[00:00] two planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center I think we're under attack I need $10 million weapons ammunition when he asked you to hold his hand is there some sort of empathy and war that comes out that nobody discusses a great question I just got approached and asked if I wanted to be certified in these enhanced interrogation techniques 92 other te that are said to show Abu
[00:31] zubeda and abdal nashiri being waterboarded were destroyed and he got up from his desk and he whispered in my ear kill them all what year did you get home from Greece was it 2000 summer of 2000 okay so 911 happens obviously in 2001 yep where were you 911 happened I was at CIA headquarters um you know this the story's kind of
[01:03] quaint now after all these years and and all that has happened over the course of all these years um the on the morning of 911 I was supposed to go to the White House with uh ker black who was the director of the cia's counterterrorism center we had a meeting scheduled with condesa rice who was the National Security adviser at the time on a on an issue related to Greek terrorism and so so um I got a call at my desk uh saying that the
[01:35] driver was uh was ready to take us down to the White House so I walked over to cofer's office to tell him that the driver was ready and his secretary had a TV on her desk now they're on every computer but back then it was kind of unusual to have a TV and she had a she had a TV on and one of the towers of the World Trade Center was burning and I said what happened to the World Trade Center and she said plane flew into it and I naively said you know that
[02:05] happened once before in 1932 a bomber flew into the Empire State Building but it was really foggy then it's so Crystal Clear today like how can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center and just as I said those words the second plane hit and then she turned to me I was standing behind her she turned to me and she said did you see that or did I imagine it and I ran back to my office and I said guys
[02:35] two planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center I think we're under attack so everybody ran back up to the front office now cofer's office had TVs mounted above the door like CNN MSNBC Fox BBC Russian Iranian whatever Chinese and um and they were all starting to switch over to El feed silence and I mean there were you know 150 200 people just standing there staring at the TVs in silence and then
[03:08] finally somebody shouts will somebody please lead and then kofer snapped back into you know real life and said you uh go to the director's office you go to security you talk to this guy you um finally a cop came in to the it to the office and said we're evacuating headquarters everybody get out nobody budged and then an hour later he came back and said if you don't evacuate you'll be arrested which they
[03:41] meant so I mean talk about chaos we all evacuated um I got about halfway home I lived about I lived about five or six miles from headquarters I got about halfway and I just couldn't get any closer to my place so I just abandoned my car on the side of the highway um my then what was she girlfriend she became my wife uh met me at my place we walked
[04:12] to the roof of my building we watched the Pentagon burn and um we tried to donate blood but the lines were so long we just couldn't and um and then I said to her this is ridiculous we got to get back to work so we walked back to my car and I made a u-turn on the the grassy median and we went back to headquarters and then I didn't leave headquarters for another four days I just slept under the desk and we got a bolt cutters and we we cut the chain on the cafeteria doors and
[04:44] we took all the food and cooked the food and then laid it out on tables in the hallway we ended up writing a check to the Marriott for 10 or 15,000 bucks we we stripped the place yeah yeah but you know the story really begins a little earlier than that I was working on Greek terrorism and on um training so on July the 6th 2001 I remember it like it was yesterday I had a visiting delegation of
[05:16] Intelligence Officers from the Middle East and so my job was to welcome them at the airport take them to their hotel they get freshened up take them to CIA headquarters they have a full day of briefing we exchange gifts I take them to the director's office for a handshake and a photo then I take them to uh uh a steakhouse that night and then back to the airport the next day so they come in and I set up the full day of briefings
[05:48] and I got some Junior analyst to come and talk to us about Al-Qaeda I didn't know anything about alqaeda I was so focused on European terrorism so um this is 20 000 2001 July the 6th so instead of this junior analyst coming kofer black came along with the chief of operations for the Osama Bin Laden Group and I was like oh oh I said kofer I said gentlemen this is Ambassador
[06:20] kofer black he's the director of counterterrorism for the CIA and this is our chief of operations for the Osama Bin Laden Group I was like so shocked to see them and they sit down and cover starts and he says something terrible is going to happen we don't know exactly what and we don't know where but we know it's going to be something on a scale that we've never seen before he said we're picking up chatter with code words for a massive
[06:51] attack the honey salesman is coming with great quantities of honey there's going to be a massive wedding uh there's going to be a great soccer match they're all codes for an attack he said we're hearing Al-Qaeda Camp commanders talking to their students and they're crying on the phone and saying I'll see you in Paradise so he said I beg you gentlemen if you have any sources inside
[07:23] alqa please help us they all just sat there because they weren't focused on Al-Qaeda either right so at the end of the day I took him back to the hotel there were a few hours we had uh before uh dinner and I went back to Ker's office to thank him and I said kofer I got to ask you was that just for their benefit or were you serious he said oh I'm deadly serious he said something terrible is going to happen I said that briefing scared the hell out of
[07:54] me well that was July 6th September 11th it happens and I said to the there was a guy I sat next to really great guy I said this is what he was talking about in July this is it the thing is is we never expected it to happen here we expected maybe another American Embassy someplace a US military base a hijacking we didn't expect they would attack us right here but they did and so literally
