Title: Aug 14 2015 — The Scott Horton Show
Show: Scott Horton
Date: 2018-01-29
URL: https://youtu.be/8fcQ4ObATRc
Duration: 30:00

---

[00:00] hey I'll check out the audio book of Lu Rockwell's fascism versus capitalism narrated by me Scott Horton at audible.com it's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of Liberty from medieval history to the Ron Paul revolution rock will blast our status enemies profiles our greatest libertarian heroes and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan fascism versus capitalism by Lew Rockwell for audiobook find it at audible Amazon iTunes or just click in the right margin of my website at Scott Horton org all right you guys welcome

[00:30] back I'm Scott Horton it's my show the Scott Horton show live here on the Liberty radio network noon to 2:00 Eastern Time 11:00 to 1:00 Texas time next up it's another former CIA counterterrorism officer this time it's John Kiriakou associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies a former CIA officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee won't wear that part welcome to show how are you hey thanks

[01:03] for having me I appreciate you joining us today so this is the first time we've spoken and I think it's probably pretty likely we will again considering the kind of things you like writing about nowadays but so first of all I was wondering if we could do a little bit of just to get to know you think that perhaps starting with the first time that you were as far as I know on TV claiming I believe you later said that you were misinformed and it wasn't a deliberate lie that only three people

[01:34] have been waterboarded and what's the big deal and and I don't know the story that well John but my understanding is something along the lines you found out that that really wasn't true and then he decided to become an anti torture activist something along those lines I tried to make two points in an interview that I did with ABC News in December of 2007 and the two points were that I'm sorry three points were that the CIA was torturing its prisoners that torture was

[02:04] official US government policy and not the result of some rogue operatives and three that the policy had been approved by the president now the mistake that I made was in saying that that the issue of torture could be could be looked at in two ways number one was it moral and was it right and I said it was not it was immoral but the second was did it work and I said that I believed it had work because the reporting from the field from these secret prisons where torture

[02:36] was taking place indicated that it was working at least that's what we were being told inside the CIA now we know now from the CIA inspector general's report that was released in 2009 and especially from the Senate torture report that that was a lie that the reporting from the field was that the torture was not working but once that reporting got back to headquarters CIA leaders were telling CIA employees that it was working and that we were going to

[03:08] continue with this program but then so you were already retired at that point or they put you on TV to say because when I remember that and and maybe this was just because this is what stuck out to me the most but it seems to me thinking back on it that the headline that came out of it was only three guys were waterboarded and it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed you'd waterboard him yourself who cares about him and that was what we all learned from the previous interview that interview that

[03:39] got this all started well a lot of the right-wing media picked it up and and parsed it and chose to report only what they wanted to hear that was my first that was my first lesson in dealing with the press that the press is generally healing through its own agenda and that the press is ideological one way or the other and there are very few members of the press who were really interested in the truth so you're right what came out of that interview was not what I said but what a

[04:09] lot of right-wing media wanted to hear and that's what they repeated and that's what I got out of it was what I didn't want to hear and and and I admit John that actually I think even after you decided that you were gonna you know talk about torture in a much more forthright way to that I still held it against you that yeah that's the guy that said that only three or water or whatever and it turned out they put you in prison for the truth that you told about this torture program so can we now go back to before that

[04:40] terrible interview and who and what you were at the CIA what you knew about or what any role you had in the torture program or any of that stuff and make all that clear and then explain you know where he went after that interview and Baltimore prison yeah I joined the CIA in January of 1990 as an analyst focused on mostly on Iraq and I did that for about seven and a half years I got bored and I switched to operations that was a very unusual

[05:10] switch but but I spoke both Greek and Arabic and I wanted to go overseas so I moved to the Directorate of operations in 1997 and spent the next seven and a half years working in counterterrorism so after September 11th I was I was named the chief of the CIA's counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan and in that role I led a series of raids in March of 2002 that resulted in the capture of 52 al Qaeda figures including

[05:43] Abu Zubaydah who at the time we believed was the number three in al-qaeda that turned out to not be true in fact Abu Zubaydah was never a member of al Qaeda he certainly helped al Qaeda he ran their training camps he served as sort of a logistician but he never pledged fealty or loyalty to some of bin Laden that was just bad information that we have so I went back to headquarters in 2002 I remained until March of 2004

