Title: Yung Flamingo Club: John Kiriakou
Show: Yung Flamingo Club
Date: 2025-09-02
URL: https://anchor.fm/s/4ed344f8/podcast/play/107722899/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-8-2%2F406759437-44100-2-88aabbdc35232.m4a
Duration: 72:00

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[00:19] All right. So it's been a minute, guys, since I think 2022, but we are back. The mics are dusted off and the podcast feed is alive again. And we're coming in strong, actually

[00:50] really strong. Today, we're talking to the one and only John Kuiakiu. And before I go into the interview, we need to further, let's give a shout out to all the FBI and CIA who I'm pretty sure are listening and to and taking notes. Let's make sure their paperwork is interesting, John. And of course, the like, you know, GS15s or whatever, the CIA FBI, if they miss this episode, we know they're already subscribed. So there you go. So, John, let's go. Yeah, this isn't like floating around. I mean, your former CIA officer, whistleblower,

[01:22] author will get into all that. And you were actually arrested by Dupeter Schrock. And, you know, you can't make it up. Honestly, if it were a movie, the final scene wouldn't be like Bond and Monica would be like, John Kuiakiu getting hauled off even before he got to finish his pop at Filomena, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. At Filomena. I like Filomena, too. It's a great spot. Speaking of restaurants and ranking system and things like that. If the question I've always wanted to ask you, if the CIA had a Yelp review system, like what would your honest start rating be? And

[01:55] what would your like review say? Wow. Nobody, nobody's ever asked me a question like that. I would say two stars do not recommend. All in all honesty, in all honesty, especially, especially on the analytic side, you've got a whole bunch of really patriotic, smart people who are human and make mistakes, but who really want nothing more than to serve the

[02:27] country seriously. But then you go over to operation. I know we went wrong a lot of different ways. It was it was operations that steered us wrong. And I mean, from the very, very beginning upon the creation of the CIA operation steered us wrong. It wasn't us. It wasn't up to us to steal the Italian election of 1949. It wasn't up to us to overthrow myriad governments in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn't up to us

[03:01] to murder foreign heads of state or murder anybody for that matter. It wasn't up to us to decide that torture was somehow legal despite the fact that there had been decades of court decisions saying that it was illegal or that what the country needed was a system of secret prisons or an international kidnapping program or the use of a military base on occupied territory where

[03:31] we could take people and do anything we wanted with them because there was no rule of law. The Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House in 1975-1976 got it right when they tried to rein in the CIA. But all Congress could really do was to create the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That was a great move, a great step. But then very quickly, and I mean just between like 75 and 81 or 82, those overseers allowed

[04:07] the CIA to slip back into its old habits of overthrowing governments and killing people. And it just got worse after that. For example, the FBI, the Congress could just shut them down. So when I hear some of these things that are going on that are egregious, why doesn't the Congress just shut them down? They have the power to do that. Either they're scared of them or I don't know. I'll answer that two ways. First, I'll answer it with a short story that I've told before. People probably have heard it. And that was when I got out

[04:39] of prison in 2015, I was invited to a dinner at the Greek Ambassador's residence. And I went to the dinner. It was kind of a large dinner. There were probably 30 people there. And one of them was Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon, who at the time was the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And he walked up to me and he said, hey, welcome home. Oh, we were really worried about you. And I said, oh, thank you, Senator. But Senator, I said, I have to be honest. I was actually pretty disappointed in you.

[05:11] I thought you would stand up for me. And he got angry and he says, look, it took all of my energy just to not lose my security clearance. And that's when I realized that even the overseers are afraid of them. Lose your security clearance. You're the boss. You're the oversight committee Vice Chairman. They should be afraid of you. And it was the opposite.

[05:41] Ultimately, like I think security clearances are like currency and DC. So once they're very much so, right? Exactly. But that goes to my next question is if you had to really describe, you know, the internal CIA culture as much as you can in one word, what would it be? Because I feel like that in itself is just runoff of the CIA culture. In one word, it's incestuous. There's really no other word for it. That's actually an easy question to answer. Listen, you join the CIA. Your entire life is going to revolve around the CIA.

[06:16] You want to play softball? Great. There's a CIA softball league. You want to you want to make a quilt? Not a problem. There's a CIA quilting club. You're LGBTQ? Not a problem. We have the LGBTQ gigantic LGBTQ group. You want to sing, you know, hymns? No problem. Tuesday at seven o'clock, everybody meets in the auditorium to sing hymns. Literally anything you want to do in your life, outside work, you can do it inside the CIA.

[06:47] Number two, the CIA actively encourages CIA romances, because you're both cleared. And you can talk about work and not get in trouble. My first wife was a ballet teacher. That didn't work out, because she had no understanding whatsoever what I was doing all day and all night. My second wife was a CIA officer, and I could tell her exactly what I was doing. You know, there were no, I didn't have to worry about, oh, my next polygraph,

[07:19] they're going to ask if, you know, there was any pillow talk when I revealed a secret. No, because we're both clear. And so the CIA wants you to devote your entire life to it, and to not have outside friends, or outside interests, outside activities. You can do everything internally. You know, it kind of reminds me of the saying, you know, once KGB, always KGB, but I think I was reading, or I've heard somewhere where once you actually joined the CIA, there's no real getting out per se.

[07:51] No, not true. Not true. And I will tell you, and I'm saying this in the friendliest way possible, I think that I get that every couple of times a week, once CIA, always CIA, that is such an intellectually lazy position to just blurt out, blurt out this, this tired, overused, nonsensical phrase. And like I say, I get it a couple of times a week. And I usually tell people, okay, well,

[08:23] I'll be sure to tell Ed Snowden, Ray McGovern, and the sons of Philip Agee that you think that they're all still CIA, you freaking morons. So no, listen, administratively, you can't just walk into HR, resign and walk out. What you do is you walk into HR, you resign, you're put on a leave without pay status for a year. And in that year, if there's an operation that you are uniquely qualified for, they can pull you back in, you do your operation,

[08:57] and then you can resign. Otherwise, no, once CIA, always CIA, no, that's just something for lazy and stupid people to humor themselves with. Okay, just had definitely cleared that up for the audience. And I'm not the lazy and stupid one, I promise. No, no, I know. I know you were quoting it. You were quoting it. I know, I know. No worries. Like, so for you, you've like, you know, when you first like, join the agency, right, which I'm sure like, you know, most people

