Title: ScheerPost
Show: ScheerPost
Date: 2023-10-08
URL: https://youtu.be/aMBuTzzYChY
Duration: 49:00

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[00:00] hey this is Diego Ramos and after a bit of a Hiatus involving unfortunate illnesses for each of the journalists for sale host we're back and with a massive guest uh my co-host Max Jones and I welcome former CIA analyst and uh torture program whistleblower John kiraku after a much needed reminder of the history of the torture program following the latest 911 anniversary on the sheer intelligence podcast which will link below uh we wanted to ask John about the state of the media's uh relationship with whistleblowers and

[00:31] taking the case of The Intercept controversial handling of uh multiple whistleblower accounts as a shining example of the eroding ethics and competence uh of Journalism within the United States uh John takes us through his personal history with the media shedding wisdom on where we're at in the grasps of the National Security State and uh yeah and make sure to like comment and subscribe to help us fight the algorithm and enjoy hi John thanks so much for joining joining us happy to do it thanks for inviting me of course

[01:04] um so just to kind of start off maybe a little more broadly uh I kind of just want to get your read on the state of the media and the First Amendment since it's clear that the media is compromised to an extent and there's a growing Reliance of using the government as a source for information about you know really important um issues regarding war and and and you know all all types of very important um stuff and there's sort of a bigger trust as well in the government where you know you'll you'll have Outlets exclusively relying on you

[01:35] know Anonymous sources and and a government officials uh but in general do you feel like the media can still be a safe haven for whistleblowers and or should other means of disclosing information be taken um similar to maybe Wikileaks is a system of anon of an anonymous Dropbox or any sort of kind of innovative way wow that's a that's a good good and powerful question actually I'm glad that you started off with it because I think that you've cut right to the

[02:06] chase so the the quick answer is um looking at the media overall I I do not think that the media in general can be trusted uh especially with National Security information um you know time was where where you could go to the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times and and um your identity would be protected while your information was being vetted and if that information was determined to be in the

[02:37] National interest it would be published just like Daniel ellberg did or just like um the uh the what do they what do we call them now the the burglar did uh with information related to the uh Vietnam War and I'm sorry to say that we really can't do that anymore with the media for a variety of reasons first of all many in the media are very very closely tied to the intelligence community and especially to the CIA and

[03:07] the CIA is forbidden by law from recruiting American journalists they have been since 1975 but they do the next best thing they cultivate journalists by giving them proprietary leaks um not even to say that those leaks are necessarily true but they're spun as being true so they have preferred journalists that they go to uh one that immediately comes to mind is David Ignatius at the uh at the Washington Post another is kend delanian

[03:40] at NBC News and we can talk about him in more uh depth later he's formerly of the Los Angeles Times and uh you know this the CIA will give them a story will give them a a leak in some cases will give them access to classified information knowing that they're going to spin it in a pro CIA way and get the CIA side of the story out there that's an authorized leak that is just as illegal as an unauthorized leak of course but it's never ever prosecuted because it's

[04:13] official it's an official leak as if that weren't bad enough you've got situations like well let's say the situation at The Intercept you know the intercept was supposed to be sort of a Back to Basics independent investigative Outlet uh that was not uh was not in the pay of any organization that didn't owe any favors to anybody and could be truly independent and if anything the reverse

[04:45] of that is true the the interet might be independent maybe maybe not um I I tweeted something a couple of years ago and I meant it literally I said I tweeted at the intercept and I said something like are you guys really that stupid or are you in the pay of the FBI serious question I said because in my view nobody could be as stupid when it comes to National Security whistleblowing as The Intercept

[05:15] has been and what I mean is this uh The Intercept has been responsible The Intercept or or journalists from The Intercept have been responsible for putting five National Security whistleblowers in prison and I'll give you just a couple of examples uh one was reality winner reality winner was a a skilled linguist at NSA she was a member of the US Air Force and uh she believed that she had uncovered evidence that um that Donald

