[00:00] Now, from the left coast, it's another podcast edition of the Peter B. Collins show. Peter B. is curious, opinionated, and relentless in pursuit of the truth like a honey bee drawn to pollen. He's an independent progressive, ready to sting Republicans and Democrats alike when they deserve it. For years in commercial radio, Peter B. welcomes you to this audio adventure in news and politics
[00:31] with no corporate filter. Listeners support this program and you can help at PeterB.Collins.com. Here's your humble host, Peter B. Thanks for grabbing the latest in-depth interview podcast from PeterB.Collins.com. Today I'm pleased to present a conversation with John Kiriakou. He's the only CIA officer who went to jail related to our torture program and he didn't
[01:01] torture anybody. He's got a powerful new book out called Doing Time Like a Spy, How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. And he's got some fascinating stories about who controls the TV set, the ritualized segregation, and the low-lifes in uniform called correctional officers. It's quite a conversation and it's coming your way in seconds. This podcast is made possible by listeners who support me with your subscriptions.
[01:32] People like Benny Alto, William Genetta, Terry Parris, and Carla Mahoney. I'm grateful for their support and I'd like to have yours. You want to arrange it? Come on over to PeterB.Collins.com. You click on menu, pull it down, click on Become a Subscriber. That takes you to the sign-up page where you can choose a subscription that fits your budget. Thanks for your support. Today on the PeterB.Collins podcast, John Kiriakou returns to the program to talk about
[02:04] his life behind bars. His new book is called Doing Time Like a Spy, subtitled How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. And in the early pages of the book, Kiriakou admits that he adopted an asshole persona while he was in the federal pen.
[02:42] One of my favorite spook tunes from Was Not Was, Spy and the House of Love, and I don't think that the federal prison in Loretto, in Pennsylvania, is quite a house of love. But John Kiriakou spent a little under three years there, and he's written a powerful new book about it that has some surprises in it. John, welcome back to the PeterB.Collins podcast. Thanks very much. Very happy to be here. Well, it's nice to talk to you again, and before we dive into the book, tell our listeners a little bit about your recent travels.
[03:15] You just did a trip to Europe where you spoke to many important audiences, and your message appears to have a little more traction outside the United States than it does inside. You know, it really does. This has been revelatory for me. I went last week to Iceland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Ireland. You sound like an American blues musician on tour where the money is.
[03:46] It was mostly to talk about national security whistleblowing and transparency. There were four separate events in Germany. I sat on panels at two film festivals in Luxembourg and Belgium, and the crazy thing is that these were not gatherings of fringe people or WikiLeaks people. I was on panels with the Luxembourg Minister of Justice, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs. I spoke to the German Parliament on my third day there, and then had lunch with the National
[04:21] Security Advisor. I was taken aback that people in such important positions, people with such prominent roles in national security, really wanted to know what I had to say about transparency and about the classification of criminal acts. So, man, it was nothing like the treatment I've gotten in the United States over the last five and a half years. And John, nominally, our Bill of Rights gives Americans significant additional freedoms.
[04:53] For example, I did some media consulting work in Berlin a few years ago, and we learned about the German laws that do not provide the kind of robust freedom of speech that we still nominally enjoy in the United States. And there was also just a tremendous cultural resistance to expressing personal opinion in public. And I was training these Germans on how to do American-style talk radio, and I had to feed them sentences.
