[00:00] If you knew what they were saying when they think you cannot hear If you understood what they do, if for you it was so clear If you knew they shut down the factory in an economic ruse If you could kiss the cheek of the child in the sweatshop that made your shoes Every time we went to war to fight our evil foes They told you we were really fighting for the good of CEOs If you could feel the hunger of the many, see the riches of the few
[00:30] If they told it like it is, what if you knew? You're listening to Clearing the Fog Speaking truth to expose the forces of greed with Margaret Flowers And Kevin Zeiss And Clearing the Fog is a project of popularresistance.org You can subscribe to us on Apple, SoundCloud, MixCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play You can also find us at popularresistance.org And while you're there, check out our store. You'll find Clearing the Fog gear Like t-shirts, bumper stickers, tote bags, and water bottles And also sign up for our daily news digest, which covers the news of the movement from the US and around the world
[01:04] And also our weekly newsletter, which is a detailed analysis of current issues that the movement is facing And this week we interviewed John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst and case officer Kiriakou tells us what regime changes like from inside the CIA It's a very enlightening discussion. I hope you'll stick around for that interview Before we start that, let's talk about some things that are in the news We'll do our weekly COVID-19 update The United States is now approaching 6 million documented cases and has passed 180,000 deaths
[01:35] In just in time for the Republican Convention, the US has the worst record of any developed country in the world And people are worried about the flu season In the United States that's coming on beginning in September It hits its peak around December, February And not sure of what, you know, could happen There's a couple of factors in play I mean, one is if the cases continue like they are now And then that's compounded on top of flu season That could really overwhelm our hospitals The other scenario is that if people continue to isolate
[02:07] And take measures to prevent themselves from getting infected or infecting others That it could actually diminish the number of flu cases So if we solve the COVID problem by social distancing Staying home, we also reduce the traditional flu problem Possibly, possibly, they're not sure But what we do know is that it all depends on what we do And that there's the potential if we don't protect ourselves for there to be serious problems We have to remember that infections rise exponentially
[02:39] Even if there's just a few cases in your area If things are relaxed, those cases can rapidly evolve to many cases Scientists also point out to some differences between the flu and COVID-19 As we're beginning to learn more about COVID The mortality of the flu is about 0.1 to 0.2% They're seeing now a mortality of COVID-19 of 2.3 So that means that COVID is 10 to 20 times more deadly than the flu Also seeing that more people who have COVID-19 are super spreaders
[03:10] Than what you get with the flu, so that COVID is more easily spread than the flu And it also lasts longer So if somebody is hospitalized with a serious case of COVID-19 They're going to be in the intensive care unit much longer than someone typically is who has the flu But the season of the flu does bring a lot of people to the hospital every year And so that on top of the already high levels of hospital use by COVID Really puts hospitals at risk It has the potential, right And that's why people are very concerned about returning to schools Returning to work already
[03:41] Teachers in Detroit and New York have voted that they will go on strike If they don't think the reopening of schools is being done in a safe way Yeah, I feel sorry for teachers and people who work in schools Being pushed into this unsafe environment And for students to be going into that unsafe environment These are going to become super spreader situations There's almost no doubt we've already seen that Right In schools that have already opened early without proper precautions And so I don't know why we're duplicating the mistake when we know it's a mistake Right, and then college students are also wary as our college faculty
[04:13] A recent poll found that 22% of college students have decided not to return To school online or offline in the fall The vast majority, 3 fourths of those are going to be seeking full-time work Or working full-time And for some schools what I'm hearing from college-age students is They're not being given a choice If they want to go to school, they have to go back physically to the school Let's also talk about who's benefitting from this situation
[04:43] And the CARES Act which passed in Congress back in the spring Basically has really enriched some of those who are already doing pretty well So property management corporations and property owners Are getting relief to the tunes of millions of dollars from the CARES Act And they're continuing to evict tenants while renters are not getting the assistance they need During this pandemic This is going to become a renter organizing opportunity And lead to probably rent strikes Which is, yeah, already starting to happen
[05:13] And also the big banks are doing very well They've made 18 billion dollars just from processing fees For the aid that's coming from the CARES Act alone 18 billion In the U.S. former capitalism, which is very tied to the government Middle men that are really not necessary Like insurance companies Profit immensely So banks who really, you can just give them money directly to businesses But you put the banks in the middle, they take their share off the top Same with the health insurance Health insurance is doing very well during COVID as well too The insurance industry really is not even needed for health care
[05:44] While they do it, they're just a middle man That takes a lot of money, causes a lot of bureaucracy Restricts people's access to health care These middle man profiteers really are not needed Some people refer to them as vampires Sucking the blood out of our health care system Another interesting fact sadly Is that with mortgage rates being very low right now Many homeowners are trying to refinance their homes To get that lower rate And we're finding that black homeowners are being denied These refinanced mortgages at a rate 80% higher than that of whites
[06:17] And it's a combination of racism Which is definitely part of the problem But also the reality that blacks are less wealthy Have less income And therefore have a more challenging deal with banks But they've made efforts to take those issues out of this equation And tested banks and found that racism also is a key factor Right, when they fill out the form and put their race They're more likely to not get a contact back And when they don't, they get eager banks ready to offer them money Let's talk about the postal service Which is under attack
[06:48] Has been under attack for a long time And that continues, but there's a lot going on right now Around that we wrote our newsletter this week About how this is a form of voter suppression this year But voter suppression has also been going on for a long time in this country This is the voter suppression issue of the year Although there's others Because of before getting in the post office I'll say Intimidation at the poll places is also a major factor A big concern, yeah And President Trump at the end of the Democratic convention He's using it to send sheriffs and law enforcement and U.S. attorneys
