[00:00] Hi, welcome to in Limone where we talk about the Constitution, Justice and Criminal Law. Today we're privileged to have John Carriacou, I hope I pronounced your name right. You did exactly right. Thank you. You're practicing it all morning and messing it up. John is a best-selling author of a number of books and those include The Reluctant Spy, My Secret Life, and the CIA's War on Terror from 2010, The Convenient Terrorist, Abu Zubeda.
[00:34] Zubeda, thank you, and The Weird Wonderland of America's Secret Wars. I love that subtitle, and then 2017, Doing Time Like a Spy, How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison, and I also understand you're an advocate of prison reform after your delightful experience. Very much so. I think pretty much everybody is when they come out of prison. Our system is utterly broken. It's utterly, utterly broken.
[01:04] You were in Pennsylvania, right? Pennsylvania, Central Pennsylvania Police called FCI Loretto. Federal Correction Institute Loretto. Correct. What was it like there? It was a shock at first. My attorneys at Sentencing asked the judge to send me to a minimum security work camp, and the prosecution had no objection. So she said, okay, minimum security work camp. And what you do when you're assigned to a work camp, you literally just drive up there and knock on the door and say, I'm John Kiriakou, I'm here to turn myself in.
[01:40] So I did that. Well, all camps are connected. They're usually across the street from an actual prison, because if there's a riot or a lockdown, the guys from the camp do the laundry, do the cooking, do the cleaning, that kind of thing. Otherwise, if you're at a camp, there are no bars on the windows. The doors aren't locked. There are no fences or anything. You're free to come and go as you please. You're on your honor, not too abscond, of course, and most guys work in town. There's a university there, and you sweep the floors or whatever.
[02:15] So I drove up there, and with a whole gang of people, like my cousin and his son, two of my attorneys, two of my 11 attorneys, a documentary film crew. And I knocked on the door, and they said, oh, you got to go across the street to the prison first, and they'll process you, and then they bring you back over here. I said, OK. So I went across the street to the prison with the double fences with the concertina wire and the guard towers and the whole nine yards. And I said, I'm John Kiriakou.
[02:45] I'm here to turn myself in. And so I had to go through a metal detector. And then they start bringing me, they brought me outside, and then 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 laughed at me and said, not according to my paperwork, you're not. And I told myself, take it easy. There's nothing you can do. If you raise a ruckus, they're going to put you in solitary, so I didn't say anything.
[03:16] It took me five days to get access to a phone. And I called my lead attorney and I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the drug kingpins and the mafia dons. What do I do? And he said, my God, well, we can file a motion, but it'll be two years before we even get a hearing and you'll be home by then. He said, I'm sorry, buddy, you're going to have to tough it out. And so I decided that very moment you're trained for this.
[03:50] I've lived in far, far worse places on earth than Loretto, Pennsylvania. And so I just kicked myself in the butt and said, all right, just deal with it. Wow. So that's what I did. And for people who don't know, DOJ controls the Bureau of Prisons. That was a tough lesson that I learned. DOJ controls the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Prisons answers to no one. They don't care what the judge says.
[04:22] They don't even care what their own prosecutors say. BOP sends people to whatever facility BOP wants to send people. I was fortunate in that they didn't send me to a communications management unit. What they ended up doing, well, what ended up happening and what resulted in my third book was I had a group of about 600 people who had signed up for a mailing list that
[04:52] my lawyer had set up. And as I was leaving for prison, my lawyer said, when you get comfortable, just drop me a line and I'll send it around to the people on the mailing list just so that they know you're okay. I said, all right, I waited about six weeks until I got my bearings. And then I wrote what I called a letter from Loretto because I love the idea of Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail. So I wrote a letter from Loretto and it was sort of a day in the life, right?
[05:27] Well, I didn't know that my lawyer was close friends with Ariana Huffington. And so she put it like as a banner headline on the Huffington Post and it went crazy. I got more than two million hits over the course of the next several days. And I ended up giving interviews to everybody from Jake Tapper who drove to the prison to interview me to NPR and Playboy and The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly and
[05:59] you name it, they immediately clamped down on my access to the outside world. So they moved me into what they called a modified CMU. So there was a five day delay on my incoming and outgoing emails, five days. And they listened to my outgoing calls live rather than just to have them taped and if they felt like looking at or listening to them that they would listen to it. It was all live monitored and I speak Greek and I speak Arabic.
[06:32] So sometimes like when if I'm talking to my kids or I was talking to my aunt or whatever I would speak Greek and they're like, no, no, no, you can't do that. It's like, why? Because you're too stupid to speak Greek. I got in trouble once for for calling one of the guards a Nimrod on the phone. It was a private conversation with my wife and I got called down to the lieutenants office. And when you hear your name, you know, report to the lieutenants office. You're like, okay, guys, it's been good to know you.
[07:03] Take care of my stuff. And you go to solitary and then eventually you're sent to a higher security prison because I called the guy Nimrod. And as soon as I went down to the lieutenants office, this lieutenant who really was like the biggest asshole of anybody in the prison, he said, do you think I'm a Nimrod? You know, first he said, can I talk to you man to man, which means I'm going to swear at you and I don't want you to report me for it. I said, sure, you can talk to me man to man. He goes, you think I'm a Nimrod? And I said, I don't know.
[07:34] Maybe you are. Maybe you're not. I don't know you, but the other guy's a Nimrod. And it just got worse from there. Yeah, you can't, you can't peak their insecurities. No. And I would say that. You know, I would, I would mock them. You know, the, the irony is that half the time they're so stupid, they didn't realize they were being mocked. Yeah. That was always amazing to me. Yeah. One of them, I was being taken to an outside, I had broken my pinky finger, so it's being
[08:07] taken to an outside medical consultation. And one of them said that he had gotten passed over for a GS4. And I said, like it's my business, right? I go GS4, how do you buy food? And he goes, why? What were you? I said, I was a 15 and I could barely buy food. And they're like asshole. And then for, for people who don't know what the GS ranking system is, that's government
[08:38] services. Yeah. If you're, if you're below, if you're a GS5 or below, like you're expected to be able to scrawl your X at the top of the paper, right? Yeah. You have to have a bachelor's degree to be a seven. And that's something that people, I don't, it's incredible to me. I don't think people understand about American prison systems. And I didn't fully comprehend until I was in a Canadian prison where they've got unionized guards who make six figures.
[09:10] And I was like, why is everybody so nice here, right? And I feel like in all the federal institutions I've been in America, you know, this is generalization. There's good people and bad people everywhere. But there's this, it's almost like it's the only place in their life that they have any power. Yeah. That's it. And they own you. And all the penniness comes out. And compare your, first of all, what you just said, Joe Bonanno, the long time head of the Bonanno crime family said exactly the same thing in his book, Man of Honor. He was arrested and held for something like six months in Canada. He said they couldn't have been any more lovely to him.
