Title: 'Wiped My A** With It': Ex-CIA Kiriakou Reveals What He Did
Show: TOI Bharat
Date: 2025-11-21
URL: https://youtu.be/uTIi8cou10U
Duration: 6:00

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[00:00] Literally nothing good will come of a of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. >> It's as simple as that. They'll lose. And I'm not talking about nuclear weapons. I'm talking just about a conventional war. The Pakistanis will lose. That the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

[00:34] Heat. Heat.

[01:20] The Pakistanis have come out publicly and said that they control the nukes. But I can tell you definitively >> that the State Department was telling both sides, if you're going to fight, fight. Keep it short and keep it non-nuclear. If nuclear weapons are introduced, the whole world is going to change. And so I think there was restraint on both sides. The Pakistanis need to come to a policy conclusion that there's nothing positive for them in fighting India. Nothing,

[01:54] literally nothing good will come of a of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. >> It's as simple as that. They'll lose. And I'm not talking about nuclear weapons. I'm talking just about a conventional war. The Pakistanis will lose, >> right? >> And so there's no benefit to constantly provoking the Indians. At the CIA, we called the Indian policy um strategic patience.

[02:24] The the Indian government would have been perfectly within its rights to respond respond by striking Pakistan and they didn't. And I remember at the White House, people were saying, "Wow, the Indians are really exhibiting a very mature foreign policy here." We expected the Indians to to strike back and they didn't. And that kept the the world from what might have been a nuclear exchange, >> right? >> But India's gotten to the point where

[02:56] they can't risk strategic patience being misunderstood as weakness. >> And so they had to respond. Right >> now the question the question now that CIA analysts are likely asking themselves are did the Pakistanis learn their lesson not to keep poking the hornets's nest and expecting to not be stung when I was when I was stationed in Pakistan in 2002. I was told unofficially that that the Pentagon

[03:29] controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, that Musharif had turned control over to the United States because he was afraid of exactly what you just described. But the Pakistanis in the intervening years, and remember I was there 23 years ago, over the last 23 years, the Pakistanis have come to say that is absolutely not true. the United States has nothing to do with the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, that Pakistani generals are the ones that control it. So I don't

[04:01] know if if that's true, then I would be very worried about who is in charge politically in Pakistan. >> You know, for example, for example, um Iran Khan, I can't believe that I forgot his name. >> Who's in jail? A >> Who's in jail? >> Yes. Yeah. >> Right. and still wildly popular. >> Wildly. Yeah. >> He told us when he was still the prime minister, he said, "Listen, I've got this political situation here domestically. I'm going to start blaming

[04:34] you for everything." And and the ambassador laughed and said, "We get blamed for everything anyway, so we don't care." So everything that happened, it was the United States fault, and it was the US, they turned their backs on us, and the US did this, and the US did that, and then they arrested him anyway. So he got a message out to the US government saying can you help me get out of this and we went to Jamaima Goldmid his gold whatever her name was ex-wife >> and she went to Pakistan and asked them

[05:06] if they would release him and they said no. So like you, I'm worried about continued disagreement in Pakistani politics that has the potential to spill into the streets because the Pakistanis have a tendency to get themselves spun up >> and people die during demonstrations and there are attacks against political figures and assassinations and and uh and the country is not known for its uh transformative you know leaders making

[05:38] positive decisions. >> [music]
