Title: John Kiriakou CIA Whistle-Blower Part 2
Show: Fort Collins Community Action Network
Date: 2016-04-26
URL: https://youtu.be/AOLKpvbVzh4
Duration: 50:00

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[00:02] since barack obama became president he has charged 10 more people with espionage none of whom have been accused of giving information to a foreign government this is all for contact with journalists that's more than three times all previous presidents combined it's nick Sounion is what it is the only hope that we have because God knows Congress doesn't have the balls to change this they have it in the last hundred and

[00:33] hundred and nine years they're not going to change it now or 100 and whatever 99 years the only hope we have is twofold the only way that you can appeal an espionage conviction is if you go to trial and our convicted of espionage there are only two people who fit that that's chelsea manning and geoffrey sterling and geoffrey sterling is just down the road here and what's it called englewood i think fci englewood daniel ellsberg who's you know the godfather of all whistleblowers is leading a

[01:04] fundraising campaign to raise enough money to pay for Chelsea Manning's attorneys so that she can appeal the Espionage Act convictions it's a it's a long road and I'm not sure that even the Supreme Court has the stomach to do it with that keep my fingers crossed but with that I went way over I'm looking at the clock here but let's do some Q&A is I'm very happy to take your questions again thank you for having me it's really my pleasure to be not just in

[01:35] Colorado but right here in the room with you today thank you very much thank you well Cheryl I'm just want to say a word as treasurer of Fort Collins Community Action Network I thought I had um that stp is a part of that umbrella organization and the turnout today tells me that there are lots of people very concerned and very interested and probably very well informed about some

[02:07] of the things that are being talked about if you want these kind of events to continue to happen then you do need to support financially strike through peace and its umbrella organization for Collins Community Action Network every year we're needing to find more new sponsors for our organization to replace some that leave or for whatever reason leave the area so please consider if not giving generously today consider also

[02:38] being a ongoing sponsor a sustainer and you can do that by giving us your bank account number and we'll make it really easy to take money out of your bank account for such things you know good things let us get into your bank account for good things no but that will help us sustain the work not only of strength through peace to bring you these events but the other ongoing very important work that we do in this community on the

[03:09] behalf of poor people on the behalf of those who need our support and for progressive change here so thanks for letting me give that spiel thank you and if you could keep your questions brief we'd appreciate that what do you think that a movie like zero dark thirty oh all about torture I mean what do you got just like the National perception that people have about the CIA's torture program yeah yeah great question when

[03:40] zero dark thirty came out I had no intention whatsoever seeing it and Daniel Ellsberg called me and he said you have to see this movie and you have to write a review because you're the only one with the moral authority to do it it was like two days before i left for prison so I I didn't see it until I got home God knows they didn't show us zero dark thirty in prison I have two thoughts about that number one the the film itself I think did the American public a great disservice because it perpetuated

[04:12] this lie that torture was what led to the killing of Osama bin Laden it was just simply a lie really great analysis is what led to the the killing of Osama bin Laden so I I think that Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow really went the wrong way on that issue I have a friend who is is very close to Mark Boal and I'm told that he regrets being involved in this thing at all I'm glad to hear that now the other the other point I want to raise on this and this is where

[04:43] the CIA goes over the top the CIA actively collaborates with Hollywood writers and producers and indeed we know thanks to the Freedom of Information Act that when Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow approached the CIA about making the movie they were given classified briefings they were given access to a classified mock-up of the bin Laden compound and we also have learned recently that they gave their CIA interlocutors gifts like watches and tickets to the premiere that are illegal

[05:17] now remember what I said the definition of espionage was providing classified information or sorry providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it where are the charges for Leon Panetta because that's exactly what he did and then in the victory lap after the movie was made he said in a speech in the CIA's auditorium where Mark Boal was present and other people who did not have security clearances Panetta revealed the name of the SEAL Team six officer who shot bin

[05:48] Laden ok that is a violation of the intelligence identities Protection Act of nineteen eighty-one and I wrote an op-ed that ran the LA Times saying there is an empty bunk in myself and Leon Panetta is perfectly welcome to come and have it but there are no charges for Panetta you know when you're a pal of the President or you have for shiny stars on your shoulder or your identified in the New York Times as the president's favorite general there are no espionage charges for you so the whole episode was just a

