Title: \"They Want the Crazy Ones\" — Why the CIA Recruits Sociopaths
Show: Jack Neel
Date: 2026-07-02
URL: https://youtu.be/y939VG16MCY
Duration: 47:00

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[00:00] John, in the 1960s, the CIA spent $20 million surgically implanting microphones inside of live cats. They sewed antennas through their spines and out their tails. The first cat was sent on a mission outside the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. >> Mhm. >> What happened next? >> Next, they experimented by putting microphones and cameras on pigeons and tried to train them to land on the windowsills of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Those experiments failed. I mean, they were able to get the pigeons and the

[00:31] cats to go over to the Soviet compound, but they couldn't pick anything up that was meaningful. >> Hm. Did you know that the first cat got hit by a bus? >> Ah. >> [laughter] >> No, that's just perfect. >> Have you ever thought that an animal was spying on you? >> An animal, no. But I did go to a demonstration in 20 18 in Washington, where there seemed to be an inordinate number of dragonflies

[01:01] around the speakers. And then when I got up to the dais, the stage, I realized that they were drones. Little, teeny, tiny drones. I thought that was just scandalous. >> When was this? >> This was 2018. >> Dragonfly drones? They're that small? >> Yeah. They're big enough only to hold a microphone. That's it. But, I mean, it's a public speaking event. You can just listen. You don't need to fly a dragonfly drone up to the

[01:33] podium. >> Hm. >> There's no secret taking place. And I wondered if it was like a training exercise. >> That's really fascinating. Have you ever inserted a microphone inside of an animal or used anything like that? >> of an animal. I was very conventional in that respect. I only uh broke into houses to to plant bugs three or four times over the course of my career. And it was always very conventional, you know, in an ashtray,

[02:04] under a flowerpot, something like that. Not in an animal. >> That's fascinating. Uh Yeah, I For people who are unfamiliar with your story, so you spent 14 years at the CIA, that's right. Uh you helped capture some of the most dangerous terrorists alive. Then a single interview on TV in 2007 ended your career, your marriage, and sent you to federal prison. What exactly did you say that made you go to prison? >> I said What did I say that made me go to

[02:36] prison? Well, it depends on your point of view. What I said that started the whole slow-motion chain of dominoes falling was that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. That torture was official US government policy. And that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself. What they ended up getting me on was something much more innocuous. So, they charged me with five felonies,

[03:07] including three counts of espionage. The espionage charges all came from that interview. And a subsequent interview that I did with the New York Times. But what they got me on was in the summer of 20 of 2008. Um a journalist wrote to me and said I'm writing a book on the Abu Omar rendition. Abu Omar was a cleric in Milan, Italy, that the CIA kidnapped and

[03:39] sent to Egypt to undergo torture. Can you introduce me to any of these 12 people so I can interview them for my book? I said, "I don't know any of these people." And then he wrote me back and said, "What these people?" And I said, "I don't know these people. Kidnapping was not my thing at the agency. I didn't work with the kidnappers." And uh I said, "You clearly know this issue better than I do. All I know is what I've read in the Washington Post." And then he said, "What about the guy

[04:09] that you mentioned on page 100 and whatever of your book?" Um I think his name is John. And I said, "Oh, you're talking about John Doe. I don't know whatever happened to him. He's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere." And that's where they got me. I confirmed the last name of that former colleague. And that's what they hung me on. >> Right. And how long were you sent to prison? >> 23 months. I was sentenced to 30 months. I did 23 months.

[04:41] >> And how many people actually involved in the torture program, like the creation of it, enacting out specific torture, covering up the program, were sent to prison? >> Exactly zero. I was the only person in any way associated with the torture program who went to prison. And I was the one who blew the whistle on it. >> Can you give me an example of someone who is directly known to have done

[05:11] something? Is there any example of that? Like something that's been declassified that someone did, but they weren't held responsible? >> At the highest levels, yes. The people who conceived of the torture, who approved of the torture, who planned the torture. So So James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen are probably the most infamous. They were two contract psychologists that were brought into the CIA to actually create the torture program. And then after we captured Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and sent him to this the first secret

