[00:00] [Music] know [Music] hi this is robert here with another edition of sheer intelligence where the intelligence comes from my guests and my goodness no one can fit that bill better than john kiriakou
[00:30] who first of all in terms of languages knows arabic knows greek uh and a few others was a ci agent for quite a long time i guess about 12 how many years was it john 15 years 15 years was one of those people out in the field he was involved in the capture of what was alleged then to be the third most important operative in al qaeda and he refused to go along with the torture program turn down the training and then
[01:00] is actually the only person uh connected with the torture program who served any uh penalty criminal penalty uh served two years for they said revealing the name of a cia agent it's a whole other story we've covered it before but it was not even a closet agent but the reason i wanted to talk to john this week is that he accompanied uh as a journalist uh president biden on his historic trip to saudi arabia and the
[01:32] question i really want to begin with is your whole life you were recruited right out of graduate school by the cia by one of your professors and your whole life was built around stopping uh terrorism in the form of arab uh extremism and it was all triggered by the attack of 9 11 in which 15 of the 19 hijackers was from saudi arabia and you were involved in sort of defending the country now of course we've got our old enemy of russia
[02:05] back and here was the president going over to make nice with the uh crown prince and apparent heir to power in saudi arabia how did it feel how did it feel first of all being there as a member of the press and what was your return like and then tell us about this really frightening political moment and what the president accomplished or didn't accomplish wow all very good questions um you know it's it's
[02:35] [Music] there's a there's a dramatic difference between going to some place like saudi arabia as a cia officer undercover and going to saudi arabia as a journalist when you go as a cia officer you have an enormous invisible network of support you have weapons if you need them you have surveillance teams and counter surveillance teams if you need them to keep you safe
[03:05] uh you've got armored vehicles uh you know it's you're never alone you're never alone when you're overseas with the cia you always have a team behind you even if no one else can see that team when you go as a journalist uh that's the definition of being alone my job was to go and cover the president's uh trip i had to make all of the arrangements uh on my own i had to get my press credentials on
[03:37] my own i was shocked frankly to even get press credentials and the only conclusion i could draw was that the person in the white house press office was so young that he or she probably didn't know what sputnik was and so uh i got my press credentials uh i wish i mentioned that you have been doing a radio program on sputnik correct both before uh the russian invasion of ukraine after and we've discussed that
[04:08] but you you are on the area not a very big station no uh and uh full disclosure you also were writing a couple of columns for me at sharepost so i was very worried did i send you to your death and you wrote some pretty tough critical columns which you filed from saudi arabia and you talked about the crown prince as a murderer as a murderer held him responsible right for murder you know you weren't any doubt yeah and
[04:41] president the president didn't say anything publicly he claims he raised it privately but the fact is he was there to forgive the crown prince that's right and once again forgive saudi arabia for anything nobody even brings up 9 11. uh and uh yes and so you were in this odd position and tell us about it and you know i i'm glad that you brought that up too because i decided many years ago that
[05:11] i can only tell the truth right i'm i'm sort of viewed as as a whistleblower because of the cia's torture program i did that because i made a decision in 2007 to tell the truth to a journalist who asked me tough questions and you know i want to be able to sleep at night i'm proud of what i write and what i write about and it's it's got to be based on truth and so i know you and i joked before i i left for saudi arabia about um
[05:43] about well maybe it was a half a joke about gallows humor yeah that's right i was worried about i mean they killed a washington post columnist right why wouldn't they kill a sugarpost columnist yeah right and so i was i was careful about my own security i was cognizant of of the possibility of being followed and then when i'm sitting there in the hotel room with my computer when i sat down to start writing the piece i thought you know
[06:13] i know i'm in saudi arabia i know i'm at their mercy but i've got to tell the truth and just before i had arrived in jeddah the uh the british newspaper the independent had published an article saying that a saudi intelligence source had told them that in 2014 crown prince mohammed bin salman had broached the the idea of assassinating king abdullah so that his
[06:44] own father the current king salman could become king sooner well that's i mean you you can't get any more inflammatory than that and so this this accusation was perfectly in keeping with muhammad bin salman's personality i believe him to be a sociopath and and we know what he did to the washington post journalist jamal khashoggi not just had him murdered but
