.9% of Americans

[10:30] have no idea that we've had a weapons embargo on Cyprus for the last 46 years 46 years sanctions on Cyprus of all places now thank goodness that the likes of the British and the French thought that was ridiculous and that the cypriots deserved an opportunity to protect themselves against Turkish expansionism because God knows the Americans never came through we did an episode a few months ago on fuia just

[11:00] the history of the city as it pertained to the Iraq War specifically regarding the deaths of the American mercenaries in fuia in March of 04 Iraqi citizens were asked some polling questions specifically about this Ambush why do you think this happened is there anything that you can point to and the Iraqis were very pointed in response that they knew the CIA had a long history in Iraq from a multitude of incidents and felt very strongly that these black water mercenaries these plain clothed contractors could have

[11:32] been members of the CIA and that they were there to commit acts of violence to violate Iraqi sovereignty as it had been many times before now understanding the long section of US history on Iraq I I don't know that you would want to call them wrong you know in terms of having that fear of not knowing and of course they're not told they didn't get told anything about what's actually happening in their country why the United States has chosen to keep this regime even you know we're now more than a decade past the official end of the Iraq War and

[12:02] none of that has really changed I'm I'm curious about because you worked on Iraq for for such a long period of time and it was uh you know in terms of you know dealing with war on terror and other things that how how do you see places like that ever getting back to anything that might seem normal yeah that's a good question and I I think the very sad answer is that they don't get back to normal look look at the US intervention in Iran in the

[12:33] 1950s here we are 70 years later 70 years after we overthrew that government and our relations still haven't returned to normal we're still suffering from that terrible foreign policy decision you know one of the things that struck me post 9911 on Iraq I I was intimately involved in the planning for the Iraq War I go into great detail about this in my first book and um one of the things that really struck me was how these very important

[13:04] people at the white house uh and in the the power structure at the Pentagon knew literally nothing about Iraqi history about Iraqi culture and Society I remember participating in a secure video teleconference where one of the Deputy directors of the National Security Council said and this was the day before we crossed the Iraqi border he said when we cross that border tomorrow they're going to throw flowers at us and I turned to my boss and I said was that a

[13:36] joke or did they really know nothing about Iraq and the answer I'm sorry to say was that they knew [Music] nothing thing to look back at and especially like you know to you know I I I I realize looking at this scope of it you know that the you know I was an MP I was doing you know ground stuff we were training the Iraqi police and and in terms of but the but

[14:07] once you understand the full breadth of the history you know you may have played and I mean you in the Royal sense you know we we may have played a very small role but we're still part of that giant snowball that has crushed that country that has been been a part of that um so I'd like to move on to talk a little bit about um whistleblowers and specifically about uh Communications management uh units um that's been something that I've I've been reading about for quite a while I I um but I I

[14:39] saw your your blog post on your substack and it it got me kind of thinking about it again um I was wondering if you could give our listeners kind of a a little Basics on Communications management units yeah so Communications management units are specialized units inside the US Federal prison system there are two of them one is in the federal penitentiary at Terra Hood Indiana it used to be Federal death row they built a new death row and then made the old

[15:10] death row into a CMU the other Communications management unit is at the supermax prison in Marian Illinois now the whole purpose of creating a a a Communications management unit those are important three important words that is a a unit ins the most secure prisons in America where all communication with the outside world can be controlled right so you have Omar abdurahman the the blind shikh who's now dead you don't want him

[15:43] communicating with people on the outside so he can plan additional terrorist attacks right so you want him to be cut off we have the the last surviving Abu nidal organization hijacker from the 19 uh 80s he's in the communications management unit John Gotti uh the the boss of the gambino crime family died in a Communications management unit so these things were set up for the worst of the worst the most dangerous

[16:14] prisoners people who had to be where the American people had to be protected by uh from them right but that's not really what they are uh they're used to silence people whose messages are inconvenient for the government and so you've got a Communications management unit uh now that houses U Daniel hail the Drone whistleblower and Daniel in my view is a Bonafide American hero he's