[09:31] when they first joined, what was the most, I mean, I'm sure you get to the level, what was the most naive belief that you had got? And that was shattered like instantly, or like the first thing that was shattered that you were like, oh, this is going to be different. It was a process for me, actually, there, there was no instant shattering. It was a very slow motion shattering. When I joined the CIA, it was halfway through the George HW Bush. Actually, that's not true. It was a year into the George HW Bush administration. And George Bush had been the CIA director. And so there was this institutional love

[10:05] for George HW Bush. He used to come to the agency and just walk the halls. And somebody would run into the office and say, the president's in the hall, and everybody would run out and just applaud him as he was walking by. It was weird. I mean, I never did, but everybody else did. It was weird. And then when Bill Clinton was elected, he initiated something that's now known as the cull, where, and it wasn't even so much Bill Clinton as it was Al Gore. But they made this policy decision

[10:36] that if you had what they called a problem with human rights in your background, and you were a CIA source, an asset, you were to be fired. The word operationally is terminated, which just means fired. So there were there were a lot of chuckles about that policy. And then sure enough, they started firing people. And in the end, they fired fully one third of the recruited sources in the CIA. And I remember saying to a colleague of mine,

[11:07] I can't believe the White House is serious about this. But they are. They're serious. So if you were like a member of a Salvadorian death squad, and we had recruited you, you were fired. Or if you participated in the murder of those three nuns in Honduras, you were fired. And I thought, wow, things really are changing. And that held through the Clinton administration. There were no real. Go ahead. Well, you know what amazes me? It's like people

[11:39] like Chulabee, right? That are way worse than that. They were. Oh, my God. Arms open, right? So I don't understand why these people that have commuted human rights violations are just terminated. But Chulabee runs around doing all that and it's fine. That's a very good point. Chulabee, for people who don't know, Chulabee was an Iraqi opposition air quotes leader. And the CIA recruited him in 1991 to be sort of the unified head of the

[12:10] of the Iraqi opposition. He was he was terminated in the mid 90s. And beyond termination, the CIA issued something called a burn notice against him, saying that no CIA officer anywhere in the world was permitted to have any contact with him. The reason is that Chulabee was a prolific thief. So not just that he stole reportedly $6 million of the CIA's money and put it in his pockets and bought a townhouse in Mayfair, London, right by Harrods, and bought another house in Geneva.

[12:44] But when he was in Amman, he was raised in Amman, Jordan. He founded something called Petra Bank, and that became the go to bank for Iraqis living in Jordan to save their money. In the end, he stole $36 million. He embezzled $36 million from his own bank. He literally bankrupted every Iraqi in Jordan and then escaped to Syria in the trunk of his secretary's car to then make his way to Geneva and then London. And so the CIA very stupidly went to

[13:20] the King of Jordan said, listen, you know, we know Chulabee's a crook. We know you guys have sentenced him to death and absentia, but we want him to be the president of Iraq. So could you drop the charges and the King drop the charges only because we asked him to. But then he started stealing the CIA's money. And so we cut him off. Now, I would agree with you that that's as bad as anybody with human rights problems in their past. People committed suicide because he

[13:50] stole their life savings from Petra Bank. So how's that any better? It could be wrong, but Chulabee was one of the reasons why Curveball is in existence, correct? They were sort of parallel to one another. Curveball came after Chulabee, well after the CIA's involvement with Chulabee. I was on the seventh floor when Curveball was presented to us by the Germans. And Curveball was telling us literally everything we wanted to hear. Weapons of mass destruction? Yep, they have them.

[14:23] Where are they? I could take you to them and show you exactly where they are. What kind of weapons of mass destruction? All kinds. Chemical, biological, nuclear, they have them all. We're like, oh my God, this is the greatest source ever. So we told the Germans we want to meet this guy, Curveball, and they said, no, no can do. We said, well, we really need to meet him because we need to vet him. His information is so specific. We need to polygraph him and make sure he's telling the truth. Germans said, nope, you can't have access to him. We're not going to give you his real name. You're not going to meet him. In the end, everything he said was made up.

[14:54] And in fact, he was not a source with access to the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. He was a dishwasher in a restaurant. And he would read in the newspapers what it was the CIA was interested in collecting. And then he would just go to the Germans and say, hey, you know, I have this information, you want to pass it to the CIA? Oh, by the way, give me a million dollars. And we were so desperate that we did. And correct me if I'm wrong here. I believe you said he hated the Americans at first, but it turned out he wanted to be an American citizen.

[15:29] Yeah, yeah, that's right. He did it at first because he hated the Americans he wanted to humiliate us. But then the money started flowing so freely. He said, hey, these Americans aren't so bad after all. Everything I tell them, they give me these giant sacks of money. And so in the end, he actually asked if he could emigrate to the United States. And we're like, yeah, you're lucky we don't put a bullet in your head. Yeah, with curveball, I think the next question is obvious. I mean, do you think the agency at this point is better at creating secrets? I mean,

[16:02] I think this is more of kind of like maybe the Germans did that in this situation. But going back to the CIA, are they better at keeping them? That's a tough one. I'm throwing a lot of curveballs at you today. I'm sorry. Yeah, the CIA has very, very deep seated problems. And I think at least in my own personal experience, the biggest of the CIA's problems is its inability to respect the rule of law. And it's also been my experience that the truth always comes out always.

[16:37] Sometimes it takes years or decades even, but the truth always comes out. And so that's something that the CIA institutionally has never really understood, that it might give you satisfaction to set up a torture program, a secret prison program, a rendition program, assassination squads. But the truth always comes out. And so it would be better for the country, for the agency, for the American people

[17:09] to just follow the rule of law. And the CIA won't do it. Well, I mean, at a certain point, do you think these CIA officers are just kind of bored with this mindset? Or can you actually train someone to be an intelligence officer that just obeys the rule of law? Well, it depends. I would say that on the analytic side, for the most part, yeah, most everybody wants to follow the rule of law. Because you're just kind of an intellectual nerd, you sit in your cubicle, you read all the information, you write papers,

[17:45] you give briefings, and then you go home at the end of the day. That's easy. Because your personality type is that is one where you were raised to respect authority. On the operational side, it's exactly the opposite. They're looking for people with sociopathic tendencies. They actually attract sociopaths, people who are very comfortable breaking the law. And that's how we end up with these illegal programs.