[05:24] I believe that Chancellor Cole is, and I'd say finish that sentence, and they would say, the Chancellor. Oh, yeah, and in the U.K., it's far, far worse than it is even in the United States because not only do they have this awful law called the Official Secrets Act, which essentially bars anybody from saying anything having to do with national security, but they actually use that law as an iron fist to crack down on whistleblowers
[05:58] and potential whistleblowers. So what was your takeaway from their interest in your talk about transparency in the era of the expanding national security and surveillance state? Well, I think my takeaway is that they were reluctant to do anything to upset the United States while Barack Obama was president, just because Obama had engaged them on issues, and while they disagreed with the American position on whistleblowing and transparency, they were willing to keep quiet about it,
[06:30] but they're perfectly panic-stricken over President Trump, and now they're willing to put their foot down. That's interesting. And take a moment, because you put up a Facebook post that really jazzed me, and I'm not sure why you didn't include the episode of Ai Wei Wei, his arch-show at Alcatraz, and the, what, 1,500 postcards that you received from people who experienced that art exhibit, but let me explain that I went to Alcatraz that was 2.5, 3 years ago, and Ai Wei Wei created
[07:04] this exhibit at the prison, which was about political prisoners, and in one of these huge warehouse spaces, he laid out a huge tableau. It was a tapestry made of Legos, and on the Legos were cast his line of drawings of over 100 political prisoners who were at that point incarcerated worldwide, and after you viewed the exhibit, you went to another room where you were invited to sign a postcard, and he created a custom
[07:36] postcard for each political prisoner, and I sent one to you, and one to Chakar Amar at Guantanamo, and I thought it was just a powerful process that engaged the people who attended this, many of whom were just on the typical tour of Alcatraz, and you had a surprise encounter with Ai Wei Wei. It's the craziest thing. I was, I'm on the board of the Courage Foundation,
[08:06] which is a Berlin-based whistleblower protection group, and so we had our first ever board meeting, and it was in a part of Berlin that I had never been to before, and I had to rush from the meeting to the airport, so I had my luggage with me, and I'm in this strange, odd part of town pulling my suitcase, and there's this Chinese man walking toward me, and he says, John Kiriaku, and I look at him, and he says, very softly, I am Ai Wei Wei, and I said, oh my gosh, what a small world.
[08:40] And I, we had been in touch previously by Skype, but he was under house arrest in China, and so we stood there on the street. I thanked him profusely for doing my portrait out of Legos at the show at Alcatraz, and he invited me back to his studio, so I left the meeting an hour early, dragged my suitcase over to his studio, which was about another mile away. He was just out for a random stroll. Wow. We bumped into each other, and so he gave me a tour of the studio,
[09:11] and he autographed, he made these iPhone cases with each of the portraits on them, and so he gave me an iPhone case with my Lego portrait on it, and autographed it, and then one of the catalogs from the show, it was an incredible experience, and I was so honored and humbled to finally meet him. Yeah, well, you can't see me, we're just talking by phone right now, but I am wearing my Ai Wei Wei cap from the Alcatraz experience, and it made a hell of an impression on me, I have to say.
[09:42] On my very first day of house arrest, that was the day that the show closed at Alcatraz, and the gallery, the San Francisco-based gallery that assisted him in putting the show on, knew that I was home that day, and so they scraped me. and they walked around the entire show with an iPad so I could see each one of the portraits. I got to see my own and then in the in the small cells the the solitary confinement cells he had filled each sink with some with ceramic
[10:16] doves and ceramic flowers and they showed me all of those as well. It was it was really incredible and very very generous. Yeah in the cells there were also depictions that included audio tracks of various prison settings around the world in many different languages and it was it was really powerful. And and John I'm a little unusual because I've been active in prison reform my secret studio it's not so secret but I'm located less than a mile from San Quentin
[10:49] prison here in California and I have visited there over 120 times. I like to tell people I've never been invited to spend the night but I I do have quite a bit of experience and I have to say that your book educated me. I learned things about what you went through in the federal medium security lockup in Pennsylvania and I want to start with just the premise of your book. What did the
[11:20] CIA teach you besides never give any information up even if they torture you but but how did they educate you and and what skills did you bring to the prison setting that enabled you to survive avoid getting into fights and prevail in many of the little petty squabbles that you got involved with. You know I never even really thought about it until I had been there five days and there's a little bit of background here. When I was sentenced in in January