[07:15] uh but had him dismembered chopped up there are recordings of him screaming as they're cutting his arms off and then disposed of his body we don't know where we've heard reports that it's in a well somewhere in in greater istanbul so there's no sense in trying to sugarcoat this uh president biden actually before he was president when he was running for president uh in the in the 2020 primaries said that mohammed bin salman was a
[07:47] murderer and that the saudi regime had no socially redeeming qualities those are very very tough words and i'll tell you i i enjoyed hearing an important person in american political life say such a thing because we're all taught that the united states and saudi arabia have had what's called a special relationship since the 1930s since the the franklin roosevelt administration and roosevelt's trip to
[08:19] saudi arabia in 1936 where he met with ibn saud the first king of saudi arabia king abdulaziz the current king's father and uh and that special relationship is uh is just simply not true the truth is we need each other even if we don't like each other we buy saudi oil and the saudis buy american weaponry and that's really the extent of the relationship it doesn't go
[08:50] much beyond that and and let me let me add to that too we keep them in power though yeah we do we do because we have military installations there and uh and we need that constant flow of oil and and they buy so much in the way of weapons and weapon systems that it keeps the american economy going when i when i arrived in saudi arabia for the very first time in 1990 it was just after iraq had invaded kuwait in august of 1990
[09:20] i was so excited to be there because it was my first overseas trip as a cia officer and i had a small apartment in the diplomatic corridor not far from the american embassy so i would walk from my apartment to the embassy every morning and i'd go into the back gate which was sort of the employee gate and there was a saudi policeman standing guard there every day and my very first day i smiled at him and i said salamu alaikum may peace be upon you and the traditional response of
[09:51] course is salaam and upon you peace so i said to him salaamwalekum and he looked at me and just ignored me and i thought wow that was odd and rude but okay so the next day i went to work again eight o'clock and i said salaamu alaikum and again he ignored me and then the third day i said for the third time salaamu alaikum and he ignored me and i said what's your problem how would you say it in arabic
[10:26] and he said and he says to me in english he said you are hired help we paid for you to come here to protect the oil fields we are not friends and that was like a slap in my face but i came to realize in the intervening months that that's the attitude of most saudis they look down on us we don't have their kind of money we don't all drive
[10:56] lamborghinis and ferraris and bugattis we don't own giant houses in beverly hills like they do or in knightsbridge london we're hired help for them we go over there to work uh in the uh in the oil companies we we run the oil companies we sell them weapons and that's it we're not friends so i hope they help us rearrange the mid east so uh that we keep power there that's right
[11:28] you know that's right that they will do but are they shifting what i got from your columns is that actually biden came back empty-handed he did and first of all did he lie to us he said he did ra and raised the question of the murder of the washington post columnist but uh one of the top aides said no it was not brought up but even if it had been brought up it was brought up privately yes uh why are you bringing
[12:01] up privately you're perfectly willing to condemn well now putin or anybody else uh uh z in china or anybody for all kinds of crimes why would you not do it publicly because you need the oil you need the oil and you know i want to believe my president i i want to believe that that he did bring this up uh in the meeting with muhammad bin salman now the the aide that denied that the president brought that up was al-jubeir and arnold
[12:32] juber is a is a you can't be any closer to the united states and still be a saudi than adol jubair so you know adol juber right now is the minister of state for foreign affairs he was a long-time saudi ambassador to the united states and he is a a keen observer and analyst of the american political scene so he's a believable guy
[13:02] at the same time he works for muhammad bin salman so like i say the only people in that room at the time on the american side were were the president's uh note taker and the national security adviser and the ambassador the u.s ambassador to saudi arabia so it was a classified meeting uh the notes taken were classified there was no press presence there uh so that it's not going to appear in the media you know the minutes of what happened in this meeting so we have to
[13:34] either believe the president or we believe muhammad bin salman i'd like to believe the president but i also wonder bob if the president went in there and said look before we get to oil there's something i need to get out of the way we're really angry that you murdered jamal khashoggi don't do that again you put us in a very bad position yeah but even whatever he said if you don't say it publicly it has no force it has no and for the articles that you wrote for sure post let me get a plug in