[06:13] and I resigned to to take a job in the private sector and then in 2007 in in December of 2007 I got a call from Brian Ross at ABC News who said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah I said that was absolutely untrue I was the only person who was kind to others Abeyta I said I've never laid a hand on him or anybody else in fact when I got back from Pakistan I was

[06:44] approached by a senior officer in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center who asked if I wanted to go through training that would certify me in what he called enhanced interrogation techniques I said I didn't know what that meant enhanced interrogation techniques and he said we're gonna start getting rough with these people and he explained to me what these torture techniques were I said look I have a visceral problem with this I don't want to be I don't want to be involved and I I had nothing to do with it but then in 2007 Brian Ross made this

[07:17] call and I denied that I had anything whatsoever to do with the torture program and he said well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself so that same week within just a day or two of that phone call President Bush went on TV and in response to a reporter's question said he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture and then later in the week see I knew that was a lie but later in

[07:48] the week he said that if there was torture it was the result of a rogue CIA officer and I thought my god they're gonna try to pin this on me somebody told Brian Ross that I was the one doing this so I decided okay I'm gonna go on ABC and I'm gonna defend myself now I went on ABC and I defended myself with with incorrect information all I knew was what I had been told by colleagues or former colleagues former

[08:19] co-workers in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center that the torture did work that was a lie that was a lie perpetrated by senior CIA officers not just to other CIA officers but to Congress into the White House as well all right and then so after that how did you get in so much trouble that they locked you in the pen because it's predict ulis when people say that in the entire torture program the only guy that was ever held accountable was a guy who had told the

[08:50] truth about it rather than participated in right the very next day after that interview the CIA filed what's called a crimes report against me with the FBI and the FBI began investigating me that investigation lasted from 2000 from December of 2007 until January of 2012 they ended up charging me with five felonies I will admit to you that that I made one mistake I confirmed the name of

[09:21] a former CIA colleague who was involved in the torture program to a reporter who wanted to interview him the reporter never contacted him and never released the name but I was charged with a felony count of violating the intelligence identities Protection Act and then for the interview I was charged with three counts of espionage and then just for good measure they threw in a felony counts of making a false statement as well all right now hold it right there we'll be right back everybody with John Kiriakou forgot to

[09:54] say he's got an article at anti-war calm today let's talk about torture and we're gonna do some more that on the other side of this hey y'all Scott here for samurai tech Academy at master samurai tech calm modern appliance repair requires true technicians who control will shoot their high tech electronics if you're young and looking to make some real money or you've been at it a while and just need to keep your skills up to date samurai tech Academy teaches at all and they'll also show you the business how to own and run your own take a free sample course to see how easily you can learn appliance repair from master samurai tech comm use coupon code Scott

[10:25] wording for 10% off any course or set of courses at master samurai tech comm all right shell welcome back talking with John Kiriakou former CIA officer author of this new article let's talk about torture running at anti-war calm today and we got it from other words they said we could now where we left off you went to prison for espionage for talking to an American reporter which I think no

[10:56] matter who we're talking to on you know about pretty much anything people got to understand you know just how crazy that is right there that federal charges can be applied in ways where the meaning of words has to be completely destroyed and then but they can do it anyway I mean it might as well charge you for weapons of mass destruction for having an unregistered handgun because hey as long as we're making up stuff I mean what is espionage about talking to an American reporter

[11:27] that must have been what your lawyer told the court right it was it would have been funny if it had been so serious and you know the lead espionage charge I should add all three of the espionage charges were dropped as was the whole famous charge but the the lead espionage charge said that I had revealed top secret code word information to a reporter from the New York Times and the information had been Declassified solely for the purpose of prosecuting me and that information was

[11:59] that after the 9/11 attacks the CIA had a program to kill or capture members of al Qaeda oh yeah yeah I allegedly said that in 2008 so apparently that was so top secret protected that I needed to be charged with espionage which which in its extreme form is it is a death penalty charge and then I got two other