[06:18] terrible disservice to the American people I'm just curious I'm sure you've heard the recent statements of Donald Trump criticizing Ted Cruz for not being hard enough on the position of waterboarding right so you know I'm not convinced that the American public is ever going to come around but of all the presidential candidates that we have do you have any hope that any of them might

[06:51] end up addressing the scituate the you know what you've described this endemic a little bit I wrote in a I have a weekly newspaper column that runs in small town papers and I wrote a column last week saying never in my life I've been a political animal all my life but never in my life have I ever seen so many presidential candidates tell us in advance that they're going to commit an impeachable act right who does that who

[07:25] gets up there and says i am going to commit a war crime as soon as i'm elected and then Carly Fiorina says I will too and then Cruz says well I will too and Rubio said well I'm not sure okay i will do it sickens me that public oppose the public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans support torture it sickens me and that's one of the things that makes me feel like I really need to stay out there talking about this right the media does say it's

[07:56] okay but finally yesterday and I saw this on Facebook of all places former senior CIA officer said it doesn't matter who's elected president nobody is going to get back into the torture business now the CIA has lied to us about everything since September 11th anyway but and I to believe that that he's telling us the truth but I think it's up to us to to do a couple of things to make sure that no matter who's elected president we don't return to a torture regime we need to ride our members of Congress ride them

[08:29] you know we've got these oversight committees the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the house permanent Select Committee on Intelligence they're supposed to be oversight bodies not cheerleaders but when you have a new chairman Senator Richard burr of Republican of North Carolina for example say on his first day as chairman that on his watch there will be no investigations of the CIA that's not oversight I mean I understand Frank church is dead I understand that Pat Moynihan is dead but by god there has to be somebody on Capitol Hill with the

[09:01] guts to stand up to the CIA and say you work for the American people and we are the representatives of the American people and we are going to oversee your operations and that hasn't happened yet now in terms of people serious candidates with a potential to win who I would trust certainly Bernie Sanders who I just absolutely adore and i'll tell you a Bernie story in a second and as crazy as it sounds Rand Paul I mean Rand Paul was Rand Paul doesn't mind yet

[09:34] polling at two percent but he can't win a Republican primary Bernie Sanders when I worked for John Kerry on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff I would go down to the Senate cafeteria every morning and get a bagel and every single morning there was Bernie sitting at a table having breakfast and inviting any Joe who walked in off the street to sit and have breakfast with him and the only thing he insisted on was that you call him Bernie mm-hmm then there were

[10:06] idiots like you know Ben Cardin the junior senator from Maryland who would say I'm a senator coming through I'm going to the front of the line I'm a senator and I saw him actually shove a pregnant woman out of his way so he could go to the front of the cashiers line Bernie's not like that so go Bernie in the intros introduction she mentioned that you were sort of recruited by a CIA CIA spotter whose money are professors yes so I kind of had sort of basically to the was curious

[10:38] to the sort of to the extent of your knowledge how prevalent are these CIA spotters in academia and how sort of how common is it that they're recruiting sort of young students and how does this relate to this idea you were talking about about recruiting people with sociopathic tendencies it's actually illegal now the way I was recruited has been illegal since the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1993 Bill Clinton saw to that but there are still CIA officers on most campuses at

[11:08] least most major campuses around the country they have this thing called the officer and Residence program so it's a it's a pre-retirement job for people who have done their 30 years and want to go back home so let's say you know you were born and raised in Bloomington you want the Indiana University job or you were born and raised in LA you want the USC job and then you're going to teach a couple classes about the CIA or intelligence or in one case a friend of mine has one of these positions and is teaching a course on espionage in Soviet

[11:42] literature which he's apparently an expert on so those CIA officers while there are many of them are overt and they're there as adjunct or visiting professors separately the CIA office of recruitment goes to colleges and universities constantly and recruits just like they've done since the 50s it's much less romantic today you generally just have to go to ww CIA gov