[09:43] But in the United States, it's a whole different class of people. There's a book called In Defense of Flogging written by a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His name is Peter Moscow. And he says that the Bureau of Prisons is really nothing more than an employment agency for otherwise unemployable, rural, uneducated white men. That's why our prisons are in, you know, no man's land,
[10:17] in the mountains, out in the prairie. They're not near anything that can account for employment. And so they tend to attract people who either flunked out of the local police academy or couldn't get into the local police academy in the first place, people who left the military and have nowhere else to go, people who have no education. They live in farming areas but aren't farmers. And where
[10:48] else are you going to go? You become a prison guard. And it's the only place, you know, I said this one time and to a guard and he was furious that I said it. But I said, you know, one of the things that I think you guys all have in common is in seventh grade, you were that skinny little kid who got bullied. And you've only realized now that you have these jobs that you can bully somebody else. And there's nothing that they can do about it. And it hurt, it stung because it was true. Yeah. Yeah. And if there's that whole American punitive mindset, and it's just
[11:25] not, that was a big wake up for me when I first started visiting clients in jail is just how petty they could be. And the, because people have just this view of it that it's oh yeah, the prison guards, it's all like running like you think it's going to be on TV. And it's just a, you know, and the federal prisons compared to the state prison. That's what everybody says. I've never seen a state prison. But that's what everybody says that the feds are head and shoulders above what state prisons are. I can't even imagine it. And did they because I've had, you know, clients who've been like politically controversial and stuff like a lot of
[11:59] hackers. And it always struck me that they, they like throw them in the shoe, which is basically solitary, just because of who they are. And did you get thrown in the shoe at all? Do you think your celebrity protected you? Oh, that's a great question. And this was something that that reared its head over and over and over again. And what it came down to, first of all, I was never thrown in the shoe. Oh lucky man. They threatened me constantly. And then I was
[12:30] sort of adopted by the Italians when when I was there. And when I say Italians, I mean, named Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese, you know, you get the idea. And so I sat at the Italian table in the cafeteria. I socialized with the Italians. I ate dinner with the Italians every night. So one of the Italians said to one of the guards, where are you going for the next quarter? And he said, I'm in central one unit, which was where I lived. And the Italian said,
[13:01] oh, my buddy John lives in central one. And the guard said, the CIA guy? Yeah. And the guard said, and this guard had a reputation for being like, particularly bad, big bully. He was the only guard in the entire prison that wore a stab vest underneath his, his uniform, because he was afraid of being shanked. And he had a piece of masking tape that covered up his name. He was he was known only as blue. We didn't know what his real name was. So he said, oh, I never mess with that
[13:35] CIA guy. And the Italian said, really, why? And he said, because that's all I need. I mess with him. And I go out to my car at the end of my shift and CNN's out there waiting for me. Yeah. And I said exactly. And none of them ever messed with me. None of them. Your celebrity protected you. It did. It protected me. Yeah. And I never expected any of that. I never planned for any of that. The honest to God's truth of the matter was that if they had let me go to the camp,
[14:05] like I was supposed to go, I would have slept, swept floors for 23 months, like they would have expected. I wouldn't have said a word to anybody. I would have just quietly read books. And then I would have gone home. But they're the ones that had to make a big production out of the whole thing. They'd love to make a production out of stuff. And it's a lot about, I think, like publicity drives a lot of stuff. And very much so. And I'll tell you another thing, because I think this is an important point that you're making. Just out of curiosity one day,
[14:38] because I was bored, I wrote a Freedom of Information Act request to the Bureau of Prisons for everything they had on me, everything. And 95% of what came back was just garbage. It was my medical records. It was my visitor's list, my phone call list, stuff like that. But either somebody was like a mental defect in the Bureau of Prisons Freedom of Information Act office, or somebody in that office took pity on me, because they sent me
[15:08] back several documents that were very clearly stamped in red at the top and the bottom of the page. FOIA exempt, do not release to inmate. Oops. Yeah. And one of those things was a memo. It was an all hands memo to everybody in the prison the week before I arrived there. And in these huge block letters, it said caution, inmate has access to the media.
[15:38] Wow. And that's really what it was all about. You would think that if they were running things properly, and in our supposedly democratic republic that we have that they wouldn't mind the media, because if you're doing it, what do they have to hide, right? Well, they have to hide. It was incredible to me. And again, the thought of contacting the media never occurred to me until they made it an issue. Oh, you're not going to be in the camp. You're going to be in the real prison.
[16:10] And then I said to on my very first full day there, I had to meet with my whatever they call themselves your your case case worker or whatever it is. Yeah. And I said, listen, I've got a I've got a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies. I have a master's degree in policy analysis. And I finished my PhD casework or I mean, coursework at UVA in international affairs. So if you want me to teach, you know, GED class or whatever, I'm happy to do it.
[16:42] And he screams at me, if I wanted you to teach a fucking class, I would ask you to teach a fucking class. And they made me a janitor in the chapel. I was like, okay, that's fine. Yeah, I know how to do that. I'm not going to help you run your prison. Yeah, there's that. That's an interesting like take on the or expression of American anti intellectualism that resentment that I think part of that feeds is behind the Trumpism. But I don't. What's the big deal? What's the big deal? What's the big deal? I'm offering to help
[17:15] you. Yeah. Yeah. But the disrespect was just incredible. And the anger and the anger. That's right. It sounds like there's a lot. That's right. A lot of anger in those places. Yeah. So I was making like, I was making like 65 cents an hour. And the chaplain liked me because I was the only person working in the chapel that wasn't a pedophile, right? So his budget was tight and the prison was overcrowded. The prison's built for like 680 people. We had 1425 people in bunks
[17:50] in the hallways. And it was just a mess. So I said to him, look, chaplain, I said, I don't want to work here. And I don't need the 65 cents an hour. So if you want to just keep me on the books and give my 65 cents to the next guy, and I just don't come to work anymore, that's cool with me. And so I took the time to write another book. Oh, what? What was that? Well, that that was the doing time like a spy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't intend. I didn't plan to
[18:20] write any book while I was there. It's just that they made it so easy, like they gave me so much material that I couldn't not write the book. It was just crazy. And so what I haven't read the book, but I'm curious now, like you said, you said you were obviously the CIA officer for years and what they for those of you don't know the reason John was sent to prison. You took a plea. It was like a four count indictment, the first five count indictment, three counts of espionage,
[18:52] one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981, and one kind of making a false statement. I hadn't committed espionage. What I did is I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in an interview on ABC News. So they gave me three counts of espionage for that. That's not espionage. No, it's not. You're not you have to be conspiring with the agent of a foreign power. Exactly. And so they dropped those charges. The false statements charge, we were never exactly sure what that was. And so they dropped that too.
[19:24] They always tacked that. That was 1001. Yeah, 1001. Exactly. They always tacked that on. So I took a plea to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. I confirmed the name of a former CIA colleague to a reporter and the reporter never made the name public. The name was never revealed. But they hit me for it. One of the things that struck me this morning is I've had a little bit of experience with the espionage act with your friend and colleague, Jess Radick. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a great lawyer. She is.
[19:58] I was Researching the history of the espionage act and what I thought was interesting is that you can draw a straight line from the Alien and Sedition Act Oh, yes, and those political very political prosecution hundred percent political to in the beginning you because they actually Lifted some of the language from the espionage act From the Alien and Sedition Act and stuck it in the espionage act in 1917 when there's all this kind of hysteria about Russians protesting over a wand and all that that's right stuff for people who are into like First Amendment law a lot of people
[20:34] Don't realize that the first amendment cases come out of that 1970 period with it's like shank and yes leading up to Abrams, but And somebody blew off the front of Attorney General Palmer's house right over here on our street Is it right over here? I went to look at it a couple of weekends ago I had read about it, you know all my life and I wanted to check it out and it's just somebody's house Wow, yeah, that was like did they ever catch them like no they never caught them I think they cracked down on people like Emma Goldman because of it because of it
[21:06] Yeah, it was a bit of caught the guy that put the bomb on the porch and there was a young I Wasn't it not an FBI agent, but a young I don't know what a department. He was a young man named J. Edgar Hoover That's right who led that investigation the Bureau of Investigation. It was called at the time right and then he shoots up like a superstar that's right and then what they say 48 years 48 years and then Yeah, no one could no president could take him out. No until the FBI did that's right with Who was it? Mark the second command of the Mark felt Mark felt yeah, who was deep-throat. Yep, and that's something
[21:40] I feel like it's not that you've had some experience with the FBI is not appreciated about the FBI I look at them. They hate him at the FBI They hated Nixon, but they're always in American politics always on both sides because they still are they still are and people think like Well, like after the church commission people think everything was fixed But yeah, it was fixed for about five minutes. Yeah. Yeah, and then the FISA court, which I cannot stand I think that's an inquisitorial Couldn't agree more abomination and like everything that was they tried to do with the church commission and
[22:14] Fixing things actually I think made it worse because that foreign intelligence surveillance court for those of you don't know it's a It's a top-secret Sort of it's almost like a quasi military court. I don't think it's an article three court Constitutionally, no, I think it needs to be attacked on that I agree that front and it sat on it was actually in the DOJ building for years on the top floor on the top floor before they They all maybe we should move it because we allegedly have a Independent it's supposed to be independent. It's like the office of the part of the US pardon attorney
[22:45] The office of the US pardon attorney is supposed to be independent of the Department of Justice It was when it was created It was originally supposed to sit in the White House and later in the in the old executive office building It's always been at DOJ always. Yeah, there's supposed to be there is supposed to be a Chinese wall between DOJ and the office the US pardon attorney and there's not yeah, it's sort of like the It's it's on paper right the only the only Chinese the Chinese wall thing is on on paper Because so much of it and I think people don't appreciate it just not not because people don't are stupid anything
[23:19] It's just they haven't experienced it like we have is that so much of this is what's going on is not textual It's it's not anywhere on paper and and so this is my little pet pee with law professors It's like, you know, you're sitting at your desk and you're reading these decisions You think that's the law, but what's actually going on with the laws? I think 90 at least 90% I've spoken and is that sort of inside baseball like sort of social club like Every federal court I've been in DOJ's had offices in the courthouse, right?
