[00:00] I had no idea that for the next three years they were intercepting my phone calls they were intercepting my my emails they had three different FBI surveillance teams tailing me and then finally in January of 2012 I was charged with five felonies coming out of that interview including three counts of espionage espionage espionage in many cases is a death penalty charge [Music]
[00:30] so 2002 is when all of this took place 2002 is when you became aware of these techniques you decided to leave the CIA in 2004 correct for for bigger and better opportunities yeah I got a job offer with a private company that was
[01:00] exactly double what I was making at the CIA I had just gotten married again I had two kids and yeah I decided to just make a real change a real career change so from 2004 to 2007 you obviously still were living with this information in this knowledge what made you decide to become the whistleblower in 2007 from what you had learned in 2002 why so long
[01:30] today the truth I waited for somebody to say something I knew that there were dissenters inside the CIA who were objecting to this program like I did but but nobody came forward finally in December of 2007 Brian Ross called me from ABC News and he said he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah I said that was absolutely untrue I had never laid a hand on Abu Zubaydah or on any other prisoner and he said well you're welcome
[02:00] to come on the show and defend yourself well a couple of days later President Bush gave a press conference and he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture and I knew that that was just a lie it was a bald-faced lie and then a few days later in response to a reporter's question he said that if there is torture it's the result of a rogue CIA officer and I thought Brian Ross's sources at the White House and they're gonna pin this on me and so I
[02:30] decided I wasn't gonna wait any longer I was just gonna tell the truth and let the chips fall so I went on that interview in December of 2007 and I said three things I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said the torture was official US government policy and I said the policy had been personally approved by the President himself so within 24 hours the FBI began investigating me they investigated me for a full year until December of 2008 and then they closed
[03:00] the case they sent my attorneys what's called a declination letter meaning they're declining to prosecute me three weeks later Barack Obama becomes president I had no idea that Obama asked Eric Holder at the Justice Department to reopen the case against me secretly this was at the urging of John Brennan a former boss of mine who became the number two at the National Security Council and then later went on to become
[03:30] the CIA director John asked Obama to ask the Justice Department to reopen the case I had no idea that for the next three years they were intercepting my phone calls they were intercepting my my emails they had three different FBI surveillance teams tailing me and then finally in January of 2012 I was charged with five felonies coming out of that interview including three counts of espionage espionage espionage in many cases is a
[04:00] death penalty charge and so so the government was seeking 45 years in prison they offered me a deal that I take a plea to one espionage charge and I do 30 years and they told me that if I take it I might be able to live to see my grandchildren and I said I'm not doing 30 minutes I didn't do anything wrong there's a legal definition of whistleblowing it's bringing to light
[04:30] any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety and that's exactly what I did so they came back just a few days later and they said they said do ten years take a plea to an espionage charge you do ten I said forget it they came back at five I said no they came back at three and a half and I said No I said I didn't do anything wrong and my
[05:00] attorney who had been an attorney for more than 50 years at that point and is like the marquee name in criminal defense in Washington said to me that in all his decades as an attorney he had never seen the Justice Department come down in time with each subsequent offer normally they'll make an offer and if you say no they'll come back with another offer later and and it's for more time I said why are they doing that and he said because they have a [ __ ]
[05:30] case and they know it's [ __ ] so he said we are not taking a plea we're going to trial well in the meantime ProPublica the investigative journalism website came out with a study in which they found that the federal government wins ninety eight point two percent of their cases well finally the government came back and they said all right you take a plea to two and a half on a reduced charge we throw out all the other charges you do 23 months so what do you
[06:00] do it becomes an economic decision do you roll the dice and risk forty five years knowing that you have a 1.8 percent chance of winning and realistically I said to my lawyers if I lose what am I looking at they said 12 to 18 probably closer to 18 or do you just take the 23 months and make the whole thing go away that's an easy decision you know and it's easy for somebody watching this right now that's not in the line of fire to say well if you didn't do it why take a plea I don't