[12:13] and click apply now yeah this is mr. Arne mikoni who is the Green Party's candidate for United States Senate for the state of Colorado I'm very proud to know him I've had the pleasure to know John over the last year and I'm honored that I was able to drive down from Carbondale with my two children and have my children meet a

[12:45] national hero I've been to his house in Arlington and I want to ask a favor I've met jessalyn through John I've met Tom Drake through Tom and I I spent ten days with Daniel Ellsberg and wrote a book with him Daniel Ellsberg and gotten to know the whistleblowers these people have gone way beyond our imagination and sacrifice and john and geoffrey sterling should be pardoned by the President of

[13:18] the United States and if the people are watching this on television the people in this room could take some of the sacrifice out of your time and ask your representatives and President to overturn the conviction that John kyriacou has outlined in this conversation this is insane thank you and they need our people need to hear this tonight there's my question John is

[13:49] tonight there's a Republican debate it seems as though the only foreign policy that's discussed in either the Democratic or the Republican debate is counterterrorism your counterterrorism specialists can you speak to why this has become the monologue of our foreign policy in the United States yes people are easily frightened in our country and you know we've we've really transitioned to a permanent wartime economy with the September love of the tax and I don't

[14:21] mean to sound conspiratorial because it's not my nature to be a conspiracy theorist but I really believe that the large corporations in this country can thrive only in this permanent wartime economy and so we need to identify an enemy to have at all times an enemy that we can build up against and that's why almost none of the presidential candidates with the exception of Bernie Sanders are talking about actually downsizing the military that's that's the first point my second

[14:52] point I think would be that another part of our problem is there really aren't many differences between the two major parties I mean they're basically the same you can tinker around the edges of some of these issues but look at it this way especially on national defense and national security issues in 2002 george w bush was documented as having killed one person with the use of a drum okay barack obama killed 424 people with drones in october so really what's the

[15:25] difference between the bush foreign policy and the obama foreign policy i would say that the obama foreign policy is nothing more than a more violent extension of the bush foreign policy that's the problem we have in our presidential candidates not talk not wanting to talk about anything but terrorism and one one final point now that it's popped into my mind again I've gone nose to nose with al-qaida nose-to-nose hit another group another well known terrorist group tried to kill me in the middle east there were two

[15:55] assassination attempts against me so I feel like I know firsthand about terrorism and I can tell you that that the the solution to the terrorists problem is a long-term one and it's one of education and public works projects because if these guys that I mentioned in these isolated villages in their home countries could read and write and had job skills and had clean water and maybe a hospital nearby or roads to get to a job we wouldn't have this terrorism problem we wouldn't have to deal with it

[16:27] it's as simple as that but its long-term and it's not sexy like an f-35 and a special stealth you know drone with extra missiles and it's it's hard sell people don't want to talk about it so I was wondering if you're allowed to disclose the information about the other and what was at the end ban basically the torture stuff that you know the other ten things oh sure yeah they're they're all in the public record now okay and and they're listed in the

[16:58] torture report in their entirety but they're everything from the basic one was an open-handed belly slap right because it makes a loud cracking sound and it's humiliating it leaves a red mark that's supposed to be the first thing that that they do to you and then they can smack you across the face and again in the Senate torture report it specifically said that the middle finger can't extend beyond the earlobe the palm can't extend beyond the back half of the chin it's so very specific and then it

[17:31] goes to walling and then there was the confinement box which was either a large dog cage or a small dog cage sometimes especially in the case of Abu Zubaydah they would put him in a dog cage and then put the dog cage in a cardboard box so it was dark and he had this irrational fear of cockroaches and they would dump cockroaches into the box with him right and then it progressed its way up to waterboarding to the cold cell and when I didn't mention that I should have which really is one of the really

[18:02] heinous ones and that sleep deprivation Donald Rumsfeld famously said in whenever it was two thousand two thousand seven I guess that he was deprived to sleep all the time he would work 36 hours 48 72 hours with no sleep and he had a stand-up desk in his office he wasn't even sitting down when he was working but the kind of sleep deprivation we're talking about is your change that eyebolt in the ceiling again with hard rock music blasting in on you