[18:18] That's how we ended up in 1975 with Word being revealed that we had tried a half a dozen times to kill Fidel Castro without any presidential authority to do so. Or the CIA is cooperating with the mafia on a half a dozen different operations. Or we're in Africa hiring somebody to kill Patrice Lumumba, for example. Or we're assassinating the president of South Vietnam. It's like it's a natural thing to just pretend

[18:50] the law applies to everybody else, but not to you because you're the good guy. Well, and it's like even if you look just recently, it was 2016, kind of fast-forwarding here, Russia gave, Gina Haspel gave the okay for George Papadopoulos to kind of get honey potted quote unquote by Azra Turk. And again, is that kind of the same exact mindset? Yeah, pretty much. George Papadopoulos is an American citizen. And not only that,

[19:22] he was a albeit lower level campaign official on the Trump campaign. And here the director of the CIA or the woman who became the director of the CIA is is approving an operation against an American citizen. That's so patently illegal. I'll tell you what what should have been done if the CIA were at all interested in following the law is question number one, what's his citizenship? American. He's an American citizenship or a citizen. Turn this over

[19:56] immediately to the FBI. It's their problem. And that's what should have been done. It was never done, but that's what they should have done. Well, and then you have Carter Page, right? Sure. Poor Carter Page. Advice there. Oh my God. And that was even worse than George Papadopoulos, right? It was worse than George Papadopoulos because here's Carter Page, who's an honest guy. Maybe he's in a little bit over his head because he normally didn't operate in those kind of rarefied political circles. And next thing you know, there's a FISA warrant against him.

[20:30] He's never committed any crime. He's not even been incredibly accused of having committed a crime. They get a FISA warrant against him to intercept his communications. It expires without him having committed any crime. And they get it renewed twice, twice. So if the likes of Carter Page don't have constitutional protections, what about the rest of us? They could do that to any one of us. And we have no recourse. But they don't do that for a deal, saliates, lawyer and shop.

[21:02] No, no, no, you're exactly right. They don't do it to that. Exactly right. That's it. That's it. And remember, with FISA warrants, you have no idea that you're being investigated. You have no idea that your communications are being intercepted. No idea that you're being watched, say again. It's a secret court, secret judges. Yes. Yes, it's a secret court. It meets on the seventh floor of the Justice Department. It's proceedings are secret. It's cases are secret. Nobody has any idea what they're doing.

[21:38] Okay. So now you have like these guys like Glenn Simpson, right? Who owns Fusion GPS. Obviously, bad guy, Joseph Miss Food, this mysterious professor. The mysterious Joseph Miss Food. And it just seems to me like, I'm not going to use the word two tier, but it's really selective on how they are going about FISA. Oh, it's a 302. Well, it's very subjective. You may have like said something. Oh, you're going to prison for a process crime now. Exactly. I just think that's so weaponized.

[22:10] Oh my God, listen, there's a famous, there's a famous speech that Robert Jackson, the former attorney general of the United States and later associate justice of the Supreme Court, famous speech that he gave in, I think it was 1940, in which he warned of exactly this. He said that the most powerful person in America is the federal prosecutor. Because the federal prosecutor can order an investigation of any American that he wants.

[22:42] And what he can do is to search the law books for a crime with which to charge any individual in American. Now, a good prosecutor won't do that. A good prosecutor will take the crime and then charge the person, not take the person, decide you don't like him or his politics, and then search the laws for a crime with which to charge him. You mentioned the term process crime a moment ago. I think that's a very important term that all Americans should

[23:14] know about. A process crime is a crime. It's sort of a paperwork crime. For example, the federal law, the foreign agents registration act. What that really is, is failure to fill out an internet form. That's it. Ask Paul Manafort. Ask Paul Manafort, exactly right. Or making a false statement. Okay, listen, I use this one as an example. I get called in to talk to the FBI. I'm trying to be a nice guy about it.

[23:48] I'm trying to be a nice guy about it. So they're making chit chat before we actually start our meeting. And one of them says, Hey, do you like the Washington Commanders? I actually don't like the Washington Commanders. I like the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I say, Oh, yeah, the Commanders are great. I love them. I think they're going to have a great year. Okay, I don't like the Commanders. And I have just committed a crime, a felony and no less. I made a false statement to an FBI agent. I can be punished by up to five years in

[24:20] prison. That's a process crime. Did I, did I cause harm to the national security? Of course not. Is society in need of protection from me? Because I told the FBI agent that I like the Washington Commanders. Don't make me laugh. But that's what a process crime is. And they'll prosecute those crimes. Well, not only that, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong here. 302 is there's no audio. There's no video. It's really subjective. No, right? There is no

[24:52] audio or video with this. And in fact, the Supreme Court has found that an FBI agent's written notes are to automatically be considered as fact. That's been argued all the way up to the Supreme Court. So why in the world is some random FBI agent's word better than mine? Why should his jottings be considered fact when I then have to defend myself as a possible criminal?

[25:24] It's un-American. Well, because when I think about that, and you know, he was kind of running the show in 2016, you have James Comey, McCabe, Schrock, Page, not even, I don't want to mention Brennan, but you know, for the CIA, but these are really scary people that would definitely take things like this, at least in my opinion, to their advantage. Most definitely. They have their own reputations to protect, their own operations to protect. They don't care about you. You're expendable. You can go to prison and nobody in a position of authority is going to

[25:58] miss you. And so, as Americans, we need to be protected from them. Because remember, there is no oversight, not really. Not when the members of the Oversight Committee are afraid of pissing off the CIA and the FBI and losing their clearances for it. Yeah, so people lose their clearance. They're insanely scared to actually say anything about anything. So my question is, what advice would you give someone, let's say, outside the government who wants to hold intelligence agencies accountable in any meaningful

[26:33] way? Like we've been kind of talking about there. I don't think there's any meaningful way in my opinion. No. I think, boy, I hate to say that, but yes, you're correct. There is no meaningful way to do that right now. What we can do, and I'm going to preface this actually by saying, I have a lot of friends in Washington who are activists on different issues. And I actually asked one of them a question, this same question about a week ago. And she said, well, you know, we have to go up to Capitol Hill all the time and complain and lobby and march. And I said,

[27:06] yeah, but that could take decades for any meaningful change. And then realistically, there probably won't be any change. And she said, yeah, that's kind of the dirty little secret of activism, where we're powerless to do anything about it. I mean, do you think at some point with technology going as fast as it is like AI, drone, cyber, do you think that's going to make human spies less important? Or will there always be a place for people on the ground? I think there'll always be a place for people on the ground, but maybe some of this new emerging technology can rid some of the rot.