[05:47] Trump had been duped by the Russian government in the runup to the 2016 election whether that was true or not is irrelevant for this story what's relevant was she came across a a an analytic product written by NSA classified at the secret level so there were no sources and methods in it but it was classified she believed that it proved that that Donald Trump had committed a

[06:17] crime and her chain of command wouldn't do anything about it so she on her own took this document and she sent it to uh the intercept using their encryption key that they had on their website now this went to two journalists at The Intercept two journalists who build themselves as National Security Specialists one was Matthew Cole and the other was Richard Esposito um what did they do with that

[06:48] classified document they immediately emailed it back to NSA and said hey we just received this can you confirm that it's an actual NSA document now if you are a national security journalist you would know of course that anytime somebody from NSA CIA FBI or a handful of other National Security organizations prints a document your employee identification

[07:20] number is embedded in the document in the period at the end of a sentence or in the dot of an ey right it'll say John kirak to 21689 91 in a period at the end of a sentence you can't see it unless you look at it on microscope but they sent this document back to NSA they immediately identified the source as reality winner they waited until the intercept published the piece and 40 minutes after they published the article

[07:50] reality winner was under arrest and charged with Espionage Now The Intercept did the exact same thing with an FBI agent from the FBI's uh Min Minneapolis field office he had he had come across an FBI an internal FBI memo uh that admitted that the FBI was probably guilty of racism in promotions

[08:21] what he did is he took out his cell phone and he took a photograph of the memo on his screen and sent it to the intercept The Intercept sent it back to the FBI hey is this an actual FBI uh memo they could tell from the picture that The Intercept had sent them that it was a photograph of the memo taken from the screen of a computer so what they was that the same was were those the same journalists same two journalists oh same two J oh wow

[08:52] same two journalists Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito so what they did was they went back and looked at the security camera footage from every um computer that had accessed the memo and they identified FBI Agent Terry Albury as the person who had taken the picture and they arrested him they charged him with Espionage and they sent him to prison for three and a half years now Matthew Cole in my own case um sent me an email

[09:25] one day and he said he a dozen names I'm writing a book about the Abu Omar rendition from Milan it was a kidnapping that the CIA carried out in Milan can you introduce me to any of these 12 people so that I can interview them for my book I said I don't have any idea who these people are so he sent me a second list of another 12 names and I said look you obviously know this issue far better than I do I

[09:56] never had anything to do with kidnappings I don't know anything about the Abu Omar operation and he saidwell what about this guy that you mention on page whatever it was 125 of your book I think his name is John and I said oh that's John Doe I don't know whatever happened to him he's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere as it turned out Matthew Cole was not writing a book about the

[10:27] Abu Omar rendition that was a lie he was secretly working for the Guantanamo defense attorneys so he took my confirmation of John Doe's name and sent it to an investigator for Human Rights Watch who in turn sent it to the Guantanamo defense attorneys who in turn put it in a classified filing saying we've identified a CIA officer by the name of John Doe and we want to interview him excuse me we want to interview him the

[10:58] judge Rec recognized the fact that this name was classified he turned it over to the FBI and the FBI went back to Human Rights Watch and said where'd you get this name and Human Rights Watch said we got it from Matthew Cole he's one of our investigators they went to Matthew Cole and said where'd you get this name and Matthew Cole said John kiraku gave it to me so two dozen FBI agents raided my house arrested me and charged me with five felonies including three counts of

[11:30] Espionage so you tell me are they just that stupid or are they working with the FBI yeah and the thing that's uh particularly suspicious about the reality winter case is that uh it the documents that leaked that didn't provide evidence that there was Russian hacking um were also in the benefit of the National Security State uh that was disseminating a lot of the lies that were were they were saying that Russia was hacking the election and helping