[05:42] prison, they were the ones that went out to the a prison and actually tortured him. And what they ended up getting was a hundred and eight million dollars of the taxpayers money for their program that they created. >> [laughter] >> I know it's like Bizarro World. I I find that really fascinating. Uh There's not a lot to say about it. But I think an interesting way to ask you about some of this stuff is

[06:15] now that people know you were once an enemy of the CIA for exposing such a dark secret and are a person who values truth. What does going to prison teach you about how the world actually works? >> Oh, wow. That's a good question and a very difficult one to answer. I learned so much in prison. I learned that really our entire system is broken. I You know what? I'm going to

[06:46] throw a statistic at you just to try to put it into context. The United States has 5% of the world's population. Okay? We have 25% of the world's prison population. Worse than China, Russia, Iran. We lock up everybody. Congress creates 500 new felonies every decade. 50 new felonies every year that are you

[07:19] know, these are new laws that are passed where something that was legal a year ago is suddenly illegal. And I'll give you an example. I've written about this a couple of times. There was a woman working for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. She was a GS-12 mid-level nobody. Honolulu is very expensive to live in. So to make some extra money, she and a business partner bought a boat. And they would take tourists out on the weekends to go whale watching.

[07:49] So, they're out there whale watching one day, and they come up on a pod of orcas, and the orcas are feeding on a seal carcass. So, everybody runs over to the side of the boat. They're taking pictures and video. Somebody whistles at the whale. To, I don't know, keep it near the surface. I don't know. Nobody knows. Couple of weeks later, FBI. She answers the door. Do you uh you have this boat? Yes. You take the boat out with tourists? Yes.

[08:21] Did you uh see some orcas couple of weeks ago? Yes. Did you whistle at the whale? She said, "No. Somebody did. But, you know what? I I videotape everything, and I sell the DVDs to the tourists." So, she gives the FBI the DVD. Couple of weeks later, they raid her apartment. They take every DVD. They take her computer. They take her phone. They seize the boat. And after an investigation, they charge her with one felony count of interfering

[08:51] with the feeding of a wild animal, which is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. She fought this thing for years. They ended up knocking it down to a misdemeanor. She took a plea to make it go away, but she lost her job. She lost her pension. She lost her boat. She lost her friendship with her business partner. She lost literally everything. Is society better off because she was prosecuted? Are we safer as a people

[09:21] because she was prosecuted? This kind of thing happens all the time. You know, there's this joke that everybody in prison is innocent. Well, you know what? I found that a lot of people actually are innocent. The thing is, and I'll recount an important conversation that I had with my attorneys. I was given a best and final offer from the Justice Department. 30 months, I do 23. And I had until noon of the next day to decide. My wife and I stayed up all

[09:54] night long discussing this. All night long. And at 6:00 a.m., I emailed the attorneys. I had 11 attorneys. Attorneys that the Washington Post called legal titans. The best attorneys money could buy. And I said, we've been up all night. We've been talking about this. We decided to turn it down. I'm going to trial. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm going to go to trial. As soon as I get in front of a jury, they're going to see how ridiculous this is. The attorneys come straight to the house. They get there 7:00 in the morning.

[10:26] The oldest, Plato Cacheris, a legendary figure in law in Washington, gets right in my face and he says, "You stupid son of a [ __ ] take the deal." And I said, "You're the one who told me not to take the deal." He says, "I only said that to keep your spirits up." The second one, total Southern gentleman. He said, "If you were my own brother, I would beg you to take this deal." I had five kids at home.

[10:58] I didn't want to go to prison. The third one, the one that I liked and respected the most, pulls me aside and kind of angrily says to me, "You know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice, and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage. Take the deal." So, I asked, "If I don't take the deal, and I'm convicted, what am I realistically looking at?" And they said, "12 to 18 years. Take the deal."

[11:28] What am I going to do? Like I say, I have five kids at home. So, I took the deal. One of them said to me before I made the final decision, this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event in your life. Make it the blip. So, I did. I took it. >> When you think about the reason so many people are incarcerated, would you say it's mostly incarceration as an excuse for something

[12:00] that wasn't a crime? Uh or would you say it's that the people who do the incarcerations have incentive structures to do as many as possible? >> Uh we we have a robust private prison system in the United States. The The biggest company is GEO Solutions. And they build and manage prisons all across America. They're doing all of the immigration prisons right now. And so, they have an incentive to make sure that every single bed is occupied.

