Title: ScheerPost
Show: ScheerPost
Date: 2023-01-20
URL: https://youtu.be/MT8DwRsee84
Duration: 35:00

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[00:00] Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence where the intelligence comes from my guests, otherwise this would be a very arrogant title for a show. And no question, in fact, John Kiriakou was in the Central Intelligence Agency what, for 12 years? 14 years. Almost 15 years. So, you are this is I sometimes say this show is the poor man's Central Intelligence Agency, but you were the real deal. And

[00:30] you actually were involved in the interrogation capture of the what was said to be the top person in Al-Qaeda before Bin Laden was killed. And you know, so you have vast experience. The reason I wanted to talk to you I've talked to you before, it's always interesting, but I am really this is the day after we celebrate or two days after we're recording this, Martin Luther King Day. And for that occasion in my class I classes I showed and discussed the movie

[01:02] made two years ago by director and um it is an incredible movie. It's called MLK/ FBI. And it's really about the effort of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover to destroy Martin Luther King first to show he's some kind of communist and then when that failed to go after his personal life and blackmail him and

[01:33] basically to suicide. And they were watching him 24/7 when he in fact was assassinated. That's something I want to ask you about, but I really want to know about the deep state in relation to dissenters like Martin Luther King now celebrated, honored with a day and so forth, but at the time we had very primitive surveillance. They had to break into his house or a hotel room or have the hotel room next door and to

[02:05] entrap them and to get information and and then fake a letter claiming to reveal stuff and all that. You were part of that deep state. What could they do now? And you watched the movie, you've thought about it. Uh and I might say one other news hook here, the Republicans in Congress are actually reviving a committee investigation to look at the excesses of the intelligence agencies, of the FBI, and so forth. And you wrote

[02:36] a column saying, "This is not the Church Committee. We need another Church Committee." Tell us about the great work of Frank Church, the Senator from Idaho, who in the mid-70s revealed so much about the evil, the the chicanery of our intelligence agencies. And that directly bears on the effort to destroy Martin Luther King. Yes. Boy, where do you even start with something like this? Let's start with

[03:06] with the Church Committee. I wrote a piece in Consortium News that was published, I think it was published today, Wednesday, about these Republican efforts to create what they're calling a Church Committee 2. It's its formal title is the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. I am 1,000% in favor of creating a Church Committee 2. This is not a Church Committee 2.

[03:36] Uh this committee is going to be chaired by Jim Jordan. He's a far-right Congressman from Ohio, the former wrestling coach at Ohio State University. Um he's also the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. And um he's going to look specifically at the FBI's targeting of conservatives. Now, these are conservative parents who are speaking out at school board meetings. He's going to look at the FBI

[04:07] targeting Donald Trump or targeting anybody deemed to be conservative. That's not what the Church Committee did. The Church Committee uh which was bipartisan in nature with intellectual heavyweights on both sides. They were looking at crimes being committed by the deep state. And when I say the deep state, I mean the CIA, the FBI, NSA, the Department of the Army, and associated intelligence

[04:38] organizations. They were looking at at the CIA's international assassinations program, for example. They were looking at the Army's program to infiltrate peace groups or anti-Vietnam war groups. They were looking at the FBI's surveillance program and spying on Americans without any warrant or court order. They would just arbitrarily do it through a program then called COINTELPRO. They looked at the CIA's MKUltra program

[05:08] in which the CIA dosed unwitting American citizens with LSD just to see what their reactions would be. Just to see if they would talk about things that they weren't supposed to talk about while under the influence of of LSD. People died in these programs. Uh this new subcommittee isn't going to do any such thing. And indeed Democrats have already said that they're not going to participate in this program.