[12:01] Donald Trump get put into office and then it also was in the National Security State's interest that reality winner goes to uh prison after that because now you scare away anyone that wants to ex reveal any kind of Truth so look how many birds you've killed with that one stone you've frightened away any other potential whistleblower right you have damaged The credibility and campaign of Donald Trump maybe and you've perpetuated the lie that the intelligence Community wants

[12:33] out there that the Russians have successfully interfered in our election it was perfect if you're the CIA it was a perfect operation and reality winner for that that one that momentary lapse in judgment got five years and four months in prison draconian yeah absolutely and and it leads to my next question which is um and I think

[13:04] we've I think we've kind of already answered it but I guess I'll ask you directly but so it's pretty clear but I'll ask but do you think there's an effort from the National Security State to basically make the media uh you know a Minefield that's almost impossible to navigate when you have these institutions like The Intercept that branded themselves on being you know uh four whistleblowers uh where it's a mindfield for whistleblowers to walk through and like you know even during ellsberg's time I think the the New York Times kind of

[13:36] betrayed him in away because they started reporting some of the stories that were uh smearing him but you know when you have an institution like The Intercept which you just laid out it's either co-opted or it's or these guys are just somehow the dumbest people to ever live right um so how much worse has it gotten and what does it say about the goals of the National Security State another great question thank you for that so let me answer it in two ways number one um let's talk about kend delanian in

[14:08] answer to your question kend delanian was a uh was a national security journalist for the Los Angeles Times he then went to NBC news as the chief National Security journalist um for NBC and MSNBC okay with that in mind uh there is another journalist for Bloomberg Jason leapold Jason leapold is the king of the Freedom of Information Act uh in fact a pentagon spokesman called him a Foya terrorist because he's filed so many Freedom of Information Act

[14:40] requests more than anybody else on earth except the New York Times as an organization it's incredible and he he's a sole practitioner for Bloomberg he's the one who broke the uh the Hillary Clinton email story based solely on Foya so Jason leapold requested on a slow day one day he had nothing else to do so he thought I'm just gonna I'm gonna do a foyer request the CIA for all correspondence between

[15:13] the cia's office of public affairs and any national security journalist okay most of it was garbage but what he found was a series of emails between kend delanian and the CIA where kend delanian was sending his stories to the CIA for clearance before he was sending them to his own editors and the CIA was saying hey Ken in par paragraph two uh third sentence we don't like that take that

[15:44] out uh in paragraph six we prefer if you say this or use this language so is kend delanian reporting on the intelligence Community or is the intelligence Community feeding propaganda to kend delanian for him to repeat on NBC and MSNBC to the American people disgraceful disgraceful another thing that Jason leapold found in this Freedom of Information Act request was any time

[16:15] a journalist was writing something that the CIA didn't like something that was not complimentary of the CIA and would send it to the CIA for comment right which the CIA never does they never ever ever have a comment um but you have to do it that's the protocol they would respond by saying if you publish this you will be cut off and you will not be invited to the CIA Christmas party

[16:46] seriously and they would back off wow so they don't need to recruit American journalists there's no reason to recruit them you control them anyway you control them by threatening them on the one hand or by feeding them the information that you want to leak Allah kend delanian on the other um I have a I have a question on something that you mentioned on on our bosses Robert Shear's uh podcast not too long ago people should definitely check

[17:18] that out um that John Brennan went after you and threw uh Attorney General Eric Holder for Espionage charges right um despite holder's uh hesitant and they made you defend yourself and essentially bankrupt yourself in in doing so so do you read this as a means of making an example of your of you and you know despite their you know uh hesitancy to to really go after this in court um they

[24:02] that he's single-handedly responsible for putting me in a federal prison that's my beef with Matthew Cole and I said Rich ESP bazito listen I'm the first to admit Rich ESP bazito was my best friend but Rich ESP bazito always wanted to be a cop from when he had his first journalistic assignment as the midnight shift uh crime blotter cop for the whatever it was called the New York