[16:45] the one that told the American people that the that the Drone program run by whomever DOD CIA NSC whoever happens to be pulling the trigger on on any given day was responsible for an 80% death rate among civilians okay well if it's a drone program and it's be supposed to be so much safer right then why are 80% of the people you kill civilians they're

[17:17] accidental deaths he's the one that told us about that now he was sentenced not to 20 or 30 or 50 years in prison he was sentenced to 42 months which you know with time off for good behavior is under three years so if he's like so not dangerous that he gets a prison sentence of less than three years why in the world is he a Communications management unit because the justice department was upset with the shortness of his sentence

[17:49] another one is Marty goddessi Marty go godd isfeld um was a computer hacker and he read read an article about a a little girl named Justina uh in uh New England who was born with a genetic disorder her parents took her to Children's Hospital in Boston uh after their doctor said look we can't help her anymore in our little town you should take her to Children's in Boston the physicians at at Children's Hospital in Boston said oh

[18:21] she doesn't have this genetic disorder uh she's being abused and starved by her parents so They seized this girl they arrested the parents and then a year later they're likeoh you know what she actually does have this disorder uh our bad sorry you can release the parents now and give them their other two kids back so in order to feel like he was helping Marty initiated a a directed denial of service

[18:53] attack on the Children's Hospital fundraising website on the weekend of its annual fundraiser okay Not only was that worth 10 years in a maximum security penitentiary and $2 million in in reparations to children's hospital but they put him in a CMU now do we really need to be protected from Marty goddessi that he's so dangerous that we need to be we need

[19:24] to have him locked away you know forever well Marty gets out in two years and he's going to go back home to Boston and live happily ever after there's no reason to have him in a Communications management unit another one I just got an email from him today is Donald Reynolds Donald Reynolds is in a CMU serving a sentence of triple life without parole for a a first time nonviolent offense related to The Fast and Furious Scandal now the reason he

[19:56] got triple life without parole is because he kept turning down the Justice Department's offers for lighter sentences because he said I didn't break the law so why would I take a plea if I didn't break the law okay you don't want to take a plea not only are we going to give you triple life without parole but you're going to spend the rest of your days in a Communications management unit with no human contact for the rest of your life and that's

[20:27] what they did to them so these cmus These are you know the United Nations has already declared these cmus to be forms of torture right they're forms of torture they're cruel and unusual punishment and we we use them anyway and it's worse than it's worse than just having your Communications uh blocked or banned you are locked 23 hours a day in a 6x10 foot concrete cell everything's

[20:58] made out of either concrete or steel uh no windows that one hour a day you're allowed to go out through a little door it's about five feet high and you duck down and you go out this little door which opens up into a cage on the outside like a dog cage and you can walk in circles for an hour each day and then you go back into your cell if you receive mail you can't actually physically hold the mail or receive it they project your mail on a on a TV

[21:31] monitor up at the ceiling so it's so high up you can't touch it so you can't like break it and you know take the glass and cut your throat or something they'll leave the mail available for you for five minutes and then they take it down and it's gone no TV no radio no phone you're allowed one call a month but it it's only to your attorney you can't call your wife your kids your friends nothing just your attorney and that's where we put you

[22:03] know some of the most important whistleblowers that we have I'm curious the large number of whistleblowers that had come forward in the post 911 global war on terror era that why do you think um you know why did the war on terror and the war on whistleblowers coincide and why do you think so many of them have been produced by the same the same circumstances yeah I can I can give you a very clear answer to that um and that was that was uh John

[22:35] Brennan so there there have always been whistleblowers through Modern American history um post 911 they became particularly newsworthy right and um the George W Bush Administration initiated Criminal investigations of two whistleblowers uh Tom Drake from NSA and Jeffrey Sterling from CIA but it was the