[08:26] everything changed that day and it's never returned to the pre- 911 way of life yeah so kofer he was the head of the the counterterrorism center at the time right um I might butcher this quote but I think the the context is briefing the president on the cia's plan to invade Afghanistan and Bush said something along the lines of how long is it going to take and kofer said within a matter of weeks flies will be walking on the eyeballs of your enemies Mr President that's right which is a [ __ ] badass
[08:57] quote he meant business too yeah he did he meant it so long-winded way of asking um what did you learn from kofer black you know CF black went on to be the vice president of Blackwater and he took some uh very controversial uh positions positions um that I personally wouldn't have taken and I probably disagree with his politics although I don't really know what his politics are but with that said kofer black was a god
[09:28] inside the CIA I had nothing but the highest possible respect for him um and he was a good guy like he was replaced by a monster by a by a psychopathic murderous monster Jose yes but kofer was a genuinely good guy who wanted to serve his country and wanted to do the right thing and um and wanted to avenge the deaths of 3,000 Americans
[09:59] you you know he he took 911 very very personally he saw this as his own personal failing and it was something that we had to we had to atone for you know when I was finally leaving for Pakistan um I went over to his office to to say goodbye and um and he got up from his desk and he shook my hand and and he whispered in my ear kill them all and I said really are we really there
[10:31] already he came out to Pakistan while I was there with Jose Rodriguez I was their control officer and just to give you an idea of the difference between the two men we went to see oh my God we went to see the Pakistani intelligence service courtesy call and I was dealing with these guys 20 hours out of the day most of them were Lieutenant Colonels Colonels a couple of Brigadier generals and
[11:01] so I hope I'm not speaking out of out of school but kofer loved to he loved the Pakistani accent so he would talk like this all the time sir you are I am loving you too much Mr Goofer your good man you know and so one of the things that Pakistani say all the time is when the when you and I would say oh there was a it was just huge you know thing or an issue or big
[11:32] Scandal they would say that was a great human cry and Ker's like wait a minute wait a minute are you saying there was a great Hue and cry and they're like yes sir not just the Hue is what you're saying it was the Hue and the cry and they're looking at each other like what is he talking about and he's like I love doing that to them I love it it's so much fun and then I took him we had a safe house uh that we shared with the
[12:03] pakistanis and we had captured this guy this bad bad guy and he was so dangerous that we didn't dare put him in the jail with all the other Al-Qaeda prisoners so we chained him up in this Safe House in a bedroom so I'm telling kofer I said listen while you were on the plane on the way over we caught soand so he's like you're kidding me I said' no we caught him we busted down the door and we grabbed him he goes where is he I said he's actually upstairs do you want to see him he goes
[12:35] you know I've never met an actual Al-Qaeda guy so I said let's go see him this is probably a violation of some Red Cross regulation or something but I took him up there I unlock the door the guy pops up out of bed and he's chained both both his ankles and his hands and he's chained to the bed but enough wiggle room that you can move around and you know stretch or whatever so he jumps up
[13:05] and I said Mr Ahmed mahmed this is this is Mr kofer Black of the Central Intelligence Agency and kofer nods and the guy nods and kofer says are you getting enough food and the guy goes yes sir are you sleeping sleeping well he yes sir are they treating you well he said
[13:35] yes sir they are okay then good luck and we left and I locked the door and he goes that was so cool I've never met an Al-Qaeda terrorist I've spent years chasing them I take kofer back to the uh to the Embassy I go back to the safe house again to interrogate the guy and he's like sir I have have to thank you so much for bringing Amnesty International to come and check on my I said I I to
[14:08] myself I was like I didn't say he was from Amnesty International I said he was from the Central Intelligence Agency but the guy heard Amnesty International and I go we're not animals we're treating you with respect he's like thank you sir thank you thank you so much but then then there was Jose so with with kofer we're just having a grand old time and the pakistanis love him and we love him and we had this big banquet to
[14:41] celebrate his he had just been named Ambassador uh for uh Ambassador at large for counterterrorism and Jose was going to take his position Jose never spoke a word and then Jose um says to me you like this job and I said I do actually as stressful as it is and as long as the hours are this is the best job I've ever had in my life it was the most rewarding you know I'm not exaggerating when I when I say we would work 20 hour days it
[15:12] and that was quite common in fact my first pay period the twoe pay period I sent in my cable saying I got my 80 hour pay period and here's my overtime that you have to document by the hour so I had 80 hours of regular pay and 110 hours of over time yeah 110 hours of overtime when I returned I had my regular salary I had perdum I had danger pay I had overtime and I had Arabic
[15:44] language differential so I went home and I bought a house I bought a house with my with my money that I saved just in six months in Pakistan damn yeah so Jose is like you like this job I said yes the best job I ever had yeah good because you're going to stay for another tour like oh okay guess I'll postpone my wedding [Music] then so last thing before we get into Pakistan um I know you mentioned briefly
[16:17] Carlos The Jackal before um that made me think of you yes Billy W just died yeah he was 98 years old Billy was an absolute legendary figure Billy W was a was a member of the special forces the military Special Forces he had served in um wow uh Korea Vietnam Grenada you name it and he had more than a dozen purple hearts he had pretty much every medal short of the Congressional Medal of
