Title: CIA Spy Reveals MKUltra's More Sinister Twin Experiment
Show: Julian Dorey Podcast
Date: 2026-06-16
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy8EslNPwKU
Duration: 1:00:00

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[00:01] I'll give you an example. Afghanistan. 2009. Poppy everywhere. Everywhere. >> And I'm just sitting there like, "Wow, okay." Little did I know you were blowing the whistle on the whole USAID thing before this was like cool to do that. >> I was. I guess I was. Congratulations [laughter] on that. So, for for everyone out there who's hearing about USAID, they've seen Mike Mercedes Benz on all these podcasts and stuff talking about it. He's been blowing the whistle on it. Obviously, Elon's working on it. We'll get to that. You know, what what was it

[00:31] to you when you were in the CIA? How did you view USAID and what kinds of things were they doing back then? And then we'll work to today. To tell you the truth, when I was in the CIA still, I paid very little attention to to USAID. I didn't have any interaction with them. Every once in a while you'd bump into them in you know, an embassy that you happen to be working in or most of the big embassies have a bar you can go to after work and you'd see them having drinks over there, but I you know, I never had to interact with

[01:02] them. So, with that said, I I was aware that USAID was giving money to the National Endowment for Democracy and there were accusations that that was a CIA front organization. It wasn't a legitimate think tank and you know, there's a lot of what you and I might call money money laundering going on. Others would say, you know, we're we're private public partnerships.

[01:33] But now it's all coming out. In Afghanistan in '09, I wasn't working for the CIA anymore. I was working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I was under the mistaken belief that I was uh I was free to investigate what I want what I wanted and to you know, make that information public. And in retrospect, I wasn't. Would you just for people out there who didn't see episode 250? That was the second one we did. You told that story maybe a couple hours in. Can you just run through what you found there and then how it was shut down just to review it?

[02:04] Sure. Um I was keenly aware that Afghanistan at the time was producing 93% of the world's So, as recently as the 1970s, Afghanistan was a net food exporter. There's not very much land there that's arable. There's not very much water. But, the the arable land that they have, they made very good use of. And they could feed themselves and export rice to Pakistan and Iran. So, that's that's pretty good.

[02:34] >> Yeah. For a country that's, you know, 90% mountains. Yep. Well, um after the Taliban were overthrown, they converted all their food production to opium poppy because it's profitable, right? And as a result, by 2009, after eight years of, you know, American control or occupation or whatever your politics want you to want you to call it, uh they accounted for 93% of the world's

[03:05] heroin. So, I wanted to go to Afghanistan and I wanted to investigate this. I was the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee working for John Kerry at the time. Your favorite guy. Yeah, my favorite guy. We can we Yeah, there's a lot to say about John Kerry. >> [laughter] >> So, I'm so grossly disappointed in John Kerry. >> Yeah. So, um So, I I got the um concurrence uh of the American Embassy in Kabul. I flew out to Afghanistan and I went to Bagram Air Base.

[03:35] And I had trouble immediately. I said that I wanted to go to Kandahar province and Helmand province in the south. That was the center of of poppy cultivation. And um and they didn't want to fly me. Hmm. And I did something that I never ever do. I pulled rank. And I said, "Listen, I'm a senior staffer of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I have the rank of Brigadier General. I'm not asking you to fly me.

[04:06] I'm telling you we're going to fly down there." What was the reaction? Somebody start up the chopper. >> [laughter] >> I've I had never done that before. In fact, once I went to Afghanistan and we were on a 16-seat uh military plane uh going to Dubai to catch a commercial flight back to DC um and it was a whole bunch of generals and a handful of us staffers. And uh 16 seats on the plane, there were 17 of

[04:37] us. And so this this general says, "Oh, I'll I'll stay behind another day." I go, "Absolutely not. I'm not going to be responsible for a general not making it home after finishing his his tour in Afghanistan." He said, "No, no, you outrank me." I said, "Absolutely not." And so I stayed another day in in Kabul so he could go home to his family. Hm. But anyway, that took me off the subject. So I I go to to Kandahar. We meet with a handful of people there. And then we fly to Lashkar Gah, which is

[05:09] a a village in the center of Helmand Province. There was something called a PRT there. Uh that was a State Department um Provisional Reconstruction Team is what it stood for. It was State Department organization. It also had military and had USAID and a couple of other uh organizations that were represented there. But they were doing things like trying to build a a a um an electrical grid Hm. or digging water wells, stuff like that. So >> Net positive things. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, legit things. Yeah. So

[05:40] um we get off the helicopter and the State Department people greet us and and I said, "I want to I want to just drive out into the poppy fields. Now, when you're coming in to Lashkar Gah, as far as the eye can see, it's just poppy. Mhm. And I mean for miles and miles. And you can see these rivers running through the province, and they're diverting water from the rivers just to cultivate the poppy. Who is doing that? >> Well, see, that's that's an important question.

[06:11] For the most part, it's just itinerant farmers. Dirt farmers. Um and they're being in some cases told what to grow. And that became an issue for me. So, I said, "Listen, we're going to drive out into the poppy fields." The military escort that I had said, "Absolutely not." And I said, "No, we absolutely are going to drive into the poppy fields cuz I have questions to ask." Right? I'm not doing this for vacation. Yeah. You know, I didn't want to go to Afghanistan. This was because

[06:43] the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members had a legitimate interest in it. >> a job to do. I had a job to do. So, we get in this Jeep, two Jeeps. Security was in one Jeep, and it was me and a driver and a State Department guy and translator in the other Jeep. We go out to the into the fields, we find a poppy farmer. So, I ask him this very naive question. And I said, "Why do you grow poppy when instead you could be growing things with two growing seasons, like tomatoes or onions or pomegranates?"