[24:32] Daily News until he became the Deputy Commissioner for public affairs he always wanted to be a cop like those are the best journalists that you could find for The Intercept seriously and he's like well you know that's just the way it is like okay next thing you know reality winner goes to prison Terry Albury goes to prison Daniel hail the Drone whistleblower okay let's talk

[25:03] about Daniel Hae for a second yeah wasn't that skill that was skill here you've got a guy who's telling you top secret information about the American drone program and how 80% of the victims of the Drone program are civilians and most of them are women and children so this is like top secret uh targeting information and Jeremy he skill says Hey listen uh Daniel uh I'm going to do this

[25:34] documentary why don't you appear on the documentary with me and out yourself as the source of our our stories on on the Drone program well Daniel never worked with journalists before he didn't know any better and so he allows himself to appear in this documentary next thing you know the FBI is breaking down his door putting cuffs on him it's like way to protect your sources there Jeremy good job yeah that's uh that's pretty amazing

[26:05] um and it's just like it's just like Source after Source after Source same story um oh yeah and then Omar's attachment to it just makes it all the more suspect um and look at it this way too how many of these These Guys these billionaires let's use Jeff Bezos as as the most obvious example Jeff Bezos democracy dies in Darkness now it says on the front page of the Washington Post which he purchased but he also does $400 million a year in business with a CIA

[26:39] providing uh classified uh Cloud space so how how do you separate the two either you're going to report honestly about the CIA and the crimes that the CIA is committing or you're going to take the cia's blood soaked money and put it in your pocket because it shouldn't be both and it is both is Pierre omard doing the same thing I don't know but I think it's a question that he needs to answer yeah it seems like a lot of these guys and these intelligence agencies um

[27:11] have like a false sense of self this re this uh personality that they kind of project onto uh or that they project to convey themselves as these good people right like uh Bezos is like a liberal guy that you know has a liberal news outlet that the slogan is democracy dies in darkness but then you're a CIA contractor uh and and that's the part you don't talk about right it's kind of reminds me of um like the the big tech people that do iasa and then they're working for Palante or something like

[27:42] that oh my God a great yeah yeah it's pretty brilliant um but uh yeah and and and then the other thing about the another thing about The Intercept that is very strange is that they got a whole of the Snowden archive and um and then now that they I think they asked their research Department right and um which is the which is the and they said it was for budgetary reasons which I don't know how true that

[28:14] is or what but uh either way now the Snowden archive is in the hands of Pierro midar this guy that again is funding regime change operations uh and works closely with the intelligence agent gencies and he's the guy that owns it and no one's looking at it no one's putting it out there and it's just it's just um extremely damaging and it was a pretty you know when you look at it from the from the perspective of this like how many whistleblowers it busted how it privatized the ownership of the Snowden

[28:45] archive it makes the The Intercept was a huge success in terms of uh what it was actually probably meant to do right and I'll tell you not a day goes by now that I don't get at least four fundraising emails from The Intercept every day every single day like please just send us five dollar please we can't make it why because your billionaire founder won't write you another check I mean what is this I I just don't understand their

[29:17] their business model I don't understand their ethics and I don't understand if they've ever really been serious about their commitment to to True transparent journalism I highly doubt it yeah and you you know talking about this incompetence from these reporters and stuff I can't help but see the parallels in in my own experiences uh with with journalism school you know I actually study journalism I don't know about these guys if they actually did but you know and you've spoken in Bob's

[29:48] classes at at USC and I I I don't want to talk too much [ __ ] about my alma moer but at the same time you know studying journalism you would expect there to be some sort of actual teaching of of these core principles and and including this kind of thing Source protection all this kind of stuff and I never I never had any classes that dealt with that fascinating and you know I think Bob Shear would tell you too well I know for a fact that he would because I've heard him say it um the anenberg school of Journalism is

