Title: John Kiriakou Podcast: Inside FBI Recruiting, CIA Secrets & Human Behavior
Show: The JK Report
Date: 2026-07-03
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkAf70JgQBI
Duration: 1596

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[00:00] everybody. I'm John Kiriakou and welcome back to Deep Focus where we're going to do another set of questions and answers which are frankly my favorite things to do. So, I'm going to call these up now. There they are. Oh, but before I I start answering, please do me a favor of liking, sharing, and subscribing. That gives us a very big push with the algorithm and so far so good. We're coming up on 80,000 subscribers which is really just I'm flabbergasted by it. That's the That's

[00:30] the population of a medium-size city. So, thank you for that. All right, question number one is from Oscar Rios. He says, "Can you walk us through your writing habits every time you sit and work on your books? Thank you and all blessings to you and your family." Thank you for that, Oscar. You know, nobody's ever asked me that before. What my writing process is. And I just did some writing last night for my next book, my ninth book. You know what? I'm going to blow my horn right now. My eighth book called Remains of the Day, the definitive guide to Washington D.C.'s historic cemeteries, is

[01:03] now listed for pre-order. Signed copies are going to be sent out in February and it hits shelves everywhere, Barnes & Noble, Target, all over the place, Amazon, in March. Remains of the Day, the definitive guide to Washington D.C.'s historic cemeteries. You can find it at rarebirdlit.com. And it's published by Simon & Schuster which I'm very proud of. So, anyway, last night I decided to do a little bit more work on my ninth book which is going to be

[01:33] called Whispers in the Dirt, the definitive guide to New York City's Mafia Graves. Or to the Mafia Graves of New York City. That's what it is. I'm about 70% done. But I got to thinking last night about Tommy Costello. Uh I won't go into Tommy Costello was. He was an important figure in the Mafia especially from the 1950s uh through the 1970s. Got to think it about him. Had a little angle I wanted to get down on paper, so I sat, I wrote for an hour, I

[02:05] wrote about, I don't know, 600 words, and then I moved on. It My process is different between books and op-eds. I write op-eds a lot. I write for mostly for Consortium News and Covert Action Magazine, sometimes for um for Prison Legal News Magazine. Uh in the past I've written for The Washington Post, the LA Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian. But on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, I'll just have an idea in my head. For

[02:35] example, I'm going to write today. And I've been thinking about about the Republican efforts to gerrymander districts, especially in um Texas, to try to win five districts that are currently represented by Democrats. I have no idea why none of the big outlets have said what I'm going to say, but what the Republicans are talking about doing is to go back to the way districts were divided in the 1980s.

[03:08] So, it was in the 1990s that the Republicans decided to start gerrymandering in order to protect Republican incumbents. So, if you were a Republican congressman, you were used to getting 54, 55%. They gerrymandered, so now you get 90%, but the Democrat also gets 90%. So, now they're going to take some of those Democratic votes, hoping that the Democrat will lose. Well, sure, in a Republican year, but in a Democratic year, the Republicans lose. And so, everybody's losing their minds

[03:40] over the fact that oh, the Republicans might pick up five seats. Yeah, the Democrats might pick up 10 seats. The Republicans are playing with fire here. This is This is not new. It's been done a thousand times over the course of American history and all they're doing is going back to the way they used to do it in the 1980s. There was an There was an op-ed in the New York Times today just saying, "Oh, the story here is that the Democrats, they're also going to gerrymander." That's not the story. Of course the

[04:10] gerry- the Democrats are going to gerrymander. The story is this has already been tried. And that's why, you know, a couple of years ago we saw like two seats in the House of Representatives change hands. But in 1974 it was like 64 seats. In 1994 it was 68 seats. We're going to start seeing these big waves again. So, my my process is this. I have an idea in my head. I let it I let it develop over the course of a couple days. Sometimes I'll actually

[04:40] even open a new Word document and just put a couple of sentences and then leave it for a day or two just to let my brain process it. And then when I feel like I'm ready to go and today I'm ready to go, I'll sit and bang it out. Usually an op-ed An op-ed is supposed to be between 700 and 1200 words and I can usually do that in an hour or 45 minutes if I feel strongly about it. That's what I'm going to do today. With a book the book I need to I do it in waves.