[23:07] Obama Administration that just launched an allout open War on whistleblowers that's because of John Brennan John Brennan became the deputy National Security adviser for counterterrorism in Obama's first term and he became CIA director in Obama's second term John Brennan had nixonian obsession with National Security leaks and it was John Brennan Who convinced Barack Obama to use the

[23:37] Antiquated Espionage Act as a cudel as an iron fist to to crush whistleblowers a New York Times journalist told me that on the day of my arrest every single one of the New York Times National Security sources went silent and they stayed silent for six months well that was the point of Prosecuting me and Prosecuting seven other whistleblowers uh during the Obama

[24:07] Administration it wasn't necessarily to teach John kyaku a lesson frankly they made me famous right they elevated me to this position of like National human rights spokesman anti-torture spokesman they made me famous they they opened uh doors and created opportunities for me that I otherwise never would have had I would be I would be wrapping up a career in some cubicle somewhere if they hadn't uh ordered my arrest uh in in a funny way I'm kind of

[24:39] glad they did because I think I've I've done a lot more important work because of my arrest um and I want to say something about the uh the Espionage Act too Henry I think I think the Espionage Act is very important it's something that Americans really need to know about the Espionage Act was written in 1917 passed into law in 1917 to combat German sabots during the first World War uh it was used right after passage

[25:12] to to incarcerate people who were opposed to us entry into the war um most famously Eugene V Debs the head of the Socialist Party he actually ran for president from his prison cell uh at the at the maximum security penitentiary in Atlanta uh a Hollywood producer was arrested and charged with Espionage and served five years because a movie that he made was deemed to be not pro British enough

[25:44] during World War I so between 1917 and January of 2009 three Americans were charged with Espionage for speaking speaking to the media three Americans were charged with Espionage for speaking to the media between 1917 and 2019 in just the eight years of the Obama presidency eight of us were charged with Espionage for speaking to the media and then under Donald Trump

[26:17] another four were charged with Espionage and you know beginning with with me the sentences got longer and longer and longer for each person after me I was sitting with Tom Drake in Daniel hail's uh sentencing hearing a year ago October and um much to my shock my name came up in sentencing and uh the prosecution said that they wanted I think they were asking for 40 years in prison for Daniel

[26:48] and Daniel's attorney said that they were asking for the same sentence that kiraku got I got 30 months I served 23 and then the judge said that Jeffrey Sterling got kiraku plus 12 months because Jeffrey Sterling went to trial and then the judge said that he's gone over the numbers and he's gon to give Daniel kiraku plus 16

[27:19] months and I'm just sitting there and and I'm sitting like I'm sitting with Tom Drake and then immediately in front of me are three journalists from The Washington Post the New York Times and Politico and they were like you care to comment and I said yeah he should have been he should have been released you know with with time served he doesn't belong in prison we should be making statues to people like him not sending them to Communications management units to make matters

[27:50] worse um the judge recommended very strongly in that sentencing hearing that Daniel be sent to the low security prison in uh Butner North Carolina he has a substance abuse problem problem and the Federal Bureau of Prisons has this program called ardap the residential drug and alcohol program and if you go through arap which is basically just sitting and watching episodes of intervention and I mean that quite quite literally that's that's what our dap is and they say you know drugs

[28:21] don't do them now watch this episode of intervention and when you watch the whole whatever it is 20 episodes you get a year off your sentence so I said to Daniel before you went to prison listen this 42 months this is a victory because you get 15% off for good behavior and then you get another year off for art app I said and you're in a low security prison you're just going to lay there and read books and watch TV and you're going to be home before you know it instead they sent him to the maximum

[28:53] security penitentiary at Maran Illinois and then put him in the CMU on top of that which makes him ineligible for our deap so he's going to do the whole 42 months even even with with good behavior time that do they do they CTA that for people in cmus well they they'll they technically calculate it for people in cmus but Marty godess Feld has already