[07:18] And attorney generals to the polling places to check for fraud But that really is intimidation And just saying that is intimidation People hear that and they're afraid If they owe money to their ex-wives People afraid they're going to get in trouble Or haven't paid their taxes People afraid they're going to get in trouble Or have a criminal history They can't vote They're afraid that they're going to vote they're going to get in trouble So it's an intimidation factor And the Republican party says they're going to have 50,000 poll watchers this year And that's new because they haven't done this in decades Because they have been under a consent degree Because of abusive poll watching intimidation tactics in the past
[07:51] That started in 1981 Just ended last two years ago And the courts have not allowed it to continue And so they are free this year to send out poll watchers to intimidate at the polling places That's a new thing as well Another form of suppression of course Is preventing people who were previously incarcerated from voting And of course there was a Supreme Court decision this year in Florida That disenfranchised millions of people down there Even after two-thirds the public voted to give felons the right to vote But as far as the post office goes That's the big issue of this year because of COVID More people will be voting by mail
[08:22] 20 states have made it easier to vote by mail And so, but they've also There's reports about hundreds of thousands of mail in ballots Being not counted during the nominating process And so there's definitely problems But the big problem from the national perspective Is the new postmaster general Restricting hours that workers can work Taking out and stopping the use of mail sorting machines And it's caused a major reaction We were at a protest in Baltimore just a few days ago We were carrying signs though That came from the Obama era
[08:53] When Obama was trying to undermine the post office When we were outside that same, our post office Protesting the post office accountability and enhancement act So-called which basically required the post office to pre-fund Its retirement benefits including healthcare for 75 years That's put a huge financial strain on the post office Probably wouldn't be in the situation it was If it didn't have to come up with that $5.5 billion Every year and remember the postal service Is a self-funding institution So now we've seen all this attack on it It's bipartisan Finally now that it's affecting the vote
[09:24] The Democrats are showing concern They put forward in the house a bill That would give $25 billion in aid to the postal service They're asking for $75 billion It seems like that shouldn't be a big problem If we just voted to give the Pentagon $740 billion I'm sure they could do with it a little bit less People are protesting And there's a big national day of action On Tuesday, August 25th Protests across the country That's right We have that on popularresistance.org On our slider On top you want information about that national day of action
[09:54] That $25 billion Trump is saying is too much money McConnell says he won't consider it in the Senate Unless other issues are attached to it, so we're not sure even that 25 billion will move forward. Right, and it was interesting at the protest we were in at in Baltimore. There was a member of the American Postal Workers Union, a postal worker, who talked about the fact that these protests really emboldened the postal workers to push back against what's happening to them. And in fact, in Washington state, postal workers refused to take the mail sorting machines offline.
[10:24] There's a report from California showing that the delays caused by taking these mail sorting machines offline is causing real damage. People ship, you know, meats and fruits, things that are perishable. Those are rotting. They ship living organisms like chicks and crickets, and those are also dying. People rely on the Postal Service to get their medication, especially in rural areas. They're not getting their medications on time. So, you know, this is really a public service. The Postal Service is something that we all rely on. And this effort to privatize this public service because I see a lot of money
[10:56] there. There's a lot of money in providing people their mail. And if a privateer comes in, profits from that cuts back on the rural areas that are very expensive to deliver to, they can increase their profits more. Plus, they get all that $5 billion a year that the postal isn't putting into people's pensions and health benefits. That's a big nest egg for whoever ends up, if the postal were to be privatized. That's the big danger, right. Right now, as a public good, the Postal Service is required to deliver to everyone, but a private service doesn't have those constraints. And so people can be charged much
[11:26] more to go to rural areas. That's something that people will struggle to afford. So we have to protect this institution. So check out popularresistance.org and the National Day of Action. To save the Postal Service, I'm sure there'll be much more. Let's talk about, we just passed on August 22nd Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day of the year when the resources that are being used have met what's capable of being regenerated in that year. So the rest of the year, we're borrowing from the future. Exactly. We're using resources that will be needed for future generations because we're
[11:59] overusing and the United States is worse than the rest of the world. It's not the worst in the world, but we're definitely not doing well. The U.S. met its overshoot day back on March 14th. August 22nd means that there's 132 days out of the year that we're borrowing from the future. And this means that we would need 1.6 planets to provide what we're using right now. Now, what's interesting is that compared to the most recent years, our Earth Overshoot Days occurred a little bit later this year because of the recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been some reduced consumption.
[12:33] And it's also important to realize that this shows that the issues not just climate, the climate crisis, which is severe enough and threatening enough, we can see the wildfires in California right now as one example of the climate crisis, but it's also much broader environmental catastrophe. Overusing our resources, many species becoming extinct. We have lots of serious environmental problems in the oceans, so we have a need to really remake our environmental policy at a time, unfortunately, the Trump administration's giving polluters a preference over the environment. And the Democrats do the same, unfortunately.
[13:06] As you know, Joe Biden's not going to end fracking, he promises. And so we have a real need to get both parties and our government to transform to much more environmentally concerned because we are threatening the environment in many ways. Well, looking at the most recent climate science, scientists are predicting that we'll reach 560 parts per million of CO2 by 2070. They basically have said that keeping the warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius is not possible. They anticipate that most likely scenario is that we'll reach 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century.