[12:33] If there aren't people in those beds serving long sentences, they don't get paid. And once those people are in beds, they maximize their profits by cutting medication and food. On my very first full day in prison, I got to prison on a Thursday at 11:00. Friday was my first full day. And one of the guys across the hall from me said, "Friday, fish day." And I said, "Oh, okay. I like fish." And one of the

[13:05] Italians stopped me and he said, "You're not going to want to eat this fish. We call it sewer trout." And I said, "Oh, okay." So, I go down to the chow hall. And behind the the chow line where they're just slopping food onto your tray, there are these boxes stacked up. And they're clearly marked and out in public. And it says, "Alaskan Cod, product of China." So, it's not Alaskan cod. And underneath it says, "Feed use only. Not for human

[13:37] consumption." And they're just slopping it onto every tray. And that became the norm. You only have a handful of choices of what to drink. Water, coffee, or Kool-Aid. And the coffee's just brown water. So, most everybody drinks Kool-Aid. Well, one day everybody's drinking Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, and there's a dead rat in the Kool-Aid. And God knows how long it was in there. One time, we got a an all-hands email

[14:10] from the uh warden. There was this internal prison email system, CorrLinks. And the warden says, "So sorry, but a few weeks ago on Wednesday taco night, we accidentally fed you dog food. >> [laughter and snorts] >> It's not our fault. It was mismarked at the meat plant. So, the dog food was marked ground beef, and the ground beef was marked dog food. Uh the company has been fined, whatever

[14:42] it was, $15,000, $19,000, whatever it was. Um so, sorry." I wrote about it at the time. And I said, "The shame wasn't even that we were fed dog food. The shame was that we didn't even realize it was dog food because it tasted exactly like the ground beef that they fed us every day." >> If you had to give me one sentence or phrase to describe how people in power make

[15:12] sure they stay in power, what would be that one phrase? >> I You know what? I would call it official corruption. Corruption that may not be illegal, but is still corrupt. Where this is the system that we've given ourselves. It was finalized with the Supreme Court's um decision in Citizens United, the Citizens United case, which found that corporations are people. Right? So, corporations can give

[15:44] literally unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. Right? Individuals can give up to, I think it's 4,000 in the primary, 4,000 in the general. But, corporations can give unlimited amounts of money. People can give unlimited amounts of money to political action committees. So, all you do is you you just fill out the paperwork and you set up a PAC. It only takes but 15 minutes. And so, look at this race, this Thomas Massie race, the other day.

[16:15] This is for a position that pays $180,000 a year. And the two sides spent $35 million dollars for one seat that pays $180,000. That's corrupt as far as I'm concerned. And it was almost entirely outside money. >> What do you think they were buying? >> Oh, they were buying I'm going to take a lot of heat for this. They were buying a seat for AIPAC. That's really what it comes down to.

[16:47] AIPAC AIPAC spent millions and millions of dollars just on that one seat because Thomas Massie does not support Israel's political agenda. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. We see this actually all over the country. If you are not 100% pro-Israel, they'll primary you and they'll try to replace you with somebody that is 100% pro-Israel. It's something like

[17:18] 90%, 88% of members of Congress have taken money from AIPAC because it's better just take the money, just vote pro-Israel so you don't have to worry about re-election. I want to ask you something that you've said that really struck me was the selection process for people in intelligence. And I know we'll talk about that, but why do you think you were selected for the CIA? A CIA psychiatrist once told me that the

[17:49] CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies. Not sociopaths because sociopaths have no conscience. And while they can blow right through polygraph exam, they are impossible to control. People who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience. They do react in a polygraph, but they're willing to work in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas. And as an example, um when I was going through the interview

[18:19] process, there were two other men and a woman in my little group. And the instructor said, "Let's say you're a CIA officer undercover overseas. You get a cable from headquarters saying, 'We really, really need the latest Indonesian economic figures.' You call the Indonesian economic officer. You invite him to lunch. You have a great time. You invite him to lunch again. You have an even better time. You take him to dinner.

