Title: John Kiriakou — Ep 133 (probe dup vs 6kmi7Tkpf7Q)
Show: Fortress On A Hill
Date: 2023-02-08
URL: https://youtu.be/LThb4bBpGUw
Duration: 48:00

---

[00:18] Henri: Well, welcome everybody to Fortress On A Hill, a podcast about US foreign policy, anti imperialism skepticism, and the American way of war. I'm Henri thank you for joining us. Today with me is, uh, a very special guest, somebody we wanted to talk to for, for quite a. Um, the, the, the myth man, the legend, Mr. John Kiriakou. Um, and, uh, we're gonna get to chat with him for a while and try, you know, uh, hear about some of, uh, his experiences, many experiences. Um, for anybody who doesn't know, uh, John Kiriakou was a, a former

[00:53] CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Uh, John became the. Whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act, a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as the result of his attempts to oppose the Bush Administration's Torture program. John, welcome to Fortress On A Hill. John Kirakou: Thanks for having me. Henri: So I, I'd, um, I'd like to give the listeners kind of a sense of, um, your, your overall background.

[01:26] Certainly we don't have to go in everything into, into great detail, but I'd like to, to hear a bit about your career, about, um, how you came to the point that you became a, a whistleblower and, um, what, how you see that career now, today, looking back on it. John Kirakou: Sure. The second part of the, uh, of the question is the more difficult one. The, the easier part is I was recruited into the CIA when I was in graduate school at, uh, George Washington University.

[01:56] I, uh, I had an advisor, a professor whom I respected very deeply, uh, and, and I continued to respect until, until he died. Uh, that was Dr. Gerald Post. He recruited me into the cia my second year in grad school. And, um, I started at the c i A the first week of January, 1990 as an analyst on Iraq. And, um, Uh, spent the first seven and a half years of my career working

[02:27] exclusively on Iraq, including a tour overseas in the Middle East, working Iraqi sanctions issues. I was in, uh, an office at the CIA that no longer exists. It's called, it was called the Office of Leadership Analysis. So my job really was to be Saddam Hussein's classified biographer, or his biographer for the intelligence community. I got bored with that after seven, seven and a half years, and so I made a very unusual switch to counter-terrorism operations. Because at the time, um, I was the only person, quite literally, I was

[03:02] the only person in the c I A who was fluent in both Greek and Arabic. So, uh, they sent me to Athens as the, um, counter-terrorism representative, uh, mostly covering Arab Terrorism Abu Organization, P F L P D F L P P F L P G C, all those old school communist, uh, and nationalist terrorist groups, and a Greek group called Revolutionary Organization. 17. I did that until, uh, the summer of 2000 and then went back to headquarters.

[03:37] I was, I was, um, working, um, I have to be careful of my language. I was, I was training Middle Eastern Intelligence services and counter-terrorism operations and then nine 11 hit and, uh, I was named, um, the chief of Counter-Terrorism Operations in Pakistan after nine. Um, in that job I led a series of raids that resulted in the capture of Abu Zubahdah, who we believed at the time was the number three in Al Qaeda.

[04:10] He wasn't. And, um, went back to headquarters. On the strength of the Abu Zubahdah capture, I got promoted to, uh, executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director and. And then my final tour was at the United Nations in New York, and I resigned from, from New York to go into the private Sector and then later back into government at the uh, Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Henri: Um, I'm curious about your time working and, and again, I, like you

[04:42] said, I'm real careful about what you, what you can share, but the time working on Iraqi sanctions, um, uh, I'm curious about, especially about that time because it, it, you know, it in some ways it informs the state of Iraq today almost as much as the Iraq war does. Um, but is there any, is there anything that you can share with us about, about that time? Just kind of the, you know, the, maybe your overall impressions of it? John Kirakou: Yeah, it was, it was that long period of Iraqi

[05:15] sanctions that convinced me. Number one, sanctions don't work. And number two, they are cruel to the point of becoming, in many cases, crimes against humanity. You know, I remember in the very beginning of the sanctions regime, beginning in August of 1990, um, the State Department of the White House took very seriously the notion that the Iraqi people needed to continue receiving.