[23:49] Oh my god, and it's such and most federal a lot of federal judges are Former federal prosecutor most of them are yeah Yeah, it's upwards of 80 something percent and so you walk in into any federal case as a defense lawyer It's it's automatically stacked against you and that's what you you have to overcome among a million other things and Well between charge stacking and venue shopping and DOJ's unlimited literally unlimited budget
[24:21] Yeah, people don't stand a chance. You know in discovery. We found something that was very important Right after my arrest DOJ turned over 15,000 pages of classified documents that I would could ostensibly use to defend myself and we found a memo From John Brennan to Eric Holder John Brennan at the time was the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and an old Nemesis of mine from the CIA. We always hated each other. We go back to 1990 because he had at the CIA at one point
[24:56] Later on yeah, no, he was a GS 15 nobody when I when I met it so Brennan wrote a memo to Holder and said charge him with espionage and Then Holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage and then Brennan wrote back and said charge him Anyway and make him defend himself It was just 2012 2012 because you did the interview in 2007 and DOJ didn't prosecuted do anything for no And there's a story there. I'll tell you in two seconds, but
[25:27] What they did is they charged me with espionage and as soon as I went bankrupt They dropped the espionage charges. Oh, yeah. Yeah war of attrition waited war of attrition Yeah, I gave that interview to ABC News and to the New York Times in December of 2007 The the CIA filed a crimes report against me the very next day saying that I had revealed classified information My position was that it is actually a felony in the United States to classify a Program that is illegal for the purpose of keeping it from the American people and torture is illegal
[26:04] I don't care what John you and J. Bybee say. It's illegal. It's unconstitutional. It's men. Yeah It's a violation of the federal torture act of 1946 It's a violation of the United Nations Convention against torture and degrading and in in humane treatment It's just plain illegal. So The FBI investigated me from December of 07 until December of 08 and they sent my attorney's a Declination letter in December of 08 saying that I had not broken the law
[26:35] And so my wife and I actually went out to dinner that night to celebrate I Had no idea that three weeks later when Barack Obama became president That they would secretly reopen the case against me and for the next three years I had no idea that my phones were tapped that my emails were being intercepted that teams of FBI agents were surveilling us They we learned later. They they went into church with us on Sundays and sat in the pew right behind us
[27:06] But still to learn what well, they're also like one of the things I noticed with those kinds of investigations is that a lot of times They're just like they're there. I think they're like like in big law. There's a phrase you You turn you're turning your shirt That's an expensive investigation. Everybody's getting you know, expensive over time lots of overtime and it's this and that's one of I think The problems with the system is there's all these incentives to turn ours and they in DOJ they They keep statistics on
[27:38] Trial winds like it's a sport. Oh, yeah, in fact, I was on their little ticker Yeah at the bottom of the of their Website for years afterwards Tom Drake was another one. Oh, Tom's great Tom poor Tom Drake They charged him with you know 150 years worth of of crimes and then they ended up dropping all the charges Provided that he took a plea to accessing his Facebook page from an NSA computer and they gave me 18 months of unsupervised probation and And they had him on the ticker that they convicted this NSA officer for misuse of a an NSA computer
[28:16] Come on. I almost think that they should they should statutorily ban DOJ from being able to do press except for like a press release upon Conviction yeah, and that they need to remove these these Sort of like careerist Statistical rankings like it's a batting average because you can't the number of convictions does not equal justice No, certainly not and I'll tell you another thing the FBI agent who actually physically put the handcuffs on me was Peter Strzok and and
[28:46] Yeah, and at first he asked one of the FBI agents He didn't ask he said tell me he implicated himself and the FBI agent said not really and Strzok said turn around and he cuffed me and Walked me, you know ten feet to a to a metal bench and then uncuffed one wrist and then cuffed the My arm to the bench my wrist to the bench and I sat there for for hours well
[29:19] Years later I get a call from some reporter at the Washington Post and he said hey I was hoping I could get a comment from you about Peter Strzok and I said Peter Strzok I said all I know about Peter Strzok is what I've read in the Washington Post What do you want from me? And he says well Peter Strzok is the guy that actually arrested you and I said what this is years later I Said I had no idea that was Peter Strzok and he said yeah He's being escorted out of the building by security right now. He's being fired by the FBI. I said oh, I'll give you a quote
[29:53] I'll give you a quote. I said Washington's a tough town and karma's a bitch is what I said. And they printed it. Well, now we're learning from James Bamford, who's one of the most brilliant and accomplished national security journalists in the last 40 years, and who wrote the definitive book on NSA. He had a book that came out day before yesterday on Wednesday, saying that during Peter Strock's tenure as the director of counterintelligence
[30:31] for the FBI, the FBI lost 10 count them, 10 Chinese sources, because there was a Chinese mole inside Peter Strock's division. Yeah. Well, while Peter Strock was worried about me blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program, he allowed Chinese intelligence to run rampant through his division at the FBI. Yeah. I think there's that. The public doesn't fully appreciate the sort of like incompetency and they see these shows like
[31:03] FBI on CBS. And one of the strangest things I'm finding right now is that I mean, we're both old enough to remember when the Democrats hated the FBI. Sure. Republicans. My God, I talk about that all the time. It's insane how it's switched, right? It's insane. Yeah. Yes. It defies any logic. And but it seems like the FBI is fine with it. It doesn't matter as long as we're perfectly fine. We're getting our funding and everything. We'll play both sides. I mean, where were they on January 6? Exactly. Where were they? How watching it on TV? They were
[31:36] waiting to see which side prevailed. And that's and they've, you know, that people, it's just strange to me that people, you know, they, a lot of people know about the Martin Luther King letter where they sent in and they said, you know, Martin commits suicide or we're going to reveal all your affairs, right? But like people seem to have forgotten the COINTELPRO, which was only exposed because it was like seven college students, burglarized in media, Pennsylvania. Yeah. I met one of those guys once they, that guy was heroes. Yeah, heroes. Yeah. He told me about a the FBI coming to his
[32:08] house and just like this narrow escape where they're interviewing him and he's like, oh my God, am I going to get popped? And then after that, he like split, he like got through it. In fact, I think he, he still had the coffee machine in his garage. That's how close he came. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there were, that, that's a fascinating story because that, that's another former whistleblower just like what you do because they burglarized the office. But here they, they're discovering all this. We would never have any idea that, that this illegal
[32:38] COINTELPRO was, was being perpetrated by the FBI all across America. Had they not gone into that FBI field office in media, Pennsylvania and burglarized the place, Betty Metzger, I think her name, her first name is Betty, has an amazing book called The Burglary that is the blow by blow of the decision to do that operation and then what happened afterwards. I got to check that out because it's my understanding that they had a really, actually kind of, it wasn't easy for them to get it into the press until... No, nobody wanted it. Nobody
[33:08] wanted it. Oh, it's stolen documents from the FBI. We don't want to make the FBI angry, right? Yeah. So nobody would publish it. Yeah. Yeah. And then finally... But you know, Dan Ellsberg says the same thing about the Pentagon Papers. He said the Pentagon Papers all over the place. He's, George McGovern said, I don't want to touch this. George McGovern. Yeah. Yeah. Right? I mean, the only person on Capitol Hill who had the guts to say anything was Mike Ravel and it cost him his Senate seat in Alaska in 1974. But the post didn't want it. The post
[33:41] only finally picked up the story because the Times ran it. And that was the big competition back then. Yeah, they had to. It wasn't for noble reasons. No, it wasn't for noble reasons. It was for market-based reasons. And you see there sort of the social structure of things. And I don't want to sell like a Marxist because I'm not. I'm a capitalist. And I love this country like you. You know, I consider you a patriot. I do. I'm a patriot. Yeah. Yeah. I very much consider you a patriot in that tradition, the Bill of Rights tradition. And we're either a nation of laws or we're not. Yeah. That's it.