[11:54] of 2012 my attorneys asked my sentencing judge to send me to the minimum security work camp at Loretto Pennsylvania and minimum security work camps have no bars on the windows there's no concertina wire the doors are not locked you're free to come and go as you please you're just sort of on your honor not to abscond and a lot of the guys work in town there's a university in town so a lot of them are janitors there and I thought well okay this is gonna be awful and depressing and I'm gonna be without my family but
[12:28] at least you know I can be out and about and get on with my life so when I first arrived at prison I turned myself in and when you do that you literally just knock on the door and say hi I'm John Kiriakou I'm here to turn myself in so I did that they frisked me then they put me through a metal detector and then the corrections officer the CO starts to lead me around to the back of the actual prison that's across the street from the camp and I said no no I think there's a mistake I'm supposed to be at the
[13:02] camp across the street and the the CO chuckles and says not according to my paperwork you're not and I thought all right take it easy there's nothing you can do if you make any kind of scene you'll go straight to solitary so just wait until you can get a phone well it took me five days before I got access to a phone and then I finally called my attorney and I said hey listen they put me in the actual prison with the murderers and the pedophiles and the drug kingpins what do I do and he said well we can file a motion but it
[13:36] will be two years before we get a hearing and you'll be home by then so I'm sorry buddy you're gonna have to just tough it out and so it was that day day five in prison that I decided you're trained for this you've lived in worst places with more dangerous people you're gonna have to fall back on your training and so that's what I did now after a while it became kind of fun or even if not fun just kind of a challenge to help me pass the time and
[14:08] so I was visiting in the visitor's room one day with a friend of mine who's a university professor and I was telling him some of these stories and he said you know I know that that by its nature this whole thing is very depressing but these stories are really fun and there are some lessons to be learned here you should write a book about this and so I I did and the book that I ended up with doing time like a spy I hand wrote on 550 legal pages there are no computers
[14:41] in prison there are no typewriters and so I just sat down with a legal pad and started writing and early in the book as I mentioned in the introduction you said you know if you met me there you'd think I'm pretty much of an asshole oh yeah and I was you do have to put up a fairly aggressive defensive exterior yes in order to prevent all kinds of predations you know major or minor I
[15:13] say later on in the book that prison is a combination of seventh grade Lord of the flies and a mental institution and that's really what it is if you show even an inkling of weakness these predators will be on you and you'll never be able to regain respect you will always be in danger and it's gonna make the time that much longer I saw this happen while I was there and the
[15:43] only way out is to check yourself into solitary confinement for your own protection and I thought well if I have anything to do with it it's people who are going to be checking themselves into solitary confinement to protect themselves from me and that's how I went about it you're right this is on page 67 the sad truth is that most co's correctional officers are assholes they're power mad bullies passive-aggressive instigators and just all-around dicks I believe this is for several reasons and you talk about
[16:16] how they're often rural white guys who can't find a job you don't say this but in my experience many of them are wannabe cops who didn't you know couldn't pass either the physical or the written test yeah and so they wind up being a correctional officer and at least here in California it pays pretty well there's a lot of overtime they've got a hefty pension system and so it's a fairly attractive job for somebody with almost no marketable skills there was one
[16:52] CEO who pulled me aside one day and I actually I'm not going to say that I liked him I'm gonna say that I didn't dislike him I respected him he was a nice kid he was probably 20 or 25 years younger than I am and he kind of whispered hey Kiryaku how do I get into the CIA and I said you know you seem like a nice guy you're obviously bright what in the world are you doing here you don't belong here you should apply to the CIA even if it's in you know the uniformed security division you should at least give it a try and he
[17:25] thought about it for a minute and he said no I couldn't do that he said my mom and dad were both CEOs my grandfather was a CEO and my wife would never want to leave Loretto and this was a town of 1200 people in the mountains of central Pennsylvania and I thought you know that's the sad thing because this guy actually had something going for himself but that attitude was very typical it was very parochial and very local and and you're right I actually do say in one of the letters from Loretto that I include in this