[05:39] Now, you've got a new speaker of the house in um in uh Kevin McCarthy. He appointed nine Republicans to this committee, this subcommittee. He's allowing for six Democrats. The Democrats aren't going to participate. The committee was created on a straight party line vote of 221, all Republicans, to 211, all Democrats. Now, compare this to the actual Church Committee. Uh it was chaired, of course, by Frank

[06:11] Church, uh an intellectual giant who ran for president in 1976. It also included Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, the Hart Senate office. me let me Okay, let me stop you for a minute, okay? Can I? Because we were used No, I mean, what you're saying is interesting, important. Your column is good. I republished it myself uh and share posted morning and and worth it. But the fact of the matter is there isn't a Democrat Frank Church

[06:43] right now. Frank Church There's not challenged Democrats. And you know, as as I said in the beginning, I'm I'm I would like to talk about with this is so recent after Martin Luther King Day, that the invasion of Martin Luther King's privacy, the attempt to destroy him, was done by a Democrat president. Uh it was even started in the It's a depth on that. It started it with the JFK, it continued with a vengeance

[07:15] with Lyndon Johnson. They allowed J. Edgar Hoover, an obsessed, you know, fanatic of a man to go after Martin Luther King for all sorts of horrible motives, racist conceits and everything else. Uh and the fact is I even Bobby Kennedy, somebody I actually interviewed the night he was shot and I liked him and admired his transformation, but the fact is, as Attorney General he allowed Hoover to do this

[07:46] and so and now the Democrats are in a position of being cheerleading the FBI it's just wonderful to go as long as they go after Republicans as long as they went after Trump. So what I'm trying to do is get past the partisan thing here. Yes, these committees should be better there should be a Frank Church but there isn't. And the fact we live in is right. And and this is not a partisan issue. And and I would point out to you MSNBC has these FBI CIA people on all

[08:20] the time as great experts. Okay, I am looking at what the voter needs, what the Constitution requires and I'm taking the Martin Luther King case as an example. It's a film if people haven't seen it MLK forward slash FBI you get it for 99 cents or something on Amazon. Watch it and you will understand what surveillance is about and the surveillance done on Martin Luther King is child's play compared to

[08:52] what can be done on anybody right now. As somebody who has been a victim of government prosecution for telling the truth which is you I'm wondering you did what Martin Luther King did. Martin Luther King got in the crosshairs of Lyndon Johnson because he came out against the Vietnam war was denounced for it by the New York Times and the Washington Post you know what's he doing with peace? Well, I he got a Nobel Peace Prize. He's allowed to talk about

[09:23] the Vietnam war and he said my government is the major provider of violence in the world today. How do I tell kids in the ghetto to shun violence and and so he was punished as you were for telling the truth And so, what I want to get though is the perspective now of of you know, what what have we learned from a film like that? What do we see in the modern society? Because after all, you were in in the deep state in the modern time with modern technology. And that's what

[09:56] I want to talk to you today. I don't we need we don't need another bashing of Republicans. We're getting that all over the place. Oh, no, no. And my intent here is not to bash Republicans because the Democrats are equally guilty of all of these things. This is not a partisan issue. You know, you know this statistic, but but between the the passage of the the Espionage Act in 1917 and Barack Obama's election in 2009, three Americans were were charged with espionage for speaking

[10:27] to the media. Just during a the Obama presidency, eight of us were charged with espionage for speaking to the media. So, this is not a Democrats are good, Republicans are bad situation. It's that all of our elected officials are bad on this issue. Now, you you've made an important point here, and that is the point uh that technology has improved. It's improved in ways that that our political figures of the 1960s couldn't have even fathomed.

[10:58] You know, we know thanks to whistleblowers like Joshua Schulte, a CIA hacker, that the CIA, just as an example, as part of their surveillance program, can turn your smart TV into a microphone. They can they can remotely engineer the speaker on your TV to act as a microphone to listen to your conversations even when the TV is turned off. Right? We now know, thanks to the Vault

[11:29] 7 revelations, that the CIA can hack into the computer system of your car, take over the car, and force you off a cliff, off a bridge, into an abutment or a tree, and kill you. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. We know, thanks to the Vault 7 revelations, uh that the CIA can uh take over any computer, even remotely, anywhere in the world,