[18:51] You get together with your wives over dinner. The kids begin playing together. The wives become friends. But 6 months into this, you realize this guy's not recruitable. He doesn't have any vulnerabilities that you can latch onto. So, what do you do? Because headquarters really needs those numbers." So, one guy raises his hand and he says, "You you double down and you work on him another 6 months and and maybe something will come up." And the woman raises her hand and she says, "Um maybe you work it through the wives.

[19:22] Maybe your wife can convince his wife to convince him to give you the numbers." And I'm like, "What?" I raise my hand. I said, "You break into the Indonesian embassy and you steal it." And he says, "That's exactly what you do. You break into the Indonesian embassy and you steal it." A normal person, rather, isn't going to break into a foreign embassy and steal classified documents. I would, but that's what a sociopathic tendency is. So, I think that was one thing that they

[19:53] saw. The other thing that they saw that was very specific was that I was a good writer. And um when I was in graduate school, my grad school advisor was a CIA officer undercover as a grad school advisor. He really liked my writing style. And so, he kind of plucked me out of the crowd and put me in the system. And the next thing I knew, I was at the CIA. >> How do you think you write? That is so interesting. >> Well, it's different now, wildly different

[20:24] now. But, at the time, my writing style was very punchy and concise and directly to the point. And that's really what they wanted at the CIA. I My boss told me one time, when I first got hired, he says, "Listen, the president doesn't give a [ __ ] about your opinion on an issue. He wants to know the facts and then he wants to know exactly what the facts mean. And then he'll make his own opinion." So, I cut to the chase. Now, my writing

[20:54] style's completely different. >> That's a fascinating one. I've I've been shocked uh listening to some of your interviews at how solid your memory is of being able to recount certain events in specific details. >> a very sharp memory. >> But I I want to ask you on the sociopathic tendencies portion. I've heard some people discuss this idea that maybe some colleges, universities, intelligence agencies select people not based on sociopathic tendencies, but maybe some form of like dissociative

[21:27] personality disorder. Have you heard of this? >> No. That would scare me. Yeah. Well, you know, it's possible that there could be something to that. The CIA as part of the MK-Ultra program in the '60s, uh up until about 1975, they did MK-Ultra related experiments at universities all around the country. There were a lot of universities in California where they did these kind of experiments. And there are rumors that,

[21:59] for example, Charles Manson may have been part of these experiments, Sirhan Sirhan may have been a part of these experiments. We don't know because when Senator Church told the CIA director, "Do not destroy the documents." He went back to headquarters and ordered all the documents to be destroyed. They destroyed about 85% of them. So, we only know a little bit of what MK-Ultra actually did. >> On that one specifically, uh

[22:30] did you ever meet someone you suspected had been MK-Ultra'd? >> No, but I met I have met a lot of people who believe they had been MK-Ultra'd. Yeah. This is one thing that the CIA actually counts on. There are a lot of crazy people out there. When I first got out of prison, virtually the first bit of work that I did was I got hired by the American Psychological Association, the APA,

[23:01] to go to Brookline, Massachusetts and it was like a an offsite. It was me and 12 psychologists and we were supposed to come up with a new set of protocols by which APA member psychologists could conduct uh custodial interrogations. We went to lunch one day and I said, "Guys, I was the only one who's not a psychologist. I said, "Guys, I have a question for you, a serious question. I said, "Not a single day goes by

[23:32] that I don't get emails from people who say that the CIA planted a chip in their brain or the CIA is communicating them with them through a filling in their tooth or the CIA is beaming waves at their head. I get that a lot." And a couple of them started to to laugh. And I said, "Why is that so funny?" >> [clears throat] >> And one of them said, "This is the most common entry-level mental illness that we diagnose.

[24:03] Oftentimes, when people feel overwhelmed in life, their brains need to blame somebody or blame something and they default to the to the thing, the entity that is the easiest to blame. That's a secret organization, one that they don't understand. And we all know what the CIA is. We've all heard stories about what the CIA does. So, a lot of people just default to the idea that the CIA is somehow interfering in their lives.