[14:05] here you made it very clear that he came back empty-handed yeah he did uh uh forget the phrase you used that he was uh taken right i i thought he was taken and you know two weeks before the president went to saudi arabia uh french president emmanuel macron called muhammad bin salman and said look we need oil and we need natural gas because we're screwed here in western europe which is true they're paying eight nine ten dollars a gallon for gas
[14:36] and mohammed bin salman told macron and we know this because macron briefed the media afterwards he told macron that saudi arabia and the united arab emirates are operating at full production capacity and that they cannot increase production now mohammed bin salman said the day after biden left saudi arabia that there's a little bit of wiggle room and they might be able to increase production just a little bit but they won't make that decision until
[21:24] murder of jamal khashoggi an innocent man a member of the media who had done nothing to hurt or harm anybody at the same time we need to look at ourselves and the way we treat people time for a break um we'll be back in a few minutes we're back with sheer intelligence and our guest but we also have to look at the way we're manipulated and we're in yet another
[21:55] period where anybody who disagrees in in in the most nuanced way with the dominant view of what's going on in the ukraine oh yes or someone like you who actually is on a radio station uh sputnik which is russian owned right uh they're made of known person okay and uh and you were made a non-person because you revealed the reality of torture
[22:25] only you were a premature revealer of that we've had the senate intelligence committee not that we can read it in this great free society it's still a heavily redacted intro that we got to read parts of and we now have not been able to see the whole report or any of the report on torture you know and so here was the saudi uh leader saying what about what you do in guantanamo what about what you did in ebu grave and what is the answer the
[22:56] answer is we believe when you tear people apart and destroy them physically and mentally it's not torture if we do it that's right and that means that every war we get involved with is virtuous i mean we're doing it now you know uh the ukrainians have never done anything wrong or who oppose putin right the ones who support a russian presence or support the russian language and so they can't do anything right the only civilian casualties that bother us are people who are in the area that are
[23:27] controlled by uh the anti-russian side but if it's done in the done bus we don't even have reports about it and that has been the norm in all of our wars we define virtue there is not an independent standard of virtue which is after all our constitution was an effort to establish some independent standard of virtue and governance you know uh that has been mocked at every turn it has absolutely no significance
[23:59] you're absolutely right you're absolutely right it's always been like this i mean just in our recent history let's go back to the vietnam war and look at look at what we did there you know everything from the milai massacre to the bombing of laos in cambodia and everything that came afterwards i mean we've never really answered for any of that but you're you're absolutely right you know i take a lot of heat too because i work uh for a russian outlet and uh well that's not your choice by the way
[24:31] you when's the last time msnbc offered you a job as a consultant i mean you have been frozen out yes at the media and you are genuinely an expert but the experts that they want on are people who looked the other way when torture was being done you became a non person by revealing torture that's right i i did i did become a non-person i was for uh let's see 2008 2009 and 2011 12 for four years i was a counter-terrorism
[25:03] uh consultant and commentator for abc news and i'll tell you the first time i you know you would work for the for john kerry's committee right after i left abc i went to john kerry i was the chief investigator on the senate foreign relations committee uh but then i was deemed to be too controversial right it was just too much controversy i was the human rights guy it was too much and i i've never been able to make a professional recovery
[25:34] but then at the same time with that said i can sleep at night and uh i'll tell you i got into a twitter fight with the former deputy director of the cia for operations a notorious torturer by the name of jose rodriguez he was the head of the counter-terrorism center and he came up with a torture program it was all his idea and um when i got in trouble that actually was the night before i left for prison the new york times did an article about
[26:04] me saying that you know i'm i'm headed to prison and he tweeted at me saying don't drop the soap oldest stupid joke in the world and i wasn't going to respond i thought oh it's better just to ignore him he's an ignoramus and and it's just not worth it and i thought about it and i said no i am going to respond and so what i said was i'm proud of what i did and i said jose i'm on the right side of history and you