[07:14] >> [snorts] >> He he was very frustrated. He goes, "Ah! >> [sighs and gasps] >> The Americans told me in 2001 if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted." And I said, "What Americans told you you could grow poppy?" As soon as I said it, the military guys were like, "Meeting over." [laughter] And they pull me back into the Jeep. "We're under threat." There was nobody out there but us. We go back to the base. So, I I fly back a couple of days later

[07:47] and I I called one of my contacts at DEA and I said, I got to write this paper, but I want to talk to you first cuz I saw some stuff that that's just not right. >> Yeah. So, they've got this secret facility out in the sticks in Virginia. I drive out there and I I told them everything I had seen. And um and the one guy says to me, you're never going to get this paper published. And I said, why not? It's all first person. It's I saw it with my own eyes.

[08:19] Plus, I interviewed, you know, DEA and a whole bunch of different people that that could be quoted. So, he said, you don't get it. Yeah, it's 93% of the world's poppy, but it all goes to Russia and Iran and we want them to be addicted to It weakens their societies. It weakens their cultures. We want them to be addicted to drugs. Can I ask a really, really difficult question here that sucks to ask?

[08:51] >> Sure. I think that's horrible. It's awful. It's awful. >> Yeah. Trying to play devil's advocate with the emphasis on devils. It's being done to us like crazy with fentanyl. Absolutely. So, could you not to excuse it or say any way they should do it, but could you see where the reactionary human emotion comes from in the decision-makers where it's not just necessary not just necessarily like let's be evil. They're more like

[09:21] them they're doing it to us, we're going to do it to them. Without a doubt and that's why this lefty supports Donald Trump's decision to send troops to the border and to crack down on China. >> Yeah. Yeah, cuz they do it to us. Yep. Mhm. So, that's the better way Yeah. >> to deal with this stuff is to use your resources to stop it and not have to do it to someone else cuz you're also spending your funneling taxpayer money through poppy fields. [laughter] Yeah. Poppy fields. And you know, the funny thing, too, is you you look at these

[09:54] charts that are produced by DEA and it's it's the amount of poppy produced in Afghanistan over the last like 40 years. Mhm. The years that the Taliban were in charge, they produced almost no poppy. And then in 2001, they didn't produce any poppy at all. >> They were terrible businessmen. That's the problem. [laughter] It's just it it's a business thing, John. We're good at that here. We bring New York City out there. We bring our public companies. We know how to spend

[10:24] money. They don't know how to do that. >> you another thing that they're not very good at. Uh when I was out there, uh one of the one of the military guys that I was working with showed me a satellite photo of Afghanistan, of southern Afghanistan, taken at night. Okay? So, it was it was measuring heat heat production. And there were these little pin pricks of light all over southern Afghanistan. I said, "What is that? They

[10:55] can't be villages. They're too small." And he said, um they're hair processors. >> Mhm. Yeah, that's what it is. Every little house every little mud hut or shack that's out there in the fields at night, you're not going to farm at night. So, at night, you cook the poppy. How strongly connected is this sinister bond? It's obviously strongly connected, but let me paint a picture for you to

[11:25] tell you how I'm thinking about it. I'm just thinking Hollywood right now. Mhm. Okay, you know in the movies when there's like the evil warehouse and production's happening, you You all these people. >> Sure. And let's even make it stereotypical here. They're speaking some foreign language and they're making drugs and give people whatever it might be. And the camera's panning across, you're meeting all the characters in there. The manager talks to this guy, whatever. Eventually, he goes to his office. When he gets into his office, there's a shadowy figure sitting in the chair with a manila envelope that's yay thick. And they hand it to him speaking, you know, Yeah. the king's English, if

[11:55] you will, the president's English, I should say, in American. And they say, "Keep going." Is it literally like that or is it more "We're going to let this happen"? >> Yeah, the latter. Okay. Yeah, it's not so sophisticated. Yeah. Yeah, there were other issues too that I I really struggled with. I I don't remember if we talked about the Dasht-e Leili massacre last time I was here. >> I believe it came up. Fill me in on what it was again. >> this was something that was actually pretty important to me during my time at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

[12:26] On November 30th and December 1st, 2001, Mhm. 2,000 Taliban soldiers Yes. >> gave up en masse. We did talk about it. Yeah, in the Northern Alliance. >> Please, please review this. Yeah. Well, there there was nowhere to put 2,000 people all at once. There's no prison in Afghanistan that can hold 2,000 people. So, we told the Northern Alliance, which at the time was led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the most genocidal violators of human rights

[12:57] in the last century. Um he was in charge of the Northern Alliance. We these guys gave themselves up to the Northern Alliance, and he called us and said, "What do I do with them?" And we said, "Take them out to the desert and hold them there until we can divide them up into smaller groups and then send them to jails and prisons around the country to hold them." So, they loaded these guys, I don't remember if it was four containers or six containers, whatever it was. 2,000 guys, they pack them into shipping containers and put them on trucks on 18-wheelers, and truck them out into the

[13:29] desert. But the thing is, there were no air holes, and there was no water, and there was no food, and of the 2,000, 16 survived. Yeah. And one of the survivors said when they arrived in the desert and they opened up the trucks, the bodies fell out like sardines from a can. >> So, in the in the 2008 election, Barack Obama said he was aware of this Dasht-e Leili massacre, and it had never been

[14:00] appropriately studied, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. That if he were to win the presidency, he was going to task the National Security Council with doing a study and figuring out who was responsible for this. Okay, great. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. So, I told Kerry, I said, "Look, you know, Obama made this statement, and I want to I want to take a look at it. I'm going to fly out to Afghanistan and and investigate." But before I did that, though, I got a call from a human rights activist, and not one of these, you

[14:30] know, loony ones, you know, like a serious human rights activist from a serious, important human rights group. And so, um he said that he needed to tell me something, but it was too sensitive for him to come up to Capitol Hill. Could I meet him um I ended up meeting him in a in a darkened classroom at Johns Hopkins University. So, he said, [snorts] "Look, I have a I have a witness to the Dasht-e Leili massacre who just came forward." And um this kid was 12 at the time of