[13:41] And that these small changes can have really dramatic impacts on the weather in the world. So this is something that we still need to avoid, but it's going to take really concerted action. And it's not happening at this stage. Let's talk about most recent censorship by Facebook. Last week, Facebook banned a number of pages. Some of them were right wing, but others were left wing pages like Crime Think and It's Going Down and Anarchist and Anti-Fascist Pages. They said that they were doing it because they were violent. But the people who run those pages point out that when you're being attacked by these
[14:16] right wing, violent people carrying guns and the police defending yourself is not violence. That's exactly right. And you know, this is a continuation of censorship that's growing. And while they take these groups out now, they'll take more groups out in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if they pop the resistance at some point taking off of Facebook. We have no control over these corporations. The Constitution, our free speech rights, our right to meet press and information that does not apply to private corporations. And that's one of the problems of us all depending on outlets like Facebook and Twitter
[14:49] and other social media sources that are corporate controlled. Let's talk about what's happening in Flint. They reached a $600 million settlement over the lead poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan. This money is going to be used to compensate residents. They haven't worked it out yet, but residents should be eligible to apply to get some of those funds. And that shows how serious that problem was. $600 million is not a small settlement. I'm sure it won't be sufficient for the damage that was caused. Right. But at least an acknowledgement that they did make serious errors. Some of that damage is going to be permanent for young children who were poisoned by the
[15:21] lead. And people in Flint, even though they're being told their water is clean now, they just don't feel like they can even trust it. So they're continuing to buy bottled water. Protests are going on across the country. Portland is amazing. They continue to show up every night. And the police continue to fight back and the right wing is fighting back and they keep showing up, calling for an end to police violence. Right. And they actually over the weekend, there was a big conflict between some right wingers that came out and the pro-Black Lives Matter anti-police violence. Protesters were able to push those right wingers away from the area
[15:52] successfully. Without the help of the police. Of course. The police, what we're seeing across the country is the police often either do nothing or support the violent right wing side. Wisconsin major protests there over Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old father of three who was breaking up a domestic dispute. And when he returned to his van, police tased him, grabbed him and shot him at close range. He's still in very critical condition in the hospital. He has gone through surgery now as in the intensive care unit. And he was shot as he was getting into the car. He had his children in the back seat of the car. People are baffled. It doesn't make any sense why that
[16:25] shooting happened. Also in Pittsburgh last week, protesters protested two days in a row outside of the mayor's home over police violence. And on the second night, the police just suddenly became violent against them, pushed them back, pushed them into a park, chased them, you know, used rubber bullets and chemical weapons against them. So that was. This is the way it goes. You protest police violence and you get punished with police violence. Right. The response to the police to protest against violence is more violence. That's not going to serve them well. And then Lions for Global Justice has a new report out on political repression increasing in the
[16:59] United States. They cite four areas of repression, mass arrests, arbitrary detentions, militarization of communities, and deaths at the hands of police. And Lions for Global Justice covers a lot of different countries. They work with many groups, including us. Last week we talked with Rania Khalik about Lebanon and we were mentioning the trial of the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was killed through a suicide truck bomb in 2005. A United Nations affiliated tribunal investigated that murder and found that even though Hezbollah and Syria were
[17:34] blamed, they in fact were not the ones to blame. There was a kind of a relief for Lebanon to see that very because Hezbollah had been found complicit. We would have probably saw more violence, but instead the tribunal found no evidence that Hezbollah leadership was involved in that assassination. Right. Despite the fact that Western media was going all over the place and saying Hezbollah, Hezbollah. I also wanted to point out that the United States, after the explosion in Lebanon, responded with more sanctions on Lebanon. But China has responded
[18:05] with peacekeepers. They've sent over 400 peacekeepers to Lebanon, mining experts to help with excavation, infrastructure, people as well as health professionals. They're rotating them on these 15-day rotation to prevent exposure to COVID. They bring them back home and isolate them, but it's a very different response between China and the United States. That's not the only thing that happens in Lebanon with that kind of crisis, it's been happening with COVID. US increases sanctions on Venezuela. Iran, China, Russia provide aid to Venezuela. You can say the same in Nicaragua, same thing about Cuba,
[18:37] where the US increases sanctions when there's a crisis, thinking that aids their regime change. Other countries come to the aid of nations. Also not being told in the news is the bombing of Gaza, which has been going on for two weeks now, ever since the United Arab Emirates signed an agreement with Israel to normalize diplomatic relations. And not only the bombing of Gaza, they also stopped the power plant from operating, so they're in darkness and being bombed. They ask that people do whatever they can to elevate and spread the word about what's happening there. It's really atrocious.
[19:09] Especially since you see in the media narrative, they're saying that, oh, well, Palestinians are sending these incendiary balloons into Israel, and they're upsetting the Israelis and causing some brush fires. But we have to remind ourselves that Palestinians have a legal right to defend themselves. And when you look at the Israeli army sending in these war planes and literally bombing them, that's a very stark difference between sending a few little balloons over the wall. It's always been disproportional. Gazan people are trapped. They have nowhere to go. It's like shooting fish in a bucket.
