Title: Rudy & Trump offered me a pardon for $2M
Show: David Pakman Show
Date: 2023-07-22
URL: https://youtu.be/DZh9W-TWV1o
Duration: 20:00

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[00:00] today we welcome to the program John kiriaku former CIA counter-terrorism officer turned whistleblower who has some very interesting things to say about pardons that may or may not have been offered by a former lawyer to a former president but but we will get to that John really great having you on I appreciate your time oh thanks so much for the invitation happy to do it so to give the audience some context to start with you were a CIA officer in 2007 six

[00:32] years after 9 11. uh you blew the whistle on what was effectively torture that was being used by the CIA you were I believe the first federal government employee to do so you were not ultimately prosecuted for disclosing that but I'll give you the opportunity to weigh in maybe for political reasons you were not prosecuted for that but ultimately uh I believe you say as

[01:02] retaliation you were prosecuted talk to us about what you knew your involvement why you decided to blow the whistle to start with it's actually quite a long story that I'm going to make very very short uh I was uh I was a senior Cia counter-terrorism officer after 9 11 I was the the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan I led a series of raids there that resulted in the capture of Abu zubaida who we believed at the time was the

[01:33] number three abusive beta was also the first person um captured by the CIA who had been ranked internally as a high value Target and because he was the first he was also the first to undergo uh torture with the CIA at the time was calling enhanced interrogation techniques uh I objected to that I thought it was torture I thought it was illegal I still think it's illegal besides being immoral and uh and unethical and um

[02:03] and my objections were uh overridden and ignored I left the CIA in 2004 I formally resigned in 2005. and waited for somebody to come out and say something about this program it was just so patently illegal to me I thought certainly somebody will come out and say something nobody did and so then in December of 2007 in response to a request from from Brian Ross at ABC News I said something I went on a nationally televised uh uh show and

[02:37] I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official U.S government policy and I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself as you might imagine the CIA reported me to the FBI for leaking classified information and the FBI investigated me from the very next day December of 2007 until December of 2008. uh after that year-long investigation the FBI sent my attorneys what's called a declination

[03:07] letter declining to prosecute me they said that the information was not classified that it was already out there it had been published by Human Rights Watch Amnesty International and the international Committee of the Red Cross and they dropped the case I did not know that three weeks later when Barack Obama became president and John Brennan an old Nemesis of mine became the deputy National Security adviser that Brennan asked the justice department to secretly reopen the case

[03:38] against me and so they investigated me for another three years and then in uh January of 2012 I was arrested and charged with five felonies coming out of that ABC news interview three counts of Espionage one count of violating the intelligence identities protection act of 1982 and one count of making a false statement we were never really clear as to what the false statement was supposed to have been that charge was dropped I absolutely did not

[04:09] commit Espionage and those charges were dropped but uh they got me on a technicality uh I had confirmed the surname of a former colleague of mine to a journalist who wanted to interview him for a book and that was the the crime that they got me on that name was never made public and other senior Cia officers who had done the same thing like David Petraeus for example who revealed the names of of 10 covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend

[04:40] uh was never prosecuted but you know I always maintained that I was prosecuted for political reasons and I'm a big boy I know how Washington works and that was that was a calculation that John Brennan and the justice department made to silence someone who had oppose the torture program they didn't silence me they actually empowered me and uh here we are now all these years later so so many different things to ask about with regard to the techniques that were

[05:12] being used that you blew the whistle on you talked about there were apparently discussions about the legality and ethics and whether these techniques the use of the techniques is policy was there ever a discussion about their effectiveness and whether listen if we do this stuff they or in most cases he are just going to tell us what what he thinks he needs to say in order to get us to stop was that ever discussed right that's a great question um and the answer is uh no not not

[05:43] in any meaningful depth huh you know in the in the immediate aftermath of of 9 11. I I think this is something that most people don't have a full appreciation for there was at least as much a desire for Revenge as there was for information to uh to disrupt future attacks uh so you know those those very senior officers those CIA leaders who had conceived of the torture program had

[06:13] implemented the torture program and then briefed it to the oversight committees on Capitol Hill um they didn't care if the prisoner was going to tell us what he thought we wanted to hear they figured we would collect everything that the prisoner said and then turn it over to the analysts and let the analysts sort through it so is there going to be actionable intelligence in there sure there is is there going to be garbage there's going to be a lot more garbage than there is actionable intelligence but you're able then to seek that desire