[05:11] Uh Remains of the Day, the book about the Washington D.C. cemeteries, I wrote in 6 weeks during COVID. It usually takes me 9 months to write a book, but I felt so strongly about this book. I felt so interested in it that I'd sit down I'd come I'd come home from my radio show and I I'd make dinner. I'd sit down. I'd look at the clock at 7:00. I start writing and then I look at the clock again. It's 2:00 in the morning. I'm like, "Oh my god, what happened?" And so I have to log off and then go to bed, but sometimes you get on a roll and you just

[05:42] can't stop. Somebody asked me on Facebook the other day, um do you ever sleep? And and the truth is, unfortunately, um, not much. No. I don't know if it's stress or anxiety or whatever, but no. I I don't sleep much, and it's not uncommon for me to get up at 2:00 in the morning and say, "Well, I'm up. I might as well make $400 and write an op-ed." So, I'll just write an op-ed and just send it to somebody. See if they pay me $400. Thanks for that question. Rishi Sharma says,

[06:13] "On The Joe Rogan Experience and other podcasts, you discussed the Japanese man who tried to recruit you. And following that, you were lured to the FBI building for interrogation. Do you think the Japanese man was a setup to try and get you indicted for espionage? Uh, also, good luck on getting a pardon. Thank you." You know what? I didn't get a chance to finish that story on The Joe Rogan Experience, but I have talked about it in the past. It was 1,000% yes, a setup. As it turned out, after my arrest, uh, you know what? Let me go back. So, I was working at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for, um,

[06:46] 2009 to 2011. And I loved that job because you get called by foreign diplomats all the time, and you meet, and you have coffee, or you have lunch, you talk about foreign affairs. It's a ton of fun. So, this Japanese diplomat called me. He said he's the number three, uh, he's the number three diplomat at the Japanese Embassy. His English was terrible. He was an Arabist, so we did all of our meetings in Arabic. And, uh, and he pitched me. In our first meeting, he offered me money in exchange for classified information.

[07:16] And so, I, um, went directly to the office of the Senate Security Officer, and I reported the pitch. And the Senate Security Officer informed the FBI. The FBI sent two agents to come up and interview me, and they asked me if I would invite him to lunch and get him to try to tell me what information he was interested in and how much he was willing to pay me for it. I said, "Cuz I'm a patriot." I said, "You want me to wear a wire?" They said, "No, we're going to be at the next table." So, I called. I invited him to lunch. He said yes. The FBI called me

[07:47] the day of the lunch and said something came up. Go ahead and do the lunch and just write us another memo. So, I did. And then they asked me to do it a third time, and a fourth time, and a fifth time. And finally in the fifth uh lunch, this diplomat told me that he had been promoted. He had gotten his dream job. He was going to be the number two at the Japanese Embassy in Cairo. I shook his hand. I wished him good luck. I never saw him again. A year later, I've been arrested by the FBI. And they have to give us discovery.

[08:17] So, they send us 15,000 pages of classified documents. And in the 15,000 pages, among other things, we find that there never was any Japanese diplomat. She was an FBI agent. They wanted to charge me with espionage because but but they couldn't because I hadn't committed espionage. And so, they decided to try to entrap me. But I foiled them by reporting the contact back to the FBI after every single meeting. And so,

[08:50] finally this Japanese diplomat writes to Peter Strzok, who became famous a little bit later trying to take down Donald Trump. Strzok was the director of counterintelligence at the FBI. He said, "Clearly, he's not going to take the bait. Recommend we end this operation." And so, they ended it by just telling me that he had gotten promoted and he's going to Cairo. So, yeah. They tried to set me up. It was entrapment. In the end, they did charge me with espionage and all three espionage counts were thrown out. Uh and in the meantime,

[09:20] three three of the FBI agents involved involved in my case have reached out to either me personally or to my attorneys to apologize for what they did. Um Taft Derek Baker says, "What can Americans do about AIPAC?" That's a very important question. AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's the Israel Lobby. Uh it gets special treatment because it does not have to register as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice.