[19:41] It's that ugly. Right. Let's talk about another media story that's out there. Alexei Navalny, who's a right-wing Russian dissident, became very ill on an airplane flight, went into a coma, and immediately the media was saying that he was poisoned by Putin. Well, his press secretary said that he suspected it was po- by Putin. But the media picked it up as well. The media picked it up everywhere. The Russian doctors said there was no this poison that was a diabetic incident. He is a diabetic. His blood sugar went too high and he went into a coma. He was on a plane so he can be treated immediately so it got
[20:14] worse. Then there was a whole debate about him going to Germany. The doctors in Russia said he's too unstable to go. The family wanted him to go to Germany. They went to Germany. Now the German doctors are saying they're treating him for poison. They can't identify the poison at this point but they said that they suspected his poison. But who knows? To me the whole incident makes no sense. Why would President Putin or the Russian government target Nelveni who gets like 2% in the polls? He's almost insignificant. And then get this negative press around the world that they're poisoning a disinitant. It just makes no sense to me that it doesn't serve the
[20:47] interests of Russia or Putin for that to be the way this plays out. Well that's the important question to ask. Who benefits from this whenever we see something happening? Let's talk about the DNC quickly. Just happened. What's your general take on that? DNC was running to the suburbs and trying to pull more Republicans to their vote. They did nothing for the progressive side of the party. It was basically an issue list convention. There were certain phrases that were not allowed to be said. Medicare for all, guaranteed basic income, a green new deal,
[21:18] wealth taxes, ending the never-ending wars. Those phrases could not be said. Even AOC and Bernie Sanders, when they spoke they didn't mention those at all. So it was an issue list convention. Attack on Trump and a lot of soft language with vague references to goals, but aspirations. Not much to it. I mean people said it was very technically a well done show. Well if you have millions and millions of dollars that's not hard. We'll see. The public can start tonight. They have some very interesting people speaking at their convention
[21:49] but of course Donald Trump will speak every night. I'm sure he'll try and dominate the show every night and make news so that could create some interesting stories. So far there's not much of a balance for Biden and not much of a balance expected for Trump. This is really one of the big moments for Trump to change the direction of this campaign. It's not going in his direction right now according to the polls. This is one of the big moments where in the past when incumbents have been out of power, have been losing in the polls, the convention helped to turn it around. We'll see if Trump succeeds at that. And I wanted to bring up who the Democrats are running for Congress this year. So starting
[22:21] last year there was a big switch to running more candidates who come from a military or intelligence background. 30 candidates ran last year. This year 34 members or candidates for the House of Representatives come from the military or intelligence. 11 in addition to that who won last election 2018 are running again in the Senate. This time they're running three candidates. Cal Cunningham from North Carolina, Amy McGrath from Kentucky and Mary Jennings Hager from Texas. All three of those beat African Americans in the primary and people who supported progressive
[22:55] positions like Medicare for All. So we're seeing this real move in the Democratic Party to become more of a security state party. And so while AOC and the squad and a few other people get attention in the progressive community, the reality is when you look at the actual numbers of who's being elected, the party's moving more to the right and not in a progressive direction. You can certainly see that in the presidential and vice presidential picks corporate Democrats control the party. So let's go to our interview with John Kiriaka.
[23:46] He won't live to see tomorrow. Secret agent man, secret agent man. They've given you a number and taking away your name. Beware of pretty faces that you find. A pretty face can hide an evil mind.
[24:19] I'll be careful what you say. You give yourself away. All's all you want to live to see tomorrow. Speaking truth to expose the forces of greed with Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeiss. And now we turn to our guest, John Kiriaku. John is a former CIA analyst and case officer. He's also a former senior investigator to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he is the sixth whistleblower to be indicted under the Espionage Act by President
[24:50] Obama for blowing the whistle on the U.S. torture program as official U.S. policy. He is the only person to be imprisoned over the U.S.'s torture program. John, thank you so much for taking time to join us today. Thank you both so much for having me. It's so disgraceful that you went to prison. This is one of the horrible stories of our history. Let me ask you about the view of regime change by the United States from inside the CIA. How does the CIA view regime change?
[25:21] There were two different ways in which people at the CIA approached regime change. The older people there, the guys who had been around since the 70s and the 80s were gung ho for regime change. They viewed it as part of their mandate, as part of their whole raison d'etre. Then there were those of us in the next generation that believed that we're supposed to be the good guys. We're supposed to be the ones who are serving the Constitution, and regime change is just simply illegal. It's patently illegal. And so if we're going
[25:55] to be serious about being the good guys, we either have to renounce regime change, or we have to be willing to watch our own leadership be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. On the one hand, they teach you early on that there are only three ways in which regime change is legal and permissible. That is, if the foreign country has attacked the United States, if the foreign country's government invites the United States to come in
[26:27] and help, or it's with the mandate of the United Nations Security Council, you can't just decide one morning that you don't like another country's politics, and so you're going to overthrow that government. That's not the way that international law works. Yet at the CIA so frequently, there's no one to stand up and say, no, we're not going to do this. Without getting too far afield, I want to add something. This is one of the reasons why I've always been so opposed
[26:58] to military leaders being placed in positions of authority in the intelligence community. It's because you have to ask, how did they get those four shiny stars on their shoulder? They got those four shiny stars by saying, yes, sir, throughout a 30 or 35-year career. But we don't want or need people in positions of leadership at the CIA to say yes, sir. We need people in positions of leadership to stand up and say, Mr. President, let me tell you why that's a terrible idea, why we shouldn't do that, why we shouldn't overthrow