[17:58] book that um that the average CEO is is a guy who just couldn't cut it in the local police academy and who couldn't cut it in the in the military either yeah yeah it is amazing now another thing that you depict I think quite accurately and somewhat colorfully is the enforced segregation that occurs in prison and this is done with the ascent of the management and it it really comes into focus when you talk about who controls what you're watching in the
[18:33] TV room right Peter this was again a revelation to me this was 1950s segregated America and you know each housing unit has a TV room and each TV room has a handful of TVs I lived in a large housing unit we had six TVs and three were controlled by the hit by the Hispanics and two by the African Americans and that's the way it was in every unit people kind of vaguely
[19:03] mentioned that there had been a riot in the 1990s in and in this riot the whites lost and they lost their their ownership of the TVs but it gets ridiculous to the point of comedy um for example every single morning at 6 a.m. one of the Hispanic TVs had law and order on it and nobody ever watched law and order so I picked one of the Hispanics well he was actually the Hispanic shot caller the boss of all the Hispanics I said hey Zeus why do you
[19:36] guys have law and order on this TV every day why don't we put CNN at least we can see what the heck's going on in the world and he said no that's Domingo's TV I said well who the heck is Domingo oh he left a couple years ago and I said well if he's not here anymore then it's kind of not his TV you're the shot caller you control the TV he said Domingo paid $400 that TV, which is another thing that people do is they'll pay their, their shotcaller, their, the, the head of their racial group, um, X amount of money.
[20:09] If you want to chair in the TV room, it's 14 bucks. If you want to TV, apparently it's 400. He said, no, Domingo paid 400 for that TV. That's his TV and he watched law and order every day. I said, okay. Well, what a legacy. Now, now John, that points up that you were a short termer there and you dealt with many people who had, uh, lengthy sentences, uh, and of course I'm not clear, uh, if you had lifers there, I would think they would be in maximum
[20:39] security facilities, but you, you, you can, unless, unless they're pedophiles because it's too dangerous for pedophiles to be in medium or maximum security. So yeah, we, we had some pedophiles who for all intents and purposes had life sentences. There was a, there was one particularly awful, horrible man, um, with whom I worked in the chapel and, um, he was in on his third pedophilia offense. So the first offense is a mandatory five year minimum. So he got out and six months later, he, uh, comes back in for 12 years
[21:13] and that's where I met him. So he was in his late sixties when I met him and at the very end of his sentence of his 12 year sentence. So he's out and then three months later, here he is in the chapel again. I said, cook, what are you doing here? Well, he says, I have a problem. I said, how much time to give you? And he said 60 years and I said, you know what, I said, society is better off with you in here. Well, and, and you know, John, that's, that's an interesting statement because when I have visited San Quentin, it is typically to advocate for
[21:48] someone that I would like to see released from prison, but each time I go in the visiting room, uh, the, the impression and the, you know, feeling that I leave with is, well, you know, we do need prisons and we do need to separate some people from, uh, society. You're right, Peter. Uh, you know, I've come to the conclusion that we don't need minimum security work camps. If your crime is so minor that they're going to put you in a
[22:18] place where you're free to come and go and free to work in town, then wear an ankle bracelet, stay at home, maintain a job and support your family and, and contribute to society. But you're right. There are some people who are just so dangerous that they just can't live among us as normal, uh, contributing or productive members of society. And so we really do need prisons. What's a chomo, John? Chomo is prison slang for a child molester.
[22:49] I had never heard that word, uh, in my life until the day that I arrived and I heard it twice in the same day. Um, I was approached, I had been in prison about two hours and, and I was approached by two, uh, neo-nazis. Uh, a CEO had told me when he was checking me in that if, if somebody walks into your cell uninvited, that's an act of aggression. And sure enough, after two hours, these two neo-nazis walk right into my room, one with an enormous swastika that took up the entire front half of his
[23:21] neck and, um, and he said to me, I jumped up and I put my, I put my fists up and I said, what do you want? And I was trying to, you know, be as, as tough and as big as I could make myself look. And he says, take it easy. Are you the new guy? And I said, yeah, so, and he said, are you, uh, a fag? And I said, no, are you a rat? I said, no, I didn't have anybody in my case. Are you a chomo? And I said, I never heard that word before. So he says, chomo child molester.