[30:20] supposed to be one of the the greatest journalism uh schools in America if not in the world right right they're not teaching you journalistic ethics and there should be a standalone class on journalistic ethics right because sometimes ethics aren't clearcut there are there are moral calls that you need to make um and then this is the same school that goes and hires uh David Petraeus of all people to be a lecturer like not in not a lecturer in

[30:51] the school of you know whatever military studies or intelligence Community studies I'm making those up of course but in the school of Journalism seriously you're going to you're going to name the former director of the CIA fourstar General who who is a convicted criminal for lying to the FBI right cheated on his wife so even his wife can't trust him I don't know how the country can trust him and that's

[31:21] the guy who's going to help teach you journalism that's just Grand yeah I guess they were on the trend of um hiring Spooks to be doing journalism even before MSNBC and CNN right exactly yeah you say something Diego sorry yeah I think I think it just lends itself to a general erosion of ethics and and I think it is purposeful in a way where you have people like uh Ken uh delanian right and and all these people who you know I I mean I don't know

[31:51] what's what's going on in his brain but I'm sure all these kind of reporters at the New York Times or whatever who accept information from direct uh officials they probably think they're doing the right thing they probably think they're they're helping their country and they're reporting as honestly as they can in the name of uh combating disinformation all all these kind of things that get in the way of of actual truth you know and it's it's yeah it just I think what happened at the intercept and what continues to happen to whistleblowers is

[32:23] just a perfect case study of of how Journal is just going down the drain I I would agree with that very strongly and I would also agree with you very strongly that this is something that needs to be addressed at places like USC or Colombia or Georgetown or Princeton where where schools are turning out young journalists who are going to be the future of

[32:53] Journalism you know you've got to have this in instilled in you from the very beginning because listen it's the same thing W with the CIA joining the CIA you're not going to be taught ethics at the CIA you have to go into your CIA career with your own ethical principles already in place your own moral uh moral guidelines a part of your life you know I have this standard speech that I give uh at

[33:24] universities and I use a high hypothetical situation and I say imagine you are a CIA case officer and you've recruited a Bonafide terrorist let's say a member of al-Qaeda or Isis or Hezbollah a true terrorist and this guy has given you information that is gold and you've used this information to disrupt terrorist attacks and to save American lives okay

[33:56] so you're going to meet with him at a hotel somewhere in the Middle East wherever you want Aman Cairo wherever and you go into the meeting and he says to you you know what I've been good to you and I've given you everything you asked for and so tonight you're going to do something for me I'm not going to give you any more information until you get me a prostitute so do you get him the prostitute yes or no and I ask for a show of hands and usually about 75% of

[34:26] the hands go up and I say yes you get him the prostitute you know this is kind of the the ugly part of the job but this is what you're trained to do you need to make your Source happy keep your Source happy so that he continues to give you information so yes it might be um you know not the nicest thing you've ever done but you would get the guy a prostitute I said what if he asks you for a child prostitute then what do you do and you usually people kind of look

[34:58] around and maybe 10% of the hands will gingerly go up and then I say absolutely not absolutely not you have to draw the line somewhere but the thing is you're not going to be taught this at the CIA you have to go in there with a sense of right and wrong and you tell this guy I will not be party to a child crime I will not do it I will not victimize a

[35:28] child for you if you don't want to work with me anymore then you don't have to work with me anymore I think that we have this relationship because we're saving lives and I'm paying you handsomely but I'm not going to victimize a child for you again the point being headquarters isn't going to tell you what to do right the desk that's following your operations they're not going to tell you what to do and there's no written rule where you can look into the CIA rule book can say oh now rule number 16.3 point1 says no I can't get

[36:00] you a child prostitute that's that's not that's not real life it's not how it works well it's the same thing in journalism you have to go into this with your own set of moral values your own ethical construct that's that's already a part of you you know a an Israeli psychologist uh and author once told me he he wrote a book about whistleblowing called uh Souls his name is Al press he said one of the things that he found in Psychology was that whistleblowers have