[27:34] XYZ government. Besides the fact that we never plan for the fallout, we never plan for the blowback, it's a bad idea and it's illegal. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. That's so critical. What the United States is doing around the world with economic measures and military intervention totally is illegal. Now, last year we were in the Venezuelan embassy trying to stop a US coup against Venezuela and you gave a talk where you talked about regime change from within the CIA and you talked about how the process works when there's a decision to
[28:10] overthrow a country. Can you talk about that? You know, I forgot that I talked about that, but yes, now that you mentioned it, I remember it. There's a specific office at CIA headquarters. I won't say the name of the office because they'll probably fall on my head like a ton of bricks, but there's an office that you go to. If you have an idea for regime change, if you have an idea that includes the overthrow of a foreign government, you simply sit at your desk and you write a memo and you say, I would like to overthrow this government and these are
[28:41] my reasons for wanting to overthrow the government. You send it through your chain of command and when they sign off on it and they always do, then you walk over to this one certain office. It's up to the people in that office to then walk it through the rest of the government. So what they do first is they'll take your memo and they'll send it over to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, OLC. OLC is the body in government that determines whether such an overthrow would be legal. Well, of course, they always decide that such an overthrow
[29:16] would be legal. We saw that during the George W. Bush administration. We saw it during the Clinton administration in Libya and Honduras. We've certainly seen it in the Trump administration. Once they make that determination, then it goes to the National Security Council's team of attorneys. They go through it just like OLC went through it and they decide, yeah, sure, it's legal to overthrow this government. Then it goes to the National Security Advisor. The National Security Advisor decides if this is a good enough idea that it should go to the
[29:48] President and if the National Security Advisor approves it and signs off on it, it goes then to the President. If the President says, well, sure, this overthrow of this foreign government fits into my... my vision of foreign policy, the president will order it as part of an executive order. The executive order is signed by the president and the national security advisor and it goes back to the CIA where it's physically put in a safe on the seventh floor in the CIA's operations center. Now the reason it's put in the safe is that it's a government document
[30:23] so it can't be destroyed, but at the same time it's so highly classified that no one can see it besides the CIA's leaders and the CIA leader's attorneys. And then it goes to the Pentagon or at least the order goes to the Pentagon to go ahead and begin the overthrow of that government. It's sick. It's, you know, it reminds me very much of the banality of evil, right? There's a Banksy painting that was sold recently at auction. Banksy had gone to a Goodwill store
[30:58] and he bought this cheap copy of a pastoral scene. And then on the cheap painting, he painted a park bench and Adolf Hitler sitting on the park bench admiring the scenery and he called it the banality of the banality of evil. And to me, that's what this is. We all know this is wrong. We all know this is illegal. We all know that innocent civilians are going to die. And we all know that in the end there's going to be blowback that we hadn't
[31:29] expected, blowback that we hadn't planned for. It's going to cost the the American taxpayers billions of dollars that they never expected to have to pay. And they've had no say in the matter. And they've had no say because this banal evil is what created the policy. So, so usually every one of these regime change operations, the president has to assign an executive order. I didn't realize it was they put their name to these actions. That's quite amazing. You
[32:01] know, I think through our listeners, it's important to know that this has been a long-term policy of the CIA. The first attempted coup regime change was in Syria in 1948. The next was in Iran, the overthrow of Mossadeh. In fact, we just passed that anniversary in 1953. And it's been going on ever since. I mean, in fact, the Mossadeh success was viewed as a great success and became a great model to copy in Chile and other countries. When we look at regime change ever today, when I try we try to analyze what's going on. Of course, you know what this we don't know
[32:34] what the CIA is doing, because that's always secret. But the National Endowment for Democracy is a non-trop that's funded by the State Department that does a lot of regime change work. The USAID also, they just announced a grant that they're giving out to build an opposition movement, Nicaragua, to try to affect the next election. So we can look at those budgets and figure out somewhat what's going on. How does the CIA relate to these public efforts like the NED and USAID? Do you have any sense of that? Yeah, Kevin, we were always told to stay away from those
[33:05] people when we were overseas. And it's not just them. It's not just organizations associated affiliated with the State Department. It's also organizations affiliated with the two major political parties, both the Democrats and the Republicans have overseas arms in which they, and I'm using air quotes here, they encourage democratic reforms overseas. Really what it is, it's propagandization of people overseas. I bumped into them in Kuwait and in Pakistan and all over the world. But the CIA is not in the business of overt regime change. They're not in the business of overt
[33:42] propagandization. Everything that the CIA does is covert. The rest of it is left to the State Department and USAID and the Broadcasting Board of Governors with the Voice of America, all the stuff that you see with your own eyes, all the stuff that happens in public is done outside the intelligence community. And the irony there is that the goal is the same as the covert operations being done from within the intelligence community. So if the CIA is
[34:16] running around the world trying to vary secretly and discreetly overthrow government, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's doing something any different from what the State Department is doing or USAID is doing when the goal is the same. It's to overthrow a foreign government. Yeah, one thing that Chris Hedges always says to us is that when you see like overt operations being done, you can guess that there's about as much resources or more being put into the covert operations behind that as well. But let's talk a little bit first about the overt tactics, because it seems like there's basically a list of tactics that
[34:51] just get used over and over again. Can you talk about what are some of the tactics that are used overtly to overthrow a government? I'd like to tell you something that I learned almost by accident. When I happened to be in Yemen, when I was still with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, and I was talking to the defense attache, I had made an appointment to see him, and I didn't really only as a courtesy, I didn't expect to to gather any information from the defense attache that I could use in my own report.