[12:02] and uh and use it against you. They can do the same with your phone. They can even when it's off, they can turn it into a microphone to listen to anything that you're saying. Now, can you imagine if the FBI had had that that kind of capability in 1965? Or in 1967? It's incredible. In this in this absolutely brilliant film that you're talking about, uh MLK FBI, they talk about the uh the FBI doing surveillance and and phone

[12:33] taps and wiretaps on Martin Luther King and the people around him. They had to physically go into these people's homes and unscrew the receiver on their phones and put a bug into the phone, screw it back up, and say, "Thank you. We just uh improved your phone service." And then they leave. To the point where one of Martin Luther King's uh deputies said to him, "Martin, I think we're under surveillance. I think they tapped our phones." And Martin Luther King responded, "The FBI has far more

[13:04] important things to worry about than what we're saying." Well, in fact, he was under 24/7 coverage. They They knew 200 200 agents assigned to destroying Martin Luther King. Yeah. And do you remember where they said also at the highest level Where Do you remember where they said also that when Martin Luther King would travel to different cities, all of the FBI agents in each of those cities would literally drop everything they would they were doing and spy on Martin Luther King.

[13:38] Every city that he traveled to. They were particularly upset because he won the Nobel Prize. They did not want him to be a role model. They didn't want him to be a hero and they didn't support the civil rights movement. That was one of their critiques, you know, that they were not vigorous. They or we wouldn't have had the problems in the South that we had. And J. Edgar Hoover was certainly not a big fan of that movement. But first he tried to to brand Martin Luther King a communist because they found some ex-communists or

[14:08] old-time guys working as they in the civil rights movement and advising him at one point, but that didn't work out. So they Oh, we got sex here. Let's destroy him. Let's destroy his marriage. Let's give a tape to his his wife purporting to be the noises of people making love. In those days it was primitive. So they didn't often have pictures to go with the tape, but they said we know he's in that room or what have you. It's disgusting. And and what I'm saying is that they what they did to

[14:39] him they did worse to people around the world because maybe they ended up killing him. We haven't talked about that. But when I watched that movie, I just kept thinking, you know, how do you have a guy under surveillance 24/7 and yet you can't prevent his assassination. I mean, that that bothered me. But even if we don't go They certainly wanted him to commit suicide. They wanted to destroy him as a figure. Now you think about it. This is one of the great recognized acknowledged heroes of

[15:10] American life, right up there, probably the top five of American heroes. And and here was the FBI which is now celebrated by MSNBC, by the the liberal establishment as the great people to save us, right? We want them to have more power, you know, I mean, we even have columns in in the New York Times and everywhere urging more control of media and surveillance and what have you.

[15:41] So, what's going on? You you've been there. What what do what do you think about this surveillance society now? Well, I first of all, I think that the FBI is an outlaw organization. Not only have I had my my home raided by the FBI, but I've had my home raided by the FBI twice. Twice. I can't tell you what it feels like to have 22 people break down your door, all wearing windbreakers that say FBI on

[16:14] the back of it as your neighbors come out to record everything on their cell phones, have them remain in your home for 8 hours, in one case smashing a hole in my in my kitchen wall over here with a sledgehammer, and it's still there's still a hole in the wall. Dumping my potted plants out on the floor your camera so we could see the hole? Yeah, I'll take it over there. Dumping my potted plants out on the floor, looking

[16:45] allegedly looking for weapons, taking literally all of my electronics, and um and then never charging me with a crime. Let's see. Right Oh, right back in there. Can you see that? it. Yeah, in the right corner. They said that they had information that I was storing weapons back there. I said, I don't own any weapons. But this is because you, who had been

[17:16] a leading agent in capturing Yeah. terrorists alleged terrorists and warrants her in Afghanistan and risked your life and you were supposed to have given the name of an open agent Yeah. to a New York Times reporter. That was your great crime. Your really great crime is you revealed the torture program. Yes. You're You're exactly right, Bob. And I'll tell you another thing. So for that reason How many were there they broke into your