[27:41] It's possible. I think that human intelligence is always going to be important. Only because, you know, having seen it myself, it's one thing to get an NSA report of a conversation. And in 99% of the intercepts that NSA gets, they only get one side of the conversation. They don't get both sides. So the analysts at NSA have to sort of fill in the blanks and tell us what the whole conversation means. There's nothing that NSA can do that will

[28:18] replace having somebody in the room who can then report back to a case officer. You really need that human intelligence. I'm not saying that human intelligence stands alone. It doesn't in most cases. But it can certainly fill in the blanks where you need them to be filled. Okay, yeah, that does make a lot of sense. And to kind of just get into some recent news,

[28:48] what are your thoughts about John Bolton getting raided by the FBI? You know, on the one hand, I understand people's complaints about lawfare. I was a victim of lawfare myself. On the other hand, the Bolton, the Bolton case is actually clearer to me in that I think most people have forgotten that John Bolton published a memoir in 2020 that he did not get cleared. I mean, he was in negotiations for a long time to get it cleared.

[29:20] But he was in this dispute with the Justice Department at the time, and he decided just to publish the book without the full clearance. Okay, that's a crime. You can't do that. I didn't do it. My first book, it took me nine months to write it. It took me 22 months to get it cleared. And by God, I just toughed it out. And I just kept making the changes that they insisted I make. Well, John Bolton just said, screw that, I'm just gonna publish it and let him sue me.

[29:54] Well, it wasn't a case of being sued. Now he's going to be prosecuted. And he should have thought about that. Right. From what I understand is he does some, for sure, at least some napkins that Trump had wrote on or something that he had took. I think that's one of the things that he had that they were looking for. But what do you think, ultimately, the FBI kind of, not being weaponized per se, but that compared to, let's say, the Mar-a-Lago raid. Do you see any difference?

[30:27] You know, I think I did at the time. And in retrospect, I was wrong. And I don't see a difference. And I will say too that I disagree with you gently on what you just said. I think that the FBI is weaponized. I think it has been for a long time. And just as an example, again, my own personal example, and I'm sorry if I keep bringing this up, but it's, you know, near to my heart. I have received emails from three different FBI agents,

[30:58] apologizing to me for being involved in my prosecution, most recently just a couple of months ago. And they all say the same thing, that it was a political case, that they were ordered to go after me by the Attorney General's office, Eric Holder, and they're sorry that they didn't stand up. But it's very nice to say I was in prison for two years because of it. So I feel like I kind of got screwed. But it also proves to me that the Justice Department and the FBI are

[31:31] weaponized. Well, for example, Eric Holder did Vassiviferias. He didn't go to jail. Exactly. That's the best example. Vassiviferias is the best example. I know a guy I've been corresponding with him and in touch with his parents for two or three years now. He was arrested in the Vassiviferias case only because he wouldn't sell weapons to the Mexican cartels and was prosecuted and charged with gun violations. He didn't commit any violations of the law and he

[32:08] was sentenced to life without parole. First time nonviolent offense caught up in Vassiviferias. He's the only person in Vassiviferias to go to prison. And he said the FBI kept coming and threatening him saying we're going to take away your gun license, your sale license, if you don't sell these weapons to the cartels. And he's like, are you crazy so the cartel can come and kill me and my family? I'm not doing it. I'm not working with you guys. Next thing you know, he's the one under arrest. And then the Justice Department recommended 10 years in prison

[32:42] and this good old boy, southern judge, Reagan Appointee, gave him life without parole. And so I see some parallels there since Vassiviferias, he's the only one that goes to jail. And then you release the truth, then you're the only one that goes to jail. Yes. Yes, indeed. Nice system we have. Yeah, it's interesting kind of, you know, I guess it's not funny, but it is interesting just how it works. I mean, I guess, you know, when you think of the word like deep state, right, everyone

[33:13] uses that term, I think it's thrown around a lot. And it's, I'm just gonna ask, I think it's been misused politically, I think to a degree, but from your perspective, what does that like, what does the deep state really mean? And like, who is it? Sure, you know, I say all the time, there really is a deep state. It's not a big secret. You don't have to call it the deep state. If you don't want, you can call it the state. You can call it the federal bureaucracy. There's no secret about it. But what it is, is people involved in federal law enforcement and the national security who

[33:50] just simply don't answer to anyone. And, and I mean, even to presidents in that, let's say you're the president of the United States, you order the CIA or the rest of the intelligence community to do something, they don't want to do it. They know that you're going to be out of office in a couple of years. They know that presidents come and go. And so they're going to just ignore you until you go away. That's what the deep state is.

[34:21] It's the national security state with no real oversight and no real counterbalance to their power and authority. It's these permanent bureaucracy that gets subway for lunch every day that just hate everybody. That's the deep state. That's exactly what it is. There is a subway in the CIA food court. And yeah, those are the people, like I say, presidents come and go every four years, every eight years. But there are people at the CIA who have been there for 30,

[34:52] 35, even more years. I met a guy, I'm not, I met a guy, I worked with a guy. He was the national intelligence officer for warning. He's supposed to be the early warning analyst. He got an age waiver when I was there. He had been in the CIA for 42 years. And I mean, going back to the Kennedy administration, well, that's not true, to the tail end of the Eisenhower administration. So presidents come and go, and this guy is still there.

[35:25] Yeah, 10 times longer than, you know, a one-time president. So what's right? That's basically all you need to know. He's, it's so much subway and he's there forever. And again, a little kind of lighter question. What do you think of the pizza tracker on Twitter, if you're familiar with that? Since we're talking about subway, I figured this is a good time to bring that up. Yeah, I know what to think of it. It could be. It probably isn't. People are probably being a little too cautious. But

[36:00] you know, in this day and age, who's to say? We don't, we don't know. I'll point you though to to an article that was in the New York, on the front page of the New York Times yesterday, Sunday, the 30th of August. And it said that Iranian political and military leaders and nuclear scientists were so worried about being tracked by the Israelis that they,

[36:33] they had forgotten their cell phones, right? They didn't want the Israelis to be able to track their cell phones so that they could be targeted and killed. And it's the same thing with the pizza tracker. But what did the Israelis do? The Israelis just simply tracked the cell phones of their bodyguards. The bodyguards never gave up their cell phones, only the scientists did. And so the Israelis tracked the bodyguards, fired the missiles at the bodyguards' locations and killed everybody.