[26:37] are not and now he has to live in a semi-secret location in florida with private security and whatnot because of what he did you know i'm proud of what i did i hope he's proud of what he did too but most of them don't live that way they have no regrets yeah i i've interviewed a whole bunch of these people over the years and and the culture reaffirms
[27:07] their torture reaffirms their violence yes uh you know it was martin luther king who said you know how do i preach non-violence to young kids in a ghetto when my government is the major purveyor of violence in the world today well they never have recognized that when they do it it's not violence that's right you know it's interesting you mentioned i i happened to go both south to north vietnam and so forth i saw the effects of american bombing and attack and the anti-personnel weapons came into their own in that war you know the
[27:39] pineapple the guavas bombs the things that sprayed out metal pellets you know wounding and killing people and so forth now when they're used in the russian invasion of ukraine you know oh it's a particularly heinous thing to do we are the ones who made that a respectable battlefield weapon right we did that yes i mean it's stunning though the hypocrisy and then there are plenty of your former colleagues who are now you know recycled as experts uh
[28:10] particularly on msnbc and cnn there's no accounting for their lives i mean look the whole lies that got us into the iraq war no accounting so i just think you're being a bit charitable uh and you're just frankly and your description of them and clearly you'd rather be on on abc than on sputnik because putnik is a radio station that hardly reaches anyone yeah you know what as part of our punishment for being owned by the russian government uh the the justice
[28:42] department tried to essentially to take us off the air and there there really wasn't a legal way to do it so what they did is uh they approached all of the platforms that carried our our show i'm talking about itunes i heart radio spreaker spotify tune in youtube between all of those those uh platforms we had between 35 000 and 38 000 listeners a day
[29:12] we were dropped by all of them and so all we have left now is just the terrestrial signal and rumble which is a relatively new platform we have if if we're lucky on a good day we'll have 500 downloads so we've gone from 38 000 to 500 nobody listens to our station and that's because that's the way the justice department wants it yeah but they still keep the illusion diversity and freedom exactly
[29:44] because they can say well look the russians still have a radio station a propaganda station in in washington and i'll tell you another thing the washington post took a real swipe at me the other day um every thursday i have a segment called criminal injustice where i've got another journalist kevin gastala who i like and respect very very much and paul wright who runs an organization called the human rights defense center and he's also the publisher of prison legal news and criminal legal news magazines
[30:15] outstanding magazines for the industry so we have this show 30 minutes every thursday and we talk about prison conditions and prison reform and sentencing reform and crooked prosecutors and judges on the take and things like that that the mainstream media mostly ignore and the washington post had a reporter listen to the show the other day and she said that by highlighting these problems in the american justice system that i am
[30:47] weakening our democracy she actually said that i'm weakening our democracy and if i was a loyal american i wouldn't discuss these issues on a russian station this is a journalist yeah for the washington was it was it's an opinion piece or this was supposed to be this was a reporter an actual reporter for the washington post i'm wondering our democracy well this is the argument putin would make in russia of anybody who you know including some outstanding
[31:18] athletes and so forth who've dared to criticize is going invading ukraine you're weakening russia that's always the argument you know you're weakening germany we have to conquer eastern europe i mean come on but the washington post does jeff bezos know that you know but i i do want to i mean i want to wrap this up but i i want to we're making light of some things that are really you know we're talking here about the possibility of a war that
[31:50] could end life on the planet yeah and i'm not talking now just about you know the issue of the moment of climate change we're certainly helping with that nothing that brings that on faster than you know uh the wastefulness of military and the destruction of military wars and so forth and now we need fossil fuel and coal is coming back and nuclear power plants i i actually visited chernobyl a year after the explosion when it was a very tight security area and the idea that
[32:21] now throughout western europe where you had the green movement and everything it was so powerful that now you know france is thrilled with its nuclear power plants they're modernizing them and they're bringing back more nuclear power and so forth but yes so i i don't mean to minimize obviously in weeks like this uh uh climate change but the the irony is that where previously and i'm an old guy i've been around a long time so i i can go back i can remember world war ii frankly as a kid and so forth i've never