[16:48] Honor that anybody can be awarded um and the funny thing about Billy genuinely nice guy never got married never had children his life was the military and then when he was two to serve he became a CIA contractor and he could do anything surveillance weapons instruction whatever you wanted him to do he would do so Billy and I um were paired up in the summer of 2000 we did a thing together in the Middle East that lasted a couple of months and just hit it
[17:20] off and so he told me this story that at first I didn't believe and then kofer confirmed it to me later and since then it's appeared in books kofer was the CIA station Chief in carum Sudan which is a godforsaken armpit of the world and Billy was there doing whatever it was that Billy was doing probably surveillance but you know Billy was one of these guys that just went from
[17:51] country to Country to Country whenever somebody needed something they would fill in the gaps so it's Billy's day off and he's down in the vegetable market where he's you know the only white guy in the cartoon vegetable market and he sees another white guy and he says to the other CIA contractor that he's with that's Carlos The Jackal well Carlos The Jackal of course had killed dozens of people in an airport attack in Vienna
[18:24] and he blew up a train uh and a train station in France and killed a bunch of cops and this this was wanted terrorist number one of the 1970s his name was was ilich Ramirez Sanchez he was a Venezuelan National but known by the numer Carlos The Jackal and he was a a weapons uh expert and had ready access because he had relationships with Outlaw Nations like the libyans the Iraqis back
[18:58] in the 70s you know the North Koreans he's he's a bond villain is what he was that's what it comes down to really so Billy says that's Carlos to Jackal ah get the [ __ ] out of here Billy goes back to the Embassy goes to K's office cofer's on an elliptical machine he says what's up Billy Billy says kofer I know you're not going to believe me but I saw Carlos The Jackal he's like yeah you're right I don't believe you he said kofer I'm telling
[19:28] you I know what Carlos looks like I saw Carlos The Jackal he saidwell if it was Carlos The Jackal then we're going to have to find him so Billy went back to the vegetable market every single day for a month and finally after a month he sees Carlos again and he takes pictures click click click click click click click click click sends the pictures to headquarters oh it's Carlos The Jackal
[20:00] but this time Billy had followed him home so now at least we knew where he was you know I I think that the actual details of the capture are still classified the bottom line is they came up with an absolutely brilliant idea that would never have occurred to me and they lured him they lured him to a doctor's
[20:31] office on false pretenses where he was sedated and when he woke up he was on a French military flight back to Paris to face murder charges wow M I did not know that that's awesome it's an incredible story and he's telling me this story I'm like get the [ __ ] out of here he said I'm serious I caught him I said Carlos The Jackal The Most Wanted terrorist in world history until Osama Bin Laden he goes
[21:02] yeah he's buying cabbages wow it was just one of those things y Billy was legendary I ran into him in the hallway about six weeks after 911 and he just disappeared on 911 and in the meantime I'm going into C's depuy's office like every day you got to send me to Afghanistan you got to send me to Afghanistan I was one of only 16 Arabic speakers in the entire CIA at the time you got to send me to
[21:33] Afghanistan and they kept brushing me off so I run into Billy in the hallway and I was like Billy I said where you been and he looks around he goes been in Afghanistan I said yeah what are you doing in Afghanistan and he goes I've been killing people what do you think I've been doing and I said well that's why they're not sending me cuz I was always the good cop I was the lingu and they're not interviewing anybody they're not interrogating anybody
[22:04] they're putting bullets in their brains they didn't need me so I got mad I went into cover's deputy's office who was an old boss of mine I really liked him and I said man if you don't send me to Afghanistan right now I am going to quit and I'm going to walk straight to Exxon and I'm going to take my Arabic with me and I am not looking back he's like relax okay can you go to Pakistan I said said yes when he says tomorrow I saides what do you want me to do there he said uh chief of counterterrorism operations
[22:35] I said done so I called my girlfriend I said I got to go to Pakistan tomorrow she said okay for how long I said I don't know maybe a year I'm not sure she goes okay I'll meet you at your apartment I'll help you pack so she helped me pack and uh the next day I I flew to Pakistan so um yeah let's get into what you were doing in Pakistan but I just I have a question on so what is our relationship with the
[23:07] pakistanis and the reason I ask is because we found Bin Laden at their [ __ ] West Point equivalent yep and uh Rasheed Ralph yep the guy who was going to blow up a bunch of airlines with explosives and soft drink bottles mysteriously escaped from their custody and terrorism charges were drops what is our relationship with them our relationship with Pakistan is very very complicated I've I've always maintained that there are two separate
[23:41] Pakistani intelligence Services I mean there aren't it's one isi but in reality it's two on the one hand you have a whole bunch of guys who were all trained at Sandhurst the British Military Academy they all speak English like you and I do they love the United States many many of them vacation here they want their kids to go to school in the United States and they would do literally anything for the CIA they were the only ones that would do our
[24:11] operations without wearing bulletproof vests M and then there are the other guys with the long beards and the short shaar kamis giving you the stink eyee putting Bin Laden up in ababat right in the middle of West Point mm shooting uh shooting at uh westerners and not doing follow-up investigations when other people shoot
[24:42] at westerners two very very different strains inside that that intelligence service and I'll add another thing it's not even that clearcut as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are look at look at the Taliban the word Taliban is the plural of the word Talib Talib in both uh pashu and Arabic means student right so Taliban is students
[25:14] plural in the 1990s the early 1990s Pakistani trucks on their way from Pakistan to Iran were getting hijacked in Afghanistan cuz it was chaos in Afghanistan right nobody was in charge it was just a big mess and so Benazir BH who was the pro-american Prime Minister of Pakistan uh said we're going to do something about all these truck truck