[18:34] 24 hours a day those military-grade halogen lights bearing down on you so you can't sleep and they keep you up according to the Senate torture report for a period not to exceed 16 days okay we know that people begin losing their minds at day nine and people begin to die at day 12 and the goal is to keep you awake for 16 days if you're lucky you live but you can't participate in your own defense because by then you've lost your mind

[19:05] and others have died and again nobody was prosecuted what do you think of the nsa's prodigal childhood and as Edward Snowden like you know he did come forth and then we'll now he's in Russia so I honestly I think it's known as a national hero I really do I take a lot of crap for that in a lot of venues but I think he's done the country of great national service I might not have released everything that he released I actually want us to be intercepting

[19:36] angouleme Urkel's cell phone that's what NSA does that's what we want them to do it whether it's to give us a leg up in trade negotiations or to disrupt terrorist attacks we want to be targeting foreign nationals so I may not have you know said that but all in all we wouldn't know that NSA is spying on us if it weren't for its node and this this nonsense that that is spouted by hillary clinton and john kerry that he defected to Russia he needs to man up like they've ever been men they he needs

[20:07] to man up and come and face the music I've written to him privately through we share we share some attorneys and I told him don't come home because in the Eastern District of Virginia you'll never get a fair trial never and there's one judge in particular she was my judge she was Jeffrey Sterling's judge she assigned the case of it's known to herself nobody's ever won with this judge and I warned him that what the Justice Department might attempt to do is they'll say and and he wants to come

[20:39] home but they'll say all right you do five years or you do ten years and the judge will say I don't accept this plea throw it out and she gives him 40 years or 30 years because that's what's going to happen so I think he did a great national service now this silliness about him running to Russia defecting to Russia he was in the transit lounge Moscow Airport on his way first to Iceland and then to Latin America when Hillary Clinton revoked his passport and

[21:10] he was stuck in that transit lounge for three weeks if you recall the only reason he's in Russia is cuz Hillary Clinton put him there she stuck in there he had no intention of remaining in Russia and another thing too and this became an issue in my case there there's a Latin term in the legal profession called mens rea ax it means a guilty mind criminal intent is what it comes down to one of the reasons why I was absolutely convinced I was going to win my case is because I had no criminal

[21:41] intent I'm a patriot for God's sake you know I I've always said that the Republican Party and the conservative movement in this country do not have a monopoly on patriotism so I was confident I'm gonna win this thing and on my very first day in my very first hearing the judge said I will not respect judge Bennett of the Southern District of Maryland's decision on mens rea ax and my attorney said your honor are you saying that a person can

[22:12] accidentally commit espionage and she said that's exactly that's exactly what I'm saying and my attorneys said this is going to be a problem and it was you know same thing with with geoffrey sterling there was no literally no evidence that geoffrey sterling committed a crime but his jury in the Eastern District of Virginia found him guilty of nine felonies including seven counts of espionage for having a conversation with James verizon of the New York Times you just don't have a

[22:42] chance not when not when criminal intent is not a factor sir my question is if you hear a comp confidential security information and you pass it on are you become liable to if you are a private citizen yes no that's a great question that's a very important point good because I'll defrayed

[23:13] no and similarly if you are a working journalist you are not liable for prosecution unless you are making a conscious attempt to gather classified information for the purpose of distributing it that's that's why journalists generally aren't prosecuted now the last attorney general we had Eric Holder described a fox news journalist James Rosen as an unindicted co-conspirator I'd call that a war on the press you know when instead of being

[23:46] a journalist doing his job he's an unindicted co-conspirator you know that there's a problem with this administration and these guys are supposed to be the progressives just imagine if Ted Cruz's the president what's going to happen John thank you very much for your talk my pleasure is excellent there were a few criticisms I had of it and one I think you attributed to someone else which was I just want my country back from 9-10 right and actually I want my country back from

[24:17] 1975 from the church commission well I I'll go back a little further and actually you can go back you know to the very foundation in the country but in 1964 the CIA came out with a publication called khoob our counterintelligence yes irrigation I believe yes okay somebody tried to send it to me in prison and the the warden rejected it as being disruptive ah um straight through peace do a little research into this at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal to you know explain that torture actually went

