Title: title doesn't name John — confirm presence
Show: Stephen Gardner
Date: 2025-06-01
URL: https://youtu.be/0r560eBIwWE
Duration: 16:00

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[00:00] Were you always for Donald Trump or did something change? Because for now, for from my perspective right now, it seems like you're thinking he he's the best option for the country right now. Yes. I was actually a supporter of Gary Johnson's um when Donald Trump first ran. Um, you know, I I Ronald Reagan was right when he said that government is the problem. It's not

[00:31] the solution to the problem. And Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president twice. So, I I campaigned in 12 states with Gary. I introduced him at all of his campaign stops. Um, I knew that he wasn't going to win. He did really great by libertarian standards. He got three and a half percent. Yeah. Um but it took me it took me a while before I I moved over to to Donald Trump. But I'm going to add though that this is not the Donald Trump

[01:03] of the first term. Yes, this is a completely and totally different Donald Trump. This is a Donald Trump who's far more worldly and um who has a deeper understanding of international events and much much more willingness to stand up to the Israelis. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised by the way things have been going since January the 20th. Okay. Interesting. I I just I was picking up on that and uh thought I thought I would ask. You were in the CIA

[01:35] at the time that that happened and did I did I think I read online you were at CIA headquarters when the news came in. What what were things like uh with top government leadership? I I mean I I was in the Dominican Republic on a Christian mission when it happened. So I you know I missed out on a lot of that. Uh but what what was it like at CIA headquarters and in the country at that time? Oh man, that morning I had a meeting

[02:06] scheduled along with the director of the CIA's counterterrorism center. We were going to see Condisa Rice on an issue that is just so silly now after 25 years that you would just shake your head. So, I got a call that our car was ready and I walked over to Kofheer Black's office and um and his secretary, this this was back in the day when you couldn't watch TV on your

[02:37] computer. So, she had a little TV on her desk and one of the towers of the World Trade Center was burning. And I said, "What happened to the World Trade Center?" And she said, "A plane flew into it." This is conda rice. No, no, no. This is cover for black secretary before we before we drove to the White House to see condandy Rice. So I said because I'm an idiot. I said um I said you know that happened once before 1932. A plane flew into the Empire State Building but it was really foggy and rainy and like it's so crystal clear

[03:07] today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And as soon as the words came out of my mouth the second plane flew in. And neither one of us reacted. And then finally she turned to me and she said, "Did you see that or did I imagine it?" And I ran back to my office. I said, "Guys, two planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center. I think we're under attack. I will interrupt myself here and tell you that two months earlier on July the 6th, totally normal day, I was

[03:41] entertaining a group of Middle Eastern intelligence officers. This is something we did every single day at the CIA. You bring them in, you do a day of briefings, you exchange gifts, you take them up to get a photo with a with the director, and then you take them out to a fancy dinner at night. And then the next day, you do it with another country's intelligence service day after day after day. So on January 6, oh sorry, uh, uh, July 6th, 2001, I had scheduled this day of

[04:12] briefings and it was six guys at the major and lieutenant colonel level. So I asked the juniormost analyst on al-Qaeda to come in and just give an overview of al-Qaeda. But instead of this junior analyst coming in, Kofheer Black himself came in with the chief of operations for Alex Station, the Osama bin Laden group. And I I jumped up and I said, "Oh, gentlemen." I said, "This this is this is Ambassador Kofer Black. He's the director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and and this is

[04:44] the chief of operations for uh the Osama bin Laden unit." Kofheer sat down and he said, and this is how he started. He said, "Something terrible is going to happen. We don't know exactly what or where, but it's going to be an attack on a scale that we've never seen." He said, "We're hearing al-Qaeda camp commanders on the phone with their students, and they're crying and saying, "I'll see you in paradise. We're hearing code words for a massive attack. The honey salesman

[05:15] is coming with vast quantities of honey. There's going to be a massive wedding. there's going to be a great football match, all code for an attack. He said, "I'm begging you, if you have any sources inside al-Qaeda, please help us." And they just sat there and looked at him. So, at the end of the day, I sent them back to their hotel, told them I'll pick them up in a couple of hours to go to dinner. But I went back to Kofheer's um office to thank him and I said, ' Kofer, I I got to ask

[05:45] you, was that just for their benefit or were you serious? And he said, "Oh no, I'm deadly serious. Something terrible is going to happen." And then September 11th, my first thought was, "This is what he was he was talking about. This is what he was warning us about." So the second plane hits and then the third plane goes into the Pentagon. There were about 300 people in the office. We all packed up to the front where Kofheer's office was. You

[06:16] have to picture an enormous room like a hotel ballroom with private offices all around the perimeter and then cubicles, hundreds of us in cubicles, you know, uh in the in the center. And there were TVs hanging down from the ceiling. So you had CNN and Fox and MSNBC and BBC and RT and Canel Plus and from all over the world. We're all watching this as it's unfolding. Silence. And finally, somebody behind me shouts, "Will somebody please lead?" And it was like somebody had

[06:48] shaken Coher and he said, "Yeah, you go to the director's office and tell him this. You go to security. You go to operations." Finally, a CIA cop comes in. The CIA has its own police force. Um, he came in and said, "Everybody evacuate." Nobody budged. So, we're standing there watching this and then Kofheer pulls out a chair and stands on a on the chair and he says, I'll never forget this. He said,

[07:19] "Today we're at war and all of us are going to have to fight and not all of us are going to come home. if this is not for you, no one will think less of you if you walk out the door right now. Nobody budged. Everybody volunteered to go to Afghanistan because we all knew what this was. We had been waiting for it. Uh and then finally the cop came back in and said, "If you don't evacuate, you'll be arrested." So, we evacuate. Took me two