[36:33] a an unusually highly defined sense of right and wrong far more highly defined than the uh than the general public but the same is true among journalists now sometimes those journalists lose their sense of right and wrong in pursuit of a story or even worse in pursuit of a relationship with an organization like the CIA and the key then is is not to lose that sense of right and

[37:04] wrong yeah and you know about how that uh that emphasizing that is completely absent in any journalism school I mean one of the things that Diego and I used to talk about when we were at USC um a lot and we still talk about it sometimes was that no one in our school and I'm not exaggerating like I I think I maybe met like one one or two people that knew who Julian Assange was at apparently the

[37:35] best journalism School in the in the world I or the country I don't remember what they say it is but um no one knew and no one really cared either and uh I remember like the one so we were having a discussion in class one time and I think that this kind of encapsulates like that theme that you were talking about of like you know do you let your sense of what's right and wrong guide the kind of reporting that you do or some other kind of external factor and the conversation was about um there were these I guess there was these guys that

[38:08] in in World War II Germany reported on like the crimes of the of the uh Nazi soldiers um and not that many people read it because it was extremely censored and uh and the the the professor asked us something like uh you know is it worth it to do this kind kind of like courageous reporting if people aren't going to read it because you know power will not permit it to be read and I said and I raised my hand and I said yeah absolutely I mean like you know for

[38:38] the sake of the historical record and also for the sake of like being Guided by what you believe is newsworthy and important for people to read even if you're fighting an uphill battle to get people to read it it is important and I said and I said you know I think that one example of a reporter that has done some courageous reporting that many people don't know about now because of his courageous reporting and because of how much he's been censored and smeared by the mainstream media and the political class is Julian Assange and without him we wouldn't know yeah we

[39:10] wouldn't know all these things about uh you know the bush crime the Bush's war crimes in Iraq and how they were bombing I mean I mean that that that Infamous footage where they bomb these guys this group of civilians and then they kill the First Responders while there were children in the van collateral yeah and just to and just to and just to demonstrate how unconcerned journalism School professors are with that kind of thinking the the professor told me well it's hard for me to really care what happens to Julian Assange because he's so damn unlikable

[39:43] yeah he is listen I know Julian very very well um and he can be difficult and unlikable and that is utterly irrelevant to the situation I was on a panel about a year ago with uh with two former journalists from night Ritter and a member of the audience asked them why they and other members of the mainstream media especially the the post the times and the journal would not come out in in

[40:14] defense of Julian Assange and without missing a beat one of these journalists said I don't consider Julian Assange to be a journalist I consider him to be an activist and the the audience members said but the post the times the journal and everybody else um have based articles on Julian assange's information and so even if you don't consider him to be a journalist you have to acknowledge that he's at least a publisher and they were like next

[40:45] question please that was it that was the end of it it was shocking yeah yeah crazy crazy Diego do you have another question before we do the last question uh no I think I think that's a good segue um to get into that okay yeah so um so uh Diego and I have been having these discussions uh lately about truth and the value of truth and you

[41:17] know uh what like at the Times the people you know hold it back and also uh talking about journalists and like when you know maybe people hold back the truth on some issue that they know is controversial so that they can talk about another TR to the truth about another issue later and this kind of like constant battle that we're fighting between um authenticity and risking ourselves in the process and I think that like whistleblowers are such a great um example of this kind of like spiritual or physical philosophical

[41:49] kind of battle that I think that humans are facing especially in the fields in the field of Journalism and um you know like there's this I I write fiction a lot and there's this saying uh that a character doesn't change until it becomes less painful for him to change than to remain the same and I think that the interesting yes yeah and I think that the true it's also true of of real people not just characters and um I I