[37:05] So listen, with intelligence, anything's possible. We know thanks to the Vault 7 revelations that the CIA can take control of your car remotely by hacking into the car's computer. Why would they do that? Yeah, exactly. And why would they do that? They would do that to kill you. They would do that to drive you off a bridge. You know, maybe they don't like what you're working on. Maybe you're writing something that's embarrassing to them. So who knows? And it's fascinating because they just had a bill come across the floor talking

[37:38] about kill switches and stuff. That has been around forever. Kill switch or not. That's right. That's right. So exactly. If you had to describe, you know, culture, I guess really in one word, at least when you worked at the CIA, what would that be? Because I know now there might be tons of things people might say, but at least in the early 2000s, after September 11th in particular, what would you sum it up and just like what was the culture? Like I know everyone kind of was, you know,

[38:11] brah-rah America at that time, but just overall. But it was angry and vengeful. The conversations were not about how do we infiltrate al-Qaeda to disrupt the next attack. The conversations were how do we locate al-Qaeda's leaders so we can either fire missiles at them or send in assassination squads to kill them? Oh, and by the way, if we kill everybody else in the building, tough luck for them. And so, you know, I know your story about Abbi Zabeda

[38:50] and these folks just really at that point didn't care. But there's my question. So they knew Osama bin Laden was that tour bore, right? Apparently. Yes. Accordingly, allegedly. Yeah, he was. He was a tour bore. Yeah. So I had never got a clear answer as to why then we didn't get them done. Well, I can tell you why. I can tell you why, because that was a sent com operation, central command. General, I forget his name was in charge and the al-Qaeda leadership was

[39:20] on tour bore mountain and we told them that we were going to liquefy that mountain if they didn't give up. And so the sent com translator, it turned out had al-Qaeda sympathies. And so he was translating the messages from sent com to al-Qaeda saying give up, give up, give up. And al-Qaeda sent back a message saying, saying, we'll give up at dawn, but we want to get our women and children out first. Will you agree to that? And sent com agreed to let the women and

[39:53] children go. Well, they all escaped. Everybody escaped into Pakistan that night. And so when the sun finally came up at dawn and it was time for al-Qaeda to give up, there was nobody on the mountain. They had all escaped. And that's including Osama bin Laden. Including Osama bin Laden, who we later learned escaped in the bed of a pickup truck dressed as a woman. Yeah, that's just, that's obviously unbelievable. Yeah. One of the first times I'm hearing that.

[40:24] And I guess to the next point, kind of fast forwarding here, I think we've been hearing a lot about A.G. Pam Bondi launching a grand jury probe into the Obama event. And, you know, D.N.I., healthy Gabbard has came along and said she made a referral about the manipulation of Russia 16 probe. And like, what is that feeling like of the intelligence world when politics and the legal system intersects? I mean, I guess what I'm really getting at, do you think Obama, they're talking about maybe there's a grand jury happening with Obama? What do you think is going to come? I say nothing, but like there's nothing. Yeah, nothing in terms of Barack Obama,

[40:59] thanks to Donald Trump, because, you know, Trump with all of his, with all of his, the accusations that had been leveled against Trump, you know, he took it all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled that you can't charge a former president for actions taken as president. So Barack Obama, nothing, literally nothing is going to happen to him. He's going to get off scuff. If you get John Brennan. I'm hoping it's more than theoretical. John Brennan committed crimes.

[41:30] Yes. Allegedly, allegedly. Allegedly. Yes. Allegedly. They look like crimes to me. Now, in the beginning, you may recall, when I say the beginning, I mean, like a month ago, you may recall that the initial allegation was lying to Congress. He and Jim Comey had allegedly lied to Congress. That's a misdemeanor. And it's not punishable by jail time. But when the grand jury was seated a couple of weeks ago, word leaked out that it was actually more than just lying to Congress. They were talking about

[42:06] John Brennan actively trying to block Donald Trump from assuming the presidency in January of 2017. That can be construed as a very serious national security crime. Sedition? Sedition? Espionage? Lots of crazy shit falls under the Espionage Act now. So who knows? I remember you, I think you were maybe saying something about this door that the FBI had found without a knob. And well, anyways, Cash Patel had found it.

[42:38] I didn't say that. Oh, okay. It wasn't you. But I heard that Cash Patel found a bunch of burn bags. I think you knew that, right? The FBI found a bunch of burn bags. In Brennan's house? No, not in Brennan's house. But Russi Gates still trying to really interfere with Trump. They found a bunch of burn bags, the FBI did. And some of that Tulsi Gabbard's releasing. And I think that is kind of what they're going off to my understanding. But that's fascinating. Like I said, a few weeks ago, if you had asked me this question,

[43:09] I would have said that, well, you know, I'm glad people are looking at John Brennan. He deserves to be looked at, but I don't think anything is going to come of it. Now a couple of weeks later, I'm thinking, well, maybe I'm wrong. If a grand jury is serious about this, then an indictment may come out. Whether it is prosecuted, let alone successfully prosecuted is a different issue. I will say that I was sorry to see that the grand jury is seated in Washington because Washington, I mean, Donald Trump got 7% in Washington.

[43:42] And that's where all the J6 people were prosecuted and received these draconian sentences. And it's because most Washington voters who become jurors are happy to come down like a ton of bricks on the Trump people, but on the Obama people, I'm not so sure. If that grand jury had been seated in the Eastern District of Virginia, it would have been different. Everyone works for the federal government on those juries. Exactly. Or even if they don't work for the federal government, they work for government

[44:14] contractors. Yeah. Think of like Michael Sussman, right? He didn't get charged because his daughter played soccer with someone else at Perkins Cooey or something. So it's all like that. Exactly right. It's so incestuous. It's embarrassing. And then you have to explain this to foreign nationals and they just shake their heads like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, when you first, I guess, you know, I guess I go this way. When you first joined, right? And let's say you had like a whistleblower class or something where people came to you

[44:50] and said, Hey, I have something I really need to tell someone, you know, am I covered under whistleblower protections? Right. What would you have to say to that person? Because obviously you were told you should have been covered under whistleblower protection after everything I've read. I should have been. I don't know. I tell people the same thing. Hire an attorney first. Hire an attorney before you ever open your mouth. And let me give you an idea of how things should work. I've actually never told this story. But when I was stationed in Bahrain,

[45:22] I was the economic officer at the American Embassy in Bahrain. And the ambassador asked me, as he frequently did, he asked me to take notes in his meeting with the foreign minister. So we go to the foreign ministry, we meet with the minister. The relationship was very, very close, lovely guy. And we went through all of our talking points. And then the ambassador asked me, is there anything that I missed? And I said, Nope, you hit everything. And then the foreign

[45:56] minister says, Well, I have something for you. And he says, the former ambassador here during the Reagan administration came back last week, which we did not know. And when he came back, he was going from Rich Bahraini to Rich Bahraini asking for donations in cash for the Bob Dole for President campaign. That is a massive violation of federal law. And

[46:28] the ambassador said, Well, I hope nobody gave him money. And the minister says, No, I mean, even we know about US election law, we, we told him that this was inappropriate. And we asked him to leave. So the ambassador and I get back in the car. And he says, Listen, that last thing, let's not put that in the cable, the reporting cable back to state. And I was like, Oh, okay. So I thought about it and thought about it. Sorry, go ahead.