[05:47] Food and medicine. Okay, so, so they, they wrote up a UN security council resolution 9 86, and then the Iraqi said, well, we need, you know, these pipes, right? For our sewer system. We can't deliver clean water without these pipes. Well, then the CIA says, wait a minute. Those kinds of pipes are used in South Africa to run fiber optic cable, and you can use fiber optic cable for a weapons of mass destruction program.

[06:20] So no pipes. Well with no pipes. Then you get no clean water and when you get no clean water, people start to get sick. And then, The US government says, well, you know, they shouldn't be using this much, uh, in, uh, antibiotics. They must be doing something with the, an antibiotics. They're making a BW program out of it. And the next thing you know, thousands, tens of thousands of people, mostly children, are dying and they're dying as a direct result of these sanctions.

[06:53] And I remember a senior officer telling me, sanctions are always a bad. Because they never do anything to the person being targeted. Saddam Hussein didn't give a shit about sanction. He had a very sophisticated sanctions busting regime set up at the American em, or at the Iraqi Embassy in, uh, Amman, Jordan. He had a, a cousin who was in charge of it at the time, and so it was only the Iraqi people. And when I say the Iraqi people, I mean the innocence among the Iraqi

[07:25] people, women, children, minorities, you know, Kurds, Shia, they were the ones who were suffering. It wasn't Saddam or his Trei clan or his Aja family, or really any Sunnis in the, in the power structure of the Iraqi government and military. None of them suffered at all from sanctions. The Iraqi people suffered from sanction. Uh, you know, we renewed sanctions so many times. Uh, uh, after 9 86, it was 10 96, and then it was like 1234, and it

[07:59] was just year after year after year. Sanctions were being, were being renewed. And I remember saying to a colleague of mine, a buddy of mine at the time, I can't do this as a career. Nothing's gonna change. American policy's not gonna change, and we're not serious about taking out Saddam, nor should we have been because that in and of itself would've been a violation of international law as it was later. Um, but I just decided I, I had to do something different and more interesting.

[08:30] And every, let me tell you, every Greek American at the cia, all through the CIA's history has wanted to serve in Athe. And so that's what we all sought to do and I ended up getting a great tour there. Henri: I remember speaking to, um, I did, I did two tours in Iraq as a, as an Army mp, and I remember speaking to, Different people. It was usually tra uh, the translators that we had cuz it was easier for us to, to go back and forth. But talking about just that, that entire period and both, you know, the

[09:01] Gulf War in and of itself, the, um, the massive killings that happened to those who rose up against Saddam. Following George Bush's call. And that was one that, this, this particular guy I'm thinking of that, that was a huge thing for him. But then, and then, you know, children, dead children, you know, from no food, from no medicine, but in terms of trying to understand, you know, the, the, the totality of American involvement in Iraq and the costs that had been paid, and I,

[09:31] I, I read your, uh, your recent article Henri (2): at Consortium News regarding Tony Blinken pursuing Soviet-type weapons for use in Ukraine and how Cyprus is still punished by the U.S. for refusing a similar request. Henri: You know, understanding the place that, that Cyprus had in that, in terms of being stuck, they, they were certainly weren't sanctioned, but they were still being punished in a very specific way for, and as far as I can just, it's just not towing the American line.

[10:03] It was just by, by just pushing back as however, however minorly they did.. John Kirakou: That's the exception to the rule. You know, the only reason the Cypriots have the great life and the great country and great economy and and honest democratic government that they have is because they're a Western. For all intents and purposes, they're a western country, but you're right, and 99.9% of Americans have no idea that we've had a weapons embargo

[10:34] on Cyprus for the last 46 years. 46 years sanctions on Cyprus of all places. Now, thank goodness that the likes of the British and the French thought that was ridiculous and that the Cipris deserved an opportunity to protect themselves against Turkish expansionism because God knows the Americans never came through. Henri: We did an episode a few months ago on Fallujah, just the history of the city as it pertained to the Iraq war,

[11:04] Henri (2): Specifically regarding Henri: the deaths of the American mercenaries in Fallujah in March of '04. Henri (2): Iraqi citizens were asked some polling questions, specifically about this ambush. Henri: Why do you think this happened? Is there anything that you can point to? Henri (2): And the Iraqis were very pointed in response, that they knew the CIA had a long history in Iraq from a multitude of incidents and felt very strongly that these Blackwater mercenaries, these plain clothed con tractors could have been members of the CIA and that they were there to commit acts of violence, to violate Iraqi sovereign