[25:45] hijackings we need to protect the trucks I have an idea she says why don't we go to the madrasas the religious schools in Pakistan will take these these Afghan Taliban the Afghan students who were studying they ran away from Afghanistan will take these Taliban out of the madrasas and we'll have them sit in the trucks with the truck drivers so if somebody tries to hijack the truck they can protect the cargo and the driver so they started doing that and
[26:16] that made it easier trucks weren't getting hijacked and then she said you know what might even be better is if we take these Taliban and we put them in villages all along the truck routes that way they don't have to drive back and forth and back and forth and they could just protect the trucks along the routs and then we'll give them weapons and money so they can protect themselves and the next thing you know she created the [ __ ]
[26:48] Taliban and then she lost control of it and it took the whole country and then it let Al-Qaeda come in and the rest is history it was an accident it was poor policy planning and we're still paying the price yeah I I will admit to a bias that I have too you know I read the Washington Post every day the New York Times The Wall Street Journal I read all the big papers because I have a radio show every day and you have to be informed every day I see these op-eds
[27:19] and editorials like oh my God the plight of Afghan women oh my God the girls can't go to school and the women are veiled they chose that the Taliban didn't come from outer space and land in Afghanistan these are the Fathers and Sons and cousins and nephews and children of all these oppressed Afghan women they had 20 years to decide what they wanted and this is what they
[27:50] decided so why don't we just walk away this was their decision that's it yeah I guess we could just try to shove democracy down their throats right exactly when they've never asked for it yeah and then we're going to take a restaurant owner from Baltimore and make him the president of Afghanistan thank you very much yeah so your first day in
[28:23] Pakistan um what was the job description and how did you get started well there was no job description there was there there hadn't been a chief of counterterrorism operations there which just flabbergasted me really yeah it was all so new 911 had just happened and so we were caught flat-footed and remember the terrorists were in Afghanistan they weren't in Pakistan at least they
[28:55] weren't supposed to be so I get there my flight arrives at 4:00 in the morning so I'm pretty dog on tired and the driver says listen I'll pick you up at 7 I said please pick me up at 8 please I'm going to die today with no sleep he picks me up at 8 takes me in I go to meet the chief who I had known vaguely from from the farm and I meet the deputy chief and um they sit me down they say here's what we want you to do
[29:26] first thing is we want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down a terrorist safe house I said that's it that's it I said you guys don't do this no but we're g to we're going to start I said okay I had never taken down a terrorist safe house before right and not to to cut you off but why wouldn't why wouldn't the agency have the ground Branch guys do that or cuz the ground Branch guys only know how to kill people seriously so sorry ground
[29:58] Branch guys you're great at what you do but the idea was to take people alive what about what about okay so Abu we'll get into this I don't want to get ahead of it but he was the number three in al-Qaeda at the time or we believed he was what what about jok what about one of the Special Operations unit Why have a [ __ ] case officer and not to say that you're not smart and capable you're completely correct yes why not because it was chaos in Washington chaos listen on 9111 as I was driving back I saw the White House
[30:30] senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs walking with no shoes to try to get to a Subway to get home that's what kind of chaos there was in Washington when those shoes this is number four guy in the National Security Council and he's like I better get the [ __ ] out of here I I don't even have time to grab my shoes so John's going to sit down now with a legal pad and a pen and I remember actually sitting there like
[31:01] this thinking okay if I'm going to take down a terrorist Safe House how would I do that and I said well I would want it to be dark I wouldn't want anybody to see me or at least not to see me gearing up for it so I wrote 0200 at the top of the page and I thought well I need guns and ammunition bulletproof vests maybe some night vision goggles yeah
[31:33] holsters secure comms walkie talkies at least so I wrote all this crap down and uh because I mean you have to think bureaucratically too 911 is an open criminal investigation which as much as it was a punch in my gut to admit it meant that the FBI had the lead and this is the Pakistani country so we need to pretend like they're in charge so you got to have a team that included an FBI agent and a
[32:06] Pakistani right and then you need surveillance and you need Security on top of it so the pakistanis called me and said hey we have an address we think there might be somebody at this address I said okay let's let's do this as a test run let's meet up at 1:00 at the safe house we'll go over to the place to the address at 2:00 we'll bust down the door and we'll see who's inside okay it was all practice so it's
[32:38] me an FBI agent a Pakistani colonel colonel colonel T who was just the greatest I love the guy and um and we had a surveillance and security team behind us like half a block behind us so I had had ordered some battering rams we had we had a battering ram you can just get them out of the police supply catalog galls.com gs.com you can buy anything your heart desires so uh we go one two three broke
[33:15] the door down splintered the door we run in it's these two kids I say kids they were both 18 years old from Tunisia they start crying we cough them behind their back one's got like snot coming down his nose one's asking if he can call his mom like no you can't call your mom so we take him and I said to Colonel Tark that was fraking easy that was easy it's the element of
[33:48] surprise he said yeah that was very easy I said okay well I'm going to be looking for information you look for information we'll try it again so then I got a call from the station chief of a friendly Arab service but this guy he was a general he was a brigadier general but he was a brigadier general who wore you know a leisure suit with a a flower and the