[29:24] lost all of his good behavior time because he did terrible terrible things like write a letter to a journalist right like God forbid and then in in a phone call to his attorney he asked the attorney would you call my wife and tell her that I'm okay oh that's a third party communication we're taking away all of your good behavior time so it's tough they do it on purpose you know in my own sentencing

[29:55] the the judge um ordered that i' be sent to a minimum security Work Camp and in a minimum security Camp there are no there are no fences no bars on the windows the doors are never locked you work in town like there's a university in town you go sweep the floors or whatever you're just on your honor not to abscond the justice department was Furious that the judge ordered that I be sent to a minimum security Camp so they arbitrarily just sent me to the regular prison that was across the street from

[30:25] the camp and they said that they did that because I was a trained CIA officer which made me a national security threat well if I was a threat then why don't you send me to a maximum security penitentiary if you think I'm so dangerous so what I ended up doing was I I ended up um saying yes to every interview request I ever had Jake Tapper drove to the prison and interviewed me for CNN um I gave multiple interviews to

[30:58] NPR um ABC News came I mean it was just count I can't tell you how many Greek newspapers came I'm a I'm a big star in Greece because I stood up to the American government and I I happened to be a dual us Greek citizen but um they complained and complained and complained about all the media contact that I had and I said listen I'll tell you guys the honest to God's truth I told the warden this straight to his face I said I was told I was going to be sent to the minimum security Camp across

[31:29] the street and if I had gone to that camp you would have never heard about me I would have just kept my head down I would have kept my mouth shut I would have done my 23 months and I would have gone home but you guys had to be dicks about it you guys had to make an issue about it and so I decided that I am going to exercise my constitutional rights which I have not given up to speak with the press and to speak speak freely and that's what I did I was a

[32:00] thorn in their side from the very beginning just like Marty goddessi is Daniel's not Daniel just wants to keep his head down and come home which I totally respect but for me not a chance I would ask about the you know the the the bureaucracy that's able to get away with these kind of decisions that the the um you know placing in and I don't know if this is common for all with blowers but I assume some form of it is placing the restrictions on reality

[32:32] winner as to telling her own story after she got out of prison yeah now she's bound to this agreement infinitely you know I I I guess I wonder about you know that the the entirely seems you know a l entire lack of due process and entire lack of uh equal protection under the law yeah how how do how are they able to continue this and and yeah do you feel that there's big steps that be can be taken to rectify it in some way oh yeah

[33:04] reality reality and I have talked about this her judge seriously overreached by by infringing on her constitutional rights I don't think that would stand up in court for two minutes but she's afraid to challenge it because they could technically still send her back to prison um by violating her they they say that she uh she broke the terms of her release and they violate her uh federal probation and they send her back to prison so she just wants to get through

[33:34] it she doesn't want to challenge it when I got out of prison um they told me that I had 30 days to find a job or I go back to prison and so I was offered a job at a think tank the oldest Progressive think tank in Washington The Institute for policy studies and they wanted me to write about um about uh these these sentencing reform and judicial reform and prison reform issues I said great I took the job and I

[34:04] had to get permission from the Bureau of Prisons which is supposed to be proforma well they denied they denied my request and they said that it was inappropriate that Mr kiraku be commenting on Prison issues so I said you know what violate me send me back I'll I'll have every news Network in America camped out in the prison parking lot violate me and I took the job and there was some you know huffing

[34:37] and puffing but they backed down um I I think that reality if if she wanted to uh to challenge these Draconian uh uh Reigns that they have on her ability to make living and to speak freely and to talk about her case and herself I think she would win but but I understand you know challenging them is not for

[35:07] everybody so what um what's to be done you know what if if if John kiraku had the power today what would you do to rectify some of this some of this stuff uh you got to start from scratch by tearing down the entire system you know the whoever happens to be president at any given time when it comes time to appoint a new director of the Bureau of Prisons they just appoint the same kind of