[35:22] But lo and behold, I did. I asked him, so how are things going here in Yemen? It seems to me like you can't really have much in the way of work when you don't have a viable government with which to deal. And he shocked me by saying that what he was doing was essentially propaganda work and what he called psiops or psychological operations. The military is very big on psychological operations. I always thought it was kind of a joke because it never works,
[35:52] but they're very proud of what they do. And I said, what kind of psiops are you are you managing here in Yemen? And he said, well, have you ever listened to NPR on Sunday mornings? They have this show called Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. And I said, sure, everybody knows Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. And he said, well, we're doing it in Arabic, and we're broadcasting it here in Yemen for young people. I said, okay, well, what's that supposed to do? Well, you know, it's part comedy, and it's part politics, and it's part current events, and we can plant subliminal
[36:28] messages in the jokes to make a Yemeni young people like the United States. I said, well, how's that working out for you? Because it seems like people are more worried about finding food and water so that their children don't starve to death than tuning into an NPR like Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me kind of show to be propagandized by the Defense Department. And he said, well, you know, we're in the early stages, but this is something that's really good. This is something
[36:59] that's going to go somewhere. And I remember laughing and thinking, you know, you're a full bird colonel, and you believe this nonsense? But they do. And, and that's just one very small example of an overt way to either influence the government or to encourage the overthrow of a government. It's, it's ridiculous. It's sad at the same time. Yeah, well, psyops is definitely part of the process. What would be looking at the covert activities? Is there kind of a menu,
[37:31] a strategy and tactics menu? What's the typical approach that the CIA takes to overthrow? Yeah, well, you know, an overthrow is coming, or at least an attempted overthrow is coming when the CIA creates something internally called a fusion center. We never had these fusion centers when I first started there. But then they began popping up to cover issues like Iraq and Iran, for example. What they do is, is they'll take representatives from the directorate of
[38:03] intelligence, which is the analytic arm of the CIA, the directorate of operations, which is the spies of the CIA, the directorate of science and technology, they're the guys who make the gadgets in the gizmos. But then they'll also have people from NSA doing the intercepts or from DARPA doing the very forward thinking, highly classified gadgets that haven't fully been developed yet, but are in the process, like, like laser beams, for example, this is
[38:35] something that's come out in public, laser beams that can be fired at enemy troops, so that instead of killing them, you blind them. The irony there is that it's legal according to international law to kill them on the battlefield, but it's a crime against humanity to blind them with the laser. So that's actually illegal. But you bring all of these people together, all with different backgrounds and with different agendas and different specializations, and you give them an office that's tightly controlled,
[39:07] you need special clearance to get in the office, and all together, they plot these overthrows. Now, the normal business of the CIA is the analyst sits in a cubicle and thinks the big thoughts and writes papers for the White House, or you write the president's daily brief. The operational people plan the targeting of individuals for recruitment. You remember that the basic purpose of there being a CIA is to recruit spies to steal secrets. And that's all
[39:37] very quaint. But when it comes to overthrowing a government, it's that fusion center you should be worried about. Because when that thing is created, or as they say in the intelligence community stood up, something bad is going to happen. So it sounds like groups like the military doing psyops, USAID, infiltrating, or or creating organizations within countries, nonprofits, or having their own media within countries to do propaganda,
[40:07] all of that is kind of the overt side of it. And so on the covert side, is it mostly just intelligence gathering then or do they actually do operations in these countries, infiltration or things like that to help them out? The answer is yes, and yes, and yes. So they're doing all of these different things. So there are people at different levels whose jobs are different in that. Perhaps you have some case officers or operations officers,
[40:38] they're also called on the ground whose job it is to recruit these spies to steal secrets, to recruit spies to infiltrate the government that you're trying to overthrow so that you get an idea of that government's plans and intentions. Then at the same time you have operations officers who are planning what are called active measures against that government. And that is a propagandization, maybe you try to hijack a radio station or a TV station,
[41:09] you plant propaganda in the media, you've got guys who are trying to recruit journalists so you can put US propaganda in the op-ed pages or in articles about domestic politics. You have NSA intercepting the communications of the leaders of that government. You've got the military doing active measures from the US embassy like, wait, wait, don't tell me. So everybody has a different job, but every one of those jobs in the end
[41:41] is supposed to lead to the overthrow of that government. It's so interesting you talk about the CIA taking over media. There've been lots of reports of the CIA involvement with US media, having people in the media or owning journalists. So part of this regime change operations is also to affect US public and our thinking about what's going on. There's so much misinformation on Venezuela, Iran and other countries. What's the relationship with the CIA and US journalism? That is a good and very important question.
[42:11] After Operation Mockingbird was exposed where the CIA was recruiting American journalists and planting stories in the US media to propagandize the American people, Congress took action and they specifically made that illegal. Well, the CIA has been able to get around that over the years. And so while you can't recruit an American journalist, you certainly can and in many cases do recruit foreign journalists.
[42:41] At the same time, at the beginning of the Obama administration, there was an incident that almost nobody paid any attention to that had very far-reaching consequences. And that was that radio and TV Marti, which is the propaganda arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors that's targeted against Cuba, was picked up by Direct TV, which is the satellite television provider, right?
[43:11] Direct TV's all over America. Well, you can't have TV Marti on Direct TV for Americans to watch. And so a court said, hey, you know, if that's illegal, you can't do that. Well, the administration appealed and what ended up happening was that only Direct TV in Florida was allowed to carry TV Marti because their position was that they were really directing this at Cuba and Cuban nationals.
[43:43] Well, even though something like 14 million Floridians then had access to TV Marti, the court ruled that, well, sure, but Americans can recognize propaganda. What's more important is that the people of Cuba be exposed to this propaganda. But what ended up happening was, de facto, it made it legal then to propagandize the American people that had never been legal before in this country.