[24:34] It's very common. They're not dangerous. They're just going through something right now. That's why you get so many emails. But then I got an email from a woman. She was the wife of [snorts] a foreign ambassador in the United States and she said she wanted to hire me because she believed she was under electronic surveillance. Well, I wrote this book called the CIA Insiders Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection. I was a surveillance instructor at the CIA. I

[25:05] said, "Okay, great. This is what I'll charge you. Let's meet and we'll figure out if you're under surveillance." I had a bunch of equipment that I'd bought online to detect, you know, different waves and and different transmissions and stuff like that. So, I met with her at the Tysons Galleria in suburban Virginia. And totally normal like 65-year-old woman. And she was adamant that she was under

[25:35] surveillance. And I said, "Okay. I wasn't under surveillance coming here and I don't notice anybody around us that wasn't here when we arrived. And we just picked the place by random. So, why don't you start walking home? I'm going to follow you from a discreet distance and I'll be able to do counter surveillance and see if you're being followed." So, I let her get pretty far ahead of me. And she wasn't being followed. So, I go up to her apartment and knock on the door. I open the door and literally the

[26:08] entire apartment, floor, walls, ceiling is covered in aluminum foil. And I go, "What is this?" I knew exactly what it was. And she's like, "It's to reflect the waves." And I was like, "Fuck. She's insane." And then she would call me in the middle of the night and say, "They're beaming the waves at me. My brain feels like it's going to explode." I'm like, "Those aren't waves. Those are your neighbors put Christmas lights on their balcony. It's just

[26:40] Christmas lights." "They're spying on me." "They don't care about you. They're not spying on you." In good conscience, I couldn't take her money. And I told her, I said, "Listen, I can refer you to a couple people who are experts at this sort of thing." She was furious, wanted no part of it, and ended up leaving the country. But, then I had a former CIA colleague tell me, "Somebody's beaming waves at me." And I'm like, "Dude, not you, too." >> [laughter]

[27:10] >> And he said, "I'm serious, man." He said, "I went for an MRI, and it shows a traumatic brain injury." And all of a sudden, I'm nauseous, and I'm dizzy. Next thing you know, it's called Havana syndrome. And I was like, "I've known this guy for 35 years. And if he says he's got Havana syndrome, he's got Havana syndrome. It's a real thing." I had a colleague at the time, we were doing a radio show together, and he's making fun of it, and it's caused by crickets, or we're doing it to

[27:40] ourselves, or whatever. And I'm like, "I know these people. These are serious people. And they're showing traumatic brain injuries in MRIs. There's something to it, whether it's the Russians, or the Chinese, or us, I have no idea. But, that is real." >> So, her concerns would be valid if she was a different person, perhaps. >> Yeah, and you know what? One of the psychologists, one of the CIA psychologists said something to me that has really stuck with me. He said, "Always ask them

[28:11] if the waves follow them when they travel." Because the equipment that the Pentagon has developed, which has to be nearly identical to what the Chinese, the Israelis, the Russians, and others use, it's not portable. And so, if they say, "No, you know, when I go to my sister's house, I feel better." Uh, that might be something. If they say, "Everywhere I go, they follow me, and they're beaming the waves." No, that's a mental illness.

[28:41] Mhm. >> Have you ever given someone DMT as a CIA spy? >> No. No. Um Well, >> of my colleagues did, got arrested for it. Spent 6 and 1/2 years in prison for it. >> Why would someone do that? >> He was a sick SOB. And it's funny, I was like the last one to see that he was truly sick. It was the women in the office who used to say, "There's something wrong with that guy." And I was like, "He's getting promoted pretty quickly."

[29:12] They're like, "No, something's up." Next thing you know, he's under arrest, it's on the front page of the post, and that's exactly what he was doing. >> Have you ever heard any stories of friends or maybe people in other countries giving people ketamine to spy on them? >> No. Never from inside the CIA. Outside the CIA, people talk about ketamine a lot.

[29:43] You know, the CIA experimented with drugs from roughly 1952 until 1975. I get a lot, a lot of people who say, "MKUltra never ended. They just changed the name." Okay, if you have evidence of that, lay it out. Let's blow the whistle on it, and we'll get the FBI involved and get people arrested. Otherwise, shut the [ __ ] up. >> [laughter] >> Because there's not enough time in the day to chase these, you know, these

[30:13] silly rumors. >> Right. >> Ketamine is something that keeps popping up. I will say that the that the CIA spent a lot of time and a lot of money experimenting with LSD. Um but that that seems to have gone away around 1975. When I was there, I started in January of 1990. I never, ever heard anything about any drugs. There there was some talk about about uh truth serum

[30:44] but um that was used during the Vietnam war against prisoners and during the course of my career I never encountered it. >> Before we get into some of the other past projects I want to ask something about you. Can you tell me two truths and one lie? >> Two truths and one lie? About my career? >> Just anything. >> About anything? Um At one time I was a licensed pilot.