[06:46] for revenge and collect intelligence at the same time so it wasn't it wasn't that it wasn't discussed because people didn't necessarily believe we might get nonsense from doing this it was just that it didn't matter and we'll kind of sort through it in the aftermath yeah that's when it comes to the locations where some of these things were taking place colloquially sometimes known as these black sites yes to the extent you can

[07:17] talk about it the CIA employees that are involved in servicing these sites either directly participating in the in the torture or not right because these are locations that presumably need ancillary Services of different kinds are they typically in these countries their entire presence in the countries is it illegal is it under diplomatic cover or do they have some nominal other job while there

[07:48] that's that's a tough one to answer without getting in trouble uh there the the CIA uses a multitude of covers both official and unofficial this would have been official cover uh in most cases it was done with the acquiescence of the host government ah um and it wasn't Deep Cover it wasn't backstopped in any way so if if somebody if you're sitting next to somebody on a plane they say what do you do for a living you say I work for the Department of Commerce I work for the state

[08:18] department oh what do you do at the state department I'm involved in uh in international trade you know that's so boring that nine times out of ten nobody's gonna ask you a follow-up question right but now if they call the State Department and ask can you know can I talk to John kiriaku there there is no John kiriaku there that's going to answer the phone so that it's not backstopped in that way a lot of people at headquarters covering for you um now with that said um I I've said this publicly in the past and and we know it's true thanks to the

[08:50] Senate torture report uh there were many cases in many of these various countries where black sites existed where the president or the prime minister of those countries had no idea that these torture chambers were were there right in their territory these were handshake deals between George Tenet the head of the CIA and the head of whatever that host intelligence service was that's how secret this was and you you said something also that that I think Bears

[09:20] repeating because it's true uh very few very very few CIA officers were actually physically involved in the torture program right but there were large support staffs you know everybody from secretaries to analysts to doctors and nurses um to Communications professionals they were all there to support the actual torturers is there sometimes in fictionalized accounts of these situations there's

[09:51] attention portrayed between the torturers and the doctors where the doctors say you're you're going too far and the torture say you know the the bomb is ticking we've got it and and it's portrayed in this kind of dramatic way is is that in any way an accurate representation of how these things go Yes actually uh you know I remember in in the very very earliest days after the CIA started torturing Elizabeth like the first week or the first two weeks there

[10:24] were there were cables coming back being written by the doctors saying hey wait a minute I didn't sign up for this this is a violation of the Hippocratic oath I want to come home that's called the curtailment cable where you want to curtail your current assignment and come home that's usually a career-ending decision you're never going to get promoted again if you curtail but you've got this ethical dilemma you put your hand in the air and you swore to First Do no harm and now your job is to allow these guys

[10:57] to torture prisoner to within an inch of his life and then if they go too far and his heart stops your job is to bring him back to life so he can be tortured more one of the great disappointments for me in those early days was that even though doctors objected most of them didn't do anything about it they didn't come home uh they didn't file lawsuits they didn't go to the Inspector General and file a complaint they just maintain their silence

[11:28] did this stuff literally make it difficult to sleep at night yes and not just for me but for a lot of people you know I remember people coming back from the secret sites and crying uh they they suffered from PTSD they had to take time off work people went on anti-anxiety medication this was just an all-around bad idea now with that said the CIA is full of sociopaths and

[11:59] Psychopaths who slept just fine at night so let's talk about the uh pardon you served your sentence um you were not going to be entitled to your CIA retirement benefits as a result of the prosecution in the sentence and you um tell the story of a meeting with Rudy Giuliani with the possibility of paying two million dollars for Trump to Pardon you is that are those the Top Line

[12:29] details as as we understand them yes indeed how did this for now just to put up front even Financial if you were willing to do it the 2 million didn't make sense because it seems like the retirement benefits were worth about 700k is that right okay that's right so the math didn't make sense how did this first come to your attention that this was maybe something that could happen I uh I had worked hard to try to get myself in front of Donald Trump to ask

[13:00] him directly to pardon me my pitch was Barack Obama ruined my life and you're the only person that can give it back to me uh an appeal to his ego exactly yeah okay so I I had a supporter in uh in Kentucky Carlson and Tucker invited me on the show a dozen times over the course of the Trump presidency and a dozen times I went on and listen you know I'm a third generation Democrat I'm decidedly left of center but I hate Barack Obama and that is what uh that's what Tucker

[13:33] Carlson wanted to hear and I was perfectly happy to say it so uh Trump saw me on on Tucker's show one one night and told uh Jared Kushner to get in touch with me so uh his lawyer called my lawyer and we met uh briefly at his lawyer's office and uh to make a long story short he was not helpful not helpful at all and not even nice about it so I mentioned to a friend of mine I need to get to Trump and this Kushner