[12:31] charges of espionage as well now the other two espionage charges were even funnier I had worked with a with an analyst who left the CIA to work for Mitchell and Jessen the two notorious creators of the torture program the two psychologists and this former colleague had given me his business card so a reporter from the New York Times said hey do you know how I can get in touch with this guy and I said you know I haven't talked to him in years but I have his business card and I gave him a copy of the business card and then I gave another copy to a reporter for ABC

[13:04] and I was charged with two counts of espionage for for giving them that business card now this is a CIA officer who had never been undercover in his life and his business card specifically says Mitchell and Jessen associates which everybody in America new had created the torture program but somehow that that business card was so highly classified that it warranted to additional espionage charges for me and then what wasn't you were eventually convicted of only I was convicted of

[13:36] violating the intelligence identities Protection Act of 1982 I was only the second American ever charged with with violating that law and what I did was uh I was working for ABC News at the time and one of my colleagues there said hey do you know how I can get in touch with somebody from the rendition detention and interrogation program I said I really didn't know any of those guys and he said well you mentioned a guy in your book who you saw on the tarmac in

[14:07] Pakistan at an airport when we were transporting a mr. bata and he says I'm gonna call him John he says you know you called him John and I said oh right that's John Doe I don't know whatever happened to him he's probably retired by now that conversation put me in prison for two years because that officer was undercover and I confirmed his last name now the reporter never contacted this guy and the name was never released to the public but but it bought me a felony conviction forfeiture of my pension and

[14:38] two years in prison well now so that wasn't the real reason that they launching up know what was ya know I maintained and my attorneys maintained from the very beginning that the CIA was so angry that I had that I had outed them on the waterboarding issue and that I continued to talk about torture that that they just asked the the Justice Department to find something find anything with which they could charge me you know I want to add to there's an

[15:10] awesome book that came out in 2012 written by Harvey silverglade who's a professor of law at Harvard University and it's called three felonies a day and he argues in this book that we are so over criminalized in this country that the average person on the average day going about his normal business commits three felonies every day and so if you're subject of a federal investigation and they really want to get you they're gonna get you whether it's with the

[15:42] conspiracy laws mail fraud wire fraud I mean those those laws are so broadly written the thinking they can apply to just about anybody on almost any day and that's really what they did in my case well and in fact a few years ago they officially legalized just within just Department guidelines going out on fishing expeditions tour and targeting people not crimes its official policy now that's just not how they really operate that's how they operate you know

[16:13] one of the things that really struck me as as hypocritical and funny in a you know not in a haha way but in an odd way is one of the things they did with me was they said your honor he was seeking to build a business and he was seeking to capitalize on this monetarily well first of all that was utter nonsense they knew what my bank accounts looked like because they had access to them and I was broke and I mean I was literally broke after I went on ABC I lost my job

[16:44] I lost my contract I lost everything in fact it was the prosecutor who went on to a six million dollar a year job at a big-name firm in Chicago it's the prosecutors who end up running for governor we're running for president it's not the the the people who you know allegedly committed these crimes there was no money involved right all right now so I'm glad we got a chance to talk about that but now we have little time to really get into that but I want to

[17:14] say a couple things from the news here just to bring this car into why this is still important Jeb Bush will not rule out resuming the use of torture is the headline at the hill newspaper yesterday and at the intercept there's a piece where they point out an interview with CIA executive director cron guard where he says quote well let's put it this way it you know meaning the stress positions that are are meant to make him as

[17:45] uncomfortable as possible so I assume for without getting into semantics that's torture I'm comfortable with saying that we were told by legal authorities that we could torture people and quote now correct me if I'm wrong but he's going a little bit off script here the struct is what we did if somebody else did it might have been tortured but when we do it it's an enhanced interrogation technique that does not rise to level a torture because if it did they might have to go to

[18:17] prison for that Scott you are exactly right this is the issue and this is what we need to be shouting from the rooftops it's all about the semantics you've got you've got George Tenet now Porter Goss and Mike Hayden three former directors of the CIA and eight former I'm sorry and five former deputy directors coming out with a book soon saying exactly the same thing if we do it it's not torture if the Justice Department says it's legal it's not torture that's semantics