[15:02] the massacre. Now he was, you know, what, 21. Mhm. And what was new that he wanted to tell us was that when they were opening up the trucks, he was hiding behind a rock, and he saw the bodies falling out of the trucks, but there were two men there, wearing blue jeans and black t-shirts, and speaking English. >> Yeah. The CIA always denied that there was any CIA presence there. Well, who in the world is going to be in

[15:34] Dasht-e Leili, Afghanistan on December the 2nd, 2001 but the CIA? Yeah. Nobody. No other Westerner from anywhere in the world is going to be at that spot on December the 2nd. So, um I wrote a letter to the CIA, and we got Carried to sign it, and I asked for clarification. I said, "We've developed this information. It appears to be new. Were these CIA officers on site at the

[16:06] uh we called it the box up?" So, 6 weeks passed. And, um a colleague of mine comes into the office, and he said, "Hey, the agency sent a a response to your letter." And, I said, "I didn't see any response. I just checked my mail an hour ago." And, he said, "Oh, they classified it top secret. It's it's down in the vault." Well, I only had a secret clearance at the time. So, I said, "Well, what did it say?" And, he says, "It said, go [ __ ] yourself." >> Yeah. And, I said, "Okay, that's how they want to play it. All right." So, I went to

[16:37] Carried, and I told him. And, he's like, "Yeah, you're not publishing this thing. They've already called. You're not publishing." I feel like this is the trap we run into all the time, and it's the thing I wrestle with the most about any of these powerful agencies that are under the spy designation. You will have people there who work on tasks that are vital to national security, and it's not just a tagline. It actually is real. >> Mhm. And, they do a nice job. Maybe they stop a terrorist attack, things like that. >> Right. You then also have some people

[17:10] who either through evil, or through very, very radicalized group think, get carried away, which are things that you were trying to point out that you discovered while you were still there and we know that whole story. But you'll have those people and they'll do things that are very bad. Very bad. Just like you're talking about right now. The argument that always gives them cover to keep doing it is also the argument that gives them cover to not release it, which is if you bring it to the public, the public's going to say

[17:41] "Fuck you. Look at this." In this case, I'll just say it like this, maybe this anecdotal thing. We know there's more problems than that. >> Sure. But they're going to say that. >> You're right. Right. You're right. It added to the body of evidence, but it was anecdotal. But they're going to then say shut it all down. >> That's right. And now you have a problem because then the good things that may also happen here, which a lot of people don't want to hear and, you know, when you hear about MK Ultra and stuff like that, it's it's kind of hard to say that, but there are some good things that happen. It's like then that baby goes out with the bathwater. How do we fix that?

[18:14] >> You know, really the only way to fix it is through is through transparency, real transparency, and true congressional oversight, which we have not had in decades. In decades. You mentioned MK Ultra a moment ago. MK Ultra was a real thing. Mhm. Most of the documents were destroyed >> That's right. by Director Helms in violation of the law. >> Right. Um but even with all the documents destroyed, we still have a pretty darn good idea of what MK Ultra

[18:46] was and pretty much every facet of it was illegal. Yeah. It was it was extensive experimentation on American citizens without their knowledge and without their consent to the point where um under something called MK Ultra, which was a a subset of MK Ultra, the CIA actually weaponized a virus that they that they blew into the San Francisco fog just to see if people would get sick.

[19:17] And this was in the late 1950s. And 11 people came down with this rare urinary tract infection that doctors had never seen before. And so that was a success. That was a success. >> "Oh, yeah. We can weaponize this. And you know, maybe we we blow this in Shanghai Harbor or in Moscow in the summertime." Uh another thing that they did, also part of MK Ultra, is they recruited prostitutes in San Francisco Yes. to

[19:49] go out and find Johns and bring them back to what was really a CIA safe house. It was made to look like a cathouse. A CIA safe house drug them >> Yep. and then try to get them to tell their innermost secrets. So they dosed them with LSD and with a couple of other There were like six different medications. >> This was like Sidney Gottlieb's experiment. >> Exactly. It came from Sidney Gottlieb's experiment. And you know, is it It's it was supposed to be some sort of truth serum. Mhm.

[20:19] >> Right? But with LSD as a base. Does it work? Well, who cares if it works? These guys never consented to be drugged by you guys to tell their innermost secrets. And then you just dump them on the street somewhere in San Francisco. Yeah. But that kind of thing was happening a lot until 1975. Church Committee. >> The Church Committee and the Pike Committee in the House. And they were appalled by that. And it it the Church Committee and the Pike Committee morphed into the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Great.

[20:51] And they had real, true, legit oversight until about 1982. Um Bill Casey was Ronald Reagan's CIA director. Casey >> Great guy. >> Oh, yeah. Lovely lovely man. Yeah. >> real looker, too. Oh, and a looker. >> He must have done well with the ladies. See, he was years ahead with the giant lips thing that he had going on. >> [laughter] >> So, he was he's a former OSS officer, Office

[21:21] of Strategic Services, which was the CIA's predecessor organization. And just a true believer. And he did his darnest to cut Congress out of everything. And then that ended up giving us, you know, Iran-Contra and all kinds of different terrible scandals. He ended up dying of a of a We had a stroke and then he had an aneurysm, a brain aneurysm. Um so, died just before the end of his term. Um but by then, the oversight committees really didn't

[21:51] have any idea what the CIA was doing. And so, they went so far as to have a vote in 1986. It was a no-confidence vote in Casey as the DCI. And the way they ended up getting it [clears throat] passed in a negotiation with the Republicans was >> [laughter] >> it's it sounds so stupid now in retrospect, but they they voted to say that William Casey is not unqualified to continue as director.