[11:38] T as it had been many times before. Henri: Now, understanding the long section of US history on Iraq, I, I don't know that you would want to call them wrong, you know, in terms of having that fear of not knowing. And of course they're not told, they didn't get told anything about. What's actually happening in their country, why the United States has chosen to keep this regime even, you know, we're now more than a decade past the official end of the Iraq war, and none of that has really changed. I'm, I'm curious about, because you worked on Iraq for, for such a long period of

[12:09] time, and it was, uh, you know, in terms of, you know, dealing with war on terror and other things that, how, how do you see places like that ever getting back to anything that might seem normal? John Kirakou: Yeah, that's a good question. And I, I think the very sad answer is that they don't get back to normal L look, look at the US intervention in Iran in the 1950s. Here we are 70 years later, 70 years after we overthrew that government and

[12:41] our relations still haven't returned to., we're still suffering from that terrible foreign policy decision. You know, one of the things that struck me post nine 11 on Iraq, I, I was intimately involved in the planning for the Iraq war. I go into great detail about this in my first book and, um, one of the things that really struck me was how these very important people at the White House, uh, and in the, the power structure at the Pentagon knew literally.

[13:12] About Iraqi history, about Iraqi culture and society. I remember participating in a secure video teleconference where one of the deputy directors of the National Security Council said, and this was the day before we crossed the Iraqi border. He said, when we crossed that border tomorrow, they're gonna throw flowers at us. And I turned to my boss and I said, was that a joke or did they really know nothing about. And the answer, I'm sorry to say was that they knew nothing.

[13:50] Henri: Thing to look back at and especially like, you know, to, you know, I, I, I, I realized looking at the scope of it, you know, that the, you know, I was an mp. I was doing, you know, ground stuff. We were trained in the Iraqi police and, and in terms of, but the, but once you understand the full breadth of the history, you know, you may have played, and I mean you, in the royal sense, you know, we, we may have played a very small role, but we're still part of that giant snowball that has crushed that country

[14:20] that has been been a part of that. Um, so I'd like to move on to talk a little bit about, um, Whistleblowers and specifically about, uh, communications management, uh, units. Um, that's been something that I've, I've been reading about for quite a while. I, I, um, but I, I saw your, your blog post on your, and it, it got me kind of thinking about it again. Um, I was wondering if you could give our listeners kind of a, a little basics on communications management units.

[14:52] John Kirakou: Yeah, so communications management units are specialized units inside the US Federal Prison system. There are two of them, one. is in the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana. It used to be Federal Death Row. They built a new death row and then made the old death row into A C M U. The other communications management unit is at the Supermax Prison in Marion, Illinois. Now, the whole purpose of creating a a a communications management.

[15:24] Those are important. Three important words. That is a, a unit inside the most secure prisons in America where all communication with the outside world can be controlled, right? So you have Omar Ab, the Blind Shake, who's now dead. You don't want him communicating with people on the outside. So he can plan additional terrorist attacks, right? So you want him to be cut off? We have the, the last surviving Abu organization hijacker

[15:56] from the 19, uh, eighties. He's in the communications management unit, John Gotti. Uh, the, the boss of the Gambino crime family died in a communications management unit. So these things were set up for the worst of the worst, the most dangerous prison. People who had to be were, were the American people had to be protected by, uh, from them, right? But that's not really what they are. Uh, they're used to silence people whose messages are

[16:28] inconvenient for the government. And so you've got a communications management unit. Now that houses Daniel Hale, the drone whistleblower. Daniel, in my view, is a bonafide American hero. He's the one that told the American people that the, that the drone program run by whomever, D O D C I A, nsc, whoever happens to be pulling the trigger on any given day.

[17:01] Was responsible for an 80% death rate among civilians. Okay, well, if it's a drone program and it's be supposed to be so much safer, right? Then why are 80% of the people you kill civilians? They're AC accidental deaths. He's the one that told us about that. Now, he was sentenced not to 20 or 30 or 50 years in prison. He was sentenced to 42 months. Which, you know, with time off for good behavior is under three years.