[42:19] wanted to ask you like you know like yourself and other whistleblowers they do this thing that's like seemingly kind of irrational by every measure right you know once you blow the whistle you're going to like face serious physical consequences you might put your loved ones in danger you're putting yourself in danger you're putting your career in danger you're putting every material attachment that you have on the line because for some reason it's more I I I I would think that it's more painful inside to bear that truth any longer than to like let it out and to and to

[42:50] and to just face the consequences so like you know as someone who blew the whistle and you seriously paid the price for it how do you make sense of that battle like what what point is it that that becomes more painful than prison or or all these other consequences that whistle blind the whistle can put on someone yeah yeah you know I never considered myself ever in my life over the course of my life I never considered myself as a as a boat rocker never um even at the CIA I did what I was told

[43:22] and I did it with a smile on my face until it came to the post 911 era and human rights abuses these these um programs whether it was torture or secret prisons or extraordinary Renditions were so obviously wrong like I couldn't see any upside over the long

[43:53] term to doing any of these these things these were so obviously crimes against humanity that I remember thinking to myself are my children and grandchildren going to be proud of me I mean there there are Generations that haven't been born yet grandchildren great grandchildren you know when I'm dead and gone are they going to be proud of me and what I did I want to leave a legacy for them you know I'm I'm proud of the of the

[44:26] people that my parents were and my grandparents I'm proud of them and they were just working people you know they never really did anything that was historically noteworthy but they were good people good moral ethical upstanding people and I'm proud of them and I want my kids and grandchildren to be proud of me now I found myself at the CIA in this historic situation so it's not just like oh was Dad a good guy yeah dad was a good guy he was always honest and he was kind to you know strangers and the poor and children and and small

[44:57] animals was I kind to people who were accused of committing terrorism maybe that's not the right question maybe the question is was I true to the Constitution was I true to the oath that I took on my first day in the CIA when I raised my right hand and I swore to uphold and protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic I hate to think that in the room that day I was the only one of the 300 who took that oath who actually

[45:30] meant it but I thought you know this is going this is this is going to be a life decision and I've got to do the right thing to tell you the truth I I barely remember being in prison it was just such a a short little uh period of my life it was 23 easy months it was a decade ago I don't even think about it anymore um but I can sleep at night and my kids are proud of me and I'll tell you a follow on to that my my third son

[46:01] just started college last month as a freshman and he called me on his first day of class and he was very excited and he said dad you're never going to believe I just walked out of my first e ever ethics class and I interrupted him and I was like ah I hated my ethics class it was all philosophy and these German philosophers I never heard of and ever cared about and he's like no no no wait a minute he said I'm telling you I just walked out of my first ever ethics class

[46:32] and the professor was talking about ethics in Wartime and he said there are 300 kids in this class it's in this giant Auditorium and the professor said there's this guy John kiraku he was with the CIA and he couldn't remain silent when he saw the torture program and he went to prison because he blew the whistle on it and he Saidi wanted to shout that's my dad and I said you see Max his my son's name is Max too I said you see it's all worth

[47:02] it it's all worth it that made it worth it you know yeah the the night before I went to prison uh Jose Rodriguez the former deputy director of the CIA tweeted at me and all he said was um don't drop the soap [ __ ] and I gave myself a few hours to calm down take it easy and I tweeted back and I said hose I am on the right side of history and you are

[47:35] not and I left it at that now here we are 12 years later almost and he's going to go down in history as a torturer as a murderer when his obituary is written it's going to say that he was the Godfather of the torture program he murdered un told people innocent people he ordered innocent people to be kidnapped and sent to third countries to be tortured there some of them never made it out

[48:06] alive I'd rather be John kiraku than to be that guy yeah me too me three well um uh did you want to ask another question Max no no uh I think that's a great place to wrap it up unless you had something to say to you go uh no yeah no that was that was amazing thank you John so much for for coming on and talking thank you guys listen these were these were among the best questions anybody has asked me in one setting

[48:38] Kudos that means a lot coming from you thank you thank you absolutely great good to see you both good to see you [Music]