[35:37] person one after the other after the other the current one used to be the head of the Oregon State Prison System big deal the the guy before her was the deputy director of the Bureau of Prisons the guy before him was a warden and then the deputy director of the Bureau of Prisons the guy before him was a general a brigadier general who was in charge of the military prison system well we need we need fresh thinking fresh ideas

[36:07] there was a warden in in Maine for example uh prisoners were complaining about the quality of food which is not human grade food it's animal feed grade food that's fed to prisoners and so the prison was sitting on this giant you know 50 acre 100 Acre parcel of property and so the people who were in the minimum security he taught them how to farm and not only now does that prison is that prison completely self-sufficient in terms of fruits and

[36:39] vegetables but they're able to sell their excess fruits and vegetables in town that's the kind of thinking that we need in the prison system now one of the things that made me very happy uh two years ago was Hakeem Jeff who's now the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeff worked with um Marco Rubio to push through a

[37:09] bill that mandated sentencing reform I I can't stress how how gutsy that is can you imagine you're you're an elected member of the House of Representatives you've got to run for reelection every two years and you go out on the camp caign Trail and you say I'm going to pass a bill to make it harder to keep people in prison well how many votes is that going to win you now that's exactly what needs

[37:39] to be done but those two are the only ones with the balls to actually go out and do it so we need that kind of bipartisan legislation let me ask a rhetorical question too how come the Germans got it right and the Danes and the swedes and the Norwegians and the fins you know how come they got it right how come they have recidivism rates of 10 and 15% when ours are 50% why is it the UN declares our

[38:11] prisons to be sources of torture but their prisons are set up like Apartments where you teach people life skills so that when they go back out they don't sell drugs and they don't Rob gas stations and they know how to you know run a load of laundry and balance a checkbook because that's what they're taught to do so we are uh this the prison system that we have at every level level you

[38:42] know city and county state and federal it's a system that we should be ashamed of not something that we should hope others would aspire to ours is an embarrassment so um my my uh my last question for you um and this is is kind kind of kind of similar what we've been talking about but also kind of different that the um what has been your your observation of the American um film industry and

[39:15] television industry in the period for the global war on te in terms of their their acquiescence to stories that are Jive easily with with government narratives great question uh thank you for that question um a as a hobby um ever since 2007 I've been writing television pilots and I've actually sold ATM that's amazing awesome yeah it's been a lot of fun I was the

[39:46] script advisor on the born ultimatum I was the script advisor on to Paris With Love I was the script advisor on um Kill the Messenger and I was the security adviser on the kit Runner and I'm just now we just finished season one I'm the script adviser on a new show on CBS that's coming out in February called The True Lies based on the James Cameron uh movie of the same of the same so I'm kind of acquainted with the way these things play out in Hollywood and I'll

[40:17] tell you that the easy answer is that the CIA finally got wise to something that the FBI learned way back in the 50s and that's that you have to control the narrative right have you ever seen a film not done by Oliver Stone where the CIA is the bad guy no they don't exist they don't exist it's gotten to the point where um just after the invasion of Iraq the cia's office of public affairs

[40:49] opened up a branch inside public affairs whose sole Duty it is to Lea with Hollywood Studios so you want a classified briefing uh over a classified mockup of the bin Laden compound Allah zero dark3 come on and we'll tell you our side of the story and then that's the side that you write up as the script for the movie and we'll give you free access to the

[41:19] building right you want to make a movie that perpetuates the lie that the torture program resulted in in the the capture not capture but the killing of Osama bin Laden that it was torture that led us to his location you you you want that lie to be perpetuated then come on we'll give you classified briefings and you can interview the the analysts and do whatever you want just like in the 50s the 60s and the early 70s where every single movie and TV show about the FBI

[41:51] was Pro FBI because Jay Edgar Hoover had to approve every single script well now you've got the CIA that has a hand in every single script for every movie that has something to do with the CIA it's just wrong something we do pretty frequently on the podcast is we talk to uh Tom Seer I don't know if you're familiar with him he runs spy culture.com yeah and I think it's one of the most