[17:34] So if he's like so not dangerous that he gets a prison sentence of less than three years, why in the world is he in a communications management unit? Because the Justice Department was upset with the shortness of his sentence. Another one is Marty Gottesfeld. Marty Gottesfeld was a computer hacker and he read an article about a, a little girl named Justine, uh, in, uh, New England, who was born with

[18:06] a genetic disorder, her parents took her to Children's Hospital in Boston. Uh, after their doctor said, look, we can't help her anymore in our little town. You should take her to Children's in Boston. The physicians at at Children's Hospital in Boston said, oh, she doesn't have this genetic disorder. Uh, she's being abused and starved by her parents. So they seized this girl. They arrested the parents. And then a year later they're like, oh, you know what? She actually does have this disorder.

[18:39] Uh, our bad, sorry. You can release the parents now and give them their other two kids back. So in order to feel like he was helping Marty initiated a, a directed denial of service attack on the children's Hospital fundraising website on the weekend of its annual fundraiser. Not only was that worth 10 years in a maximum security penitentiary and 2 million in, in, uh, reparations to Children's Hospital,

[19:13] but they put him in A C M U. Now, do we really need to be protected from Marty Godsfield that he's so dangerous that we need to be, we need to have him locked away, you know, forever. Well, Marty gets out in two. And he's gonna go back home to Boston and live happily ever after. There's no reason to have him in a communications management unit. Another one, I just got an email from him today is Donald Reynolds. Donald Reynolds is in a C M U serving a sentence of triple life without parole

[19:48] for a, a first time non-violent offense related to the fast and furious scandel. the reason he got Triple Life without Parole is because he kept turning down the Justice Department's offers for lighter sentences because he said, I didn't break the law. So why would I take a plea if I didn't break the law? Okay? You don't want to take a plea. Not only are we gonna give you triple life without parole, but you're gonna

[20:19] spend the rest of your days in a communications management unit with no human contact for the rest of your life. And that's what they did to him. So these CMUs, these are, you know, the United Nations has already declared these CMUs to be forms of torture. Right. They're forms of torture. They're cruel and unusual punishment, and we, we use 'em anyway. And it's worse than, it's worse than just having your communications, uh, blocked or banned.

[20:52] You are locked 23 hours a day in, uh, a six by 10 foot concrete cell. Everything's made out of either concrete or. No windows. That one hour a day, you're allowed to go out through a little door. It's about five feet high, and you duck down and you go out this little door, which opens up into a cage on the outside, like a dog cage, and you can walk in circles. For an hour each day, and then you go back into your cell. If you receive mail, you can't actually physically hold the mail or receive it.

[21:27] They project your mail on a, on a TV monitor up at the ceiling. So it's so high up you can't touch it. So you can't like break it and you know, take the glass and cut your throat or something. They'll leave the mail available for you for five minutes and then they take it down and it's. No tv, no radio, no phone. You're allowed one call a month, but it, it's only to your attorney. You can't call your wife, your kids, your friends, nothing.

[21:58] Just your attorney. And that's where we put, you know, some of the most important whistleblowers that we have. Henri: I'm, I'm curious, the large number of whistleblowers that have come forward in the post nine 11 Global War on Terror era that. Why do you think, um, you know, why did the War on Terror and the war on whistleblowers coincide? And why do you think so many of them have been produced by the same, the same circumstances? John Kirakou: Yeah, I, I can, I can give you a very clear answer to that.

[22:30] Um, and that was, That was, uh, John Brennan. So there, there've always been whistleblowers through modern American history. Um, post nine 11, they became particularly newsworthy, right? And, um, the George W. Bush administration initiated criminal investigations of two whistleblowers.

[23:01] Tom Drake from N S A and Jeffrey Sterling from c I a, but it was the Obama administration that just launched an all out open war on whistleblowers. That's because of John Brennan. John Brennan became the Deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism. In Obama's first term, and he became CIA director. In Obama's second term, John Brennan had a nixonian obsession with national security leaks, and it was John Brennan who convinced

[23:34] Barack Obama to use the Antiquated Espionage Act as a, as an iron fist. To, to crush whistleblowers. Uh, a New York Times journalist told me that on the day of my arrest, every single one of the New York Times national security sources went silent, and they stayed silent for six months. Well, that was the point. Of prosecuting me and prosecuting seven other whistleblowers, uh,