[18:49] and the reason why they're so up in arms about this is because this is their legacy when their obituaries are written they're going to say that these men were instrumental in implementing the torture program and they don't want to go down in history as tortures they want to go down in history as Patriot now I don't doubt their patriotism however misplaced it might be but we need to call this what it is it's torture and we need to accept responsibility for it now if if

[19:19] they're of the ideological persuasion that torture is something that they needed to do okay that's fine I suppose we can all agree to disagree on an issue like that but we can't continue to play games that that then finally indicates that it wasn't torture and that it worked because it was torture and it didn't work and those are historic facts yeah well a couple things there I mean first of all though I'm not certain that's true I think it didn't work if you assume the premise that the goal was

[19:52] to gain good intelligence to protect the American people but that's fairy tale you know Disney World crap the purpose was to hurt this guy until he says he's friends with hüseyin and it weren't perfect for that didn't it that's right yes you know in the halls at the CIA while Dick Cheney was was leaking information to the press false information in the press linking saddam hussein to al-qaeda in the halls of the CIA we called that the big lie and I remember analysts like myself who had spent you know most of our adult

[20:23] adult lives working on Iraq I remember thinking surely no educated American is going to place any intellectual value on this at all al-qaeda hated Saddam Hussein more than they hated us there was nothing Muslim about Saddam Hussein at all he famously made a trip to Mecca to make the ohm rather minor pilgrimage and didn't even know the prayers and had to have an aide whisper the prayers into his ear so there there was nothing religious or Muslim about him at all and there was certainly no tie whatsoever between

[20:56] Saddam Hussein and al-qaeda none in fact in the two or three weeks before the invasion Osama put out a podcast urging the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the socialist infidel Saddam and fight the Americans - that's right that's exactly right it was all a big lie and it all came out of Dick Cheney's office all right now so then the other point is something that is almost unbelievable to me and I'm sorry I'm keeping you an extra minute here if that's okay George Tenet Porter Goss

[21:28] Michael Hayden and several of their underlings I presume that means they're lawyers they're writing a book together to justify torture they don't have all the power in that sentence they don't have a PR adviser who could tell them to just shut the eff up about it right now I said the same thing yesterday to a former colleague why can't they just let it go and like I said the only conclusion that I can come to is that this is their legacy this is this is how

[21:59] history is going to remember them and they think somehow in their warped little minds that they're going to be able to twist the truth and to twist history and to convince people you know who you know have to be either stupid or or so gullible that they just know any better that this this terrible program work especially when I mean the what's the introductory chapter here is you can trust me tenet and him Hayden because we were in charge of the CIA and

[22:31] NSA on September 11th so we really know what we're talking about that's the other part of their legacy they're the greatest failure in the history of all bureaucrats in all of humanity it really was it was the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the country and somehow none of them have borne any responsibility for it well by the way now that we're going to that and you were there in some capacity I want to ask you about the rich bleed podcast especially Part two you may be familiar

[23:03] where Richard Clarke when confronted with just how much George Tenet absolutely knew must have known about the San Diego group is just flabbergasted and says well man I don't know I guess they must have been trying to recruit them and and I can't believe that he lied to me about this for so long because according to Clarke he intended would talk on the phone like girlfriends late into the night about al-qaeda all the time and and George Tenet was keeping from him the director

[23:34] of counterterrorism in the White House that there was real ass al-qaida in the country how do you account for that I know both Dick Clark and George Tenet personally and I can tell you that if Dick Clark says that George Tenet was lying to him then George Tenet was lying to him and that's just how George operated he was an intensely secretive person even at the cost of a September 11 style attack Dick Clark was one of the most highly respected

[24:05] non-ideological counterterrorism professionals in government anywhere in government and I mean even on Capitol Hill and nobody wanted to disrupt an attack like September 11th as much as dick Clarke did talk about shouting from the rooftops it was Dick Clark who had gone to condi rice and said you're not listening to me there's going to be a terrible attack and it's going to be so for George Tenet to lie it really goes to the core of who George Tenet is