[44:16] To make matters worse, we know through Buzzfeed and specifically through the journalist, Jason Leopold, who I think is one of the great young journalists working today, Jason is the king of the Freedom of Information Act and indeed a former Defense Department official called him a foyer terrorist because he uses the Freedom of Information Act against the government. Jason made a Freedom of Information Act request of the CIA in which he asked for every email
[44:50] over the previous two years between an American journalist and the CIA's Office of Public Affairs. Now, in a normal situation, that would be a waste of time and paper. But what he ended up getting was hundreds and hundreds of email conversations between CIA and American journalists that were controversial to the point where Ken Delanian, formerly of the Los Angeles Times,
[45:22] now of MSNBC, was writing articles based on information leaked to him by the CIA and then he was sending the articles back to the CIA for clearance before he sent them to his own editor. So what that is means. Yeah, that's CIA propagandization of the American people. And you know, it was a big story for a day and then it went away and nobody really cared.
[45:54] And Ken Delanian is still the Chief Intelligence Correspondent at MSNBC. That's amazing. Well, it sure does seem like the US media has a lot of propaganda from CIA, Pentagon. Oh, just looking at the Washington Post. Oh my gosh. It's certainly the article on Venezuela. Terrible stuff. Yeah, the amount of lies and how it just puts forward the imperialist viewpoint. Totally. It's like, do you do journalism anymore? We see it all the time in Reuters and all kinds of things where I have to ask them. I'm like, did you actually investigate this?
[46:27] You know, there's a lot going on around the world right now and people don't always see it through it. I mean, even people on the left of the United States were fooled by the coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018 by the protests going on in Hong Kong and now the situation in Belarus. When you see something happening around the world like what we're seeing in Hong Kong and Belarus, what are your first thoughts? How do you figure out what this is all about? Oh, I think you have to assume
[46:58] that the CIA is involved in these things, not always. Like when something happens very quickly, there's an uprising, you know, there's a bread riot, let's say. I don't automatically assume, for example, that the CIA is involved in Egyptian bread riots. There's no reason for them to be, there's no end game for them. But if you look at Belarus, or I think even more appropriately, you look at Hong Kong, yeah, I would bet a paycheck that the CIA has some sort of involvement, whether it's providing money or logistics
[47:31] or radio support or planting stories in the media, sure, because if there's chaos in Belarus, that benefits the United States. If there's chaos in Hong Kong that in turn is weakening the Chinese government or causing a threat of some sort to the Chinese government, that benefits the United States. So where you see things that have been bubbling along for a while and then end up in the streets, definitely the CIA is involved in one way or another.
[48:02] Now, in most of those cases, we're never gonna really know what the truth is because the information is classified and mandatory declassification doesn't happen for another 30 years. So unless there's a leak or unless something is released in a Freedom of Information Act request that otherwise shouldn't be released, we can only speculate. We really aren't gonna know for certain. So like, for instance, in Hong Kong where there was a group of the protesters, the ones that were really being overtly racist towards China and calling for recolonization by the UK
[48:36] or Trump comes save us, they also were very well equipped and they seemed very sophisticated. They were doing a lot of property damage and they all had the same equipment, the same gas masks and then they're matching umbrellas. Is it possible then that that equipment and training to do that came from the United States? Yes, and I'll give you another example and this is something that I know from my own firsthand experience. Do you remember immediately upon the liberation of Kuwait
[49:08] from Iraqi occupation in February of 1991? I'm sure if you think back on the news broadcast that you saw at the time, practically every Kuwaiti citizen lined the streets in the center of the city, waving these tiny American flags. Do you remember that? People shouting, God bless America, God bless George Bush. Well, the country was on fire, the oil wells had been blown up as the Iraqis withdrew and you remember the highway of death,
[49:40] we had killed everybody and where did all those little American flags come from? There were millions of them, literally. Where'd all they come from? Well, they came from the CIA. The CIA works with private firms, contractor firms and they say, listen, we're gonna kill every Iraqi soldier who does not. run back across the border in the next three days. And once that's done, we want every Kuwaiti in the country to come out of their homes and to thank us. And
[50:11] believe me, Kuwaitis couldn't get on their knees fast enough to thank us for liberating their country. And so instead of flooding the country with food or water or medicine, we flood it with little tiny American flags that everybody can wave back and forth and then shout the thanks to George H.W. Bush. That's what happens. They prepare for these kinds of things. Fast forward then a little more than a decade and you've got easily 15
[50:44] different Iraqi opposition groups and 15 different heads of those groups who all want to be president of Iraq once Saddam Hussein is overthrown. Well, that's unwieldy. You can't work with 15 different groups. So what you do is you rent an entire floor in a hotel in Vienna, Austria, and you invite all of these groups leaders to come to the hotel. And over the course of two weeks, you hash out who's important and who's not, who's going to do what job and who's
[51:15] not, and you decide that you're going to call this thing the Iraqi National Congress. And your handpicked guy, Ahmad Chalabi, is going to be the head of the Iraqi National Congress. And then when Iraq is liberated, Ahmad Chalabi is going to be the president. Never mind the fact that his own personal corruption was epic in proportion. Never mind that he had been sentenced to 60 years in prison in Jordan for bank fraud. Never mind that you've already given
[51:50] him $14 million and it's just gone and he has nothing to show for it except a brand new house in Mayfair, London. But that's what happens. You know, these propaganda efforts coalesce, you decide there's a guy that you like, whether he's corrupt or not, you decide you're going to install him into a position of authority in a country once you overthrow the leadership and everybody else can either like it or lump it. Yeah, it's so interesting how the United States has these long term