[32:53] been in a time of such a myopic time towards the possibility of nuclear war as now and i don't get it and you're a guy who studied all this stuff in graduate school and then at for the c.i.a and you know the enemy you were there to fight different enemies including the old you know uh remnants of the old soviet union and so forth uh so and well the old soviet union so what how do you see that there's almost a giddiness
[33:23] i i even i i would go further and insanity but giddiness in the sense of we just don't take it seriously you know that that the possibility of nuclear weapons being used whether intentionally accident yes you're absolutely right i heard something today that at first excited me and when i heard the rest of it depressed me i heard today that the russians are preparing a diplomatic offer to the
[33:56] ukrainians to end the war and it's going to be what we always thought it would be when it finally came that the russians would would cease hostilities if they can keep what they took in crimea and the two regions of the donbass luhansk and donetsk uh are treated as independent republics under russian control so they
[34:27] want to keep what they what they've taken the donbass and the crimea and i heard that the americans have told the ukrainians absolutely not not under any circumstances so when you hear these these jokes that the united states is prepared to fight to the last ukrainian uh it's it's actually true we want the ukrainians to bog the russians down forever even if it results in the deaths of every last ukrainian in
[34:59] that country we don't have an interest in peace well that's certainly you're an expert on the afghan war and that you remember it's a big new brzezinski it's the one who bragged about tricking the russians into going into afghanistan absolutely to give them their vietnam and now they have their vietnam and ukraine but i'm raising a a an even more concerning question not and not that the loss of life isn't concerning but there doesn't seem to be an awareness
[35:30] of of the power of nuclear warfighting i mean it's like you're back you know i remember interviewing ronald reagan about the possibility of nuclear warfighting and uh first president bush before ira what was president and but there's that old mentality and what do we think you know let's say you can push them back against the wall what we really are at a moment where people are talking about these as usable weapons and we're modernizing our force
[36:01] and there's the restraint and it's interesting to have henry kissinger uh be a voice of restraint now okay and kissinger you know after all he was with nixon when nixon went to negotiate with what was supposed to be the most brutal fearsome communist leader ever uh mouseyton and and and they did it and they did it because they thought it would enhance stability and peace and and you know now the idea of even negotiating
[36:31] uh with putin seems like heresy yes can't even negotiate and there's no peace movement there's not one single member of the us congress liberal progressive not one single member who was opposed uh to to the total uh rearmament of the ukrainians and spend any whatever money you got and uh you know and no one's talking about give peace a chance no no one's talking about negotiation and i want to end this but because we were
[37:02] started out talking about saudi arabia it seems to me i'm not the first person to talk about it that there's really a realignment of power in the world and it's not obviously communist or or democratic for that reason or the president wouldn't be going to saudi arabia to get their endorsement but there is a recognition that there are people who favor a multi-polar world yes and people who believe in u.s leadership because after all for
[37:32] the europeans now that's what they've lined up behind yes uh you know this is not the old days of owner owns and german social democrats and so forth uh and on the other hand you've got some very powerful countries like china and india and uh you know brazil maybe and others uh that are arguing no uh this is overreach by the u.s and uh i wonder what the what the message is from saudi arabia because part of this multi-polar
[38:04] world idea is you know you have the uae and and so they do business with these other folks and in opec they're actually on the same side they are on the same side you know it i i've detected that same shift especially in saudi arabia and um you know it's it's easy for us to sort of rely on history that well it's always been this one certain way there's no reason why it should change now on the contrary i
[38:34] think it's actually already changed just a few weeks ago the chinese announced that they had made an oil deal with the saudis not unusual at all what was unusual is that the saudis agreed to accept payment in chinese yuan and that is the first time the first time that a country ever bought oil from saudi arabia that wasn't in dollars this is exactly what the united states has worried would happen since the 1970s
[39:07] is that the dollar would be replaced by a basket of currencies is what we used to be worried about and now by the chinese currency in oil transactions so i think the saudis while they may not be walking away from us they're exploring other options that the relationship with the us just isn't as critical as it used to be well also right now we have a deal