[24:48] back a long ways from the CIA yes and the thing that struck me of KU bark is that the point was to make people feel that they were damaging themselves so this threat you put people in stress positions and they were causing themselves the pain and so they blame themselves right it's calm it's called learned or acquired helplessness you know much more about it may I'm sure but but so could you comment on how how

[25:20] does what was going on in qu bark compared to what happened after 911 are we in a qualitatively worse era and how so that's my after nine eleven it became more more regimented and more formal and it was more it was better documented the CIA this has been a cyclical issue for the CIA over the years the CIA did some terrible terrible things in the 1950s

[25:50] and 60s for example the prices of which we're still paying today I mean the overthrow of masada in Iran we're still we're still dealing with the ramifications of that terrible operation look look at the trouble that the CIA has caused in Latin America over the years guatemala el salvador nicaragua the dominican republic were still feeling that the after-effects of those operations so we've go through these periods where torture is okay and then

[26:25] tortures not okay again probably the the golden age for civil libertarians was in the immediate aftermath of the church committee hearings where there really was oversight in fact in the aftermath of church Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York wrote a book a very well received critically acclaimed book saying there there's no need for a CIA anymore certainly the Directorate of operations can be folded into the department's defense Human Services they do human source collection and the

[26:56] analytic arm of the CIA the Directorate of intelligence can be folded into the State Department's Bureau of intelligence and research and then the Directorate of Science and Technology can be split between the Pentagon and NASA there's no need to have a CI anymore you know John Kennedy played with that idea and took two bullets to the head and I'm not saying that the CIA killed Kennedy I'm just saying at the time of the Kennedy assassination cetera et cetera okay when I joined the CIA before I joined the CIA I went to a

[27:26] classmate of mine in grad school and I knew that her boyfriend was at the CIA and I asked if I could have dinner with him so we got together and I said listen I was just talking this guy he's pitching me for the CIA but I have some concerns about the bad old days and I want to hear your side of the story and he said oh yeah that's that's all in the past since the church committee it's been great we don't do any of that stuff anymore I said all right and then honestly everything seemed to me to be okay again I was a junior analyst so I

[27:59] really didn't have a full view of what was happening but then when bill clinton was elected the CIA went through this this culling of sources anybody who had any any his any history of human rights abuses was was fired from the payroll right and they got rid of something like a third of their sources and i thought you know this is great this is exactly the way it should be we shouldn't have people on the payroll who are torturers

[28:29] you know generals with human rights issues in their past etc and that was that worked until September 11th and then all the rules went out the window and everything no matter how crazy it sounded was appropriate if you could make an argument that it's somehow made Americans safer and we've never come back from that it's become the norm which is really dangerous I've read your letters from prison on the common dreams website terrific him and the question

[29:02] that kept coming to my mind was I wondered if your identity was known widely or at all to the fellow prisoners because sometimes accounts that come out of prison or that there's punishment and then there's the brutality that is visited on somebody who is labeled or tagged as a traitor to the country causing American boys to be killed etc etc so I wondered how that for thank you for that question I love talking about this everybody in the prison knew who I was

[29:33] before I arrived several hundred prisoners get the new york times i was on the front page of the of the sunday times the week before i arrived in prison so everybody knew so several things happened virtually all in my first week when I when I turned myself in well I should back up at sentencing the judge ordered that I'd be sent to a minimum-security work camp Club fed as they as they miss identify it the press

[30:04] and you know Club fed it there's no fence there are no walls you can work in town you just have to be on your honored oh you know come back on time so I got to prison my first day and I went over to the camp and I said hi I'm John Kiriakou I'm here to turn myself in the guy says everybody has to check in across the street the prison I said okay my attorneys i went up to prison with jessalyn raid act Tom Drake Jim spean who directed and produced the documentary film silenced my cousin and

[30:36] his son-in-law so we took this big van up there they dropped me off hugs kisses goodbye they drove away I go across the street to prison I said hi I'm John Kerry hago here to turn myself in the guy looks his computer he says okay he said turn around put your hands behind your back I put my hands behind my back he cuffs me then he shackles my ankles and he said okay let's go and I said well wait a minute I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street and he said