[24:36] and again if Dick Clark says Tennant's a liar tenets a liar yeah well you know Michael Sawyer your former colleague has told the story on the show and in print too to James Bamford and and it's been told other places where the CIA were tented at the time was Director of Central Intelligence boss of all the different agencies and CIA kept trying to get NSA to share their intercepts from the Yemen switchboard house and they wouldn't and supposedly at least CIA had to build their own intercept station on Madagascar but they could

[25:08] only get half the conversation and tenet would never make Haydon share the intercepts with the bin Laden unit is that really how business is done up there come on because a lot of this sounds like yeah you know I don't know cover for something or another it was even worse in the CIA's dealings with the FBI at least at least we had you know mutual respect between CIA and NSA colleague to colleague but our relations with the with the FBI were actively hostile and I've always been convinced that that

[25:40] that's why the September 11th hijackers were able to move around the country like they did because we hated the FBI and they hated the CIA and so no information was exchanged but Mike sure is exactly right you know make sure there's another one who who was sort of you know shouting into the wilderness he was warning people as best he could that something terrible was going to happen and nobody would listen to him and here the whole time the operations people probably were on these 9/11 hijackers at least the ones in San Diego and you know those of us

[26:12] who were supposed to be working against al-qaeda didn't even have any idea of it yeah well not so have you read the 28 pages no I wish I had but here's another thing you know it's Bob Graham not only was he one of the most highly respected members of the Senate he was one of the most highly respected members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and if Bob Graham says that those 28 pages would shake our government to its foundation uh I believe Bob Graham and if you know

[26:42] if leaks and room about Saudi involvement or what's in those 28 pages I'm gonna believe that the Saudi government was involved yeah well listen I I would rather err on the side of conspiracy kukri rather than letting a CIA guy spin me if I have to if it comes down to it so what about what could be pretty reasonably inferred here possibly if you were to assume that Dick Cheney's mean enough to say I don't know torture people to death maybe he would work with Bandar Bush to

[27:15] make sure that al Qaeda had enough guys to get on those planes to carry out their successful attack because they had some agendas and they liked Pearl Harbor attacks what about that I told Paul Jay at the real news network when he posed almost exactly the same question I said in my heart I don't want to allow myself to believe that something like that could possibly happen but with that said there there seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence to indicate that it may have happened at least some

[27:47] version of what you just said may have happened and we know that we know that the Bush family and the messiah's family go back generations we know that we know that nobody was closer than george w bush and prince Bandar I mean you know weekends at each other's homes and Camp David and vacations together so you know I've gotten myself to the point where I'll believe just about just about anything and until

[28:19] until the White House decides to declassify these 28 pages I just don't know what else people are supposed to conclude well I guess we could just bomb Iran all right hey thanks very much for coming on the show John good to talk to you thanks for having me good to talk to you all right so that is John Kiriakou he's writing here for other words that's other words org and we're reprinting this one today at anti-war calm it's called let's talk about torture and he

[28:51] is limb page down here at the Institute for Policy Studies hey I'll guess what you can now order transfer of any interview I've done for the incredibly reasonable price of two and a half bucks each listen finding a good transcriptionist is near impossible but I've got one now just go to Scott Wharton org slash transcripts enter the name and date of the interview you want written up click the PayPal button and I'll have it in your email in 72 hours max you don't need a PayPal account to do this man I'm really gonna have to learn how to talk more good that's Cal

[29:22] Wharton org slash transcripts you hate government one of them libertarian types maybe you just can't stand the president gun grabbers and war mongers me too that's why I invented Liberty stickers calm well Rick owns and now and I didn't make up all of them but still if you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are there's only one place to go Liberty stickers calm has got your bumper covered left right libertarian Empire police state founders quote central banking yes bumper stickers about central banking lots of them and well everything that matters liberty stickers calm everyone else's stickers suck hey

[29:55] I'll Scott were here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson the war state and the war state Swanson examines how presidents Truman Eisenhower and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War two this nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone we are going to have to abolish the Empire know your enemy get the war state by Michael Swanson it's available at your local bookstore or at amazon.com and Kindle or in paperback just click the book in the right margin as Skywarn org or the war State calm

[30:33] you