[34:14] That's the bottom line. Yeah. Yeah. And here that you see how the social aspect of that and the quote unquote establishment, because they're really very sort of, they don't want to, they don't want to... What do you call it? What's the metaphor? They don't want to rustle their banner or whatever, like the post. And they've got close relationships with all these agencies. And like, one of the things that recently like struck me about DOJ and everyone's like, Merrick Garland, okay, he's the hero of
[34:45] the left. But his DOJ leaks like a seep. Oh my God, yeah. And I am not a Matt Gaetz fan. But the one thing that drives me crazy is the criminal defense lawyers. Have you seen the Matt Gaetz indictment? No. Right, because there is one. But they've been leaking really nasty accusations, whatever the merits on a pending federal criminal investigation. Now, for like two years, where is the outrage on the left about that? Right? I mean, I don't think left or right or whomever, DOJ should not, should not at all, I
[35:20] think, be talking to the media like that. I think it needs to be restricted. You are absolutely right. Absolutely right. You know, several months before my arrest, let me think now, the weather was warm. So this must have been like six, five, six months before my arrest. I get an email. I was working on the on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff at the time. I was the head investigator. And I get a call from this reporter from the Washington Times. The Washington Times. Right? And I just
[35:50] deleted it. Yeah. But this son of a gun was persisted. He kept, he kept asking me for lunch. So I mentioned to my boss, and he said, Well, he said, Go ahead and have lunch. Just see what he wants. So, so I, I met with him. And it was a perfectly nice lunch. We talked about the Middle East and we talked about Turkish elections and Israeli elections. And I was like, Okay, well, thank you. This was really great. It was nice meeting you. And I, I was going to leave. And he's like, No, no, no, that's not why I invited you to lunch. Well, we'd already been sitting there for an hour and a half. So he said, I have a source inside the FBI. And
[36:25] they're investigating you because they think that you're the source for the Sam Adams project. What's the same Adams project? And I said, What's the Sam Adams project? And he said, It's a leak to the Guantanamo defense attorneys. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never met a Guantanamo defense attorney in my life. And he said, Wow, that's really not the response I was expecting. I said, I appreciate your
[36:59] concern. But I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Well, in fact, he was right. They believed that I was I had never heard of this before, but they believed that I was the source for this. I think it's called the Sam Adams project. This Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is the Sam Adams project. But I wasn't. It turned out that this there was a journalist at the Intercept by the name of Matthew Cole, the Intercept. Yeah, the
[37:34] Intercept, which I think is a division of the FBI. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Matthew Cole said he was writing a book about the CIA kidnapping of a terrorist suspect by the name of Abu Omar. Omar was innocent. And almost two dozen CIA officers kidnapped him off the street in Milan and rendered him to Egypt where he was tortured. I remember that. And then the Egyptians came back to us and said, We think he's the wrong guy. And they let him go. And he was the wrong guy. So I didn't know anything at all about that
[38:08] operation. So Matthew Cole emails me said, I'm a reporter for the Intercept. Can you introduce me to any of these dozen people? And I said, I don't have any idea who these people were. Then he sends me a second email with another dozen names. And I said, Look, you clearly know this story better than I do. Kidnapping was not my thing at the agency. I don't know anything about rendition operations. I just don't know anything about Abu Omar. And then he said, On page whatever it was 165 of
[38:46] your book, you talk about this guy that you used to work for. I think his name is, I'm going to say John. And I said, Oh, you mean John Smith? I said, I don't know whatever happened to him. He's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere. That was a felony. Because I confirmed the name. Oh, that's what they went after. See, I went after that was where they went after me. Yeah, that's what it was. It was
[39:18] that innocent. Well, it turned out that Matthew Cole was never writing any book about Abu Omar. It was all fake. He was secretly working as an investigator for Human Rights Watch. So he turned all those names plus John Smith's name, actual name, he turned it all over to Human Rights Watch and their lead investigator, John Shifton. I know John. I know John Sifton. Sifton. I know him personally. John Sifton in turn turned it over to the Guantanamo defense attorneys. And the Guantanamo
[39:51] defense attorneys filed a request with the judge at Guantanamo saying, we want to interview these people. The judge recognizes these names as covert CIA officers. He turns the names over to the FBI, and the FBI reverse engineers where they got the names. So Sifton ratted me out, and Matthew Cole ratted me out, and I ended up in prison.
[40:22] Wow. On a side note, my legal career starts interning for the Charles P. Sifton, the father of John. Wow. I haven't talked to John in probably like a decade, but that's an interesting... It was bad. And the intercept allowed somebody to represent themselves as a journalist with their organization
[40:52] in order to basically conduct an undercover investigation for you. How unethical is that? Yeah, they've got a long list of stuff like that. And it wasn't just me. It was Terry Albury, the FBI whistleblower. He went to prison because of the intercept. Reality winner went to prison because of the intercept. Daniel Hale, the drone whistleblower, went to prison because of the intercept. I wrapped Dan Hale for a little bit with Jess, and then when he wanted to take a plea,
[41:22] you know, we kind of... Yeah, because I'm just a trial guy. I'm just laying in there breaking dishes and yelling and pounding on the table kind of thing. But I met with the general counsel for the intercept, and they... It was just... And I went in with a little attitude. I went in with jeans and a t-shirt kind of thing, right? Like punk lawyer kind of thing. I don't know if I did that these days, but... I was more so unreceptive to contributing to his defense or anything.
[41:52] And they thought that, you know, me coming in there just like... Because I was doing things like... One of the interesting things to me about the Espionage Act is I was talking to Steve Ladik about it during this prosecution. And I'm a little autistic. I always need to know the basics of things, right? And I'm a big con law guy. So I'm looking at the Espionage Act, and I can't see, you know, supposedly in our United States Constitution it's supposed to be one of enumerated powers, and Congress could only pass statutes that are explicitly listed in the Constitution.
[42:24] Now the New Deal kind of blew that up, right? But the first thing I always check is, okay, what gave Congress the authority... Yes....to pass this act? And I can't find it in the... I can't find it in the case law. So I asked Steve Ladik. I said, Steve, you know, you're the expert in this... Can you just tell me, like, what authorizes Congress to pass the Espionage Act? And he couldn't give me a straight answer. So I'm like, oh, I want to go challenge the constitutionality of the Espionage Act. And Daniel Hill's federal defenders, and I call them federal surrenders, told me I was crazy.
[42:57] Right? But I'm like... You're not crazy. In fact, Daniel Ellsberg would agree with you 1,000%. This is something that he's been doing a lot lately. He and I talked a lot when Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA whistleblower, was in prison. Dan really, really wanted Sterling to appeal beyond the court of appeals because Dan believes, as do I and a lot of other people, and I think you do too, that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally broad.
[43:29] It's unconstitutionally vague. And it got even broader and vaguer in my case when Judge Leanny Brinkama of the Eastern District of Virginia said that she would not respect a precedent set by Tom Drake's judge in the federal district of Maryland and said that in my case the prosecution didn't have to prove criminal intent. That's insane. That's like going against centuries of the common law and the most basic fundamental thing about our criminal justice system.
[44:00] My attorney jumped up and said, Your Honor, are you saying that a person can accidentally commit espionage? And she said, that's exactly what I'm saying. And she looked at me and she said, Mr. Kiriaku, you either did it or you didn't do it. And I think you did it. That's what she said in a hearing. I knew I had literally no chance. In fact, we were walking out of the courtroom and I said to the lead attorney who was a legend, Plato Kacheris, legendary figure in Washington law.
[44:33] I said, what just happened? And he said, we just lost the case. That's what happened. Yeah, he's legendary because he knows how to speak the truth. That's right. That's what you get to do. But on the flip side of that, and this is something I think is one way to combat this, but again, there's all these barriers to it, that's what the jury is for. Exactly. And I said that and Plato said, yes, but the problem is, you can only appeal after you lose the case and you're going to appeal from prison.