[22:23] Meaning Okay, I see what they're doing. So, they're basically just trying to like put a little in there but politic to say, "But he still can." Yeah. Yeah. We're not asking that he resign. >> Yeah. But we're we're saying that he's >> doing great. >> Yeah, he's not doing great. That's right. That's right. Um but ever since then, I mean, there's not been any real oversight. When the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee did the Senate Torture Report, uh what, a decade a little bit more than a decade ago, that report, as it was published, was

[22:53] Democratic staff only. There were no Republicans involved, no Republican staff, and no Republican members. It was a Democratic product. >> [clears throat] >> Excuse me. And then the Republicans came out with with a counter to it that they published. And what was that? Oh, we love torture, and it wasn't torture. And literally said that? >> Yeah. It worked. It was It was moral. It was right. It's like, okay, if that's

[23:23] [laughter] what you're going with, you know, don't let me stop you. Yeah, so the the other problem though is when you look at the history of you bring up the the Church Committee. That guy Frank Church, who it's named after >> Yep. I believe the committee commenced in '74 or '75. Correct. >> Yep. So, he won his Senate election in '74. He He won He won re-election in '74 because Richard Nixon had just um had just resigned, and it was the worst,

[23:54] most devastating That's right. kill job in the 20th century. >> Yeah. Point being though, his next election was 6 years later. >> And he got crushed. >> Yeah. And it's cuz there's some weird money that went into the race against him, which we know where that's coming from. >> You are exactly right. You know, Frank Church was one of those giants of the 20th century. I can I can honestly tell you such senators don't exist anymore. Maybe they'll there will be some someday, but

[24:25] giants like who had a place in American history. We had a half a dozen of them back then. From both parties. But anymore, they're just a bunch of They're bought. >> bunch of bozos. >> Yeah. But this guy tries to make that committee so that there can be oversight or whatever. And then the very people that they're investigating, I mean, it hearkens back to the old New York Times headline, where it's like, the CIA investigated itself on whether or not it sold crack in the hoods, and it found no wrongdoing. Exactly. >> That's what they're doing here. When the the who are supposed to be pushing for

[24:57] the oversight, they can then use surreptitious ways >> That's right. to get them out of office and then poof, you never really hear about it again. Cuz to your point, there hasn't been There've been arguments over like the torture time or whatever, but there hasn't been some sort of like hands-on major oversight commission since then. Yeah. I was a little kid when that was happening and I remember my dad voting for Frank Church for president in the 1976 primaries. My mom had voted for Birch Bayh from Indiana. I remember that. I don't know why she did, but

[25:27] um my dad voted for for Church and my mom said, "Really, Church?" And I remember my dad saying, "That guy earned it. If anybody's earned it, it was him." Mhm. Mhm. A young John Kiriakou that went in one ear out the other, apparently. So he joined up. Joined up with the dark side. >> Right, the dark side. Well, the context of all this and what we're talking about and I appreciate you running through some of that again just so people can hear it because you saw this hands-on, but the context has to do with an organization like USAID and how

[25:57] it may be used for terms of soft power. Now, we pulled up a link right here just for people to review. I know you and I were talking about this a little earlier before we got on camera. Let's see, can you scroll down a little bit? These are just some highlights, if you will, of different things that have been uncovered since they started investigating this. So you have 14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department. You have $20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department. You have $7,071

[26:30] for a BIOPIC speaker series in Canada through the State Department. Like, I could go on and on. They all are like that, pretty much. Now, the fact of the matter is when you add up the money on this sheet, to you and me, it's a lot of money. To what the actual budget is, it's a very small percentage of it. But like when I see things, the carelessness of like $10,000 to to Lithuanian corporations to promote DEI values through the State Department. John, do you know what $10,000 buys you? Yeah, nothing. I can get like an editor in Venezuela for that. That's it. All right? Like that's I think you said it

[27:02] you put it best. You're like that could buy you two Facebook ads. Yeah, that's it. >> And that and they characterize it as pressure. Now, to you and me, $10,000 very small part of the budget here, but that's a lot of money to me. It's like if they're this careless with that $10,000, how many other things are they this careless with? And what does any of the stuff you're seeing here >> which frankly a lot of the highlights that they've decided to pick out because it is and I'll be fair like it is a Republican who's pointing these things out. They're picking out the LGBT stuff and the DEI stuff cuz that's like the you know, soup du jour right now. Right.

[27:32] But like when you add up probably all the things that are in that type of lane, like something that seems totally unnecessary, it probably adds up to a lot and is something where we've lost the oversight completely in the organization. Mhm. You're exactly right. You know, 2 years ago I was I was one of six um independent journalists who were invited to have lunch with the Russian ambassador to the United States. And we we went to the to the residence. It was this big formal deal. So, it was

[28:03] the ambassador, the deputy ambassador, and like three of his staff members, and six of us journalists. And he had read um articles that all of us had written. He actually quoted them, which really struck me. And the reason for the lunch was for the most part, he wanted our ideas on how the US and Russia could cooperate in a time of war. And I gave my standard thing, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, counternarcotics. Um but the thing that made him angriest

[28:35] was how the State Department pushes LGBTQ on countries where it is culturally unacceptable. And he said, you know, we don't even mind being adversaries on some of these issues. Our interests are different sometimes from American interests. He said, you're right, we can cooperate on counterterrorism. We can cooperate on on counterproliferation. That's a great idea. No problem. But don't force us to accept trans people in our government.