[17:46] house? Twice? 20 24? 22. There were 22 of them. Yes. I don't want to exaggerate. 22, not 24. And they broke in and went through everything of somebody you had been honored by the CIA for your work, right? You were I I got 12 exceptional performance awards, the sustained superior performance award, the counterterrorism service medal, and the merit meritorious service medal. Yes. And so these agents though when they came there was like trying to get

[18:18] something on Martin Luther King or they don't care that he won the Nobel Prize. No. No. They don't care that John Kiriakou because they're ordered to go there and find something. And then which is after all what the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution is supposed to protect you against you know And And in fact In fact, the FBI agent that physically put the handcuffs on me was none other than Peter Strzok who has been you know implicated up to

[18:49] his chin in in this this partisan rebranding of of the FBI. Well, you should tell us about that. He's the one who had the what girlfriend or wife that also had a high ranking Correct. Yeah, he was cheating on his wife with with an attorney at the FBI and he was the one that was exchanging these text messages with his girlfriend uh about Donald Trump and they're not going to stand for Donald Trump's election and they're going to take him down and they're going to block

[19:19] everything he tries to do and he just made it so partisan, so stupidly. So, he's part of an agency that went after Martin Luther King and was going to smear him for being unfaithful to his wife. But, here's this top FBI agent, two of them, and they're doing what they alleged that Martin Luther King did, right? That's right. self-righteous about it. And and just as an aside, Bob, something that that I have found to be very important over the last couple of days, Jim Bamford, who is

[19:49] a gifted writer and researcher, who wrote really the definitive book on NSA years ago, is out with a underestimates it. He is the first person in this country Yes. to make us aware That's right. of the surveillance state. I mean, it's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's out with a new book today. Oh. Um about What's the title? Do you have Do you have Do you have the title? Yeah, I'll find it. it. We could be the first to push it.

[20:20] Well, well, well, no, he does great work. Oh, he does great work. Uh let's see. It is called Let me find it. Spy Fail. Well, we're doing reality TV and radio here. Yeah. Yes. It's called Spy Fail, one word, Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence. Now, what what he's saying in this book

[20:51] is that over the last 10 years, the FBI has lost 10 of its China intelligence sources. 10 people have been either killed by the Chinese government or arrested for working on behalf of the FBI. Why is that? Because Peter Strzok's counterintelligence unit at the FBI had a Chinese mole in it.

[21:21] And the mole was a former CIA operations officer who was directed to go to the CIA and then later on to the FBI as a Chinese translator. This guy was arrested quietly in 2019 and is awaiting trial in Hawaii of all places. Why isn't this front-page news? There was a Chinese mole inside the FBI and we're now just learning about it

[21:52] thanks to Jim Bamford? That tells me that there's something grossly wrong with the mainstream media here. But let's get back to the story of of of of what you learned from this movie because I I I was shocked. I mean, you know, I got my own files and everything. So, I was not naive about the FBI. But the idea and this is again I want to remind people before the modern surveillance technology where you know, they know

[22:22] everything. I mean, how far you read in a book and you know, and what you emailed and and the people should remember the Fourth Amendment was considered the most important addition to the Constitution by most of the founders because they said this was how the King of England was able to destroy any independent thought in the colonies because they could do warrantless churches and come storming into your house to searches and come into your house and find plant and find evidence and so

[22:55] forth. And so, Adams and all of these people, John Adams, said this is the most important. The American Revolution was born with you know assertion and of the right to to protect your domicile, your house. As you can see that goes back to the Magna Carta. You now have a culture which takes what what Hoover did up to the I mean my God it's like you know can we go across the street or can we go to the moon? They can do anything now. They can manipulate, they can make an alternative reality. They can fake

[23:27] sex scenes and movies and everything. Yes they can. They're called deep fakes. Yeah and and they can do all that and that's being cheered on though. Oh yeah. Amazing thing you know and including by the so called liberals. So I that's why I wanted to talk to you. I I I the irony that we now celebrate as we should Martin Luther King the man who you know everybody forgets we were in a deeply segregated society at the time in

[23:57] the mid 50s when when Martin Luther King was leading a the bus you know used to be able to desegregate buses in Montgomery and all that and and the movie reminds us of that. We can't the US Army was segregated, the Navy was only desegregated in 47. We supposedly fought a war for democracy and freedom with a segregated military, racially segregated military. Baseball the national pastime was segregated until Jackie Robinson.