[14:06] thing didn't work what should I do and he said you need to get to Rudy Giuliani I said actually I know a guy who knows a guy who can get me in front of Rudy so I called my friend I said hey can you put me in front of Rudy Giuliani he said sure I'll make a call so I talked to giuliani's uh assistant or Deputy or a major Domo or whatever it was that he was calling himself and he said actually we're going to be in Washington next week why don't we meet at the Trump Hotel I said great naturally yeah that's the only place you

[14:36] would ever meet with people so I went to the Trump Hotel and uh you know the funny thing is that I normally work from uh I have a live radio show from 12 to 2 so I said well how about any time after two o'clock he said no uh Rudy uh likes to uh you know enjoy the day and usually by two o'clock he's not able to do business I just have to do this it's like in a court for people only listening John did the drinky drinky hand gesture when he said that we just need for what it is that's what he did so I said okay that's fine we met at 11

[15:08] o'clock and uh we're all sitting there just making small talk just meaningless Chit Chat yeah and finally I said so Mr Mayor there's this issue of of a pardon I wanted to raise with you and he said anybody know where the pisser is and he got up and just walked away and I said to his assistant what the heck just happened he wants you to go in there right I I was happy to follow him there if that's what he wanted but his his assistant said

[15:39] um you don't talk to Rudy uh directly about a party don't talk to me and I talked to Rudy I said okay whatever and he says Rudy's going to want 2 million for the pardon and I laughed and I said listen I don't have two million dollars I'll never have two million dollars but even if I did I wouldn't spend two million dollars to recover a 700 000 pension right so we just sat there for a minute and looked at each other and I said this this just isn't going to work thank you

[16:10] for your time Giuliani was walking back and I said Mr Mayor thank you for your time I walked out um I happened to go to a book uh event that night a buddy of mine had just come out with a book and there was this big uh launch party and I ran into another friend another whistleblower he said to me very innocently how was your day today and I said oh listen to this and I told him the story that I just told you he was so enraged that on his own position told them that Giuliani had solicited

[16:42] two million dollars to sell me a pardon I didn't know that but the FBI never called me and my friend was then so outraged that the FBI never called that he called The New York Times that leaked it to the New York Times so the New York Times did call and I decided you know what this was an illegal act it was a felony that Giuliani had committed and so I'm gonna I'm gonna tell the New York Times what happened and I did as it turned out Giuliani had done this with several people but again the FBI wasn't

[17:13] interested I've never spoken to the FBI they've never called me they've never questioned me um it wasn't until Giuliani was the subject of a of a civil suit recently yeah that this came up where the the plaintiff is alleging that in the course of pillow talk I suppose um he told her that he was soliciting two million dollars for pardons and he was splitting the money with Donald Trump I have no idea if that's true let

[17:44] me ask you a super practical like logistical question if you had wanted to go forward with this do you have an assumption about how the money would be transferred is it like you bring physical cash that you get from somewhere how would they even do it you know I can't imagine that any legitimate bank would even let you have to even if I had two million dollars in my checking account yeah they they Banks normally don't even keep more than ten thousand dollars on hand at any given

[18:14] time uh you have to actually order it from the Federal Reserve right and they and they truck it over it plus there are money laundering laws where you have to report to the IRS any transaction over ten thousand dollars right so my guess is that it would have to be electronic in which case it would have raised red flags in which case it would have probably initiated uh an investigation and they just couldn't have gotten away with something like that yeah that I mean of course it raises the question how many

[18:45] other people were offered this deal how many took it and I guess we don't know but you would think that there would be some trail if that's right if this was being done regularly in some way obviously we don't know the answer you know I'll apologize because I know I knew my attorney and I went to see an FBI agent over over a case of fraud that I just sort of stumbled over and I I felt it was my duty to report this this fraud so I took a thumb drive with me

[19:16] with thousands of pages of supporting documents and we went to the Washington field office to speak to the FBI I'm five minutes into my explanation of what we're doing there and this FBI agent puts up his hands and he says buddy if this doesn't have the word terrorism associated with it we're not interested and I think that's what happened with Giuliani interesting yeah and that Rings true to all of my friends who are in some way involved in federal law enforcement have expressed

[19:47] their as a compartmentalization of focus and if something isn't within your immediate purview very similar attitudes have been seen I guess is the point so that rings that Rings very very true yeah I think that's it we have been speaking with John kiriaku former CIA counter-terrorism officer um thank you so much for your time I really appreciate it thank you this was fun