[29:07] Don't force us to to accept LGBTQ people in positions of authority in the Orthodox Church. We will not do it. You don't respect our culture. And he said, that's a bigger problem than not respecting our policies. Why do they do it? Cuz like I I like living in a country where people are are are free to be themselves and do what they want to do. That's a beautiful part of America. Agreed 100%. >> It's different when you're pushing like I would in in fairness like my gay friends like this is not this is pushing

[29:40] like some sort of business commissioned ideology on places to make them probably pay more attention to it in a negative than they would have in the first place if you didn't do it. >> Exactly. Exactly. So why do they do it? People some of the people who might be impacted by like eight eight thousand dollars to promote DEI among LGBTQ groups in Cyprus. Well, everybody in Cyprus is Greek Orthodox, right? The Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

[30:10] There is no such thing as LGBTQ in a in a culture like that. It's a conservative culture. It's offensive. I I recognize that it's only $8,000. And I'm glad that we that we have it here. I'm glad. I welcome it. I celebrate it. Truly. But we we shouldn't be imposing our own values, our own cultural values on countries that don't want it. Yeah. I don't I it just it seems so especially

[30:41] when you look at like I was saying the amounts. It's not doing anything. >> No. So, when you look at >> It's not. >> like the the devil's advocate to like USAID, and we can talk about this cuz I think you'll probably have a lot of thoughts here. Is that it has to do with this idea of soft power. >> Mhm. And we already mentioned the extreme example of like pushing drugs in other countries earlier, but where there are countries like, I don't know, China, Russia, Iran, who are running around and maybe

[31:12] building roads in places to curry favor. >> Oh, yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. Or give debt, you know, basically create debts and say, "Don't worry about it, but now we get to do this with you." I understand why the United States would want to have things like that. I just don't want to see it have stupid [ __ ] like this, and I don't want to see it not have oversight. Does that make sense? >> and then that leads to the question of why is it that the Chinese are building ports and roads and hospitals and airports all over the world, and we're

[31:42] doing that? Right. >> What do we have to show for that? We have nothing. Nothing. It's like democracy in Afghanistan. This has long been a big deal for me. Why in blazes did we force Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy when in the 3,000 years of that country's history, they never had a Western-style democracy. They had this system called the Loya Jirga, which worked. What is the Loya Jirga? It's a consultative council of tribal chieftains.

[32:13] And so, if you and I are in a dispute, I I say that my land ends here and you say, "No, it ends here," and we have a conflict with one another, we go to the Loya Jirga, and they we each give our side, and they settle the dispute. Or um I want to be the village, you know, tax collector, let's say. We go to the Loya Jirga, I make my pitch, the other guy makes his pitch, the Loya Jirga votes. Uh they choose, you know, this guy. >> Oligarchs instead of kings. Yeah. Right.

[32:44] Right. So, we said, "No, no. We We recognize you guys have been doing that for thousands of years, but we don't like that. Instead, we're going to have uh an election. And we got this guy, Hamid Karzai. And his brother's got a nice restaurant in Baltimore. You can You can have lunch at his Afghan restaurant in Baltimore. It's very popular. And so >> Uh-huh. It really did? >> Uh-huh. In Baltimore? >> Yeah. There's like six good blocks in Baltimore. >> I know. That's about it. And And they still call it Greektown. >> [laughter] >> Yeah.

[33:15] >> [gasps] >> And uh And they're like, "We don't uh We don't want that kind of system." And we said, "Yeah, we're We're not asking you. We're telling you." But then, you know, we're not pushing democracy on Saudi Arabia or on Kuwait or Bahrain or or even Egypt, which actually had a democracy for a minute, but when the wrong guy got elected, then we said, "Now, a a coup would be okay just about now." >> [laughter] >> Why? Why did we choose Saudi Arabia? I

[33:45] think it's more self-explanatory. Yeah. But like Egypt, why do we decide that's okay there, but not in Afghanistan? Because the Egyptian populace um has an intense dislike of Israel, which is in opposition to our foreign policy. And there are so many poor people. We're afraid of a broad uprising there. Mhm. They'll throw us out. You know, it's it's going to be chaos. >> What's different about Afghanistan

[34:16] though? Cuz there's a lot of poor people there as well. Is it the geography more than anything? They thought they could get away with it? >> In part it's geography, and in part it's population. There aren't that many people in Afghanistan, and we thought we could We could push these people around. And uh we could supply them with whatever they need. We have bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, we had the drone base in uh in in Pakistan that nobody knew about until until a a really smart-thinking reporter filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all drone fuel deliveries in

[34:48] Pakistan. And they're like, "Oh, sure. Here you go." All the drone >> got fired for that. >> [laughter] >> Like, what's the harm in asking where all the fuel is coming from or where where the fuel is going? It's going right here to this base. Oh, wait a minute. That's a secret base? Oh, sorry. Oh, man. >> Yeah. But we just pushed them around. And it didn't work. I I say often, too, that that the Taliban did not descend from the moon, right, and just softly land in Afghanistan and take over. These are the

[35:19] the husbands, the fathers, the brothers of Afghan women. They're they're Afghan families. This is who they chose to be led by. They had 20 years of American leadership. They didn't like it. And so they chose the Taliban. >> Well, we didn't lead. That's the other problem. We put in figureheads. We tried to push, as you just laid out beautifully, democracy on a on a country where that wasn't necessarily what they wanted or what their history wanted. And then we also got, oh, I don't know, tangled up in a [ __ ] war in Iraq, so

[35:50] we pulled resources. >> That's right. And there was all kinds of [ __ ] that that went on that led to that steep decline. And it's not even like the whole population supports the Taliban, but the Taliban them was able to say, "Hey, we're not as bad as this." >> That's right. And enough people were like, "All right, [ __ ] it." Yep. That's exactly right. You know, there was another thing, too. I remember being there in like 2007 maybe? 2007. And we had come up with this just terrible idea

[36:21] uh to combat corruption, right? Corruption is endemic. It's just a part of the culture. So, we decided that the police chief in each province would have to come from another province. Right? So, the police chief in a Pashtun area was a Hazara, for example. And the police chief in a Baloch area was from, you know, the the border with Tajikistan.