[42:22] grotesque aspects of our modern military industrial complex that they are able to stick their figures so deeply into what is otherwise entirely fiction and create these narratives that absent any other point of reference people learn a lot from movies and TV shows sure they do should they I don't I don't know about that but they certainly do I know that the things that I knew about the military before I joined were all came from those movies I saw you know the the rock Blackhawk Down all these you know

[42:54] different ones um but that the the enormous power they have and how how it seems to directly butt up against any kind of First Amendment supposed to actually have the benefit of free speech As Americans one that extends to filmmakers too and granted you know there's corporate interest and other things involved but you know um listening to a a podcast um on North Korea recently a uh a director someone who had uh she had gone to North Korea and directed a film and she was

[43:25] talking about comparison of North Korea's uh desire of involvement with her film which was almost nonexistent switched to the American cinematic landscape where us filmmakers allow huge changes in their scripts and presentations in order to receive DOD or CIA support and it's a blatant active censorship withholding their support such as helicopters or other major equipment and filming locations if the filmmakers don't properly tow the government line deciding what can and

[43:55] can't can't be in the film do this and I couldn't do this and you know you get narrowed down into telling a story that is exactly the story they want told not anything that is actually controlled by the filmmaker or can be seen as Truth by the audience it locks us into these mindsets of being accepting of violence as the first solution of being accepting of seeing American troops in places that we would you wouldn't think they would be absolutely right there's never going to be

[44:26] a really large change in the Winds of how America does its foreign policy until I think until that's rectified in some more powerful way certainly the top of whist whistleblowers goes right alongside that but you know it is it's what what people run on you know is the the things you know my wife and I we sit down every night and we watch new stuff but now we understand that we're not just dealing with the desires and and whims of filmmakers and writers and things like that we're dealing with them literally having being military or

[44:57] intelligence I wouldn't call them overlords overseers I guess would be a better way to put it to say this is okay and this is not okay um and it's and it's it's just disgusting I had another experience with a buddy who um you know the uh the National Geographic series The Long Road Hope sure A friend of mine who deployed to Baghdad in early 2004 his unit saw action during early April that year that was portrayed in the Long Road Home I traveled to his home in New York and together we watched that and we

[45:29] recorded some of his responses from it and just to see you know just basic things that were just not right pretending that there were suicide bombers in Kosovo was one that I I that I could never just oh man that made me so angry oh yes but um anyway I think that's probably a good place for us to wrap it up for today you asked very smart questions very very OnPoint questions so thank you for that

[46:01] I would ask one favor if if anybody's interested in these issues I just migrated over to substack it's John kiraku Dos substack docomo I I really enjoyed it too John I am I am actually a new uh a new subscriber to your substack I've really enjoyed it so far and uh I hope to have you back sometime I look forward to that thanks very much for all right thanks John and uh thank you everyone for listening today we'll we'll

[46:31] catch you next time take care money is tight these days for everyone penny pinching to make it through the month often doesn't give people the funds to contribute to a Creator they support so we consider it the highest honor that folks help us fund the podcast in any dollar amount they're able patreons is the main place to do that and for supporters who can donate $10 a month more they will be listed right here as an honorary producer like these fine folks fim sherazi James Oar James

[47:05] Higgins Eric Phillips Paul Appel Julie Dupri Thomas Benson Janet Hansen Daniel Fleming Michael Karen Ren Jacob Howard Reynolds Rick coffee Scott Spalding Spooky Tooth and the status quo podcast however if patreon isn't your style you can contribute directly through PayPal at paypal.me fortress on a hill or please

[47:37] check out our store on spreadshirt for some great Fortress merch we're on Twitter and facebook.com at Fortress onah Hill you can find our full collection of episodes at ww Fortress onah hill.com skepticism is One's best armor never never forget it we'll see you next [Music] time come on you good [Music] people and listen to my

[48:09] [Music] song I hope you'll pay attention I will not detain you long