[24:07] during the Obama administration. It wasn't necessarily to teach John Kiriakou a lesson, frankly, they made me famous. Right. They elevated me to this position of like national human rights spokesman, anti torture spokesman. They made me famous. They, they opened, uh, doors and created opportunities for me that I otherwise never would've had. I would be, I would be wrapping up a career in some cubicle somewhere if they hadn't, uh, ordered my arrest. Uh, in, in a funny way, I'm, I'm kind of glad they did

[24:40] because I think I've, I've done. More important work because of my arrest. Um, and I wanna say something about the, uh, the Espionage Act too. Henri, I think, I think the Espionage Act is very important. It's something that Americans really need to know about the Espionage Act. Was written in 1917, passed into law in 1917 to combat German saboteurs during the First World War. Uh, it was used right after passage to, to incarcerate people who were

[25:16] opposed to us entry into the war. Uh, most famously, Eugene v Debs, the head of the Socialist Party, he actually ran for president from his prison cell, uh, at the, at. Maximum security penitentiary in Atlanta. Uh, a Hollywood producer was arrested and charged with espionage and served five years because a movie that he made was deemed to be not pro British enough during World War I. So between 1917 and January of 2009, three Americans were charged with

[25:56] espionage for speaking to the media. Three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the media between 1917 and 2009. In just the eight years of the Obama presidency, eight of us were charged with espionage for speaking to the media, and then under Donald Trump, another four were charged with espionage. You know, beginning with, with me, the sentences got longer and longer

[26:26] and longer for each person after me. I was sitting with Tom Drake in Daniel, Hale's, uh, sentencing hearing a year ago, October. And, um, much to my Shock, my name came up in sentencing and. The prosecution said that they wanted, I think they were asking for 40 years in prison for Daniel and Daniel's attorney said that they were asking for the same sentence that Kiriakou got. I got 30 months and I served 23, and then the judge said that Jeffrey

[27:03] Sterling got Kiriakou plus 12 months because Jeffrey Sterling went to trial. And then the judge said that he's gone over the numbers and he's gonna give Daniel...kiriakou plus 16 months. And I'm just sitting there and, and I'm sitting, like, I'm sitting with Tom Drake. And then immediately in front of me are three journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Politico. And they were like, you care to comment?

[27:33] And I said, yeah, he should have been. He should have been release. You know, with, with time served, he doesn't belong in prison. We, we should be making statues to people like him, not sending them to communications management units to make matters worse. Um, the judge recommended very strongly in that sentencing hearing that Daniel be sent to the low security prison in, uh, Butner, North Carolina. He has a substance abuse problem, problem, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons

[28:06] has this program called R D A P, the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program. And if you go through RDAP, which is basically just sitting and watching episodes of intervention. And I mean that quite, quite literally. That's, that's what rdap is. And they say, you know, drugs don't do 'em. Now watch this episode of intervention. And when you watch the whole whatever it is, 20 episodes, you get a year off your sentence. So I said to Daniel, before you went to prison, listen, this 42 months, this is a victory because you get 15% off for good behavior.

[28:40] And then you get another year off for R D A P, I said, and you're in a low security prison. You're just gonna lay there and read books and watch tv, and you're gonna be home before you know it. Instead, they sent him to the maximum security penitentiary at Marion, Illinois and then put him in the C M U on top of that, which makes him ineligible for RDAP. So he's gonna do the whole 42 months.

[29:10] Henri: Even. Even with with good behavior time that be, do they, do they curtail that for people in cmu? John Kirakou: well, they, they'll, they technically calculate it for people in CMUs, but Marty Gottesfeld has already lost all of his good behavior time because he did terrible, terrible things like write a letter to a journalist. But God forbid, And then in in a phone call to his attorney, he asked the attorney, would you call my wife and tell her that I'm okay?

[29:42] Oh, that's a third party communication. We're taking away all of your good behavior time. So it's tough. They do it on purpose. You know, in my own sentencing, the, the judge, um, ordered that I'd be sent to a minimum security work camp and in a minimum security camp, there are no, there are no fences, no bars on the windows. The doors are never locked. You work in town, like there's a university in town. You go sweep the floors or whatever. You're just on your honor, not to abscond.

[30:13] The Justice Department was furious that the. Order that I be sent to a minimum security camp. So they arbitrarily just sent me to the regular prison that was across the street from the camp. And they said that they did that because I was a trained c I A officer, which made me a national security threat. Well, if I was a threat, then why don't you send me to a maximum security penitentiary if you think I'm so dangerous? So what I ended up doing was I, I ended.