[36:52] And they said, "Well, that way, you know, there's no connection between the police chief and the populace. They don't have anything in common, so it's going to make bribery go away, and it's going to make everybody honest." No. They just started killing all the police chiefs. They're like, "I'm not going to I Where's this guy from? He's got Asian eyes. He's not a Pashtun." And then they put a bullet in his head. It's like, that's a that was a dumb idea. Who's Who thought of that? It's a lot of people who play fantasy football with government sitting in

[37:23] offices in DC and even in Langley and stuff. It doesn't mean they're dumb, it means that they're not thinking. No. And they just have no cultural understanding and no understanding of history. I will say that for the most part the working level foreign service officers at the State Department do have that understanding of history. And they tend to focus on specific geographic areas. So, if you're an Arabist, you speak Arabic, Mhm. you're

[37:55] going to spend probably the entirety of your career in the Middle East until you become an ambassador. And then you'll probably spend most of it in the Middle East, even after you've become an ambassador. And you know, elsewhere in government, USAID, CIA, Pentagon, forget it. I never met anybody at the Pentagon spoke Arabic. They live in their own worlds. What is it What Where Where is the State Department in all this? That's actually good you bring that up. Because there the State Department and you've done a great job explaining this in the past. I

[38:27] know Bustamante's talked about this in the past and Jim Waller and those guys like they will house a lot of people who maybe work for the agency or even sometimes the Pentagon like undercover. And then they're also there to be the diplomats and have the embassy and you know, shake hands and kiss babies. But for things like USAID AID to to happen you have the intelligence agencies potentially using it as like a money laundering operation to get stuff in. >> the dangerous part. But does the State

[38:58] Department know that's happening or can they just not do anything about it? Yes and yes. Okay. Yeah. There there's a formal written agreement between the CIA and the State Department um on that addresses cover issues. You know, sometimes from for for most of my career actually for the entirety of my career now that I'm thinking about it um I was under what was called nominal cover. Like oh, where do you work? Ah, State Department. >> Right. But there was nothing to back that up. You couldn't call the State

[39:28] Department say, "Can I speak to John?" and then you know, they route the call to me. That just didn't exist. Oh, you didn't even have a cover back? >> No, no, no. Oh. No. No. I was declared to so many intelligence services it wouldn't have made it a difference anyway. So um so there's this formal agreement between the State Department and the CIA like there is between the the CIA and other governmental bodies. USAID is an unusual situation though. I never ever encountered a CIA officer

[39:59] who was embedded in USAID. I don't think that that happens. Um it it wouldn't make sense anyway because yeah, because when you're when you're embedded you have to do that cover job for 8 hours and then you go out and do your CIA job for 8 hours. That's right. So, if if you're going to be given some kind of official cover, you don't want it to be USAID where you actually have to do the work. You know? You want to be

[40:30] I I got to be very careful here. Um but you want to be in a position where you can sort of blend the two. Hm. Yeah. Why do you have to be careful here? Because um the details are classified. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, let's not have another trial. >> No. No No more trials for me, thank you. So, you got to blend the two. You do that there. No. The reason I said that this is a a problem is that to use to use a phrase that I heard this week on the news, um USAID was was a beachhead for the CIA

[41:03] in the State Department. Let's That's not what USAID is supposed to do. USAID is supposed to be, you know, digging water wells and training doctors and, you know, building sewage treatment plants and electrical grids and helping people develop. It's the Agency for International Development. Which was like John F. Kennedy's dream of it. >> USAID, the Peace Corps, and VISTA were all created at the same time by John Kennedy.

[41:34] You know, it was a great idea. Yeah. But the CIA the CIA moved right in as soon as Kennedy was killed. By 1964, the CIA was running covert operations out of USAID. This has all been declassified. It's all available >> is declassified. >> declassified. You It's available at the um at the National Security Archives at George Washington University. >> Okay, so for this example, since it's declassified, can you explain what that one looked like? Cuz now I'm a bit

[42:05] confused cuz you're saying you wouldn't go undercover there, but is it a blend of the two? >> not have They did not have people under cover at USAID. What they did is they ran covert option operations through USAID. English. Uh okay. In 1972 Ted Kennedy wrote a letter to the CIA and he said this is also available declassified online. So he said I heard that the CIA was

[42:36] paying Laotian mercenaries through USAID. Just cutting Okay. payroll checks. Yeah. Is that true? And so he got a letter back from from Henry Kissinger who was the Secretary of State at the time. >> Real straight shooter, too. Oh yeah, yeah, he's never going to obfuscate. >> Phenomenal guy. He got an identical letter from the CIA. Like identical to the word. Um saying yeah. We're using USAID essentially to launder

[43:08] money and pay these Laotian mercenaries to fight communists. And Kennedy's letter said did you pay these people in 1969? And he said yeah, we paid them in '69 and '70 and '71 and '72. Like what are you going to do about it, Kennedy? Well, that was just one of many many operations that that was paid for through USAID. Here's another thing. And and this might be a better explanation. They're >> I love when John starts cooking.

[43:40] Really good. Chef Curry with the shot. Keep going. There used to be a a senator, Democratic senator from Wisconsin by the name of William Proxmire. Proxmire was famous for a couple of reasons. First, he won the seat that Joseph McCarthy vacated when he drank himself to death. Okay. Right? >> Yeah. So he was a liberal Democrat. There he is, Bill Proxmire. And he was famous also for never spending a single dollar to get reelected. He said, "The people of Wisconsin know my voting

[44:11] record. They either like it or they don't like it." And he got elected? Time after time after time. Yeah. He finally retired like in the '70s, like '76 or '78, something like that. I've never heard of that before at any point. When did he retire? He It looks like >> Senator, '89. Okay, so he was around for a long time. Yeah. From '57 to '89. So, he hated government waste more than anything in the world. And he decided to bestow an award, kind

[44:44] of a gag award, called the Golden Fleece Award for the fleecing of the American taxpayer. And he would do it every month. Every month he would call a press conference >> I like this guy. >> to issue the Golden Fleece Award. The problem was a lot of what he identified as government waste was actually secret CIA programming. >> So, he couldn't say No, he said it anyway. Oh, he did? And he didn't get arrested? >> The CIA was apoplectic. I'll bet. Because he would say, you know, $5 million dollars to study, you know, gay

[45:16] monkeys in Gabon. >> [laughter] >> And he's like, "What the [ __ ] is this? This is a waste of the taxpayer's money." Well, of course there was no $5 million dollars to study gay monkeys in Gabon. That's just what they called it. Yeah. >> So, that the CIA cuz you can't like go on to Google and look for the CIA budget. It's not >> You can't, but do they have to create like a shell company on the other side, meaning like a company called like research for gay monkey studies? are probably >> mercenaries behind it who are like, "Thank you for the money." There are at least hundreds of those.