[31:17] I was the fencing champion of Bahrain. And uh let me think of something else I can say. I got into a terrible terrible fight with Alec Baldwin and the last thing we said to each other was [ __ ] you. >> [snorts] [laughter] >> Kayla, do you have a guess? >> Um I'm going to ask the first one. >> [snorts] >> She said the licensed pilot's a lie.

[31:48] >> Do you want to say? >> What was it? Yeah. >> I was not the fencing champion of Bahrain. I took fencing lessons in Bahrain. >> Damn, that's not one of the most realistic cuz you uh the pronunciation. Okay, that's interesting. >> Alec Baldwin and I hate each other. >> Wait, so you actually got in a fight with Alec? >> Oh, yeah. He's a total [ __ ] >> Tell me about that. >> When I got out of prison a buddy of mine who's an Academy Award winning writer um said that he wanted to do an off-Broadway

[32:18] play based on my case. And he said Alec Baldwin and I have been looking for something to do together for years. And um and uh he said let's get together for lunch the three of us in New York. I said great. I take the train up to New York. Go to this little place on the West Side. And um and my friend says, "Tell him the story about this. Tell him the story about that. Tell him the story this story from Kuwait from your book. Tell So, I'm telling him the stories. He's just sitting there looking at me,

[32:49] listening to the stories. And finally, I said, "Listen, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them." And he goes, "I think you're full of shit." I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "I think you made all this [ __ ] up. I think you're full of shit." I said, "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a liar." And I said, "If you think I'm a liar, then [ __ ] you." And he goes, "Fuck you." I said, "Fuck you." And I got up and I walked out. And my friend's like, "No, no, wait, guys. No, wait. Stop, stop." I was so mad. I walked all the way back to

[33:21] the train station. So, then I don't know, 6, 8, 10 months pass, whatever it is. And my friend and I had come up with this idea for a show. And we had a bunch of pitch meetings set up. So, I flew out to LA, and we pitched it to Fox. And they said, "Nah, you know, it's kind of interesting, but it's not really for us. And maybe if you had somebody important attached to it, you know, it it might be a little bit more palatable." So, we go back to Soho House. He was a

[33:52] member of Soho House. And he said to me, "You know what we need? We need to attach an A-list star." And I said, "Don't even say it." And he said, "He's an A-list star." I said, "All right." So, we go into this little breakout room, and he calls him. He puts him on speaker. And he said, "Alec, I'm here with Kyriacou." And he goes, "What's that [ __ ] want?" And I said, "Yeah, nice to talk to you again, too, Alec." And he says, "Well, John's got an idea."

[34:22] So, I gave him my idea. And he goes, "Actually, that's that's a good idea. You can attach me." So, we attach him. The next meeting was at AMC. And we he he came uh into the meeting on Zoom. And they were like, "Wow, that's a cool idea. We'll take it." I said, "Great." They said, "Have your attorneys call business affairs, and we'll get this thing squared away." Great. Well, like weeks pass, and I haven't heard anything from business affairs.

[34:53] So, I called my attorney, and I said, "Hey, have you heard anything from AMC business affairs?" He said, "Geez, I forgot all about that. Let me call over there." He calls over, and um and they said, "Oh, uh we walked away from that project." And he's like, "Why?" "Oh, Alec Baldwin dropped out, and he he went to do uh some project at HBO. He played uh the CIA director or something like that." So, I called him.