[09:51] Any other organization representing the interests of any other country on the earth has to register as a foreign agent. Not AIPAC. Uh I'm I'm appalled by this favoritism. And I'm appalled by the by the power and authority uh that AIPAC exerts in American foreign policy. The way we have to start is by is by um writing our members of Congress and telling them that this is unacceptable and that this has to be dealt with legislatively. That's probably not going

[10:22] to happen because AIPAC has a stranglehold on Capitol Hill, but it's it's something that I've done. I'm outraged that AIPAC has the the power that it does and I think it should have to register as a foreign agent just like every other organization does. Shang Zong 1598 says, "What are your thoughts on the recent shift in attitude toward the press at the Pentagon and the White House?" I'm appalled by this. What Shang Zong is talking about is at the Pentagon um every news outlet covering the Pentagon had to sign a contract

[10:55] 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, saying that they would not publish any information that had not been officially given to them by the Pentagon. Can you imagine? It's like the only thing that you can publish is propaganda personally vetted by, you know, the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Uh what that does is it it makes illegal investigative journalism. With the the idea being

[11:26] if you publish something that is technically classified, that would be espionage and you would be charged under the Espionage Act. In fact, that's constitutionally protected free press. So, I'm appalled by this. The only organizations that said yes and actually signed were Newsmax, OAN, the One America Network, some Turkish newspaper I never heard of, a Hungarian newspaper I never heard of, couple of bloggers. That's it. Otherwise, there's no news coverage of the Pentagon right now, at least not at

[11:56] the Pentagon in the press office. Teller Fry 679 asks a very difficult question. What question or questions do you wish you had been asked so far? You're always a well of knowledge, almost like a character from Arthurian legend. Thank you. One must know the right questions. That's true. One must know the the right questions. And to tell you the truth, I've been asked pretty much everything I I could ever imagine being asked, and what I haven't been asked, I've just volunteered, uh which has gotten me in

[12:28] trouble in the past, as you as you well know. Um you know, I I think an issue that that I probably haven't talked about that that I'd like to talk about more is personal respect or the respect of one's children. People often ask me why I blew the whistle, like was I raised in such a way, you know, etc. etc. Well, yeah, sure. I was raised

[13:00] in such a way that that you know, as I say all the time, deep down we know the difference between right and wrong. We just do. Whether you're a CIA officer or, you know, a teacher or a truck driver or you work at a grocery store, whatever it is, we all deep down know the difference between right and wrong. And when something is so wrong that it violates the law and it violates basic human rights, you have to say something. We can all agree on that. I I But, I also did it because I want my children to respect me.

[13:31] I don't have any grandchildren yet. I'm 61. My two oldest sons are married, but neither one of them has children yet. And there are generations that haven't been born yet. Perhaps generations that I'll never get to meet. And if they ever wonder, I wonder what my grandfather was like. I wonder what my great-grandfather was like. I want them to be proud of what I was like. I want them to be able to look back and say, Oh, my grandfather was confronted with this with this ethical dilemma, but he did the right thing.

[14:02] Yeah. That's something that I'm generally not asked about that I think is very important. Thank you for that. Cballer77 says, John, it's my understanding that during your CIA training, you would have been taught to read people. In essence, to quickly assess their motives, whether they were someone you should be wary of, etc. Do you still find yourself doing this today? If so, are there any tips you could provide a layperson to assist in this quick assessment of strangers? Thank you. What a great question that is. Um so, first, yes, we we were actively

[14:33] trained to make a spot assessment. There is um this thing at the CIA called the asset acquisition cycle. It's four parts: spot, assess, develop, recruit. So, if I bump into you at a party, immediately in my mind, I'm going to I spot you at a party. I go up and say, "Hey, how are you? My name's John. I work at the American Embassy. What do you I assess you based on your response. Now, remember, in that position as a CIA officer,

[15:03] my question to myself is, What can this person do for me? What classified information can this person give me? And then I if you do have classified information, I develop you, right? We become great friends. I take you to dinner. I take you to lunch. Our wives become friends. Maybe we go on vacation together, I give you expensive gifts, and then finally recruit and you become a paid CIA asset. Um, I do still find myself doing that today, but

[15:34] not in the way the CIA taught me, not what can this person do for me. Like all of you, I'm very, very busy. And frankly, I don't want to be surrounded by I I want to genuinely like the people that I hang out with or the people that I have contact with. Life's too short. I'm 61 years old. How much time do I have? I'm on the backside of my life here. I don't want to waste that time with people who aren't good human beings. And so yeah, I I use those skills that