[34:18] lapel he wasn't interested in getting his fingernails dirty so he's like I have this address I'm like okay I'll take it so I took the address I said hey got this address told the packs let's move 2:00 in the morning we bust down the door we grab some guy from Egyptian Islamic Jihad now this is a serious like an aess terrorist group and he was groggy and it's the middle of the night and he's like you know who shot who in the what now that line from The Simpsons that I love so much and I
[34:48] said you know we're we're on to something here if it's going to be this easy you know it's just a question of developing the intelligence but the element of surprise is everything well Egyptian Islamic Jihad ended up merging with Al-Qaeda and Iman aahi the number two in al-Qaeda was the founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad they murdered president Sadat uhhuh in 1981 so headquarters is beginning to take
[35:21] note of these successes and they said how can we step this up and I said you know I've got an idea we've got officers all the way up and down the Pakistani Afghan Border in every little godforsaken village along the border why it's dangerous for them there's nobody to protect them we know that these Al-Qaeda guys are going to try to get into Pakistan because they
[35:52] think that it's safer in Pakistan in the meantime we're bombing the [ __ ] out of Afghanistan right tor Bora and everything so they're they're along the border trying to get into Pakistan I said let's pull everybody off the Border let's let them into Pakistan because you know they're going to make a mistake and then we raid the safe houses and we catch everybody at once instead of one guy here in this Village one guy there in that Village one guy in this other Village that's not cost
[36:24] effective so they said yeah let's try it so we pulled everybody back and we put them in you know Pasa rul pendy uh Islamabad feis labad laor Karachi qua every major city in Pakistan and it was a flood of al-Qaeda that came into Afghanistan or into Pakistan from Afghanistan a flood and sure enough what's the first thing they do they get cell phones and they call
[36:55] home and we say thank thank you for your locational information and then we bust down the door and grab dozens at a time and then it just got better from there and this was all happening very quickly I I'm saying like in this was all in a matter of like six weeks that we were able to step up our game to the point where we were catching so many people we actually filled the rubble pendy jail and then had to start moving them to Regional jails the jail was full
[37:26] wow MH so did you go to Pakistan with the direction of catching Abu AA because no okay no um I went to Pakistan with the object being to do as I was told and to make as big and as important a contribution as I was able whether that you know maybe I'm going to run into Bin Laden in the vegetable market I'm thinking right and
[37:56] then six weeks after I got there I got called in the weekend in Pakistan was Friday and Saturday Saturday was the only day I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping until 8 because you have to work seven days a week so it's like 6:00 in the morning on Saturday my phone rings it's the chief I was like oh man I feel like I just went to sleep and he says you got to come in right away something happened I said bad he said no but come so I speed over there it was the chief the
[38:27] Dead deputy chief chief Ops the FBI Chief and me and my chief says um we got a we got a cable from headquarters that abuaba is somewhere in the country and we have to capture him we have to take him alive everybody turns and looks at me I'm like great but in my mind I'm like Abu zubeda that name sounds vaguely
[38:59] familiar I went back into my office and all my Oldtimer contractors were there these was all old guys in their 60s 70s some were in their 80s they were all senior officers who had come back after 911 to volunteer and I said anybody know who Abu zubeda is and one of them like yeah I just read a piece about him in Time Magazine he's the number three in al-Qaeda I'm like right right that's where I know that name from I go well we got to catch him like are you serious I go yeah he's here somewhere we got to
[39:29] catch him so when everybody turned to look at me I go I go you guys I go this country is the size of Texas it's got 220 million people what do you mean catch him you got to narrow it down for me somehow and one of them says well he's he's constantly moving which makes it harder he's moving
[40:00] between between lore and faisalabad well later on the night we captured him we also captured his diary and he knew we were looking for him and so he was one day ahead of us like there were a couple times where we'd bust into a place and and there's a cigarette there that's still lit right or there's food that's still warm on the table we're like dang it close again but no cigar sometimes we were 2 days behind
[40:31] sometimes we were 15 minutes behind but he knew we were on him and we're chased them all over the dog on Country so I came up with a couple of just terrible ideas I won't waste your time terrible unworkable ideas to try to tighten the Noose a little bit and just not no there was no operation that I could conceive of on my own that was is going to find him so I said to the chief listen I need
[41:02] a I need a targeting analyst so a targeting analyst is different from the kind of analysis that I did the the analysis that I did was was political and social analysis where you you think the big thoughts you boil it down to a page or half page you send it to the president he reads it thank you very much a targeting analyst goes through reams of data sometimes Millions of pieces of data a lot of time just metadata so you're not reading newspaper articles
[41:33] and classified cables you're just looking at dots and dashes and ones and zeros to try to geolocate somebody who you want to either capture or kill so I said I've got a buddy at headquarters who's a a targeting analyst and and he's really good and I trust him this this operation was so highly classified that there were only a handful of us who knew not just that we were going after a senior
[42:04] alqa leader but that it was even abuu beta we never told the pakistanis who it was we said he was a big fish and so we ended up calling him Mr fish like we've located Mr Fish he's he's in this place but he just left you know we're going to chase Mr Fish over here we're going to chase Mr Fish to P so um so I I sent an email a classified email to my my friend and I said dude can you can you get to Pakistan like right now I