[35:23] And I was like, "You know what?" I said, "Fuck you, Baldwin." I said, "You didn't even have the cooth to call and say, 'I'm going to drop out?'" Just like that, he goes, "Fuck you." And he hangs up on me, and we never spoke again. >> I don't mean to be insensitive, but how's he doing? >> I understand that he's doing better. I'll tell you, when he got arrested, my friend called our friend called me, and he said, "You know, it would probably mean a lot to Alec if you called him and just kind of walk him through this." I said, "Fuck him. I I

[35:54] don't care. I said, he killed that woman. Somebody's got to pay for this. Even if it was an accident, the buck has to stop somewhere." I said, "No, I I'm not calling him." >> That's fascinating, man. Um >> [laughter] >> I'm Yeah. I mean, for the record, I don't consider you to be a liar, but that's just because That's That's solely just an energy thing, you know? It's like you

[36:25] can see people talk online all day, but when you meet them in person, it's a totally different experience. >> agree. Until 1995, the CIA paid people to spy using their minds with project Stargate. >> Correct. >> One operator claimed to have done over 400 psychic missions. Have you ever sat in a Stargate briefing? >> Never sat in a Stargate briefing, but did participate in a in a long session where the subject was under

[36:57] hypnosis. Stargate was weird to me, and that was managed through the Office of Medical Services. I only worked with the OMS, and it wasn't even the physician so much as it it was the psychologists when we needed to use the psychologists operationally to help us get the most that we could out of a source. The Stargate stuff was just so out there. >> Mhm. >> To tell you the truth, I remember saying

[37:28] to a guy, "I don't have time for this. I I need to hear it from the from the source's mouth. I I I can't sit in a room where some guy's going into a trance, you know, looking off into space, and then tells me something that he probably just made up. So, I never I never worked with it. Hypnosis was different. That was I've never seen anything like it before. It it was it was the real deal. >> Have you been hypnotized? >> I've never been hypnotized.

[37:58] Yeah. I I'd like to try. >> a few times. Yeah. >> Yeah, what what Did you know that you were under hypnosis when you were under? >> That's a really good question. Uh A couple times. Yeah. I'd say so. Not every time. Yeah, some people have a really masterful skill when it comes to hypnosis, I would say. Would you say that's the case? >> I never saw anything like it before in my life. I flew out to Europe

[38:31] with a psychologist from the CIA and a guy who is a psychiatrist and a hypnotist, and he was president of the like American Society of Hypnotists or some such thing. We had a walk-in in a different country. And a walk-in is somebody who literally walks into an American Embassy and says, "I have information. I want to see a CIA officer." 95 times out of 100,

[39:03] and I mean that literally, there've been studies done, they're crazy people just walking off the street, and they wanted yell cuz the chip in their tooth is telling them to, you know, kill the prime minister or whatever. And um you say, "Okay, I'm so sorry to hear that." And you write it up and say it's a crazy person. Send it in just so it's on on the system in the system. So, we had this guy come in and he says, "I think I witnessed the aftermath of an assassination." And the assassination was like a major

[39:35] front-page like global assassination. >> [gasps] >> So, we're like, "Okay." We turn him over to the FBI. The FBI says, "He's a nut. We're not interested." But then he said something to me that I thought, "How could he possibly know that?" And what he said was that he was driving down the highway and decided he had to take a leak. So, he pulls off some exit, and the only thing at this exit is a church, and it's

[40:07] just a little teeny tiny chapel. He goes behind the chapel, and there's a big banyan tree you know, with the giant trunk, right? So, he's behind the banyan tree taking a leak. And this van pulls up and two motorcycles pull up. The van pulls a ramp down and they drive the motorcycles into the back of the van and the two guys on the motorcycles get out. The guy who was driving the van says,

[40:37] "Is he still alive?" And one of the motorcyclists says, "He has to be dead by now. It'll be on the news." Well, that was the day of like an hour after this major assassination. That was it. He didn't say, you know, I heard them say, "I did it and my name is, you know, something nutty like that. Mhm. So, we flew him to this other country. We flew out there and met him and I asked

[41:08] him, "What do you want from us?" Cuz clearly he's not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, right? And he says, "My wife has breast cancer. I can't afford treatment. She's going to die. I want her to have cancer treatment in the United States." I said, "Done." So, another case officer and I flew out with a psychologist and the psychiatrist. And um the [clears throat] guy didn't speak any English. So, we translated and

[41:39] we turned all the lights off in the room. He's sitting in a chair like this. The psychiatrist is sitting right behind him. And we're translating, you know, we're we told him, "Put your hand up in the air." And he goes like this. And we're going to count backwards to 10 from 10. And when we get to zero, you're going to be out. And he's like, "Okay." As soon as we get to zero, his hand goes like this. But his arm stayed up in the air.