[30:46] Um, saying yes to every interview request I ever had. Jake Tapper drove to the prison and interviewed me for c n Um, I gave multiple interviews to N P R, um, a B C. News came, I mean, it was just count. I can't tell you how many Greek newspapers came. I, I'm a, I'm a big star in Greece cuz I stood up to the American government and I, I happen to be a dual US Greek citizen, but, They complained and complained and

[31:18] complained about all the media contact that I had and I said, listen, I'll tell you guys the honest to God's truth. I told the warden this straight to his face. I said, I was told I was gonna be sent to the minimum security camp across the street, and if I had gone to that camp, you would've never heard about me. I would've just kept my head down. I would've kept my mouth shut. I would've done my 23 months and I would've gone home, but you guys had to be dicks about it. You guys had to make an issue about it, and so I decided that I am going to exercise my constitutional rights, which I have not given up to speak

[31:54] with the press and to speak free. And that's what I did. I was a thorn in their side from the very beginning, just like Marty Gottesfeld did. Is Daniel's not Daniel, just wants to keep his head down and come home, which I totally respect, but for me, not a chance. Henri: I would ask about the, you know, the, the, the bureaucracy that's able to get away with these kind of decisions that the, the, um, you know, placing in, uh, and I don't know if this is common for all whistleblowers, but I assume some

[32:28] form of it is placing the restrictions. On reality winner as to telling her own story after she got out of prison that now she's bound to this agreement infinitely. You know, I, I, I guess I wonder about, you know, that the, the e entirely seems, you know, a la entire lack of due process and the entire lack of, uh, equal protection under the law. How, how do, how are they able to continue this and, and do you feel that there's big steps that be, can be taken to rectify it in some way?

[33:02] John Kirakou: Oh, yeah. Uh, reality. Reality, and I have talked about this. Her judge seriously overreached by, by infringing on her constitutional rights, I don't think that would stand up in court for two minutes, but she's afraid to challenge it because they could technically still send her back to prison. Um, by violating her, they'll, they say that she, uh, she broke the terms of her release and they violate her, uh, federal probation and they send her back to prison.

[33:32] So she just wants to get through it. She doesn't wanna challenge it when I get outta prison. Um, they told me that I had 30 days to find a job or I go back to prison. And so, I was offered a job at a think tank, the oldest progressive think tank in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies, and they wanted me to write about, um, about, uh, these, these sentencing reform and judicial reform and prison reform issues. I said, great.

[34:02] I took the job and I had to. Permission from the Bureau of Prisons, which is supposed to be proforma. Well, they denied. They denied my request and they said that it was inappropriate that Mr. Kiriakou be commenting on prison issues. So I said, you know what? Violate me. Send me back I'll have every news network in America camped out in the prison parking lot, violate me. And I took the job.

[34:34] And there was some, you know, huffing and puffing, but they backed down. Um, I, I think that reality, if, if she wanted to, uh, to challenge these draconian, uh, uh, reigns that they have on her ability to make a living and to speak freely and to talk about her case and herself, I think she would. But, but I understand, you know, challenging them is not for everybody..

[35:08] Henri: So what, um, what's to be done? You know, what if, if, if John Kiriakou had the power today, what would you do to rectify some of this, some of this stuff? John Kirakou: Uh, you gotta start from scratch by tearing down the entire system. You know, uh, the, the whoever happens to be president at any given time, when it comes time to appoint a new director of the Bureau of Prisons, they just appoint the same kind of person.

[35:38] One after the other. After the other. The current one used to be the head of the Oregon State Prison System. Big deal. The, the guy before her was the deputy director of the Bureau of Prisons. The guy before him was a warden, and then the deputy Director of the Bureau of Prisons. The guy before him was a general, a brigadier general who was in charge of the military prison system. Well, we need. We need fresh thinking, fresh ideas. There was a warden in, in Maine, for example, uh, prisoners were

[36:13] complaining about the quality of food, which is not human grade food. It's animal feed grade food that's fed to prisoners. And so the prison was sitting on this giant, you know, 50 acre, a hundred acre parcel of property. And so the people who were in the minimum security, he taught them how to farm. And not only now does that prison, is that prison completely self-sufficient in terms of fruits and vegetables, but they're able to sell their excess fruits and vegetables in town.