[31:06] not according to my paperwork you're not so I thought oh my god they're putting me in the actual prison take it easy there's nothing you can do if you make a scene they'll put you in solitary it was five days before I was allowed to make a phone call so I called my attorneys and I said listen they put me in the actual prison which was a low-security prison but which means double walls concertina wire controlled moves the whole nine

[31:36] yards murderers mostly pedophiles but lots of murderers who and he said well we can file a motion but it'll be two years before we get hearing you're just going to have to tough it out so I was in prison well the only thing that the guard told me as I was checking in was hey buddy he said one of the most important rules is if somebody comes in to your cell uninvited that's an act of aggression and I thought great I'm 50 years old I'm going

[32:06] to have to defend my I'm gonna get my ass kicked on the very first day in prison so I'm sitting on the edge of my bed and these two Aryans walk into my room just walk right in big swastikas on their necks one guy had tattooed fu so every time he blinked yeah how do you like that in a job interview after he gets out of prison so I jumped off the bed and I said what do you want and one of them says take it easy he says are

[32:37] you a and I said no and he said are you a rat and I said no I'm not a rat I didn't have anybody in my case are you a chomo I said I don't know what that means he says chomo like I'm stupid child molester I said no I'm not a child molester so he said okay you considered our table in the cafeteria and I thought oh I guess I'm with the Aryans now so few days later these two big

[33:11] muscle-bound black guys come into my cell and the same thing I jumped up I said what do you want one guy puts his hands up he said are you the CIA guy I said yeah and he's holding this newspaper and he said Reverend Farrakhan says you're a hero of the Muslim people and we wanted to tell you that you're not going to have any trouble with us and I said okay thanks I said thanks I appreciate it and he says I don't shake hands with the white devil I said I'm sorry I said I said thank you I

[33:43] appreciate you coming in and then finally I was across the hall from a from a senior captain in the Bonanno crime family and when I was done with my new york times i would give them to him and he would give me his new york post so we kind of struck up this friendship to the port where he said to me one day yeah I'm in on a murder charge somebody found a body in a barrel in my student on my storage unit he said I don't know how his body got in there like a hundred people had access to my storage unit I said Pete you don't have to explain your

[34:14] case to me I don't care how the body got in your storage unit anyway he said to me one day let me ask you a question why do you sit with those retards in the cafeteria I said I don't know they they invited me my first day here and he says from today you're with the Italians so I said thank you we had the actual boss of the Gambino crime family Little Nicky carazzo we had Peter the rebbe at Calabrese we had the boss of the Cal

[34:45] vacante family we had the Genovese families captain who ran the port of Newark and I was friends with all these guys there was one thing though Little Nicky he's doing 18 years on 18 murders how he must had a brilliant lawyer I don't know but anyway yeah so I I stayed away from Nikki because he had a reputation as being obviously very violent and then one day one of his bodyguards came up to my room and a huge guy like stupid cross-eyed and he says

[35:18] the boss wants to see you and I thought oh my god because I've been trying like not to make eye contact with the guy everybody else was great to me I go down to his room and I said mr. carrozza did you want to see me and he says you two CIA guy I said I am you write a book I said I did your book do good I said actually it did very well I made number five on the New York Times bestseller list it was my first book he goes you're gonna write my book I

[35:49] said oh is that what this is about and he says I'm going to tell you stories and you're gonna write them down I said well let's think about this for a second you know most of the books of this genre written by rats and they spend the first half of the book talking about all the cool things they did but they spend the second half of the book trying to justify why they turn rap and you're not a rat and you probably shouldn't talk

[36:20] about all the cool stuff you've done I wouldn't write the book and he says hadn't thought of that nevermind but then from that day I was invited to every Italian dinner every Italian party birthday parties going away parties they had a crooked cop on the payroll we had pork loins and lamb chops and white wine for the marsala sauce and fresh mushrooms and tomatoes and Alfredo I

[36:53] gained 15 pounds in prison I did 15 pounds the cops have come in what are you guys cooking today oh we got some nice veal veal chops here wow really smells good yeah it does so the Italians to Cara Mia there was one Italian in particular who really became my closest friend I actually miss his friendship very much we're not allowed to have contact because that would be consorting with known felons which means I would go directly back to prison so he had read