[42:10] For 4 and 1/2 hours. I never saw anything like it. So I'm asking him, "Can you see the license plate on the van?" And he's he's like this, he goes, "Yes." And I said, "Can you tell me what the letters are?" And he goes, and like reads off the letters. Like he's squinting to look at the plate. I give the numbers to my colleague. He runs into the adjoining room, calls headquarters, they call the station, the station calls

[42:42] liaison, liaison calls back, they says they say it's a stolen plate. I couldn't believe it. It was a stolen plate. So, after 4 and 1/2 hours, we count back from 10 again, and his hand is like this, and we get to zero, and his hand drops down, and he opens his eyes, and he says, "What happened?" And then he goes, and just vomits all over himself. And then runs to the bathroom.

[43:13] And the psychiatrist said, "I've read about this in the literature, but I've never actually seen it happen." And I said, "Do you believe what he said?" And he said, "I believe that he believes what he said." So, it didn't bring us any close to the killers, but in the end, we all came to the conclusion that he was telling the truth. The whole case fell apart later where he got back in touch with us. He triggered this emergency meeting.

[43:44] I met him at this crazy place outside of town, and um and he said he had been kidnapped, but he happened to have a a little recorder in his pocket, and he recorded the kidnapping. And I'm like, "Oh my god, that sounds kind of nuts, but okay, let me have it." So he gives me the recording. And it's him and he goes, "Wait, what are you doing?" And then it's also him saying, "I am kidnapping you.

[44:15] >> [laughter] >> I am the Minister of Interior and I am involved with a terrorist group." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me?" So afterwards I was like, "Listen, you know, you had me for a minute. I believed you. But this >> And this is the same guy from the initial case? >> Yeah, I said I'm offended by this. And he says, "Well, you guys weren't making any progress." And I said, "You can't just call me and say that the Minister of Interior is the leader of the terrorist group that we're after." >> Right. >> With your voice

[44:45] on the tape. >> Just to clarify on this So you're saying that this guy witnessed a major assassination in person? >> He witnessed the aftermath of the assassination. >> So he witnessed that specific. Okay, got it. >> them hiding the the getaway motorcycles. They they shot the guy on motorcycles. >> Mhm. >> Went up over the mountain to the highway, got away, and then put the motorcycles in the van, and then did whatever with them. >> To kind of close the loop on the psychic

[45:17] question and ask about this in general because my takeaway from what you just said is that some people can be under hypnosis and do things that they believe are true or right, say things. >> Manchurian Candidate theory. And that's really That was the whole basis of MK Ultra. You know, it's funny, the way MK Ultra started, we had a source who said that the Russians were doing the same kind of thing, that they were experimenting with remote viewing and ESP and all this

[45:49] stuff. That actually wasn't true. What was true was that the Chinese were doing it. We didn't have any sources in China at the time. And so we were like, "Oh my god, we're behind the eight ball." Mind you, the CIA is just 5 years old at the time. And China had only been communist for 3 years. So, we haven't quite gotten our footing in China by 1952. And so, we panicked. And we were like, "Oh my god, the Chinese are ahead of us." Or I'm sorry,

[46:20] "The Russians are ahead of us. We've got to catch up. Let's make this thing called Well, we'll call it MK Ultra." You know, it's funny, the digraph MK just meant that it was a um scientific operation. Like you can have QR, MB, AR, AL, whatever. And each one means something. It means a a country, it means a domestic operation, it means, you know, terrorism or proliferation or whatever. And then the

[46:51] after the digraph, the word is just ginned up at random by a computer. So, they just picked out of a hat ultra. MK being this experimentation thing, and it became MK Ultra. >> Do you think anyone is actually psychic? Personally? >> My friends are going to laugh at me when I say, "I think some people probably have some sort of abilities that others don't have." Yeah.

[47:22] I'm not saying that I would hang my hat on it or live my life based on it. I had this friend who went to a psychic once, and she told him he was going to live to 88. And he was he started just jaywalking all over the place because he was like, "No, I'm going to live till I'm 88. I'm not going to get hit." I said, "You may live like as a quadriplegic until you're 88." He's like, "I hadn't thought of that." Um But yeah, I think there are probably some people who are more sensitive to these kinds of things than others.