[47:01] No, go ahead. I'm sorry. I thought about it a lot. My tour ended. I go back to CIA headquarters and it's still kind of bothering me. So I look up the law, the law is clear. This is a violation of the law. So I called the general counsel's office at the CIA and I said, Listen, six months ago, I was in this meeting and I told them the story. And they said, Ooh, that's illegal. And I said, Yeah, I thought so. And they said, We'll write up a crimes report. And so they wrote up a crimes report. They asked me to go to the general counsel's office

[47:36] and sign an affidavit. And as I was leaving, the attorney said, Oh, by the way, you're protected by the federal whistleblower protections. It had never occurred to me that this was a form of whistleblowing. I just said, Okay, protected. Like, why would I be protected? I didn't do anything wrong. And then that was it. Now in the end, literally nothing came of it. There was no grand jury. There was no charge. There was wasn't even an investigation. They just decided not to do anything about it. But I had done the right thing.

[48:07] That's what you should be able to do. Just go to the general counsel's office, speak your piece, get protection in writing, and then let the Justice Department do its thing. But that's not how the system works in the United States. The system's broken. And it's been broken for a very long time. Well, this is kind of the next story I wanted to get into, because, you know, you're a patriot, some people, I think Tucker Carlson even called you a Boy Scout, but when the FBI, since they couldn't get you on espionage and Eric Holder just said,

[48:38] you know, or I think Brennan actually told Eric Holder just get him on espionage. Yeah. Charge him with espionage. Charge him any way and make him defend himself. Right. So what ends up happening, you know, as far as I understand from listening to you, is they set you up at a sushi restaurant or something. It's a Japanese FBI agent that speaks Farsi, and he's trying to get you, right, guests, give him money or something. Yeah, right. So that was going to basically be espionage. That's how they're going to get you.

[49:11] Yeah, they wanted to charge me with espionage, but they couldn't, because I hadn't committed espionage. And so they were trying to trick me to entrap me into committing actual espionage. But every single time I would meet with this guy, who I thought was a Japanese diplomat, but was really an FBI agent, I would go straight back to the office and I would write a memo and I would send it to the FBI. And it frustrated them. We ended up getting, getting discovery in which

[49:45] this Japanese American FBI agent wrote to Peter Strock and said, recommend terminating this operation. He's clearly not going to take the bait. And then they charged me with espionage anyway and had to drop the charges. Right, they didn't, but they knew you weren't ever going to take the bait. Even your last meal with him, I believe it was that fellow Mina, they knew you weren't going to take the bait. Yep, yep, that's exactly right. But they kept trying. We're going to play a little game, John. I don't think anyone's ever done this before,

[50:17] but we'll start the nuts and bolts and the spy craft itself and, you know, all the glamorous stuff is whatever. So we're going to start with mice. So of the four levers, money, ideology, coercion, ego, which one has actually produced for you reliable sources? And no, I'm not talking about Brian Stolter. Which one was a disaster every time as well? I think that's another good question in my head. For me personally, pride. All right, now the curve ball. Pride. Okay, pride. So that meaning like you have maybe a

[50:54] kid's sick or something? No, I mean, people have, people close to me have said to me occasionally, you are an arrogant son of a bitch. You need to tone it down. And I said, the last time a friend said this to me, I said, you know what? I know. And I know it's a weakness. But I feel so strongly that I'm right and they're wrong that I just can't stop talking about it. Do you throw the same way now? I do. I do. Listen, I say all the time, and this may sound a little bit hard. My detractors at the CIA when they die

[51:29] and their obituaries are written. Their obituaries are going to say that they were instrumental in creating a torture program, a torture program where we tortured human beings, many of them innocent of any crime and none of whom had ever been charged with a crime. How many people went through this? I'll pay it. It's impossible to say they won't tell us. But then what they have done in the meantime is to repeat the lie over and over and over again that torture was not torture,

[52:08] that torture was legal, that torture was necessary, that torture saved American lives, hoping that it sticks. And that's the only way that they can save their reputations. And this torture was supposed to get actionable insights, which it never really did. Never. No, never. It simply didn't work. It really is as simple as that. It didn't work. And I think one of the things you said that, you know, I know you hate admitting it, but the FBI was way better at interrogating terrorists. Way, way better. Way better.

[52:43] They've been interrogating prisoners since 1945 in advance of the Nuremberg trials. They're really good at it. So, for example, when we first started catching al-Qaeda fighters, in Pakistan, I had only been there a few weeks and we started doing raids, headquarters said, go ahead and do the interrogations yourself. And I wrote back and I said, I've never taken an interrogation class. And they said, oh, you know what to do, just go ahead and do it. So, I mean, it's-

[53:14] Okay. Sicking Abu Zubaydah in a coffin full of cockroaches? I know, right? It's unbelievable. Exactly. Okay. So, then that's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. So, walk-in, how often did a so-called quote-of-quote walk-in turn out to be actually, you know, great or gold, as I'm saying, versus just like a total disaster? Yeah. Because I spoke both Greek and Arabic, I was almost always the designated walk-in

[53:45] officer. And I'm going to say I probably had over the course of my career, 60 or 70 walk-ins, and one was the real deal. And the other one, we're just trying to get intel of the place, right? One was trying to get intel on the place, and the others were crazy people. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And so, Moscow rules. So, everyone knows about the Moscow rules, and so what was the one unspoken rule you personally lived by, I think?