[42:36] said there's a major operation we'll read you into it when you get here I can't tell you who it is but I need your help and 24 hours later there he is I picked him up at the airport 4 o'clock in the morning and he's like what's up and I said we've got a lead on abua he's like oh my god you're kidding me I said no and we're freaking close but we can't quite get there and he goes I can find him so brought him into the uh station
[43:07] the next day and he signed all the secrecy agreements we gave him the full formal briefing and he took a piece a piece of Butcher Block paper um that was like the size of a small American billboard and um and he wrote Abu zubeda in the center and circle cled it and then around abuaba he wrote every piece of information that we
[43:38] had for people who had been in touch with abua whether it was by phone by email or if we had an address which was a little bit unusual now we had a couple of addresses but they they were um travel agencies because he was the logistics guy for kaaa if you needed a fake passport and a ticket home he was the guy that was going to get it for you he established al-qaeda's House Of Martyrs um Safe House in Pasa he created
[44:09] al-qaeda's two training camps in kahar and helmund uh provinces so he never actually joined Al-Qaeda but he was al-qaeda's goto logs guy so around that second ring he put a tertiary ring of everybody who was in touch with the people who were in touch with Abu zua and then made connections between the secondary and tertiary levels at the end of the week it looked like a spiderweb it was very pretty like
[44:40] like artistic and he comes to me to tell you the truth I couldn't make heads or Tales of this thing he had to explain it to me because it was very complicated and he said listen I'm just not able to get this down to any fewer than 14 sites I said dude it's not it's not workable we've never done more than two two raids before in a single night we can't hit 14 places simultaneously we don't have the men the men for it he's like I don't know what to do I just can't get it down
[45:11] to any fewer than 14 so I cable headquarters and I'm like I don't know what to do they said well what do you need in a perfect world tell us what you need so I said all right I need I need 36 people I need $10 million and I mean intelligence is a cash business um I need weapons ammunition battering rams bulletproof vests helmets walkie-talkies satellite connectivity
[45:43] with um with uh scrambling capability um and we're going to have to be generous with the pakistanis mhm I'm telling you within 48 Hours of had all of it and unmarked 737 lands at the airport and they just offload everything so the the Manpower was half CIA half FBI I drive down with a colleague I
[46:17] drive from from Islam Abad to fisel Abad and introduce myself to the pakistanis there and uh good guys they told me as soon as I walked in I said gentlemen so nice to meet you shake hands and uh the guy that I was assigned to deal with um a brigadier general General Muhammad he said your reputation precedes you he said my instructions are to do anything
[46:47] you tell me to do I said thank you I said we're going to have fun it's going to be fun and so um he said what do you need first I said I need a real estate agent because we need to make some purchases he said for what I said for safe houses big ones where we can do interrogations privately so we bought a 10 bedroom 10B mansion and we bought a seven bedroom SB
[47:19] Mansion one in one city one in the other and I paid cash for both of these houses um we bought a van uh we had all of our equipment we rented the entire floor of an A-list Hotel um so we could use that as our temporary base before we got our safe houses set up and we had we had enough weapons and ammunition to start a war it was
[47:49] ridiculous so this all ended up happening very quickly once we identified the the 14 sites it was just a question of getting everybody set up it only took but another two days and like I say we knew that he knew that we were on to him and so you know if I wait too long he might slip back into Afghanistan he might slip into Iran which is what two of Bin Laden's sons did um he might make his way out to
[48:22] Tajikistan usbekistan we didn't know so I had to get him while the getting was good and so my colleague and I decide to do a dry run while everybody's you know loading up and getting their body armor on we're like fill your bellies drink lots of coffee we're going to start looking at the uh the targets so we went to each one of the 14 targets that day we wanted to look for
[48:55] Ingress and egress we wanted to make sure we weren't going into an ambush or a setup you know if everything sort of turned to [ __ ] and somebody started firing at us we wanted to make sure that we had a way out or we could defend ourselves while we were looking for a way out almost all of these sites were just one or two room mud Huts or concrete block HS tin roofs um one of them was a shishkabob
[49:25] stand with a pay phone so we cut that site right away obviously there was al-Qaeda in the neighborhood and they were using the pay phone at the shishkabob stand to make calls but you can't raid the shishkabob stand at 2 o'clock in the morning it's closed so we cut that one then as we were going through the University of faisalabad campus to get to the back side of it the analyst called me and he said listen
[49:57] I just got a call from a friendly Western intelligence service and they said that they had a walk-in a walk-in is somebody who literally walks in off the street and says I have intelligence information I want to give to you but I want you to pay me for it 95 out of a hundred times they're either lunatics or probes like from the Iranians just to see how thick the glass is who has weapons where are the cameras
[50:30] set up they do that all the time scary so if they intend to attack the embassy they know where the vulnerabilities are yeah it's not good so they're either lunatics or probes or something called intelligence Peddlers where they'll go to the American Embassy and get $100 for the information then they'll go to the British the French the Canadians the this one the that one yeah that that's a year's salary right there so he says this Walkin says that there
[51:03] is a large brightly painted house that's full of al-Qaeda and I said okay I want to talk to the walk-in he said no can do I already asked they said he's not available which led me to believe that there was no walk-in that it was a telephone intercept and they didn't want to admit to us that it was a telephone intercept why not cuz they're trying to protect