[39:37] between india and russia right for to buy russian oil that's going to use the currency of the uae that's right uh as the standard that that that just happened in the last few days it's shocking isn't it well i mean i know about shocking and uh in the sense that it's certainly a startling uh difference but it does threaten the dominance of the dollar maybe that's where we should end it but it seems to me that that if we survive this
[40:08] uh you know the plates have shifted yes and we're not really i don't know get the last word from you but i think that's what happened on this saudi trip an american president went there to beg and he came back empty-handed i want to add one other thing before we we end bob um it's easy to consider mohammed bin salman as some sort of a cartoon character villain a villain you know like from uh rocky and bullwinkle
[40:38] or something and it should be so easy he's actually very complicated yes i believe he's evil um i think that's important but then at the same time he's actually reforming saudi arabia and and implementing changes that that just 10 years ago people wouldn't have even dreamt of the thing things like women driving for example women are now allowed to enter movie theaters women have always been banned from movie theaters in saudi
[41:10] arabia women are allowed to bowl believe it or not bowling is very popular in saudi arabia and now women are allowed to participate i saw at least 50 of the women that i saw on this trip were unveiled absolutely unheard of before uh muhammad bin bin salman became crown prince you would be beaten with a with a a cane with a with a wooden cane by a member of the religious police if you've been caught without a veil the last time
[41:40] i was in saudi arabia so things are changing i think that was because the americans were there the american president no not at all you can you can see there's been a societal change this this wasn't you know temporary and people just experimenting this is this is a real change well you know you make a very important i mean i'll extend this a little bit you make a very important point that any serious observer of international politics comes
[42:10] up against it ain't simple no you know and we always want to have a simple view of the enemy and a simplistic view of the problem and and what was acknowledged you know uh nixon going to china first of all nixon and kissinger were not saints they were killing people in the millions uh in vietnam and laos and cambodia and you know i witnessed a lot of that uh but they also could be rational they
[42:43] could have an idea of self-interest that wasn't destructive uh and uh you know mao obviously was not saintly he was capable of encouraging great destruction and fighting and tension uh whether it was making a revolution or it was with the cultural revolution and now we've got this again the simple thing putin is nothing more than a menace or the crown prince of of saudi arabia and the whole idea
[43:14] of realistic diplomacy used to be you still can't have a nuclear war and that all wars are ultimately costly to everyone and that if you can do it through diplomacy and negotiation and in the face of nuclear war you better do it through diplomacy negotiation you got to give it a try yes and and that's what's missing now that's why i use the word a giddiness there's sort of a feeling we'll show them and we
[43:45] can do with it and they're just a third-rate power well russia has shown once again they're not a third-rate power when it comes to the military they got their deadly toys they can play witches like we do and they're not going to be winners and that the losers or ordinary people will get their lives smashed so i'll give you the last word on this but i i just wonder talking to people in the press talking to some people do they understand the seriousness of the moment
[44:15] i think they do and i i don't fully understand why the word isn't getting out there i i do want to add one more thing before we leave um you know i remember when i was at the cia i had just started at the cia and the gulf war the first gulf war was just beginning and i remember just being shocked every time i would hear someone on the news say that saddam hussein was crazy
[44:46] he's not at all crazy he may have miscalculated but i would compare him to a mob boss to an organized crime boss rather than to a crazy person there's no evidence that he's crazy but you know we've said that besides saddam being crazy that qaddafi was crazy osama bin laden was crazy arafat was crazy everybody that we don't like is crazy they're not crazy well even donald trump right the democratic donald trump yeah
[45:17] not crazy yeah or crazy as a fox that's right all right let's leave it on that note uh i want to say john kuriaku i'm really proud to have you right in columns thank you so much i'm proud to be associated with you i've had a lot of fun and uh i think the work holds up and uh but we'll talk uh at another time uh but i'm sure these issues are gonna get scarier rather than
[45:47] saner but okay i want to thank christopher ho and laura condorgerian uh the producers at kcrw put these podcasts on joshua shear our executive producer natasha kimi zapati who edits and writes the introduction and the jkw foundation the memory of a very independent terrific writer jean stein who helps fund some of these broadcasts see you next week with another edition of sheer intelligence