[23:54] And I said, no, I'm not a child molester. And he said, okay, then you can sit with the Arians in the cafeteria. And like I say in the book, I kind of stood there and looked at him and thought, well, I guess I'm with the Arians now. Later that day, I met, uh, Frank Russo, uh, Frank became one of my closest friends and, uh, and my, my bunkmate, he had been the, uh, mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. And then he was the auditor general of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and was actually arrested on corruption charges.
[24:25] While he was running for governor of Ohio, Frank was just a wonderful, kind and sweet guy. Well, he had never heard the word chomo either. So somebody walked up to him and said, Hey, are you a chomo? And Frank said, no, I'm Russo. And the guy said, what? You crack and wise with me. And he said, no, I'm not chomo. Maybe chomo's coming on the bus next week. And he said, the war, he protested that his name wasn't chomo.
[24:58] The angrier this Arian got and Frank, he is 67 years old. He thought, Oh no, I'm going to get my ass kicked here. Finally, the guy was just so perplexed. He walked away and I laughed. I said, Frank, I never heard the word either. It had to be explained to me. Now, John, let me be candid that one of the things that kind of shocked me about the narrative in your book is that you are really allergic, if not highly antagonistic to anyone who is tagged as a pedophile
[25:32] or a child molester or kitty porn convict. And I do understand in a prison setting, things are different and it can represent more than just an annoyance. But the my takeaway from the book is that you were pretty radicalized about sex offenders and you cut them absolutely no slack. Zero, zero slack. I, you know, I, to the best of my knowledge, I've never met a pedophile. I, you know, thank God I was never molested as a child.
[26:04] I don't know anybody who was, at least in my family or among my friends. At least nobody's ever said anything. So I never had an exposure to somebody like this. And my very first, I had been at Loretto study four days and I started working in the prison library before I got my chapel job. And my job was to wipe off the tables. And so the leader, I guess, or the head of the cleaning crew said to me, Hey, are you the new guy? And I said, Yeah, well, welcome to the library.
[26:35] I said, Yeah, thank you. He said, How long you in for? I said, 30 months. And he said, Oh, short timer. That's easy. I said, Yeah, it feels like 30 years. How long are you in for? Oh, I have 24 years, he says. And I said, 24 years. Do you mind if I ask you what you did? And he said, Sure, I got caught looking at crime scene photos. I said, What the heck is that supposed to mean? And he said, Well, having sex with children is a crime. I got caught looking at the photos.
[27:07] And I said, Oh, come on, you're not a victim here. And he says, Well, what really did me in was that subfolder? So I said, OK, I'll bite. What was in the subfolder? And he got very excited and animated. And he said, Well, I like to masturbate while looking at pictures of dead children. And I have a friend who works at the morgue and I put my hands up. And I said, Stop, don't ever speak to me again. You understand? And he says, Yeah, I understand. But it wasn't just that it was fully, fully 25 to 30 percent of the prison
[27:43] and not just Loretto, but any federal prison at the low level is made up of child molesters. And they congregate, they eat together, they room together, they exercise together and walk the track and they even have their own chomo shot collar. I wasn't sure how to deal with them. So I wrote a letter to a professor friend of mine. I had been an adjunct at a university in Washington. I wrote him a letter and I laid all this out.
[28:15] And I said, What do I do? How do I deal with these people? So he went to the director of the or the chairman of the psychology department and the chairman wrote me a letter back and said that pedophiles can't be cured. There's no therapy, there's no medication, there's nothing that can change them. And the reason why they hang out together and talk about their crimes constantly is because it gives them sexual gratification to relive those crimes. So there's no rehabilitation for these guys.
[28:47] They actually enjoy themselves in prison. And they were lucky at Loretto. I heard horror stories about other prisons where people would buy olive oil in the commissary and then microwave the olive oil until it was boiling. And then pour it on child molesters while they were sleeping. Child molesters aren't allowed to have visitors in their cells. They're not allowed to have seats in the TV room. They have to sit at designated chomo tables in the cafeteria. So it was a real learning experience for me.