[54:18] Wow, unspoken rule. Yeah, that's okay. Unspoken rule that I lived by. You know what? The security officer that I was friendly with told me in the very beginning of my career just has a rule of thumb, not to do anything that I wouldn't be proud to see on the front page of the Washington Post. And I think that's probably the rule that I lived by.

[54:52] Yeah, and obviously you did, which is amazing, John. So, let's talk about Blue Border. What was the real significance of a Blue Border memo, status symbol, or was it just the fork at all? No, no, a Blue Border report, the Blue Border, Red Border, Black Border. These are controls, not classification, but controls that are above top secret. So, let's say that you're doing a set, let's say that you've got a source who is, and I'm just going to make this up for the purpose of the explanation. This is not, I'm not admitting to any kind of operation. But let's say we've got a source who is

[55:30] Vladimir Putin's personal secretary, right? So, job number one is to keep this person safe and alive. So, whatever he gives us is going to be so well protected, so deeply secret and well controlled that only a half a dozen people inside CIA headquarters are going to have access to it, like the director, the deputy director, the executive director,

[56:01] the deputy director for operations, and his deputy, and the person receiving the cable. And then you can only brief it to the president, the vice president, and the national security advisor. Nobody else has access to it. That's a Blue Border report or Black Border. Red Border is slightly less like insanely protected. Maybe a dozen or a dozen and a half people are going to have access to that. But most simply, they are controls

[56:34] above the classification of top secret. Now, we just talked about Blue, let's talk about Red. Red Cell, right? So, did Red Cell actually challenge any anyone's assumptions or was that just like a post 9-11 branding exercise, you think? Yeah, no, that's two different things. So, Red Border and Red Cell, yeah. So, every few years they would have a Red Cell. Can I always hate it, those Red Cells? Only because people thought they were so smart and

[57:06] so cutting edge and they weren't. They're like, well, we're trying to think outside the box. Okay, I hate that phrase. But, okay, that's fine. But you can't just make shit up and then offer that up as your analysis. You know, it's like, well... So, would they call it Knuckle Draggers, I guess? No, no. The Knuckle Draggers were the ops guys who didn't recruit anybody. They would just go out and kill people. Got it. And you hate the Red Cell, right? Yeah, because that's just from the movies. Nobody actually uses that.

[57:37] Yeah. But the Red Cell, let me give you an example. Okay. Let's say the Saudi Royal Family, but you want to do some cutting edge analysis on the stability of the Saudi Royal Family. So, can the Saudi Royal Family be overthrown? If so, who would do it and how do we help them remain in power? You appoint a Red Cell. And the Red Cell comes up with different analyses. Well, what I would hate is that

[58:12] one of the analysts thinking they were thinking so outside the box would say that, you know, the UFO people come down from the sky and they overthrow the Royal Family. How do we deal with that? It's like, yeah, that's not going to happen and you're an idiot. So we're not going to consider that. So that's what my question is, do they ever use RAND for some of these outside the box thinking things? Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. Yeah. And not just RAND, but any number of think tanks, commercial or otherwise.

[58:44] All right, I'm going to hit you with another one since we're talking about out of the box. We're going to talk about Jack in the Box. Was the Cold War Jack in the Box myth ever used in your time or was that just a Cold War myth? Yeah, yeah, it was just Cold War. Yeah, so much changed with the Church and Pike committees that a lot of that stuff just fell by the wayside. So we're going to get in the trade cap now a little bit. I think this is too crazy. So we'll talk about brush pass. Was a brush pass ever as smooth in real life

[59:16] as it looks like in the movies? Yes, it has to be. It has to be or you're going to get caught. Yeah, definitely. We practiced brush passes until we could do them in our sleep. Yeah. And then even after I left the agency and I was teaching a surveillance and surveillance detection class at George Washington University, we practiced brush passes with the students and the students who were doing surveillance never saw me make the pass.

[59:51] That is actually, well, you're good, obviously. Everybody was that good on brush passes. You had to be. That said, though, just kind of speeding it along to like fast forwarding. You use those same skills to say, hey, there's a bunch of people out front that are the FBI looking at my house, right? Yeah. They were horrible at following you and I think you said- Yeah, but in retrospect, in retrospect, I think they wanted me to see them because they thought that was intimidating. Really? Yeah. What do you think about one-time pads? So I think by

[1:00:28] your era, was that a thing? We didn't use one-time pads, but a lot of our adversaries did. And so if we were working on developing a source inside an enemy, let's say an enemy embassy, and they offered to bring out a one-time pad, we would say, oh, no thanks. We're not interested in that. And so for like DIs, did you ever see a real divide between analysts and DI and field officers, or did the two sides kind of rely on each other more than like people assume

[1:01:00] actually? Yeah, I did not see great disagreements between the two sides, but keep in mind too, when I first started at the agency, there was a Chinese wall between the analysts and the operations people. Analysts were not permitted to have access to any of the operational cables. And the operations people really didn't care about what the analysts were working on. After 9-11, everybody was merged. And so everybody had access to everything. The analysts are sitting next to the ops people. The ops people would say, hey, I'm going to meet with source,

[1:01:34] you know, AB air filter, and AB air filter, you know him. He's this guy. What do you think I should ask him? That would never, ever have happened before 9-11. And now it's commonplace. And I think after 9-11 too, obviously, Syria is not supposed to operate domestically in any way, but I think maybe you said it. They sometimes go to a, you know, patriotic business man that goes to China a lot or something. Well, that's different. What you're describing is something

[1:02:08] that the National Resources Division does. Yes. So I'm glad you brought that up actually, because that's important. So the CIA is forbidden by law from operating on U.S. soil clandestinely. Normally, if they're involved in an operation, it's in support of something that the FBI is doing. And conversely, the FBI doesn't operate independently overseas. They have to do it in support of something that the CIA is doing, or if it's directly related to law enforcement,

[1:02:38] like capturing a fugitive, for example. Here in the United States, the CIA has something called the National Resources Division. And the National Resources Division is a group of CIA officers who do not work clandestinely. Their job is to call up, you know, officers of big companies, anybody who has gone to what we call a denied area, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, whatever, and say, hey, I'm so-and-so from the CIA. I know you just got back from Cuba.

[1:03:13] Can I come by your office and ask you a couple of questions? So you have to be honest. You have to say you're CIA officer. And almost nobody ever says no, because they're patriots and they want to do the right thing. And everybody's happy. No, no, no. They're actually, in my experience, I only did that like twice over the course of my career, where I called an N.R. officer and said, hey, you got somebody in your area that

[1:03:46] that just went to, you know, Iraq, let's say. And I'd like to interview them. And so the N.R. officer would call the executive and they're thrilled that they could do something that's, you know, kind of clandestine and fun. And it's exciting. And then they could tell their friends over drinks. The CIA came to talk to me. It's so cool. So that, that was always easy.