[06:30] think everybody can understand that that's a it's unfortunate because I'm sure you did not view the justice system the way you do now until after you'd become it's on food I never gave many this five minutes of thought in my life but I remember saying something that that's to my lawyers in the beginning that that was so naive in retrospect that it's actually funny I said once I get in front of a jury and they see how
[07:00] ridiculous this is they're gonna acquit me on all charges and one of my lawyers said you think this is about justice this isn't about justice this is about mitigating loss this is about making this as easy to swallow as possible well when they when they finally offered me the 23 months I initially said no I emailed my attorneys at like 6 o'clock in the morning and I said I'm not doing
[07:30] it I didn't do anything wrong I'm going to trial they drove over to my house it was a Saturday morning they drove over to my house texted me to put a pot of coffee on three of them came I had 11 lawyers if you could imagine cost me almost 1.2 million dollars so they came over and the one that I liked and respected the most pulled me aside and said if you were my brother I would beg
[08:00] you to take this deal he said this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life make it the blip and so it was that conversation that convinced me to take the deal I have five kids I couldn't risk dying in prison so John let's kind of talk about that for just a second I haven't heard you talk a whole lot about your family you're married you have five children you've just accepted the fact that you're probably going to go to prison
[08:30] it's no longer just a possibility it's a reality how how has this affected during that point in time how are you explaining this to your wife how much did your children know what were you going through internally watching how this was basically not just affecting you but the people around you as well my wife had been a senior CIA officer as well we met at the CIA we married while we were at the CIA um she went with me
[09:00] to that Brian Ross interview she said just off-camera and when I finished the interview I said how did I do she said great I said I didn't say anything classified right and she said no he did great so she was fully entirely supportive through the whole experience um when it was all over and I came home the PTSD set in and we are in the final stages of divorce right now she just couldn't take the pressure anymore sorry
[09:30] to hear that thank you me too about the children though how how did you explain to your children that you're how old how old were your children when you were going to prison and how did you explain to them that you're gonna be leaving my two older boys from my first marriage were 19 and 16 and so they followed the news they were supportive their friends were supportive my oldest was in college his professors pulled him aside said that I had done a heroic thing and and you know not to let anybody bother them or bully them and none of that ever happened everybody was very supportive my my
[10:00] three younger children were a lot younger let's see my son was no my son was 8 my daughter was six and my youngest son was a year and so what I told them was I said you know I've been in this fight with the FBI and I said unfortunately I lost and so I'm gonna have to move to Pennsylvania for two years and I'm gonna teach bad guys how
[10:30] to get their high school diplomas and they accepted that they were sad but they accepted it and then after three or four visits they were in the visiting room one day and I entered the visiting room through a door that had a sign on it that said inmates only and my son said what does inmate mean and without thinking I said it means prisoner and he
[11:00] said so do you work here or are you a prisoner here and I said ah doggone it I said well buddy I'm a prisoner here but it's for a really complicated reason I did the right thing for the American people but the FBI was really angry at me and he accepted that and of all my five kids he was the only one that had trouble dealing with it um but you know we got him counseling and and he got right through it
[11:30] with my wife it was different it was it was this delayed reaction PTSD that it didn't really hit until I got home we were back on our feet I was off paper and then she just decided she's gonna walk I imagine it's a pretty hard life to live being not just you but people that are around you right now with I mean you're in the spotlight all over the place yeah if you
[12:00] finally made my show so you finally know yeah but uh but you know just in the last just in the last week I was on Fox News four times in CNN was so yeah and I'm and if she's still trying to pursue any type of a career I imagine it's it's got to be hard she's an executive and a defense contractor and I'm kind of a peace and human rights activist and the two don't really mesh that's that's what I would my conclusion I'd come to so your relationship with your children is
[12:30] good now right so let's talk a little bit just a little bit about your prison experience cuz I'm sure there's nothing you're gonna talk about here that people haven't heard a million times about going to prison but I am curious so while you were in prison how did the inmates and guards and other staff members treat you did they treat you as like a spider were they worried you were gonna tell on them or what was the it wasn't like the day-to-day in there for you quite the contrary