[36:45] That's the kind of thinking that we need in the prison system. Now, one of the things that made me very happy, Two years ago was Hakeem Jeffries, who's now the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. Hakeem Jeffries worked with, um, Marco Rubio to push through a bill that mandated sentencing reform. I, I can't stress how, how gutsy that is.

[37:16] Can you imagine you're a, you're a, an elected member of the House of Representatives, you've gotta run for reelection every two years, and you go out on the campaign trail and you say, I'm going to pass a bill to make it harder to keep people in prison. Well, how many votes is that gonna win you now? That's exactly what needs to be done. But those two, were the only ones with the balls to actually go out and do it. So we need that kind of bipartisan legislation.

[37:50] And let me ask a rhetorical question too. How come the Germans got it right and the Danes and the Swedes and the Norwegians and the Fins, you know, how come they got it right? How come they have recidivism rates of 10 and 15% when ours are 50? Why is it the UN declares our prisons to be sources of torture, but their prisons are set up like apartments where you teach people life skills so that

[38:22] when they go back out, they don't sell drugs and they don't rob gas stations and they know how to, you know, run a load of laundry and balance a checkbook because that's what they're taught to. So we are, uh, the, the, the prison system that we have at every level, level, you know, city and county, state and federal. It's a system that we should be ashamed of, not something that we should hope others would aspire to.

[38:52] We, ours is an embarrassment. John Kiriakou: So, um, my, uh, my last question for you, um, this is kind of, kind of similar to what we've been talking about, but also kind of different that the um, What has been your, your observation of the American, um, film industry at television industry in the period for the global war on terror in terms of their, their acquiescence to stories that are jive

[39:25] easily with, with government narratives? Great question. Uh, thank you for that question. Um, as a. Ever since 2007, I've been writing television pilots and I've actually sold eight of them. That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I was the script advisor on the Bourne Ultimatum. I was the script advisor on to Paris with Love. I was the script advisor on um, kill the Messenger, and I was

[39:58] the security advisor on the kite. And I'm, I'm just now, we just finished season one. I'm the script advisor on a new show on CBS that's coming out in February called The True Lies based on the James Cameron, uh, movie of the same, of the same title. So I'm kind of acquainted with the way these things play out in Hollywood, and I'll tell you that the easy answer is that the CIA finally got wise to something that the f b I learned way back in the fifties. And that's that you have to control the narrative, right? Have you ever seen.

[40:30] A film not done by Oliver Stone where the CIA's the bad guy? No. They don't exist. It's gotten to the point where, um, just after the invasion of Iraq, the CIA's Office of Public Affairs opened up a branch inside Public Affairs whose sole duty it is to liaise with Hollywood Studio. So you want a classified briefing, uh, over a classified mockup of the

[41:06] bin Laden compound, ala zero dark 30. Come on. And we'll tell you our side of the story. And then that's the side that you write up as the script for the movie, and we'll give you free access to the building, right? You wanna make a movie that perpetuates the lie that the torture program resulted. In the, the capture, not capture, but the killing of Osama bin Laden, that it was torture that led us to his location. You, you, you want that lie to be perpetuated, then come on, we'll

[41:39] give you classified briefings and you can interview the, the analysts and do whatever you want. Just like in the fifties, the sixties, and the early seventies where every single movie and TV show about the F B I was pro F B I because Jay Edgar Hoover had to approve every single. Well, now you've got the CIA that has a hand in every single script for every movie that has something to do with the cia. It's just wrong.

[42:10] Henri: Something we do pretty frequently on the podcast is we talk to, uh, Tom Secker, I don't know if you're familiar with him. He runs, uh, spyculture.com yeah. I think it's one of the most grotesque aspects of our modern military industrial complex that they are able to stick their fingers so deeply into what is otherwise entirely fiction. Mm-hmm. and create these narratives that. Absent in the other point of reference, people learn a lot from movies and TV shows.

[42:40] Sure they do. Should they? I don't, I don't know about that, but they certainly do. I know that the things that I knew about the military before I joined were all came from those movies. I saw, you know, the, the Rock, black Hawk Down, all these, you know, different ones. Um, But that the, the enormous power they have and how it, how it seems to directly butt up against any kind of First amendment. Supposed to actually have the benefit of free speech as Americans. One that extends to filmmakers too. And granted, you know, there's corporate interest and other things involved too.