[45:04] If we take a plea, it's going to be short. If you lose at trial, he said, you're realistically looking at 12 to 18 years. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You made the rational choice that most people make. Well, I'll tell you one thing that, like I said earlier, I had 11 attorneys. I'm not exaggerating. There were actually 11 of them. And one of them was the head of white collar defense at Aiken Gump and Strauss. Another legend here in Washington. His name is Mark McDougal. I love the guy like a brother.
[45:34] I liked and respected him the most out of all my lawyers. And I had A-list lawyers. But he got in my face and yelled at me one time because DOJ made their best and final offer. 30 months, I do 23. And I decided to turn it down. And I said, the lawyers came over to the house seven o'clock in the morning. I put on a pot of coffee and I said, listen, we've been up all night long. My wife and I, we decided to turn it down.
[46:05] I didn't do anything wrong. And as soon as I can get in front of a jury, they're going to see how ridiculous this is. And Mark got right in my face and he said, you know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage. Take the deal. And I realized then that he was right. Yeah. I took the deal. Yeah. And then another one, another one of the attorneys, Bob Trout, awesome guy, a real Southern gentleman.
[46:35] He said, look, this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life. Make it the blip. Yeah. And that's that's so I took the deal. That's the calculus and that's why. But getting back to Dan Ellsberg, he wanted, he wanted Jeffrey Sterling to go all the way to the Supreme Court to at least get the Supreme Court to chop on the constitutionality of the of the Espionage Act. In my case, Judge Brinkama actually defined espionage in a way that had never been defined before.
[47:11] She said espionage is the act of providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. Period. You raised the foreign power aspect of it. Yes. Yeah. Period. Yeah. But judges don't make law. Right. So I didn't stand a chance and neither did anybody coming after me. Yeah. And a lot of people came after me. So when Jeffrey Sterling just he he just couldn't fight that fight any longer and he dropped his appeal rather than to go on bunk at the at the Fourth Circuit.
[47:46] Dan released classified information on the American Nuclear Weapons Program on Twitter. He wrote a book, didn't get it cleared. He also published an amazing history of the Nuclear Weapons Program and then tweeted the most classified stuff and then said, will somebody please arrest me? Right. Because he's 93 years old and he doesn't care anymore. And somebody has to appeal the Espionage Act to the Supreme Court.
[48:17] I didn't know he did that. Yeah. That's brilliant. But nobody will arrest him. Because of the social dynamic and the power. Right. And if they arrested Daniel Ellsberg that's going to be all hell is going to break loose and all guys have bonafide American hero. Yeah. And they have to relitigate. You're almost like you're relitigating the Pentagon Papers and that whole thing. That's exactly what it would be. And they're afraid. That's that's interesting that because he induced fear on the other side. He did. And that that shows that it's not like we're not like in some sort of like hopeless state.
[48:47] We're in a tough state fighting this this kind of whatever you call it the social aspect of it and their their their whole world view which we don't share like which seems to be very contrary to the Bill of Rights. I was I was saying like, you know, the bill, the philosophy of the Bill of Rights is not trust the government. Right. Just go through them go through each one, you know, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Second Amendment, right. Whatever you think of it, right to bear arms. That's right. First Amendment, no quartering of British shoulders and, you know, soldiers in civilian homes, which I want to bring the first amendment case because I think what the FBI is doing with the, you know, the Rule 41 search warrants.
[49:28] Yeah, they expanded it now so that they can basically put like surveillance malware on any computer that they think is related to a crime. So they've got people that notices was a real change about like a few years back and they basically now a magistrate judge anywhere like say the Eastern District of Virginia. Which for those people who don't know, I call I consider national security hellhole. Yeah, they call it the Espionage Court. Yeah, it is the Espionage Court. No Espionage Act defendant has ever won a case in the Eastern District of Virginia. I see why, like my first experience with it.
[50:00] with Daniel Hale, I think it was, there was all these unspoken procedural barriers, just for me to get in like Prohac Vichy, because that just means like, I'm not admitted to the court, but for the matter only, I had to have local counsel that had to show up to every hearing. Now, for people who don't understand the dynamics of the financials, these kind of cases, where you're trying to do something for no money, and you don't have a lot of money, first of all, you're spending a bunch of money just traveling down to Virginia, that's super expensive.
[50:31] And to pay for that counsel for something that's just like trivial, like a status conference, right? I found that the Eastern District was full of that. And then I couldn't notice how all the defense contractors are down there, there's all this money flowing around, and it is out of all the federal district courts in the entire country I've ever had to get into, it is the hardest court just to get in Prohac. It is the one that I think is the closest to the point of just like the French kissing
[51:03] the military industrial aspect of this kind of house. And look at who's in the Eastern District of Virginia. It's the home of the Pentagon, the CIA, and literally every one of the top 12 defense contractors. Yeah, and that goes back to the Constitution's venue clause, which people are always like, venue clause just means for people to don't know, it's just that all federal criminal trials have to be in the state and the district where the crime occurred. And the point of that was to try to avoid that kind of social club dynamic
[51:37] that's already just gonna condemn you before you're even there, because the revolutionaries, you get arrested in Philadelphia, but you do a jury trial in London, it's a very, very different thing. And down in EDVA, I don't even, like it's not even an independent judiciary when it comes to that kind of stuff. No way, I'll tell you something funny too. At the time of my, what was going to be my trial, my best friend's wife's uncle was introduced to me.
[52:09] He was O.J. Simpson's jury consultant. Oh wow. And besides O.J. Simpson, he did George Simmerman, he did William Kennedy Smith, all these major headline grabbing cases, and he had never lost a case. So he was very, very expensive, but because this was my best friend's wife, he agreed to help me for free. Wow. Wow, that's a score. It was a score. We got him a security clearance, which was tough.
[52:40] It was another thing that we had to fight over. We got a call from the prosecution that the White House says that Kiriakou has enough cleared lawyers. And my lawyer said, who at the White House said that? John Brennan said that? How about if we call the Washington Post and tell them what the White House is saying about Kiriakou's lawyers? Next day he's got a security clearance. So he came up, went through all the documents, and I still remember sitting around the enormous table
[53:14] in the law firm's conference room, and he said, if we were in any other district in America, I would say, let's go for it. We're gonna win this thing. But the Eastern District of Virginia, he said your jury is gonna be made up of people who work for the Pentagon and the CIA and defense contractors or their relatives. He said, you can't possibly get a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia.
[53:44] He said, I can't believe I'm gonna say it, but take the deal. Yeah, and that's one of the best jury consultants in the country. Yeah, he was the best. And that's true, and that's why Assange is not going to get a fair trial. He doesn't stand a chance. Doesn't stand a chance, yeah. No, that's not gonna be good. And they're gonna throw him in the shoe. Sure they will. Yeah, yeah. You notice that they promised not to put him in a CMU, a communications management unit. They didn't say anything about the shoe. And I'll tell you something, and this is what I've told his attorneys.
[54:15] I'm in touch with his attorneys here in Washington and in London. I said, first of all, I explained that the Bureau of Prisons answers to nobody. They don't care what the judge says. They don't care what the prosecutors say. They're gonna put him wherever they decide to put him. So the prosecutors can promise every judge in the UK that they're not gonna put him in the CMU. That's not their promise to make. But even if they don't put him in the CMU, all they need to put him in the shoe, for years, right?
[54:45] We've had people in solitary confinement for 44 years in this country, as long as 44 years. All they have to do is say, well, you know what? Some prisoner came up to us and said, he overheard two guys saying that they're gonna shank Assange. So quote unquote for his own safety, they're gonna put him in solitary and he's gonna spend the rest of his life in there. And for people who don't know this, the United Nations considers solitary confinement a form of torture. Anything more than 14 days is a form of torture.
[55:17] And if you think it's not, try locking yourself in a closet just for 24 hours. And it's totally inhumane. And they do it to a lot of our hacker clients who haven't done really anything. Marty Goddusfeld. Yeah, Marty Goddusfeld is Marty. A great example. I'm in close touch with Marty. Marty, the worst that Marty did was a directed denial of service attack on a website. Yeah, we wrapped Marty. Did you? Yeah, yeah, for a while. He fired us and there's a good Peacock documentary.