[37:26] about my case in advance and took it upon himself to engage with every one of the Italians at loretto to explain to them the difference between the CIA and the FBI right the FBI are rats and cops the CIA are heroes who protect the country overseas and so as soon as these Italians understood that I didn't have arrest powers and I would never ratted on anybody I was one of them

[37:57] and it made life very very very easy I'm writing a book about this I finished it actually it's out for bid it's called doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison and there's one there's one account of I was near the end of my of my sentence and my my bunkmate was the former mayor of Cleveland right awesome guy totally corrupt just like a big brother to me was so great so he said to me one day

[38:28] hey John there was some guy in the insulin line tonight talking trash about you he said you were a rat I said who who said I was a wreck those are fighting words he said I don't know I never saw him before and then sure enough another friend of mine from Texas came down and said that there's this guy in the cafeteria telling people you're a rat I said point him out to me I want to see who this guy is and they pointed him out to me in the cafeteria and I shouted at him I said hey you have a problem with me and the guy says you know what I

[39:00] said you know where I live you come up to my room and we'll finish this between the two of us I said right now I told him well the only place where the cops feel vulnerable is in the cafeteria because you have 1400 guys and ten cops right so they're always worried about violence breaking out I stood up I said let's go right now I had no intention really I was I was bluffing so um one of the Aryans came over and he said please please not in here though they'll arrest

[39:31] all of us and put us all in solitary well Peter the rabbit Calabrese was next to me and he looks up he says what are you doing sit down he says we'll take care of this later so I'm staring at this guy and I said as God is my witness Pete I'm gonna kill this guy and I don't know why I was so angry nobody had ever called me a rat before but this guy maintained that I had ratted out the CIA by talking about torture so I sat down and then Pete says we're going to go

[40:04] back to my room and you're going to read the USA today so I was shaking I was so angry we went back to his room he hands me the USA Today he says I'll be back in a minute so he and another Italian went out and they came back 20 minutes later and he said to me it's all taken care of I said what's that supposed to mean he said it means don't worry about it it's all taken care of I said all right all right I said I trust you I gave him back his paper and I went to my cell about 20 minutes later the

[40:35] guy comes down to my room and his face is like this and there's blood coming out of his nose and blood coming out of his lip and he says to me I'm very sorry for calling you rat I don't know why I did it I'll never say it again I said get out of my room before I kill you and he went back to his room and there was never any problem again after that because i had the italians to rely on i

[41:06] read some time ago that former President Truman wrote a letter to Washington posted i think 1963 that his greatest mistake was signing the CIA i've read that and is it the Washington Post as I understand printed it in their first edition and then pulled it out on the later yes yeah interestingly enough J Edgar Hoover was the one that put it into Truman's ear that this creation of the CIA was a terrible terrible mistake now Hoover was saying that for his own

[41:37] purposes of course because when when Congress first began considering the National Security Act of 1947 whoever just assumed that the CIA was going to be a division within the FBI and when general Donovan insisted to Truman and Donovan had Truman's ear when he insisted to Truman that the CIA be an independent standalone agency Hoover turned and tried to talk the president into first not signing the bill and then later to disbanding the CIA in the next

[42:08] national security authorization act it didn't work and we've been stuck with the CIA ever since I have a two-part question so the first part of my question I agree that ethics should be introduced back into politics and other areas as well besides just intelligence operations but I was curious if you've ever thought about the steps that need to be taken to introduce ethics into intelligence operations um and then a second part of my question and forget my ignorance on your opinion in your position but do you think the torture

[42:38] program needs to be completely eradicated or like do you think there is some good that comes out of it and it just needs to be reorganized I'll answer the second part first because that's an easy one no I think tortures inappropriate under all circumstances there's no place for it it doesn't work it's not moral it's not ethical it's not legal we have this federal torture act that bans it we have we're signatories to the united nations convention against torture and indeed not only were we the original signatories we were actually the authors of the united nations convention against torture and let me

[43:09] add another thing to that in in the january of 1968 The Washington Post ran a front-page picture of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner when the secretary of defense robert mcnamara saw that picture he ordered an investigation and the soldier was arrested and he was tried and convicted of torture and he was imprisoned well the law hasn't changed since nineteen sixty eight so why was torture illegal in 1968 but not illegal in 2002 or in 2015 you know when when we