[51:34] their own intelligence equities you know we share our intelligence with our friends but we don't share all of our intelligence with our friends just as I hung up the phone with him I was telling General Muhammad and my other colleague I said that was the analyst he said there's a big yellow house and it's right there and it's full of al-Qaeda and general Muhammad
[52:06] says I can tell you right now that something bad is happening in that house I said what makes you say that he said because it has to be 115° right now and all of the blinds are closed it has to be roasting in there and I said we need to put a big team on that one it turned out that there were more than two dozen Al-Qaeda fighters in that house wow hold up so that night at
[52:39] 10:00 I stood on the coffee table in the safe house and I said guys it was all guys except for one I said guys at the risk of sounding melodramatic we have to synchronize our watches like in the movies so we synchronized our watches right 10:00 check I said here's what we're going to do everybody's Gonna Leave Here everybody who's going to feot is going
[53:10] to leave here by bus you're going to arrive at midnight at 01:30 you leave for your Target site be in the neighborhood by 0150 0155 be in line of sight of the target 0158 get out of the car and exactly at 0200 break down the door and grab
[53:41] everybody inside right and I mean to the second which is why we synchronized our watches because we don't want them you know we're five minutes off and so they're going to call each other the Americans are coming right you can't risk that so almost all of the targets were in uh faisalabad so most of us got on the bus went to fisel laad everybody else remained in lore and
[54:12] um and my colleague and I climbed to the roof of the uh Safe House in F labad and I looked at my watch and I said 0200 here we go and just as I said the words we could hear this sound in the distance boink boink boink metal on metal loud and I said that's not good and then we heard shots fired and I said oh my
[54:42] God shots fired that's not good and then the walkietalkie starts crackling and the guy on the ground's like shots fired shot fired right well the the location that was nearest to us was the house where earlier in the day and I've skipped this story we believed that Abu zua might be in there do you want me to go back and tell
[55:14] you how we identified that house yeah yeah so after the big yellow house we only had one more site to go to and the analyst called me back and he said Abu just Abu Zeda just made a terrible mistake he said he downloaded his voicemail from a landline which you could do back then you call this number you press you know star to and you can listen to your voicemail on a
[55:47] landline and I said oh my God how could he make such a such an elementary mistake he said I don't know but man we have a physical address I said oh my god well the physical address was site 14 or 13 as it became so we rush over there so excited and it turns out it's an empty field just an empty field and I said no no this this has to be wrong this is a mistake we're sure
[56:19] that the call came from this site and general Muhammad says no he said this is quite common in p he said whenever a lot is divided into a legal subdivision each lot is assigned a telephone line even if there's no building on it and so what poor people do is they'll climb the telephone pole they'll splice the telephone wire that's assigned to
[56:53] the empty lot and they'll run a wire to their house so they can make calls and the phone bill goes to the owner of the lot and I said well how how do we find out where the wires going because it looks like Medusa's head up there right there had to be 500 wires coming out of that thing he calls this young technical officer from isi this kid climbs up the pole and he goes through the he goes
[57:25] through the wires you know like this well sorry and he finds this one wire and he follows the wire literally down the pole like this and then down the alley and he goes it's that house right there wow and see I got chills again thinking of it and my buddy and I high-fived each other cu the night before he said to me you think we're going to get him and I said no I think we're going to
[57:57] get somebody but I don't think we're going to get him he's been too smart so far so that night shots fired we race over to site 13 and it's chaos and man the last thing I said before everybody got on the bus is do not shoot our orders are to take him
[58:28] alive alive not shot half to death so we get there and it's it's it's Anarchy chaos there's a guy laying in the street who's clearly dead there's a guy laying next to him who looks like he's if he's not dead he's going to be dead in a couple of minutes and then there's a guy who is screaming bloody murder completely soaked in Blood and I've shown you the pictures I
[59:01] think so I go I go what happened here and one of the pakistanis one one of the packs who was on site a major he said we got him we got your man I said where right here and it was the middle guy the guy who looked like he was going to be dead in a couple minutes I'm like that that doesn't look anything at all like the picture we had a six-year-old passport picture I said this guy is 40 lbs heavier he's clean shaven he has crazy
[59:32] hair I this guy doesn't look anything like him so I I wasn't sure what to do so I call the analyst I'm like look they they shot somebody they say it's him I don't know if it's him it doesn't look like him at all what do I do he says get me a picture of his eye I'll run a retinal scan so I I kneel down on top of him and I shout if open your eyes and I get back
[1:00:02] on the phone I said dude he he's he's dead or almost dead his eyes are rolled back in his head and all I can see are the Whites so they had shot him in the thigh the groin and the stomach with an AK-47 he was jumping from the roof of the house to the roof of the next door house with these other two guys to try to escape and this Pakistani policeman shot all three of them with a name k-47 killed the first one instantly he was dead before he hit the ground shot the second guy three times and then shot the
[1:00:32] third guy through the leg so the analyst says get me a picture of his ear and I never knew that no two people on earth have the same ears it's like a fingerprint so I took a picture of his ear I plugged the the camera into my phone cuz phones didn't have cameras back then I sent it to him he sent it to headquarters headqu sends it back to him he calls me and he says it's him I'm like oh my God so we Commander this filthy Toyota pickup