[55:50] I like him. Yes, there is. I like him. We had a deal for, that's one of the few guys I've ever told to take the deal, because I'm usually a trial guy. We had a year for him. A year? Right, but I got respected for this. One of the tensions was he really wanted to get press and further the cause. And I respect that, but I said to him at one point, I'm not a publicist, right? But we had a year and he turned it down. He turned down a year. I did not know that. Oh yeah, he got, and then he got 10. You got 10. And then the whole 10 is in the CMU.
[56:23] Yeah, it's all in the CMU, which is, again, he didn't deserve that. No, he didn't. And I saw a lot of the discovery in that case. Obviously, and people, that was blowing up the story, right? He didn't really take that hospital down. He didn't take down any of the medical stuff. No, no, no, no, this is just the fundraising website. Yeah, it was just like, and so he got a really raw deal, but like, yeah, I mean, you know, he was stubborn and he, well, he got his NBC Peacock documentary, which, but Marty, I know well.
[56:58] Tell him I say hi, actually. I sure will. I hear from him once or twice a week. Yeah, oh, good. Oh, good. Oh, good, good, good. You know, the funny thing is, he is still fighting as hard today as he was at the very beginning of this whole thing. And he's gonna be out in a year and eight months. Oh my God, time flies. Yeah. Oh my God. He, I remember when he went to Cuba. Yeah, he tried. And then I had, because he disappeared. I didn't know he was gonna go and he just like disappeared.
[57:30] And then, there's like a couple months later or something like that. I got a phone call from them the day because they'd been picked up by a Disney cruise ship off the coast of Cuba. And so, you know, I helped bring him back to, you know, through the port of Miami and all that stuff like that. But he had a hanging judge too. He had Slade Gorton's brother. Who's Slade Gorton? I don't tell you. He was the senior senator from Washington state. Yeah, you see the people don't get this, the club with the federal judges. They're all connected. Yeah, they're all connected. And it's like this myth that the system
[58:02] is stacked in favor of the criminal defendant is the most ludicrous, ludicrous there, you know. Boy, Marty, he's in the shoe. He only gets, doesn't he get like one 15 minute call a week or something like that? Something insane like that. And what he does, he sends an email to his wife and two attorneys and me. And it's for his one 15 minute phone call. So whoever answers first is the person he talks to. Oh, wow.
[58:32] Yeah. Wow, he's hardcore, man. And it's funny, the first time he called me, and we had been corresponding for years, but the first time he called me, I was like, oh my God, it's Marty. And I saw the number and it's from a federal prison. It's in Terre Haute, Indiana. It used to be Death Row. He's living on Death Row. They built a new Death Row and converted the old one into the CMU. New Improved Death Row. It's miserable. Yeah, the new and improved Death Row. So all he wanted to talk about was like,
[59:03] you know, who won the playoff game and what books am I reading? And I kept saying, are you okay? Are you okay? What can I send you? Do you need any books? Do you need any magazines? How's your health? He didn't want to talk about any of that stuff. He just wanted to have a conversation with somebody like about normal daily life. Right, because we're social animals and just cutting people off from that. That's the torture. You know, the New York Times Magazine, I'll never forget this, in May of 2015,
[59:34] the New York Times Magazine ran a really in-depth article about shoes and the federal shoes in particular. And they talked about this prisoner in the shoe at Florence, the Super Max in Florence, Colorado. And this guy had been in the shoe for like 18 years. So no human contact for 18 years. Well, as you might assume. So he went insane, right? So he got to the point where, you know, you've got like a two or three inch wide window in
[1:00:09] your cell just barely enough to get a little bit of light. He was able to smash that window and eat the broken glass just so that they would have to take him to a hospital where he could talk to another human being. Shame on us. Shame on us for pretending that we're better, you know, and then we wonder why our recidivism rates are so high. Yeah. Because we're not reforming anybody.
[1:00:40] No. We're just torturing them. Yeah. And we move slavery basically into the prisons because most people don't appreciate that the 13th Amendment actually doesn't ban all slavery. No, it specifically exempts prisoners. Yeah. That's a big, you know, a big thing behind that. Like, I joke sometimes that I want to run for Congress on an anti-slavery platform. So everybody's going to be like, what do you mean? But it is, it's that incarceration system.
[1:01:12] And what's the theory of punishment behind a lot of these statutes and these crimes? I feel like the judges don't have any, like it's very arbitrary. Oh, listen, I'll tell you about arbitrary. There was a woman working for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, GS-12, mid-level nobody. And so she and a friend of hers went into business together.
[1:01:42] They bought a boat. And on the weekends, they would take tourists out to look for whales. They were out on one of these little charters that they did every weekend. And they came across an orca feeding on a seal carcass. And so everybody runs to the side of the boat and they're taking pictures. Somebody whistles, right, just in a silly attempt to keep the whale up near the surface so they could take better pictures. A couple of weeks later at her apartment, FBI, she opens the door and they said,
[1:02:20] are you so-and-so? Yes. You have this boat? Yes. You take tourists out on the boat? Yes. Did you whistle at the whale? She said, no. I think somebody did. But she said, you know what, I videotape all of these whale watching trips and I sell the DVDs to the tourists. I can give you the DVD. So she does. A couple of months pass, six o'clock in the morning, they bust down the door of her apartment and they arrest her and they charge her with a violation of the Endangered
[1:02:55] Species Act for interfering with the feeding of a wild animal. It's a felony. As you might imagine, the Department of Commerce fires her immediately because she's under FBI investigation after having committed a felony. Right at the gate. So she loses her career, she loses her federal pension, she loses the well-watching business, her partner walks away from her, they have to sell the boat, she goes bankrupt, five years pass and then they finally reduce it down to a misdemeanor if she just takes
[1:03:29] it guilty plea. They ruined her. They ruined her life. And this kind of thing happens every single day all over America. And you don't see it in the court cases because most stuff is going to a plea. Exactly. And the law. So it doesn't become part of case law. It doesn't become case law and if 90, 98% of things are going to a plea and the law professors are only studying case law, what does that actually tell you about what law is actually operative? Because what's going on for people who don't know, John, I'm sure you experienced this is that when you're taking a plea, first of all, the evidentiary standards are preponderance
[1:04:05] of the evidence. So not beyond a reasonable doubt, it's basically an inquisitorial system, not an adversarial system. That's right. And once you sign that damn piece of paper saying you're guilty, nobody gives a shit about you. And they just, you are a scheduling problem. Because you admitted to it. You admitted to it and the government comes in at your sentencing and I don't know if it's happening to you, but they just pile on all this crap, something you didn't grade school. Oh yeah. Something that one of your enemies told on there and then the judge just like believes it all and fuck. I had something called an 11C1C plea. Oh yeah. So my lawyers said it was novel, right?
[1:04:38] So this is a plea where the agreement is written in stone and the judge can't change it. So the plea was for 30 months, I would do 23. And we go into Judge Brinkham as a courtroom and she said, this is an 11C1C plea. Now, she was a Reagan appointee in 1986. She's been around a long time. And she said, I have never had an 11C1C plea in my entire career. And she looks at me and she says, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.
[1:05:08] But if I could, Mr. Kiriaku, I would sentence you to 10 years. And I thought to myself, yeah, well, you can't. But I mean, every national security journalist in Washington was in the courtroom on that day. They were all there to hear what she had to say. So she came out of it looking really tough and I walked out with 23 months. Yeah. And that's something that people don't appreciate is how the judiciary plays to the press. And that's a double edged sword for them because they also, I feel, do respond to social
[1:05:43] pressure. Yes, they do. Yes, indeed. And that's, unfortunately, part of the equation when you're trying to handle these, particularly in a case like yours with very high publicity and everything, I mean, that's a really great deal. Your lawyer's got you right here. We are like, yeah, 30 months in jail. That's great. Yeah. Right? Like, what the hell? Right? That was great. For what? Giving an ABC News interview. The New York Times. And the New York Times. Yeah. Was that Eric Lischblatt with the New York Times? No, it was Scott Shane who apologized profusely for the next three years, wrote me letters
[1:06:20] in prison, called me as soon as I got home. I was like, stop apologizing. I'm a big boy. I went into it with my eyes open. And he didn't lie to you about that? No, and he didn't lie to me and go behind my back. Yeah, like the intercept did. Yeah. That's a start. I just hear so many stories about the intercept and you know. They're, it's an outlaw organization. They're pretending to be some sort of investigative. They're not. And they're not. They're not. They're in the pocket of the FBI. Or they're so unbelievably stupid that they just sort of hand everything they have over
[1:06:53] to the FBI inadvertently. One or the other. Yeah, or both. Right? Like it's like, yeah, it's like that toxic, toxic mess. And then there was a certain kind of, like when I went over to their offices, they were like very like, you know, downtown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Very sleek. We're cooler than you kind of shine. Right. The exposed brick wall. Yeah. But then I'm like, you guys are corporate fascists basically. They are. Like I didn't go along with them like, you know, and I'm a fucking capitalist, right? Like that's, that's, you know, that's the thing I feel like people don't understand. I was like, we really love this country. Sure.