[52:22] persistent efforts at regime change, like in Ukraine, you know, billions of dollars the United States spent in the end result was removing a democratically elected president who lean toward Russia and replacing with Poroshenko, who was actually according to WikiLeaks documents, a CIA asset for years. They knew he was corrupt and he comes into power, but then there are other countries where the CIA has been trying for years. Iran, 1979 revolution, ever since then, the CIA has been trying to overthrow the
[52:54] government and put in place a US friendly government. Venezuela, since the election of Chavez in 1998, they've been trying to remove the Bolivarian leaders, whether it's Chavez or Maduro and they've been unable to do so. Why are some countries able to withstand this incredible effort by the United States to overthrow regimes? Oh, that's also an excellent question. Some countries like Venezuela, for example, are able to withstand this onslaught because the planning was
[53:28] done so poorly here in the United States. One of the things that I realized early on when I was at the CIA is that the CIA's leadership, especially in these covert elements of the CIA, they consistently overestimate the popularity of the United States and they underestimate, just as consistently, the resolve of the citizens of those countries to protect the status quo. You know, I remember my own mother saying something
[53:59] about, I don't even remember what the country was. Like, why do they allow themselves to be led by these corrupt dictators? You know, why don't they welcome us as liberators? And I remember saying, Mom, you don't like George W. Bush, but if the Russians sent in troops to overthrow George W. Bush, wouldn't you take up arms to kill the Russians and to protect the country? She said, well, of course I would. And I said, exactly. And that's exactly what other countries are doing when we
[54:31] interfere in their internal affairs, when we try to overthrow their leadership, and when we send troops across the border. Nobody wants American troops in their countries. No, it's ridiculous. Well, we saw both in Venezuela and Iran. People are pretty educated about US imperialism, US intervention, right? And they're ready to withstand it. And it does unify people around their leadership. Even if leadership is flawed, it still gets people to rally around that leadership. That's what the US doesn't understand. Exactly what you said, you know, these economic coercive measures that we call
[55:03] sanctions that are designed to punish, you know, the country and create chaos and get people angry at their government, mostly just makes them angry at the United States and rally around their government, even when they have criticisms of their government. They understand that their first priority is to stop these deadly US sanctions. I want to say one more thing about Venezuela, if I could, I know we're running short on time, but I think this is, I think this is important. I remember when Juan Guaidó was named president or leader or
[55:36] whatever made up title they had for Juan Guaidó. I mean, who was Juan Guaidó? He was a nobody. And he was a grad student at GW. He wasn't even in Venezuela. I was in Washington. But I remember a reporter asking John Bolton about Juan Guaidó and he said Juan Guaidó is the legitimate president of Venezuela. And the reporter said, but the Venezuelan constitution says that if a person is elected president or is made president and doesn't
[56:07] take the oath of office within 30 days, he's not permitted to hold the office. And this was like, you know, 60 days after the White House declared that Guaidó was president. And Bolton just stared at this reporter with a blank look on his face. And I realized that nobody at the CIA or the White House had bothered to read the Venezuelan constitution. They just thought they're going to name Juan Guaidó, they're going to drop a bomb on the Supreme Court from a helicopter. You may recall that that's what they did. Guaidó was going
[56:40] to declare himself president and everybody was going to live happily ever after. And it just didn't work that way. But nobody at the CIA did their homework. There was no follow up plan. There was no, there was no plan to win the hearts and minds of the Venezuelan people. And there was no plan to convince the Venezuelan people that Nicolás Maduro was somehow bad for them. See, this is the arrogance that is a part of these, these plans to overthrow governments. Everybody just makes an assumption. Everybody at the CIA and the White
[57:12] House makes an assumption that as soon as we cross a border, or as soon as we announced that so and so is the new leader of a country, that the populace is just going to throw flowers at us. And that's not real life. That's not how it works. No, arrogance is such a good word. I think arrogance really it's American exceptionalism. We have so many problems in our own country with corruption, with fake elections. And then we have so arrogant to think we can tell another country how to do it better, and that
[57:42] they're actually gonna believe us. I mean, arrogance is really the heart of it. I wanted to ask you one quick last question, because recently there was a hearing where Chris Murphy, you know, was very overt about the Senator from Connecticut. Yeah, that you know, right, right, and do regime change well enough in Venezuela. I don't recall hearing discussion so overtly about regime change in the Congress. No discussion about being illegal, right, as we didn't do it right. It was just Yeah, we didn't do it enough. And you have Trump and Biden fighting over who can be, you know,
[58:15] the worst towards China and Russia. What are your thoughts on kind of where things are at right now? Oh, I think things are quite bad right now, because like you, I really don't see much of a difference between Trump and Biden, certainly between their their policies. I mean, you look at the Obama administration's foreign policy, and you compare it to the Trump administration's foreign policy. And while there may be some, some, you know, minor differences around the edges, I think, I think the core of the policy is the same. It doesn't matter if it's a Democrat in
[58:46] the White House or a Republican in the White House. And this is something that's gone on for generations, where we may watch our elected officials fight on the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate, and criticize each other between the Congress and the White House. But when push comes to shove, foreign policy is pretty much the same. Yeah, and not you can see that just the Democratic Convention is not just foreign policy. They didn't mention Medicare for all, basic income, wealth, a green new deal. No, no issue was mentioned at the recent
[59:17] Democratic Convention. So it's not just foreign policy, unfortunately. And so anyway, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this, your perspective from inside the CIA is when we don't get to hear very often. So we really appreciate you taking the time and openly talking about the reality of CIA and how the approach reading change. Yeah, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, that's all for today. Let's go out with a song by Jen Card Empire. It's called We Want because the people organized can build the kind of future we want.