[29:20] In the chapel, just as a rule of thumb, the library and the chapel are real safe zones for child molesters in prison because there are always COs there. And they know they're not going to get beaten up there. So they hang out literally all day from morning until night in the chapel and the library. And we had a rule in the chapel that you can't talk about your case. Right? The chapel is a place of meditation and reflection and prayer.
[29:51] Nobody wants to hear about your sick case. But that's all they would do was talk about their cases. About, you know, there was one, he was a fireman from Haiti. here's town maryland we called him chomo the giant he was six feet seven or six eight and he was going on and on and on about having sex with a fifteen-year-old daughter and how she came on to him and she said she liked it and it felt good and he was videotaping it and he was selling the dvds on online and everybody just loved them she was so beautiful and i went out there i
[30:22] said hey no talking about your case and he looks at me indignantly and says jesus loved the little children and i i was so flabbergasted by that i just went back into the office and just sat back down again like you can't even reason with these people so john are there any other ways that uh... prison changed you changed your perceptions changed your attitudes toward groups of people or types of people yet very very much so peter before i got in trouble i didn't give five seconds of thought
[30:54] to the justice system or certainly to the prison system not five seconds of thought and then living through it made me realize what a broken system we have you know i i threw out the statistic all the time uh... because it's true and it's shocking and that is but the united states has five percent of the world's population and twenty five percent of the world's prison population we have more people incarcerated per capita than the russian the chinese even the iranians
[31:25] that to me is a problem when when there's no rehabilitation and no education that's a problem when mental uh... health is is treated as a disciplinary problem that's a problem when when one out of every four black men in america is either in prison or jail or on probation or parole that's a problem we don't see it as a problem we we have an attorney general now who wants to reimpose mandatory minimum
[31:56] sentences on uh... for drug crimes got up to this point so that was something that that really open my eyes and i think he was you know you you really get to see what happens in a community where everybody's poor where people don't have an educational background or foundation in in even basic education where they don't have job skills they end up in prison
[32:26] and uh... i don't have a conversation one time that was just it it was just so stunning to me i don't think i'll ever forget it there were these uh... three african-american guys playing cards in the tv room with middle of the day all the tv's were on most people were at work or outside to the place is empty these guys were playing cards and one of them just kind of looked around and said you know we get three square meals a day we get a warm bed we get clothes
[32:56] we got tv we can play cards we get medical care if we had pussy this place would be paradise john talk a little bit about the price that you have paid but it's always uh... as i explained when i go to san quentin i stand in line with family members of prisoners and they pay an incredible price to stay in connection with their loved one
[39:51] franklin roosevelt was you know personally waiting for everybody at ellis island to give them passports and citizenship and jobs in the steel mill in pit And so, all my life, and all my dad's life, my grandfather talked about public service, that we owed this country so much for what it did for us that we had to pay it back. My grandfather kept a framed photo of Franklin Roosevelt on the TV until he died in 1978.
[40:22] I still have that picture of Franklin Roosevelt. I have it in my bedroom. So public service was very, very important. And you know, I wanted to see the world while serving the country. I had a fascination with the Middle East. I still do all my life. And I had an advisor in grad school who was actually a CIA officer undercover as a grad school advisor. And he recruited me into the CIA in 1989.
[40:52] So do you have a clear sense though of who you are after all that you've been through? And are you still at heart a spy who would like to return to that work and you know, deliver on missions for our country? Or do you feel that the agency that you spent 14 years in is tainted and has been assigned impossible missions and improbable missions as well? Well, yeah, the CIA is tainted.