[24:29] You know so Martin Luther King's efforts to desegregate were pioneering. And the courage involved and the idea that at the time when he was showing the greatest courage and also as a minister telling us about the larger moral issues and the importance of non-violence worldwide that our secret police agency was with that with out to get this guy to kill himself. And

[24:59] some would remember to argue maybe they sat silently by while he was killed. Oh, I think I think they did actually. You know, at the very end of this film uh you you can't see their faces but you hear their voices. These are These are the voices of two of the FBI agents who were involved in the surveillance of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where he was assassinated. Uh and they interviewed Jim Comey which made no sense to me. But anyway, um

[25:30] these FBI agents are saying that they were doing the surveillance that night and saw the whole thing unfold. Now, we have something should mention to people that the Martin Luther King was at the his most controversial moment because he was challenging when he challenged the war in Vietnam his point was you're spending all of these resources, you know, destroying these other people. You're

[26:00] not going to have any money for your war on poverty. And without economic justice, without dealing with the root causes of poverty, of which segregation had quite a bit to do with the racial basis of poverty, you're going to fail to to bring about a a freer society. So he was making his point. Lyndon Johnson was upset about his, you know, opposing the war and suddenly he didn't have the protection of Johnson who who had uh uh signed the, you know, change in law uh

[26:32] and uh and was an ally of of King. King was an ally of Johnson at one point. Now, by taking on the war, he broke his ties to the Johnson administration. They unleashed J. Edgar Hoover. And so here he is down there at this rally, organizing, supporting garbage workers in their strike. He's going to lead this poor people's campaign to Washington, embarrassing the Johnson administration. The FBI had him under closer surveillance that night than they probably ever did. Yes.

[27:03] the target and they were unleashed by Johnson uh to do their their their their deeds and and he man and he's assassinated. And you know, that that leads to a lot of other questions. Um they interview Andrew Young uh in in this film. Andrew Young, of course, was a was a lieutenant of Martin Luther King. He was the mayor He went on to become the mayor of Atlanta. He went on to become the US ambassador to the United Nations. Andrew Young's a giant in his own right.

[27:34] And he and others around King at the time said that they never believed that James Earl Ray uh killed Martin Luther King. They believed that it was the FBI or somebody working for the FBI. Uh James Earl Ray was later arrested at Heathrow Airport in London with a false Canadian passport. Actually with two false Canadian passports um trying to get to Brussels. Uh he was on the run. He at first confessed to killing King,

[28:04] but then later said that he was a dupe and that he didn't have anything to do with it. There are a lot of people, including African-American leaders, national leaders, and family members of Martin Luther King who believe that James Earl Ray was innocent and that the killer was either the FBI or somebody working on behalf of the FBI. We're going to end this, but I want to get across the point of your column, which people should read.

[28:36] Original Source Consortium News, which is now wildly attacked and publication Yes. started by this fellow Perry, who was a very good journalist, run by journalists, but now, you know, they're you know, the New York Times even celebrates mainstream media, celebrates destroying any alternative website, certainly Consortium News. But, the whole thing is we people don't realize what the Church Commission

[29:07] revealed. Mhm. They revealed basically, you know, the COINTELPRO, the dirty tricks, the setting people up, the destroying people. And that's what was happening to Martin Luther King. Yes. They tried to label him first as some kind of communist agent. That didn't go over, then as some kind of pervert or something, but destroy him. The end justifies the means. That is what the deep state why it's deep. Yes. Because what they're doing if it's in the light of day, would be

[29:37] considered reprehensible. That's what we mean by the deep state, right? That's right. That's exactly what we mean mean by the deep state. Let me Let me just finish on on this note. Um the day after my arrest in 2012, um there there there were two things that happened. One, there was an article in the the Washington Times, which is the conservative paper, it's owned by the Unification Church, the Moonies. Um an FBI agent, an anonymous one of course, um said that I was a bad actor.