[1:07:24] And that's why, you know, I consider you a patriot because what you did, you're like, we're violating our fundamental values. Thank you. And you know, I say this all the time. On that day in January of 1990, when I was at the CIA with my right hand up in the air, swearing to uphold and protect the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I hate the thought that I was the only one who actually meant it. You know, we're either going to be a nation of laws or we're not, but we can't pretend
[1:07:55] to be and then break the law and expect everybody to just look away. Yeah. Tortures of the, they specifically singled out in the eighth amendment. Listen, we executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs in the Second World War. That was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody in, in January of 1968, the Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding in North Vietnamese prisoner on the day that that picture was published.
[1:08:25] Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense ordered an investigation. The soldier was arrested. He was charged with torture, convicted and sentenced to 20 years at Leavenworth. The law never changed. We changed. We changed because everybody went crazy. So how is it that this is a death penalty crime in 1946, that it's worthy of 20 years and a penitentiary in 1968, but then in 2002 it's somehow magically legal?
[1:08:56] 9-11. And then there we betray our values because I don't think we, what it seems to me is like tortures are necessary. It's unnecessary. It doesn't work. And if anything, it's the best recruiting tool that our enemies have. I was on this awful Laura Ingram show on Fox one time and she says to me, you seem like a nice enough guy, but I really hate your position on this. I just think you're wrong. And I said, listen, Laura, if you want to torture people, that's fine.
[1:09:28] That's on you, but you got to change the law, right? If you want to have torture as part of your policy arsenal, then have the guts to go to Capitol Hill and say, I want to make torture legal. Why will nobody do that? Yeah. We fought a revolution over it. This is the system we've given ourselves. Yeah. I mean the crowd just used to torture the hell out of people. I remember going to the, it was at the Tower of London and there's that hill where they used to execute people on the top. And they told me that you had to say, you had to thank the king.
[1:10:00] You know right before you get a kid you had to thank the king, you know for being so great and meeting up justice Or they would kill your entire family. Oh my right. It's just like it's and it's really just goes to this primal brutality It's not it's not any rational thing yet They like if you ask them, I think their theory of punishment or what like what they wouldn't be able to be coherent about it Because it's it's not rational. It's just this like Primal yeah, or just a higher for vengeance. Yeah, decide. Yeah, it wasn't what you just say beware of anyone in whom the desire to punish is strong
[1:10:35] Yeah, you know like and like you expose the constitutional violation and you're the one going to all the people doing it Yeah, no, they all got off scot-free. Yeah, there were 14 of us who were Invited to undergo torture training at the CIA of the 14. I was the only one who said no I said I have a serious moral and ethical problem with this and I think it's illegal They had torture training. Oh, yeah
[1:11:05] Yeah, what was like the syllabus for that like that's like what are they? Oh, you start with what was called the attention grasp Which is where you grab somebody by the lapels and give them a shake And then it went to the belly slap which is an open-handed smack in the belly It makes a cracking sound and it stings and leaves a little handprint then the facial slap and then it went all the way up to Walling which is where you slim somebody's head against the wall and waterboarding and sleep
[1:11:36] Deprivation and the cold cell and and then here we start, you know doing these things and we're like whoops Killed the prisoner. Sorry my bad. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, just bury him outside Nobody ever was prosecuted for that. We killed six people in those torture sessions Nobody was ever prosecuted the Justice Department never said we could murder people like that in cold blood Yeah, there goes to process, right? There goes to process. Yeah I've said this for years and I've said it publicly many times
[1:12:07] Including in an interview in an interview with the BBC If I was a beta and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Ramsey been a ship and up to the Hemanashiti and all these other guys at Guantanamo If they are the bad Monsters that we say they are Then let them face their accusers in the court of law before a jury of their peers Just because we don't like their politics doesn't mean that they don't get the same rights that everybody else does again We're either a nation of laws or we're not Yeah, one or the other
[1:12:38] Yeah, yeah, but like after 9-11 everybody lost their mind. I was in New York that day You know, I remember thinking crazy stuff on that day. I remember thinking. Oh my god. Did they have any idea what they've done? Yeah, yeah, I said to my she was my girlfriend at the time. She became my wife I said do you have any idea how many millions of people are gonna die for this? Yeah, and that's what happened I guess what happened, you know cuz you know what we've made Iraq, right? Were you an expert in Iraq too, right? Yeah, that was my specialty at the agency. Yeah, that must have been
[1:13:11] What did you think when we after 9-11 when we just decided we decided okay? We're not gonna. Well, I'll tell you a funny story about that I had gotten back from Pakistan and on I was the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan Yeah, you did you read did you lead raids? I read on the other day Was you in them or you just you were like the head of them like oh, no We were busting down doors with battering rams and everything. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, but something we're gonna punish you for this interview But like you did all this for our country said said any evidence of previous heroism is irrelevant. Those were her exact words
[1:13:43] Wow, yeah, wow She didn't she didn't give a shit at all. No, she did right now. Wow. So why she's so bitter I know like she's like something really bitter. Oh, she's an awful awful. Yeah little you should say all this like a prison guard in a row so on the strength of the app is way to capture I got promoted and I became the the deputy director of operations Executive assistant, but you should have because I was a man. I was a third in line in Al Qaeda. Yeah, so My first day on the job. I was like, okay, what are we doing? He said, you know what?
[1:14:16] I can't tell you yet. You have to go up to the seventh floor and sign a bunch of secrecy agreements and then Come back down. We'll talk about what we're gonna do. I said, okay so I go upstairs and They have all these six secrecy agreements laid out I have to sign each one saying, you know, until the day I die. I'll take these secrets to my grave I'll never speak of them. So I sign all six and I'm like, okay. What's up? I'm excited, right? Yeah, what's up? What are we doing? The guy takes a deep breath and he says
[1:14:48] Early next year we are going to invade Iraq We're gonna overthrow Saddam Hussein and we're gonna open the world's largest Air Force base so that we can move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia and Deprive Osama bin Laden of the ability to say that we're polluting the land of the two holy mosques Damn, I was so dumbfounded That I said like all I could think to even blurt out. I said, but we haven't caught bin Laden yet
[1:15:20] And he says John the decision has been made. It's gonna happen And he went on to say There are two sides on this and and this is what took up most of my time over the next year The pro-invasion side was The office of the vice president Cheney, uh-huh the office of the secretary of defense OSD Don Rumsfeld and the National Security Council the anti-invasion faction was
[1:15:54] The office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Interesting which should say a lot. Yeah, yeah the CIA and The State Department It's kind of odd that we're invading a Shi'i country for an act of Sunni terrorism I thought that seemed to me imagine and I'll tell you another thing I was George Tenet's morning intelligence briefer for that year So I get to the office to 45 every day in the morning to 45 every day for a year six days a week and
[1:16:25] Go through literally 10 to 12,000 cables that had come in overnight I'd pair them down to about a half a dozen and then brief George on those six most Important issues that were so important that day that he had to know because then he was gonna go to the White House 30 minutes later and brief the president so The day before the invasion of Iraq We're doing a secure video teleconference and I'm the note taker
[1:16:56] So George is at the head of the table and I'm sitting directly behind his right shoulder taking notes and on all the screens Are what are called the principles the members of the principles committee? so the meeting was chaired by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice was there and Colin Powell was there and General I forget who it was from sent com was there and the head of NSA general I don't even remember his name anymore, but everybody is represented there and then the national security staff the senior director for Iraq and the senior director for the Persian Gulf
[1:17:31] so Cheney starts off and says you know general whatever his name was sent com commander. Why don't you start us off at the briefing and Again George is just sitting there at the table with his arms crossed and the sent com commander Says well Elements of this unit are moving here and elements of this unit are moving there And we have this division that's here and the first Army Corps is moving there and blah blah blah
[1:18:03] Order of battle they call it and Then he says if all goes as planned Now this was the day before the Iraqi invasion. So this is like March whatever it was He says if all goes as planned we can be in Tehran by August And George like I say he's just sitting there like a statue He leans forward. He turns off his microphone and he turns to me and says Did he say Tehran or did he say Baghdad?