[41:24] And I wouldn't and couldn't go back to the CIA because that's not the CIA that I knew. In fact, when I was at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I worked with a guy who had been a senior CIA officer. And we became good friends. And he said to me one time, you know, you always talk about how much you love the CIA but how the CIA has changed over the years. And certainly now it's more of a paramilitary organization than anything else. And he says, I always chuckle when I hear you say that because the CIA that you describe
[41:59] never really existed. It only existed in your mind. He said it's always been a troubled organization. It's always been an organization that's been antithetical to the American way of life. You had a good time, but you were so junior, he said you didn't see what was really going on upstairs at the top. And the more I think about that, the more I realize that he was probably right. I've always been a progressive, I've always been a civil libertarian at the same time. And the CIA that we have now that gladly carries out operations against American citizens
[42:34] even is antithetical to the American way of life. So John, let's segue now to some current issues. And I do want to highly recommend your book, Doing Time Like a Spy. It is now published and I read a pre-publication copy, but it's out there and available and I encourage people to find it and to read it. But the agency where you used to work is now embroiled in this whole Trump-Russia embryo.
[43:05] And I'm a skeptic. I don't believe the representations that the Director of National Intelligence offered in October or in January. The documents that they published are insulting and infantilized. We have no public evidence of the alleged Russian responsibility for hacking the DNC. And so much of what we believe to be true or people have embraced is based on anonymous information leaked by people who we can't identify.
[43:40] And so we have spun into this evidence-free era where a leak becomes a fact by repetition and by multiple reporting, but not by proof or multiple sources. And so I feel that we've entered this hall of mirrors that makes it very difficult for the average American to know what to believe or who to believe. Do you have any confidence in the assertions contained in the assessments from October and
[44:12] January about Russia's attempt to manipulate the election in favor of Trump? No. No, I don't. And I've been quite vocal about this, too, in columns that I regularly write for ReaderSupportedNews.org. No. Anytime the intelligence community or the FBI lays out a story and then says, take my word for it. Well, don't take their word for it. I think that this whole notion of hacking, too, is overblown because no one's ever
[44:45] actually defined what they mean by hacking. Did the Russians somehow steal the election from Hillary Clinton? No. Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. Hillary Clinton stole the primary election from Bernie Sanders. So if they're accusing the Russians of having hacked voting machines and changed votes or somehow having stolen the election for Trump, well, my God, that's a serious charge. Lay out the evidence and let's take a look at it.
[45:16] But they haven't laid out any evidence, and you're right. The evidence that they have provided tells us literally nothing. And with that said, and I part company with a lot of my friends on the left on this issue, I support the appointment of a special counsel. Not because I think that there's anything to these Russian issues, but because I think crimes have been committed by senior members of the Trump campaign. Mike Flynn, for example, we know failed to register as an agent for a foreign government
[45:51] when he was lobbying for Turkey. That is a crime. We know that he failed to register as an agent for the Russian government when he was taking money from the Russians to lobby. That is a crime. He did not report the whatever it is, $40,000 or $65,000, I've seen both figures, that he received as payment from the Russian government. That's a crime. He filled out incorrect improper information on his ethics report. That's also a crime.
[46:22] So that's what I'd like to get to the bottom of. Flynn, Manafort, Carter Page, possibly Roger Stone. I'd like to see what was going on inside that campaign. Getting back to the issue of hacking and the emails though, Ambassador Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job because he blew the whistle on the Uzbek torture program, said to the Guardian newspaper in London that a DNC staffer printed off the Podesta emails and gave them to Craig.