[43:13] John Kiriakou: Sure. Henri: But, you know, um, listening to a, a podcast, um, on North Korea recently a, uh, a director, someone who had, uh, she had gone to North Korea and directed a film, and she was talking about the comparison of North Korea. Uh, desire of involvement with her film, which was almost nonexistent. Henri (2): Switch to the American cinematic landscape, where U.S. filmmakers allow huge changes in their scripts and presentations, in order to receive D O D or CIA support, and it's a blatant act of censorship,

[43:45] withholding their support such as helicopters or other major equipment and filming locations if the filmmakers don't properly tow the government line. Deciding what can and can't be in the film. Henri: Do this and I couldn't do this. And, you know, you get narrowed down into telling a story that is exactly the story they want told, not anything that is actually controlled by the filmmaker or can be seen as truth by the audience. It locks us into these mindsets of being accepting of violence as the

[44:16] first solution of being accepting, of seeing American troops in places that we would, you wouldn't think they would be. John Kiriakou: It's absolutely right. Henri: There's never going to be a really large change in the winds of how America does its foreign policy until, I think, until that's rectified in some more powerful way. John Kiriakou: Mm-hmm. Henri: certainly at the top of whistle whistleblowers goes right alongside that. But, you know, it is, it, it's what, what people run on, you know, is the, the things, you know, my wife and I, we sit down every night and we watch new stuff, but now we understand that we're not just dealing with the

[44:49] desires and, and whims of filmmakers and writers and things like that. We're dealing with them literally having military or intelligence. I wouldn't call 'em overlords, overseers, I guess would be a better way to put it. Just saying, this is okay and this is not okay. Mm-hmm.. Um, and it's, and it's, it's just disgusting. I had another experience with a buddy who. You know, the, uh, the National Geographic series, the Long Road Home. John Kiriakou: Sure. Henri: A friend of mine, who deployed to Baghdad in early 2004, his unit saw

[45:21] action during early April that year that was portrayed in The Long Road Home. I traveled to his home in New York and together, we watched that and we recorded some of his responses from it. And just to see, you know, just basic things that were just not right. Pretending that there were suicide bombers in Kosovo was one that I I, that I could never, oh man. That made me so angry. John Kiriakou: Oh, yes. Henri: But, um, anyway, I think that's probably, uh, a good place

[45:52] for us to, uh, wrap it up for today. John Kiriakou: You asked very smart questions, very, very on point questions, so thank you for that. I would ask one favor if, if anybody's interested in these issues, I just migrated over to Substack It's john kiriakou.dot com so thanks very much. It was a, it was a pleasure to speak with you. Henri: I, I really enjoyed it too, John. I am, I am actually a new, uh, a new subscriber to your Substack. I've really enjoyed it so far, and, uh, I hope to have you back sometime.

[46:23] John Kiriakou: I look forward to that. Thanks very much for the invitation. Henri: All right, thanks John. And, uh, thank you everyone for listening today. We'll, uh, we'll catch you next time. Take care. Money is tight these days for everyone. Penny pinching to make it through the month often doesn't give people the funds to contribute to a creator they support. So we consider it the highest honor that folks help us fund the podcast in any dollar amount they're able. Patreon is the main place to do that. And for supporters who can donate $10 a month or more, they will be listed

[46:57] right here as an honorary producer. Like these fine folks. Fahim Shirazee, James O'Barr, James Higgins, Eric Phillips, Paul Appell, Julie Dupree, Thomas Benson, Janet Hanson, Daniel Fleming, Michael Karon, Ren Jacob, Howard Reynolds, Rick Coffee, scott spaulding, Spooky Tooth, and the Statist Quo podcast.

[47:28] However, if Patreon isn't your style, you can contribute directly through PayPal at PayPal dot me forward slash Fortress on hill, or please check out our store on Spreadshirt for some great Fortress merch. We're on Twitter and @facebook.com at Fortress On A Hill. You can find our full collection of episodes at Fortress On A Hill dot com. Skepticism is one's best armor. Never forget it. We'll see you next time.

[48:11] I hope you'll pay attention. I will not detain you long.