[1:18:34] Yeah, and I said he said Tehran and he says have these people lost their minds and Then he turns the microphone back on and just Folds his hands and sits there So at the end of the meeting I go back to the deputy director's office, and I said did you know we were going to invade Iran and He goes ooh Are they still talking about that? Wow, and I said yeah, I said general what's his face?
[1:19:05] Said we could be in Tehran by by August and he goes we're not gonna invade Iran He said these guys don't know the first thing about the Middle East Nothing one of these idiots. He was the senior director at the NSE Said giddily in that same meeting as soon as we cross the border. They're gonna throw flowers at us Sort of like Russia's invasion of Ukraine exactly all right exactly You know I had a degree in Middle Eastern studies at the time
[1:19:35] I had lived in the Middle East for five years, and I'm like you guys are the policymakers. You don't know anything about the Arabs Nothing, and you speak Arabic too, right? Oh sure. Yeah, beautiful. I would it is Wow. Oh, yeah, it was bad. It was really bad Wow, I couldn't stand any of those Bush neocons. They were all nuts. I was a wolf away Oh, yeah. And now like the worst after Trump, Cheney seems like, like, like, I'm almost like,
[1:20:07] the voice of reason. I'm like, yeah, what do you think? Oh, man, man, oh, man, oh, man. So, I mean, it's basically like everything that people cynically thought on the left was kind of true. It sounds like those guys, right? It was all true. And it was a mess. And remember, through that whole period, we're still fighting a completely separate war in Afghanistan. Which we needed to go with. Which was a righteous war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we needed to go with that, I think, yeah. Yes, I agree.
[1:20:37] But it was like that, but that they took it so fast at like to a place of their own self-interest or whatever their. Well, there's kind of a famous story about Richard Perl, if you remember Richard Perl. Richard Perl was one of the original neocons. He never changed his party affiliation from Democrat, right, lifelong Democrat. He was a top foreign policy advisor to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Oh yeah, it was like Senator Moynihan from New York. He's a legend in New York, yeah. Well, there's this famous story that on September 12th, Perl was at the White House telling Cheney's aides,
[1:21:09] you know we have to invade Iraq, right? Like, 9-11 had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. But Perl saw his opening and man, he ran with it. Yeah, and you just, the way you just have to, I mean, I'm not an expert in the Middle East, but I know the Sunni Shi'i split, right? And like- And Saddam Hussein, as bad as he was, was a bulwark against Iranian expansionism. Yeah. You know, at the CIA, and you know, this is probably a violation of international law too,
[1:21:40] but the CIA position was, if we can overthrow Saddam Hussein, we need to replace him with a Sunni general, right? A Sunni general who is going to incorporate Shia Muslims into the government, where Saddam oppressed them, just so we could have somebody to keep the Iranians at bay. Meanwhile, the CIA set up the whole Iranian problem with their coup, it was at Mogad- Mossadik. Mossadik, yeah, and Mossadik in 52, 53 or whatever. Bob Shear told me, yeah, 53?
[1:22:13] Bob Shear told me a fantastic story. When he was a young go-getter journalist at the LA Times, he was fascinated by this story of the overthrow of Mossadik in Iran. And everybody knew that it was Kermit Roosevelt, the son of Theodore Roosevelt, who had actually done the overthrow. He was a senior CIA officer. The son of Theodore Roosevelt was named Kermit. Kermit, yeah, Kermit. And so nobody had ever interviewed Kermit Roosevelt. So, Bob told me he found a Washington DC phone book,
[1:22:45] found Kermit Roosevelt. He was like 80-something years old, living in some nursing home here in Washington, and he called him and said, hey, would you sit for an interview for the Los Angeles Times? I want the whole story about the overthrow of the Iranian government. And Roosevelt gave it to him. It was his first big scoop. And Roosevelt said that he'd had a long life and a long CIA career, and that was the only decision that he ever regretted. He said it was the worst mistake he had ever made in his life. He was agreeing to overthrow the Iranian government.
[1:23:17] And here we are, what, 70 years later. We're still paying for it. And we still haven't recovered from it. Yeah, yeah, because the Shah was quite the, I lived in Iran for like a year when I was a kid. I was like five or six right before the revolution. So I remember, that's what was my first memories of the Shah and how like just over the top he was. And then, yeah, that's crazy what we did there. And like, because he basically nationalized the oil companies is what he did. And we did it as a favor to the British.
[1:23:48] Because the Americans weren't losing any money from the nationalization of Iranian oil. It was BP. BP had that concession that they were gonna lose. So the British, MI6 came to us and asked us, will you overthrow the Iranian government for us? Because we're gonna lose our shirts on this oil deal. And we did it. And most people are, like in Britain, our, their pensions are invested in BP oil. Oh sure. I remember when that, the golf, the BP golf.
[1:24:20] Yeah, they all went broke. They all went broke. But that's, I didn't know that. And you got on time, were you okay? Or we could rap or whatever you want. I'm happy to. I was supposed to go to the, to the Belmarsh Tribunal. But I think it's over in like 20 minutes. I'm happy to like, just like put on a closer for this. And then, and, and because this is great. I feel like we've got a lot of stuff. Thank you. I appreciate it. So let me just pause for a second and I'll give a closer. Thanks. John, I've really, really enjoyed this.
[1:24:53] And I really. The pleasure is mine. This is a lot of fun. I'm so glad we connected on Twitter. Yeah, this is what. Glad we got the chance to do this. I gotta tell you a funny story. The person who sent that, it was somebody on Twitter. I will go, I will go find their name because I want to give him a shout out. It was like, you know, torn John, you guys should talk, right? And I thought, John, I thought that the, it was on your podcast. You had some, I was like really paying attention, right? And then I'm like emailing with you. And I was, oh, John thinks he's gonna interview me. He'll be interviewed by me on my podcast. And I don't have a podcast. Oh, neither do I. So you are the first guest on our first podcast
[1:25:26] because I was like, there is no way. I am missing this opportunity. Oh, thank you. I had no idea. I don't have a podcast either. This is great. I am so, so glad we did this. And I'm here, I'm admiring your very sophisticated equipment and everything. Well, I've just, I record a lot like, and stuff. And I've like, you know, kind of like in false launches before, but this is a great way to launch it. I hope that we can come back and talk to you again. Because, oh, I look forward to that. You've got such a rich body of experience. We've just like, just touched the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, we jumped around from one good topic to another.
[1:25:59] There's a lot to talk about. John, thank you again. Thank you. And I look forward to future conversations. Oh, it'll be fun. Thanks. Well, that's it for this inaugural edition of In Limine. Thank you for listening. Before we go, I'd like to give a shout out to our law firms associate Michael Hazard for being such a trooper and helping out with this. And I'd also like to give a shout out to James Brown, if that is your real name, from Twitter
[1:26:30] for tweeting at both John and I and getting us together. James, thanks a lot. Was it really a lot of fun? And I think you've launched a podcast here. I'm now going to go through my Rolodex and reach out to some of the people I've had the privilege to meet over my last decade of practice in this space and hopefully have some more interesting conversations. If you like what you heard, you can subscribe at torechlund.substack.com.
[1:27:02] That's just spelled T-O-R-E-K-E-L-A-N-D. If you want to look up information on our law firm, you can find that at www.torechlund.com. I hope you don't need us because it means you're probably in trouble with the feds. But if you are in trouble with the feds, give us a ring. Until next time, thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.