[13:00] somehow I have no idea a rumor got started before I arrived that I had been a hitman for the CIA and so the Arians just thought that was great they called me the Muslim killer I don't know where that came from so one day one of the he was the shot-caller for the Aryans pulled me aside he said is it true that that you were a hitman for the CIA and so I said and I actually like congratulated myself for my quick
[13:30] thinking I said listen it was wartime and we all did things we weren't proud of and he just said that's cool man that's cool I didn't say no you didn't say yes you didn't say no you kind of left him a little bit yeah probably probably something a real hitman would say that was probably pretty spot-on what really saved me though was you know my case was so high-profile it was on the front page of the New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal and and the Italians had
[14:00] read about it and the Sunday before I arrived there was a story about me on the front page the New York Times and so this one Italian guy took it upon himself to go to all the other Italians to tell them to make sure that they understood the difference between a CIA officer and an FBI agent an FBI agents a cop an FBI agent arrests people the CIA officer is not a cop he doesn't have arrest powers and he's
[14:30] out there catching Muslims to make us safe and so when I finally arrived the Italians welcomed me with open arms and for the whole time I was there I was with the Italians so you had no issues in prison zero now I've heard some other weird I know personally but I do want to kind of clear the air a little bit there's different classifications in prison federal prison camps lows mediums pens whatever people refer to you they were like the penitentiary were you in a
[15:00] penitentiary I was not in my sentencing my attorneys asked the judge to send me to a minimum security camp and for your viewers who don't know minimum security camps have no bars on the windows the doors are generally unlocked there are no fences you're kind of free to come and go as you please so long as you don't abscond a lot of the guys work in town and the the prosecutors had no objection so she hid her gavel and said so ordered
[15:30] so I get to the prison I turned myself in six weeks later and it's a camp attached to a low so I had to turn myself in a little low and they put me through the metal detector and frisked me and then they start leading me around to the back of the prison and I said no no I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street and the guard kind of laughed and said but not according to my paperwork you're not well it took me five days to get access to a phone and finally I called my lawyer and I said hey they put
[16:00] me in the actual prison with the the murderers and the drug kingpins and the pedophiles so what do I do and he said oh my god he said well we could file a motion but it'll take two years before we get a hearing and you'll be home by then he said I'm sorry buddy you're gonna have to tough it out and so I decided that very day I was trained for this I was gonna fall back on my CIA training to make sure that I remained safe and at the top of the social heap
[16:30] so you're right there's a minimum security camp which is easy but then there's low it's also called a medium-low then there's the medium which is also called medium high and then there's the penitentiary I was in the in the low which became to find out is is isn't a probably was not as bad as you had imagined it being no wasn't the type of people that nobody wants to get in trouble too low because if you do you get bumped up to a medium high exactly
[17:00] and most of the guys pedophiles aside because all the pedophiles have to be in a low it's too dangerous for them to be in a higher classification prison and they're not allowed in the minimum security so the place is just overflowing with child molesters besides the child molesters most of those guys have worked their way down from a penitentiary to a medium to a low and they've got a certain level of freedom at a low and they don't want to blow that and then go back up to a medium or a high and you seem like the type of guy that's gonna have the right
[17:30] demeanor in there I mean with all the training you had the very least I would imagine you've got some amazing social skills to converse with people I actually wrote a book while I was there that did very well it's called doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison and you know copy of it sitting there it won it won two awards it won the pen First Amendment Award and it won the forward reviews memoir of the year where can
[18:00] people pick this up on Amazon yeah yeah it's on Amazon and it's on Amazon hard copy or hardcover and also download but it did really well and it starts off with these 20 life lessons that the CIA taught me and how I use them in prison - I need to say it but to manipulate other people to get other people to do my dirty work and to make sure that I protected myself not necessarily from other prisoners but
[18:30] from but from the guards the COS that's that was the only danger to me was the CIO's