[46:56] And Craig personally delivered those emails to WikiLeaks. He says that there was no Russian hack, that he was the middleman between the DNC staff and WikiLeaks. But the mainstream media has ignored that assertion. Well, and the reporting, it's a little rough on the latest developments in the Seth Rich murder investigation. But it's much more credible to believe that an insider released that information than
[47:30] the Russian hack gave it to WikiLeaks. And your colleagues in the veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, including Bill Binney, who I've talked to on many occasions, former technical director at the NSA, they flatly maintain that if it was a hack, that the NSA could trace those packets and could determine when they were accessed, where they went, and most likely who did it. We also know that this bullshit about Fancy Bear and APT-28 and the Cyrillic reference
[48:05] to the founder of the KGB, anybody can create that kind of a false trail. And everybody is well aware, at least by now, that it's easy to fake your IP address. Absolutely. Hackers do it every day. Yeah. It's very easy to do. And the fact that the FBI has never examined the DNC servers, they relied on CrowdStrike to submit a report, and they just take that at face value. All of this, you know, truly undermines the, you know, much-vaunted national security apparatus
[48:44] that we have. But I do part company with you a bit on the selection of Mueller as the special counsel. Mainly... Well, no, no, I'm not a supporter of Mueller. It was Mueller who headed the investigation that put me in prison. It was Mueller who created what they called the John Kiriakou Task Force at the FBI. So, no, believe me, I'm no fan of Mueller. But I did think that we needed somebody as a special counsel. Well, I do think, though, that he can be relied upon to, number one, preserve the reputation
[49:19] of the FBI. And whatever you define as the deep state, he is a deep actor in the deep state. And I do believe that he's well positioned to dispatch Trump. But at what cost? The cost will be the public role of the deep state in running our country and picking our presidents as opposed to the murky covert role that has been exercised in the past.
[49:51] That's true. You know, there was an interesting editorial in the Washington Post today. And I generally hate the Washington Post, just because they... uh... they're so anti whistleblower and it's not just me at any national security whistleblower but there was a fascinating editorial today in which they they laid out how trump can save himself and it was by adopting the reagan model during iran contra because it's not the crime that brings them down it's the cover-up of the crime you know look at scooter liby
[50:21] scooter liby never leaked valerie claims name to the to robert no back uh... deputies secretary state rich armadage did but it was scooter liby who was put on trial and and what would be convicted of he was convicted two counts of perjury and three counts of making a false statement charges that had nothing to do with the leaking of valerie claims name we're gonna see the same situation now it's not necessarily about whatever president trump or or his people may or may not have committed
[50:54] it's going to be their response to this investigation their response to the accusation of the crime if they're not careful that's what's going to do them in so as you look at the current picture what are your uh... most significant concerns john well here i am concerned about so much right now this was my first trip overseas uh... trump was elected president and people at least our european allies are absolutely panicked stricken
[51:25] you know i thought maybe they would say all trump he's a buffoon he's a reality tv star they're panic stricken this is the guy that has his finger on the nuclear button and because he's so unpredictable it actually has an effect on their economy and on their own society so that's what they're afraid of they're desperate for for a steady hand they're desperate for american leadership and they're not getting it with donald trump this is going to be bad not just for the united states
[51:55] but it's going to be bad for every country in the world that considers itself to be a friend of the united states well john it's always a pleasure to talk with you thanks for joining me today and uh... i want to reference uh... your latest book is doing time like a spy how the c i a taught me to survive and thrive in prison and i see online that sky horse is planning to publish the convenient terrorist abu's a beta and the weird wonder wonderland of america's secret wars uh... when when can we expect to see that
[52:26] that is a book that i wrote with uh... joe hickman a former guantanamo guard and an author in his own right i know it's good uh... he's a good man yeah good guy and it's going to be published on june the twenty seven okay well i'm looking forward to that and uh... maybe i'll have you and joe on together cuz uh... he's done a great job of uh... of really reporting on the burn pits that was his most recent book uh... and the way the military uh... sacrifice the health of many service members and support personnel
[52:57] uh... with the reckless uh... destruction of trash and uh... other materials at various locations in iraq including my best friend from high school who was in charge of the burn pit in uh... in bagdad and died of uh... of an extraordinarily rare form of brain cancer five years ago i'm sorry and also uh... joe hickman has been and uh... and a great source and he published his first book uh... about the death of three prisoners uh... who they claimed committed
[53:29] suicide at guantanamo when the evidence is uh... pretty clear that that's not the case that's right john pages book thanks for joining us will talk again soon i'm looking forward to it thanks for having me former cia officer former federal prisoner john carry out i'd like to hear your comments email peter at peter b collins dot com