[45:47] >> Right. Okay. >> Maybe thousands. >> to try. >> They got to try. >> Got it. >> Yes. Yeah. But, the thing is the CIA's budget is hidden all around the rest of the federal budget. Yeah. Okay, it's not just in the State Department, not just in the Defense Department or the Commerce Department, it's everywhere. And so, they'll say $5 million for gay monkeys in Gabon, and they'll put that at USAID. Or they'll put it in, you know, the whatever, some fund for the National

[46:18] Geographic Society or whatever. They're not really going to spend that money on that. They're going to spend it to, you know, buy weapons for LRA mercenaries or, you know, bring drugs to Los Angeles or whatever. Okay. So, let me ask a direct question then on this that you may not know the answer to, but in theory you could. Did we really spend $50 million on condoms in Mozambique or did that fund some sort of like rebel army there? You know, if that were $50,000, I'd say yeah, we we did that. If it's $50 million,

[46:49] I'd say that's nuts and it's probably something else. >> Okay, that's making sense now. So, this is a tale as old as time, and they as you said, there's declassified things involving like Henry Kissinger where they admit >> Oh, yeah. they're doing this. >> And they went beyond that. I mean, let's go into the into the early 2000s. >> Please. Uh, in 2003, We didn't do anything wrong in 2003. Stop Stop right there. >> I don't know where people found the time to get all these things done. >> great year. There everything was right. Slam dunk.

[47:21] >> dunk. [laughter] It was a slam dunk, wasn't it? In 2003, we created a a Facebook alternative called ZunZuneo. And it just appeared in Cuba. Like, oh, look, this this this this Facebook copy and it just appeared Cuba libre. >> the Cuban internet one day. >> Yeah. And uh >> I didn't know they had that. >> Yeah, ZunZuneo. And so, it was supposed to um encourage Cubans to initiate uh,

[47:55] the equivalent of the Arab Spring and overthrow the Castros. And nobody signed up for ZunZuneo. Nobody. No, they couldn't get anyone to sign up? >> No, people are like, "Nah, we're not interested." >> like drop some flyers with like prizes? No? Nah. Just >> Low effort. Yeah. They weren't interested. That's how I like my overthrows, though, John. Softly. You do it online, you piss them off, everyone gets their tiki torches, they have a nice little meeting, and then poof, new leader. Yep. Nothing wrong with that. That's exactly right.

[48:25] Um, in in 2013, they, um, they infiltrated the Bolivian, uh, media to try to overthrow Evo Morales. How'd they do this? Uh, they just started buying uh, journalists. Just say, "Hey, how much do you make? $500 a month? Okay, here's $5,000. Write this article saying that Evo Morales was caught with a 6-year-old girl." Yeah. And they're like, "Okay, I can do that." How often does stuff like that still happen? Oh, every single

[48:57] day. >> Right. Yeah. All over the world. All over the world. Meaning it's not just concentrated in one two places of interest, this stuff is happening all the time. >> All over the world. And, you know, with the with the advance of technology, too, it just makes it easier and easier. Although, it diffuses it because, you know, it's not just ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times. Now, there are millions, I mean, we're all journalists, any any blogger, anybody any slob who rolls out of bed in

[49:28] the morning and makes a YouTube video can be a I feel attacked, John. >> a journalist. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. >> It's okay. You saw my bed before we got started. >> [laughter] >> No, that's okay. You're wearing a pirate's hat, and that's that's all that matters to me. >> John, but keep falling for [laughter] it. But, yes, as you were saying. >> It happens every day. Yeah. So, if we had to steel man something like that, would you say that doing uh, cuz that doesn't sit right with me that you're you are infecting what's supposed

[49:59] to be sources of news that's supposed to in theory be unbiased. So, it just feels dirty in every way. I know it happens to us. It's same argument as earlier. I know it happens to us all the time. Do you think if you had to choose poison pill, it's better to do that than it is to actually hire rebels to go in and kill the people in charge that we don't like? Yes. Now, it gets hard. Cuz it's like what do we do and what do we not do? And and your chances of success are low. Yeah. I mean, look at look at what the Russians

[50:29] were accused of doing in 2016 and what they actually did in 2016. The Democratic narrative is that the Russians essentially bought the 2016 election for Donald Trump, right? >> Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. All been proven false. >> Yep. Yep. So, what did the Russians actually do? They spent $50,000 on YouTube ads. Okay? None of the YouTube ads were political. $25,000

[51:00] half of it was spent after the election was over. So, you have $25,000 left. And they're all like memes of kittens and puppies and flowers. Almost all of that money was spent in states that were already solidly red or solidly blue. Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> That's not stealing the election. That's somebody Some idiot wasted $50,000. Like we were looking at up here. Mhm. Yeah. So, we do what the Russians do,

[51:31] what the Chinese do, what the Cubans, the Iranians, the Israelis, the French, the British, everybody does it. So, why did they cuz we can look at that now because so much of this has been disproven. You know, it was always crazy to me. There were so many things like just in general that if you wanted to attack Trump on, you could attack him, but they had to come up with stuff. >> Yeah, why attack him on the fake stuff? >> That's what I'm saying. Like stuff and and they made it sound very bad, I'll say that. So, I see why it could make a story, but they attacked him on things that now hindsight being 20/20 it's like