[30:10] Those were the words that he used. I was a bad actor, and that I was working on behalf of the terrorists. Okay, ridiculous. I had blown the whistle on an illegal, immoral, and unethical program. Um the other thing was that I was charged with confirming the name of his former CIA colleague. That name was never made public. But, at the same time, there was a former CIA officer in Bethesda, Maryland, who had been thrown

[30:41] out of the CIA. He was a disgruntled former officer. He had a website in which he named seven former CIA officers and was never arrested. And then the director of the CIA, David Petraeus, confirmed the name of 10 covert CIA officers to his adulterous girlfriend. He was never prosecuted for that. And I said to my lawyers at the time, well, why aren't they charged with this crime?

[31:12] And the the quick answer was because they didn't blow the whistle on the torture program. The point being out one of the startling examples of Panetta when he was Yeah. That's even back revealing the name I wrote a piece in the LA Times about that. Leon Panetta did exactly the same thing to a roomful of un cleared people, including journalists. yeah, well, also there were people from Hollywood who were going to make the Mark Bowden and Kathryn Bigelow. Yeah, they were going to make a movie

[31:43] that ended up praising the CIA and actually suggesting that torture, erroneously, lying really, is suggesting that torture was critical to the capture of Bin Laden. That's right. if you defend if you defend torture, then you will be given the names of the sealed, you know, team that got Bin Laden, which would be a very important secret cuz their lives could be threatened and so forth. And but they didn't go to jail and Leon

[32:15] Panetta didn't. So, that's a point and the the hypocrisy. But, you know, do I got a last word? No, I'm so glad that you I'm so glad that you reached out to me over this. I think this is a very important topic and even though what happened to Martin Luther King happened some 55 years ago, it's still just as current today. Such It's just as important today um as it was in 1968. Oh, it because of the modern technology,

[32:45] it's more important. You can alter reality. You can learn and and you know, even in in that situation, we don't really know what was going on because we got FBI agents and they're putting things in the margin That's right. suggesting, you know, worse things happen and so forth and they're writing it and distorting it. Uh but now, my goodness, you know, what what you can And we've had We've had leading politicians already have to leave office, you know, the former governor of New York versus allegedly was involved

[33:16] with some prostitute or something. Boom, they're gone. No longer a possible presidential candidate and so forth. And so it it's it's odd that Yeah, it's great that Martin Luther King survived. And however, I would warn people uh in 2027, those documents are supposed to be released. That's right. And I suspect there will be people who use that to finally destroy uh the image of arg- and no unquestionably the

[33:48] five greatest Americans of all time in terms of their positive impact on the society. They'll be still people chomping at the bit to do him in. You know. That's right. That is right. It'll never end. Yeah. Sadly, but again, we're here to warn people and uh okay, so I you were the real CIA, I'm the poor man's sure intelligence. That's where I got the word and so forth actually given to me by the station. Want to thank you, John

[34:19] Kiriakou, a great American punished uh for what? Almost 2 years in prison for uh really uh coming out uh and exposing the torture program. That was it and they went after you and what did you say 22 of these FBI agents? They couldn't go in there and bust up Martin Luther King's place cuz that would have been too much news and what they could do it to you. All right, on that note, I want to thank

[34:49] by the way before we get off here. I want to thank Laura Condijerian and Christopher Horwood station KCRW in Santa Monica great station NPR station for hosting these podcasts. Joshua Sheer our executive producer the JKW Foundation in the memory of a very independent and important journalist Jean Stein for helping fund these shows. See you next week with another edition of Shear Intelligence. Take care.