[1:04:18] And just quickly here, we're speaking about ground game, CIA. I'm going to kind of get into the massage here. And I was listening to a PBD and he was saying that massage just does it better than the CIA, at least the ground game. I mean, do you do you agree with that 100% or? Well, no, it's apples and oranges. He and I actually talked about that and I gently disagree with them. The reason why the Mossad is so effective is because they have literally no laws that they have to live by. You know, you want to, you want to go

[1:04:49] after a Palestinian, you just go to the guy's house and put a bullet in his head. And that's not, that's not intelligence collection. So yeah, sure, sure, the Mossad is great. You look at this cell phone and pager operation. As I've said before, war crime, definitely. But oh my God, it was brilliant. The planning that had to go into this long term planning over the course of years, where they have to control the entire supply chain. Absolutely incredible.

[1:05:24] But the CIA could never do that because there are so many moving parts. We're not as live as the Mossad is and the Mossad doesn't have to respect any law. Any law at all. No, they do anything they want in the name of national security. So if I'm thinking correctly, the Mossad did that Operation Grim Beeper where some of those radios were going back to 10 years. So it does right. Those laws never apply to them.

[1:05:57] So that's not something the CIA can technically do. Although I'm saying I did the torture program and all that stuff, but Mossad does it just consistently. So that is how they can get maybe a leg up. Yeah, yeah, they do it consistently. Yeah. Yeah, obviously I'm going to tread lightly here on the Israeli Gaza situation here. What do you think is ultimately going to end up happening? I kind of have a theory, but I would obviously like to hear from an expert like yourself. It's not good.

[1:06:32] I'm going to give you two answers. What I hope happens is that cooler heads prevail on both sides. There are some kinds of negotiations that go on and we can try to get this thing behind us. What I think is going to happen is that the Israelis are going to continue committing what really amounts to genocide and ethnic cleansing. The United States is going to do

[1:07:04] nothing to stop them. And in the end, there won't be any Palestinians in Gaza. When that happens, the Israelis then turn their attention to the West Bank and it just keeps getting worse from there. And taking some parts of Syria, obviously, and this is the whole, the greater Israel plan. And do you think a part of their calculus is like, look, we're losing the boomers, the younger generation. We have 10 years maybe of this US relationship. Yeah, yeah. Right. I'm genuinely worried, genuinely worried about all this. And one of the reasons why I worry is because

[1:07:38] as much as many of the Arab states want to help the Palestinians, they can't because to open their borders to allow refugees in would further the Israeli's policy of ethnic cleansing. So they would just strike for example Jordan. Yeah. I mean, half the population of Jordan is Palestinian. Yeah. So I mean, that is what's scary about it. Because in my theory is this,

[1:08:10] they have a calculation. They say, look, 18 to 35 year olds, they are not liking what we're doing. They see it's 4K. We're looking at the videos. People that are watching Fox News because they don't know how to listen to podcasts. They just know how to use remote control. Those are based and they don't want to be rude, but they're dying out quickly. So I think their calculus 10 years and then we can, that's all we have. So we have to really step it up as much as we can in those 10 years. And then my next question is after that 10 years, is Israel, I mean,

[1:08:42] you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think they've ever really been a ally to the US to begin with. They've over spying on us and like the Lockheed plans. They found like 80. Totally agree. You know what I mean? It's really special. It's a special relationship, right? That's what they always say. Special relationship. We agree. Yes. It's a very much a one-sided relationship that we just accept. Well, why do you think that is? I totally agree. Honestly, I hate to say it, but we cannot underestimate the strength, power and authority of

[1:09:13] APEC. You know, they spend so much money in American campaigns that our politicians just line up to support the Israeli government. Whether what it's doing is right or wrong or illegal or illegal or whatever it is, they can do anything they want. We just accept it. And then they come to you and go, oh, do you want to come to a all paid for, you know, trip to the wall? And that's how APEC gets you. And I think the only person that didn't take APEC money,

[1:09:44] I think. Yeah, just about everybody takes it. And I'll tell you, on my very first, in my very first week on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, the APEC guys came around like they always do and said, hey, welcome to Capitol Hill. Like I'd never worked on Capitol Hill before. Hey, we want to offer you an all expenses paid trip to the Holy Land. And I was

[1:10:16] like, oh, no thanks. I said, I can pay for my own vacations. And they said, oh, no, we'll give you an all expenses paid trip and a tour of all the holy sites and blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, no, thank you. Well, everybody else on the staff went. I didn't go because I don't want to be in, I don't want to be beholden to the Israelis. And so, you know, I said no. Everybody else

[1:10:49] said yes. And from what I hear from Thomas Masser, what he said is everyone is an APEC guy which is crazy to me. I didn't hear him say that really. He was on Tucker Carlson and he goes, so if somebody's running ads against you, another US Congress person will be like, you know what, I'll talk to my APEC guy and we'll tone the ads down. He said I was the only person without an APEC guy. That is very interesting. I missed that. It is fascinating. Just to think it's

[1:11:25] that powerful where, you know, since he's in Kentucky, right, so if they're running ads saying, hey, he's a bad guy or whatever, he can, you know, when Dan can come up to him and go, you know what, I'll talk to my APEC guy. We'll tone those ads down. I'm sorry about that because we got along on this bill or whatever. Yeah, not cool at all. I don't like that one bit. And they don't have to follow fire as far as I know. No, they don't. And see, that's a real bone of contention. How is that even possible? I know, right? Because they say that they are not doing anything in support of any foreign government. They are just representing the

[1:11:59] interests of pro-Israeli Americans, which of course is utter complete total nonsense. But they've gotten away with it for all these years. Yeah, and I think they're going to continue for the next 10 years. Well, all right, John, I think you've been wonderful because I think I'm on the verge of getting us both in trouble. That's like sad now. Yeah, gotta get an email, some weird email. I feel, well, look, I think that's a wrap for this episode. I hope the people from the FBI and CIA that were listening in too got what you needed and you took some really good notes.

[1:12:32] And look, John, I would love to have you back at some point. My pleasure. I have a new question for you. It was such a pleasure having you on. Pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, John. Bye-bye. Bye.