[07:49] hours just to get out of the parking lot. I got about halfway to my apartment. I lived about six miles from CIA headquarters and I had to abandon my car on the George Washington Parkway. My girlfriend was several floors above me. She later became my wife. Um so I called her. I said, "We're evacuating." She said, "Yeah, I'm leaving right now." I said, "Meet me at my place." So I abandoned my car. I walked the last three miles. I saw the deputy national security adviser

[08:20] coming across the Teddy Roosevelt bridge with no shoes. If you This is how the level of chaos in Washington that day. He had no shoes. And I remember saying, "Oh my god, if the White House is evacuating, who's leading us?" So we went to my apartment, we went to the roof, and we watched the Pentagon burn for a while. And finally, I said, "This is ridiculous. we got to go back to work. And we walked back to my car. I

[08:51] drove across the grassy median, went back to CIA headquarters, and I didn't leave for the next four days. Just baldled up my jacket and slept under the desk and slept two hours at a time. Everybody did that. And then got to, you know, the theater as quickly as I could. Wow. total totally caught off guard. Uh they knew something big was happening. They But they you know what, Stephen? They

[09:21] didn't think it was going to be here. The conventional wisdom was they're going to they're going to take out another embassy, right? They'll probably do it in the middle of the workday. Yeah. A big embassy. Paris, London, Manila, you know, something big. We didn't think they're going to attack us right here in the country. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's interesting. Um I wanted Yeah, I wanted to get your uh your insight on that. Um

[09:52] another question I have kind of related to this is uh President Trump and Marco Rubio. They're they're they're talking about supporting this new leader in Syria, not fully trusting him, but not really having anyone else to work with to avoid ISIS and al Qaeda uh getting getting big again. What What are your thoughts on this? Because there's been a lot of people, oh, look at Trump now dealing with terrorists and on the other side they're like, well, he has to to avoid the worst terrorists. Exactly.

[10:22] Okay, you're right. And we should call a spade a spade here. This guy was an al-Qaeda leader. He was the number two in ISIS. Uh he broke off from ISIS, claiming at the time he wanted to moderate. The CIA supported um al-Qaeda in Syria. The State Department supported the the Kurds and the Defense Department supported an independent

[10:52] rebel group. So, we had the most screwed up policy on Syria that was possible. Um, but you're right, you know, wouldn't it be lovely if we could just choose the people that we wanted to lead each country, but that's just not real life. Compare it to this. We could have cultivated a relationship with Fidel Castro in the 1950s when he was a rebel leader, and we didn't. Fidel Castro was

[11:23] a minor league pitcher for the Washington Senators. He liked the United States. We could have cultivated that relationship, but we decided not to because we had thrown our weight behind Batista. You know, love him or hate him. This time it's different. And I have to say, Donald Trump is playing it right. We don't have any choice. And we're not doing this alone. Emanuel Mcronone, the president of France, has come out like and laid out the red carpet and invited Golani to uh to Paris

[11:55] and then Kier Starmer invited him to London. So, we're not just we're not just winging it here. There's been a there's been a a policy hatched by by, you know, the allies that we're going to get it right this time. It took us a long time to get rid of the Assads and so we're going to we're going to do it right this time. And Golani seems to be playing ball so far. So one of the most important lessons I

[12:27] learned in the fight against al-Qaeda, let me let me rephrase that. And this is why I I think this policy is going to work in Syria. Every al-Qaeda fighter at the grunt level, at that, you know, 18 and 19 year old fighter level told exactly the same story. They were from some isolated village in whatever country they came from. They were illiterate. They had no

[12:57] job skills, no job training, and they wanted to get married. But what man would want his wife to marry a kid who can't read, can't write, and can't work? Nobody wants their daughter to marry a guy like that. So the local imam went to these kids and said, "Why are you here in this village? You should make something of yourself. You should go to Afghanistan and make jihad against the Americans. And if you do, we'll give you $300 a month. And if you're martyed, we'll give your parents a $500 martyrdom

[13:27] bonus." And they said, "Okay, I got nothing else going on." They couldn't find the United States on a map. they had no beef with the United States, it's that they were poor. So, I've always said if if we were serious, not just the United States, but the West, were serious about addressing the root causes of terrorism, we would be involved in widescale economic development and

[13:59] education. What's the first thing Donald Trump did in Syria? The very first thing he lifted sanctions, he lifted sanctions so now Syria can accept investment money. And investment money is going to build infrastructure, including better roads, which make trade easier, especially with Turkey, which is the the big, you know, 800 pound gorilla on the block. Um, an upgrade and the port of

[14:30] Latakia, right? So ships can come in and make trade easier. It's building the economy. Mark my words, in 20 years there will be no no such thing as a Syrian terrorist because that economy is going to be on track. So it may not look pretty right now, but this was the right thing to do. Okay. Yeah. I kind of I kind of figured that it may not be the per It's like in Batman. It's not the It's not the hero you want the but the one that

[15:00] you need right now. Like we're not saying the guy's a great guy, but like it's what we have to work with right now if we want the area um to to be better. Uh this has been a this has been a great discussion. I definitely want to have you on. I've got uh several more questions that I could go on and on and on about. Um, but John, if people want to follow you online, uh, continue to hear your your thoughts and perspectives, where can I point them? Thank you. Thank you. Everything I I write and do, I put on Substack. So,

[15:32] it's, uh, johnkuryaku.substack.com. I'm on X, uh, John Kuryaku. I'm on Facebook and I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. I've got a TV show uh on an online platform called CIA Declassified where we take declassified documents and tell historical stories based on the documents. That's at unified television unifyd. Uh but everything ends up on Substack. Well, I'm going to put those direct links down low uh below, John, so

[16:05] that people can find your book, your Substack, and uh your ex. Thank you so much for coming on. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much. Same to you. Take care.