[16:06] they taught me not not to determine if they have something that I want or need that they could provide, but whether, you know, I used to ask myself this question all the time and now I I I ask it even more frequently. It's would I want to have a beer with this person? And if I were down on my luck, would this person let me sleep on their couch for a night? I know that sounds kind of crazy, but that's actually the questions that I ask myself when I meet someone. You know, would I like to have a beer with this person? If the answer's no,

[16:36] move on. So yeah, it was valuable training and I still use it every day. Stefan Lazarevic 12, can you give us your thoughts on the political state in the Balkans, specifically ex-Yugoslavia countries? Are you familiar with ongoing riots in Serbia and what do you think about this region in general? I answered a similar question a few weeks ago and I took it on the chin in the comments afterwards and I deserved it because because I didn't give a full analysis. I just gave sort of an offhand comment off

[17:07] the top of my head. I was serving in Greece when the Yugoslavia war broke out. And the reason, this is why I took took it on the chin last time. The reason why the United States and NATO attacked Serbia specifically was because of the human rights violations, the the the crimes against humanity that were taking place at the time in Bosnia. So, I I get it. Totally agree. Totally agree. There were terrible Slobodan Milošević was a war criminal and he was committing terrible terrible acts of of genocide. Um

[17:37] at the same time I was stationed in Greece at the time and Greece is an Orthodox Christian country. Serbia is an Orthodox Christian country and there is this bond between the two countries that was unbreakable. To the point where we had to evacuate the US Embassy six times during that war where they sent us all home because there were riots that would begin at Parliament and start marching toward the Embassy, you know, in a in a slow in a slow march. You have about 45

[18:07] minutes that you can get away. And then they used to have these big 100 drachma coins before they converted to the euro and people would fling these coins at the Embassy and smash all the windows. And, you know, there were terrorist groups there at the time, Revolutionary Organization 17 November and Popular Revolutionary Struggle that both supported the Serb position. And so, it was it was dangerous to be an American in Greece at the time and it was extraordinarily difficult difficult to be a an Orthodox Christian at the time and to be at least officially on the

[18:38] side of um of the Bosnians. So, I have tried to stay um abreast of what's happening in the Balkans. I hate that that many of Serbia's most important Orthodox Christian monasteries now fall um on Kosovar territory. The Kosovars, of course, say that the Serbs have free access to any churches or or um uh you know, holy sites that they that they

[19:10] want access to. Um I think that's probably true, but then there are more minor issues that flare up and cause problems between the two. I'm very glad that other countries making up the former Yugoslavia, like Croatia, for example, or Slovenia, have made great economic comebacks or economic strides. I hope the the same thing for for Serbia, although it's been a little slower. Um, I will say that I am biased, extraordinarily biased, against what is now called the Republic of North Macedonia.

[19:40] Macedonia is Greek, 100%. Alexander the Great was Greek. There is no such place as the Republic of North Macedonia, as far as I'm concerned. They can call it the Republic of Upper Vardar, they can call it whatever else they want. I hate, hate, hate the fact that they use the word Macedonia. It's It's stolen history. But other than that, you know, God bless. Montenegro's in NATO now, of all things. So, now we have to protect Montenegro. Um, but uh but I wish the best for the

[20:11] former Yugoslavia. I I hope that the Serbs find peace and prosperity, and I'll continue following it. Super Shirley's says, "Hi John, I just happened to hear you on a podcast and I cannot get enough of your story. Thank you." Question: "Knowing what you do now, if you could go back and change your life story, would you still join the CIA? Praying that you get that presidential pardon. God bless." Thank you, Super Shirley's. Um, I'm smiling because I've actually given different

[20:41] answers to this question over the years. Sometimes I say, "Yes, I would do the same thing. The only way to change the CIA is from the inside. Nobody else blew the whistle. I was the only one that blew the whistle on the torture program, so maybe there would still be torture, blah blah blah." But then there are other interviews in which I've said, and I've said it seriously, it may have sounded like a joke, but I'm serious. I should have gone to film school. Um, I don't know. I I've I've told all of my children. I have five children.