[43:43] had to pass the McCain fine stein amendment to reaffirm our national ban on torture so the law never changed American politics changed we need to change it back in terms of how we implement ethics into our political system I think there are two ways to do it one is Congress has very very strict ethics regulations and both houses of Congress have an ethics committee that is not only to advise the members of Congress on ethics but every staff

[44:15] member on Capitol Hill I can't tell you how many times I had to engage the Ethics Committee on sometimes very basic questions but that's what they're there for if there's any question at all you just ask the ethics people what to do and they what's the right thing what's the wrong thing so I think that that needs to extend to the executive branch I think every federal department and agency like they have a general counsel and they have an inspector general ought to have a chief ethics officer justice does

[44:45] although the Bush administration bastardized the the position but I think every governmental agency should have a chief ethics officer another thing is that lots of colleges and universities across the country especially Catholic schools have very robust ethics programs ethics departments in many cases and I think we need to rely on those people to guide us in government as to what proper ethical processes are not just in

[45:18] intelligence operations but in any governmental function at all you know they're they're experts in ethics and we should rely on that expertise John thank you so much for your presentation thing because this has been very very helpful this is the kind of thing I think that we need much more of rather than the circus that's going on right now with the presidential candidates agree but I wanted to ask you if you had a magic wand and you could really revise the

[45:52] whole approach in this area of Foreign Affairs what would you do what would be your suggestions fares writ large well and end CIA and the interaction between those this is just a short question yes you know I'm so arrogant that I've never been stumped before I'm stumped now in a

[46:26] perfect world the scituate the setup that we have ought to work it's not a perfect world and for the most part I think I blame Congress their Congress just over the deck aids I mean through generations Congress doesn't lead their reactive reactionary there's really no oversight and it's both parties and they lie you know when I was a when I was in college I used to be an autograph hound and my college

[46:57] roommate and I would each buy copies of the Almanac of American politics we didn't have friday classes so every Friday we would go up to Capitol Hill and we would get autographs from famous senators and congressmen right and I have you know some of the Giants Barry Goldwater Ted Kennedy Bob Dole scoop Jackson mo Udall was loads of fun and I I thought these guys were special because the country had entrusted them with leading us and you know now I realize how naive and how childish that

[47:28] was that for the most part they're idiots they're just idiots and they're opportunists on top of it so when you have the likes of dianne feinstein you know just cheering for the CIA and approving of the torture program and then when things hit the fan saying well jeez I I don't think I was briefed on that and they say well yeah you were maybe a staff member forgot to give me the notes no you were there and we have a record of you being there I just don't

[47:59] remember well that's not leadership that's not oversight you know when when Diane Feinstein says I don't know if I like Leon Panetta as director we need somebody who really knows intelligence so al vote for Panetta only if Steve Capus gets to be the deputy director well Steve Capus was one of the architects of the torture program so thanks to Diane Feinstein we have this you know can add this continuing legacy of torture another problem is all the senior CIA leaders of the Bush

[48:30] administration were the senior CIA leaders of the Obama administration there are civil servants they didn't go anywhere and they know that they can outwait presidents presidents are going to be there for four years or eight years these guys are going to be there for 35 years so they can just wait so really I think that the problem that we have had is a problem of congressional leadership you know the CIA just by its nature is going to try to get away with as much as it possibly can but that's what oversight is all

[49:03] about oversight is a committee saying wait a minute no you can't do that you can't overthrow that government you can't establish that secret prison another problem is when the CIA determines that an operation is so sensitive or so classified it only informs the chairman and vice-chairman of the two committees right that's considered to be notification but if the chairman and vice-chairman of the committee's are true believers and

[49:33] cheerleaders then again there is no oversight so it's all about Congress in my view well thank you very much what a pleasure it is to be here I really appreciate it thanks for everything thank you so I also wanted to let you know that it's going to be broadcast on Fort Collins public media so thanks to Phillip mayor for videotaping it for us and when that comes out on Fort Collins

[50:04] public media I'll let you know via social media and our listserv so you can tune in and let your friends know