[52:01] it was always going to come out that this isn't real. The evidence is all there. You know, when you assemble this blue ribbon panel of the the greatest minds in government to look at the evidence they're going to find the truth. Unless they're the Warren Commission. >> Unless they're the Warren Commission or maybe the 9/11 Commission. >> Man, oh oh. Well, I don't I don't want to talk about that. >> Okay. And uh no, I'm just kidding. >> Pin put in that. >> [laughter] >> We're coming back. >> And um yeah. I mean, if they're if they're legitimately doing their job they're

[52:32] going to find Look, we we have no evidence. The Russians didn't steal the election for Donald Trump. That's just the way it is. There was so much There were so many people though cuz you're making me think with the media thing. There were so many people in the media who were Now we can say it creating evidence. >> Oh my god, Rachel Maddow as an example. >> Yeah. I On my show one day we played a clip of Rachel Maddow saying Russia, Moscow or Putin

[53:05] 90 times in the first hour of her show the night before. >> [laughter] >> It was ridiculous. And she was ripping Mitt Romney for saying it 4 years before that. Remember that? He got like laughed off the stage. >> Obama was like Cold War called once their policy back. And and everyone's like haha he said Russia and then it was like the main keyword. >> Yeah. It sure was. Do you Do you think that Well, let's get to the bigger question here. Do you think that like

[53:36] powers that be in the bureaucracy I mean, this is what the internet says, but do you think there is any legitimacy to people in the bureaucracy besides like those two idiots at the FBI who really were actually working to attribute things to other places when in fact it was quite literally them doing it to stop Donald Trump from getting into power? >> [sighs] >> Boy, that's a good question. Yeah. That's a good >> it looks. Yeah. I regardless of politics, you know how it looks. Yeah. >> You know, honestly, I have to say

[54:07] probably yes. Yeah. Yeah, probably. And and that's a surprise to me because when I when I worked at the CIA we generally had no idea what our colleagues politics were. genuinely. I sat next to this one guy for 6 years. I didn't have the foggiest idea if he was a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent. No idea. There was a woman I worked with. This is in like '96. And she got in trouble.

[54:39] Like written up because she put a Bob Dole for President bumper sticker in her cubicle. Oh, wow. >> like, that has to come down and you're getting written up and you have to go to HR and you know, we work for the for the country. We don't choose sides. That's how it used to be at the FBI as well. And that really seemed to change dramatically around 2016. What do you think it was? Do Well, let me even ask a hypothetical in there. Cuz I always wonder this. I'm like, obviously I know Trump says a lot of

[55:09] [ __ ] >> Yeah. And like, you know, he's an outsider and all this. But like do you think that there's some sort of intelligence, I don't know what it would be, that they know about him that they think is just so dangerous that they're willing to completely lift the veil on their not caring about these elections and No. and saying like, [ __ ] it, get him out of this. Somebody would have leaked it. You know, going back to um to the um

[55:40] Christopher Steele report. You know, I worked with Chris Steele. Wait, this is the guy who had the piss memo, right? >> Right. Yeah. He was an MI6 officer. You worked with? Yeah, we did an operation together in in London in the '90s. And the funny thing about it is he was like the guy at MI6 that all the other MI6 guys wanted to be like. That's how highly respected he was. I I enjoyed >> Christopher Steele. Golden showers. Yeah. Okay, please continue. So

[56:13] I have I have a theory. He went from the James Bond kind of officer that that every MI6 guy wanted to be to this caricature because when you're collecting intelligence when you're an operations officer collecting intelligence no matter how outrageous the intelligence might be you send it back to your headquarters and the analysts go over it. And the

[56:44] analysts say this is [ __ ] this is great, this is a possibility, this is a probability. You just turn it over to the analysts. So if he had been at MI6 and a source told him that Donald Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on Barack Obama's hotel bed um the analysts would say this is stupid and it wouldn't get published. Cuz there's no other information to corroborate this. But in private practice there is no team of analysts to go over the the intelligence. Cuz he was out by then. He

[57:16] was out by then. And he was paid by the Clinton campaign although there were reports that he was initially hired by the Ted Cruz campaign and [laughter] then Cruz walked away from it. >> I intend. Uh-huh. And then Hillary said, "We'll take it." So, there was no team of analysts to vet the information and to tell the Clinton campaign, "This is nonsense. This is true. This is maybe. This is I don't know. We have to ask other questions, find other sources." There was nobody to

[57:46] do that. And so, he did what he always did at MI6. You just write it up and send it in. And then let the next group figure out if it's true or not. >> it's just literally because he may not have endorsed it. He just had what he found and he didn't have government analysts on the other side. So, he said, "They'll take care of that." >> Yeah. I think that's exactly what happened. >> Now, all right. Back up a second. How were you working with this guy? >> [sighs and gasps] >> Was this Was this the Greek stuff? Yeah. Oh, [ __ ] Okay. Can you talk about this at all? In

[58:17] generalities. That's good enough. I became the master of the old files on Greek terrorism. I I took this issue so seriously. It actually cost me my first marriage. I was obsessed with Greek terrorism. >> And then they tried to kill me in Athens. You told that story. So, I would go through these files. These files, some of them were 25 years old, just looking for a lead, a lead that maybe had been overlooked 10, 20, 20, 25

[58:50] years ago. And I found a lead. It was a connection between the Greeks and Carlos the Jackal. And nobody had ever talked to this guy. So, I'm like, "Where is this guy?" We don't have any idea where this guy is. So, Which guy? Oh, wait. >> The The connection. >> Got it. Yeah. So, I wrote a cable to headquarters and I said, "I've identified this guy that I think is the middleman between the Greeks and Carlos the Jackal. Um

[59:20] do we have any idea where he is? I think he's probably in Lebanon." I said. I get a cable back and they said no he's he's living in London. I said how the heck is he living in London? They said he converted to Christianity married some English woman and he's living in London. I said I got I got to see him. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge huge help and if you'd like to check out this clips

[59:51] full podcast episode that link is in the description below or right here and finally you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.