[21:11] And uh I've told all of them that I absolutely, positively don't ever want to hear the words I want to work for the CIA ever come out of their mouths. And thank God they don't. My My eldest son is a bond trader. My second son is uh an elementary school music teacher. My third son is a junior uh in college studying supply chain economics. My daughter's a sophomore in college studying She's not sure what she's studying. And I have a 14-year-old. Um you know, I think that

[21:43] I probably would do the CIA thing over again. And I would not have waited as long as I did to blow the whistle. Somebody had to say something. This was a disgusting disgraceful crime against humanity that we were committing with smiles on our faces, and somebody had to say something. I'm glad that it was me. I'm sorry that I waited as long as I did. >> And the last question is from Muffin Cooper. John, so glad I discovered you and your story recently. Thank you for that. I've been binging on your interviews and various other podcasts. I honestly had

[22:14] no idea of the inner workings of the CIA and what goes on behind that curtain. I truly hope you're finally pardoned. I appreciate it. I consider you a true American hero. And speaking of heroes, did you ever have the opportunity to meet Tony Mendez, who rescued the six Americans in Iran? >> Not only did I meet Tony Mendez, I worked with Tony Mendez. And I am so proud of it. And his wife, Jonna Mendez, um Tony Mendez and Jonna Mendez were the creators of the CIA's

[22:47] disguise program. They They wrote a book together, which I highly, highly recommend. I did I did a thing with with Tony Mendez in the '90s. I can't say what it is. I'm I signed a secrecy agreement that I have to take to the grave on this one because it was so sensitive. It was so sensitive. >> [laughter] >> My station chief came into my office one day and he said, "You got a cable from headquarters

[23:18] today." I said, "Okay. I get 100 cables a day from headquarters." He said, "This one is so highly classified that even I'm not allowed to read it." And I was like, "What?" And he said, "Yeah. You've got to sign a secrecy agreement and then go to the communications shack, which was the, you know, six levels above top secret room in the embassy where all the cables come in and go out and all the equipment and the computers are." Nobody was allowed in there except the communications officers, but I had to

[23:50] sign this document and then the communications officer gave me this cable that was inside a folder and then sealed in an envelope. And I said, "What's this about?" And he said, "Dude, I send the cables out and I receive the cables coming in. I don't read them." So, the cable was from Tony Mendez. And he said, "You don't know me, but I'm the head of disguise and an issue has come up

[24:20] and the agency needs you. You have to come back for 6 weeks starting in June and we'll brief you once you get here." So, I went back to my station chief. I said, "I I'm going to I've got to go back home in June. They want me to do a an operation, but it's so sensitive they couldn't put it in writing." And he's like, "Well, this came from Tony Mendez, so you're good to go. Just go." So, I booked a flight home. I went home. As I said, Tony Mendez was the director of disguise.

[24:51] And so, man, they made a disguise. Woo! I wish I could talk about it. I'd like to actually write a book about it. Um but I can't. And um the operation was successful. And so I flew back to my station in August. And then in like December, Tony Mendez flew out to my location and gave me an award. A big award. It came with like five grand as a bonus.

[25:23] And everybody in the station was gathered around and he said, you know, everybody the station chief said, everybody knows Tony Mendez. He was a legendary figure. John did this thing. I don't know what it was. He won't tell me. Tony won't tell me. I'm not cleared to know, but John's getting this award. And then Tony gives me the award and he said, listen, John did this thing. Um so he's got this award from these guys, but none of us could ever tell you what it was. And everybody was like, like, okay. And then we all went back to

[25:54] work. So, I was honored to work with Tony and Jonna Mendez. They are giants in the history of the CIA. Buy their book. It's fantastic. You won't regret it. So, those are the questions we have for today. Please, as I've said in the past, continue to put questions in the chat. I'll answer all of them. No issue is off limits. Actually, some issues are off limits. So, if they are, I'll tell you that I can't answer that question. But but I love the questions. I'm very happy to at least try to answer them. And please again, if you don't

[26:26] mind liking, sharing, and subscribing, it would really mean a lot to me. I'm John Kiriakou. You've been watching another Q&A from Deep Focus. We'll see you next time.