[1:01:06] truck from this guy who's just happens to be driving by and we stop him we take him out we take his pickup truck we throw Abu Zeda in the back of the pickup truck and we speed to the hospital faisalabad international hospital the worst place place on Earth that I've ever seen in my life cats and dogs just walking up and down the Halls clouds of mosquitoes
[1:01:38] feeding on people's open wounds absolutely disgusting I would rather be dead than to have to be operated on and recover in a place like this so here by now it's like 3:00 in the morning and all the Americans come in dressed as pakistanis with an Arab who's bleeding to death from gunshot wounds and I said to the doctor hey
[1:02:09] you've got to save this guy because my orders were to take him alive and he's like I don't know what to do oh my God it's like no you got surgery to do so get cracking so they take him in and we sit down in the waiting room it's like four of us well word got around the al-Qaeda community that we had gotten him and so these Al-Qaeda guys began driving by the hospital and just opening fire on
[1:02:42] the hospital as they're driving by and we're hitting the ground and I said to I said to excuse me Colonel Tark I said if they realize how lightly armed we are we're dead can you get a helicopter in here and he said I think so so he calls 20 minutes later a helicopter lands in the parking lot so I I put my shirt up over
[1:03:12] my mouth and I walked into the operating room and I said doc wrap it up we got to go he's in the middle of the surgery they just sewed him closed as quickly as they could he's got blood being pumped into him he's it's spilling out of him as as quickly as they can pump it out I said in the book too we were soaked in blood he was soaked in blood there's blood pooling on the ground there's just blood everywhere so we put them on the helicopter and we fly to a Pakistani
[1:03:42] military base about 50 miles away and uh and they had a a trauma an eight-bed trauma unit it was in the form of a a hub and spokes right so it was circular there were only like four other patients there and all of them were soldiers who had attempted suicide so this was the only trauma case that they had and um they rushed him they they knew we were coming of course so they rushed him in and then as the doctor's
[1:04:13] getting ready he asked to see me so I go in where he's scrubbing up and he said listen I've never seen injuries so severe where the patient lived so you need to be prepared for this man to die so I called I called the analyst I'm like look this doesn't look good so you might want to tell headquarters that he's he's probably not going to live so he was in there for hours in the
[1:04:43] meantime the analyst called me back and he said that the director had called George tenant he said George called and said his only orders for you are 247 CIA eyes on not FBI not Pakistani intelligence CIA do not leave his bedside well I've been up for 24 hours at this point I'm tired right so I get some coffee they had a
[1:05:15] machine and he comes out of uh surgery and I'm thinking I I can't possibly stay awake I know what I'm going to do so I tear up a sheet and I tie him to the bed by his wrists and his ankles he's naked um because his wounds needed to be open and exposed you know to the air and it it was the most
[1:05:46] gruesome thing I've ever seen in person that's not true they tried to kill a couple of our people in Pakistan a couple of weeks earlier I saw a human head rolling on the floor that was more gruesome but anyway you get the idea it was pretty gruesome so um I turned the ceiling fan on full blast to make sure that I stayed a little bit too cold because I thought if I get warm I'm going to fall asleep in
[1:06:17] the chair and I kept getting up and walking around and the guy that was shot in the leg was screaming in the other room so I went in there and talked to him and he had had a he had a story of his own um he was screaming so I uh I said to him uh kak how are you and he goes alhamdulillah right thanks to God and I said yeah you don't look so good he goes are you American I said yeah I caught
[1:06:48] you and he says the pakistanis they held me down they put a rifle against my leg and they shot me I said that's not what I heard I heard you were jumping from the roof of the house to the roof of the next house and then he gets real serious and he goes I am 150 kilos 330 lbs I cannot jump from the roof so I pull back his blood
[1:07:20] soaked fobe and there was a powder burn the size of a fraking dinner plate all the perfect way around his wound they held that AK-47 right against his leg yeah and pulled the trigger and I said well I don't know anything about that that happened before I got there all I know is you're in some big trouble so you have some decisions to make and then I went back to abuu beta's
[1:07:51] room so I sat there just living on coffee for as it as it turned out I sat with him for 56 hours 56 hours I I felt like I was starting to hallucinate at the end I had been so long without sleep but a buddy of mine brought over some food and a change of clothes which I wrote about um I I smelled so
[1:08:23] bad right there's no time to shower there's no place to shower anyway and I've been in the same clothes for days and I haven't slept and we've been out in the dust and the dirt and so I smelled bad enough that I was grossing myself out so he bought me or brought me I should say a a t-shirt from the safe house that I slept in normally it was it was something my kids had gotten me it was a red t-shirt with SpongeBob SquarePants in the center so about 24 hours into
[1:08:56] uh his capture AB beta starts coming out of the coma and so I'm in the SpongeBob uh t-shirt I still have the big poofy Pakistani balloon pants on and I stood up with my hands on my hips at the foot of his bed and I was looking at him and he's laying there tied down and he looks at me not really at me though he looks at SpongeBob and
[1:09:26] I say in the book you can see the exact instant that he realized oh my God the Americans have me because his pulse went from 110 to 220 and the Machine starts going and then you hear code blue code blue so they run in and then they shock him and they give him a shot and then he's out again so I sit back down and I eat a
[1:09:56] little you know those little peanut butter cheesec crackers that's all I had so I'm eating my little peanut butter cheesec crackers six hours later he comes back out of it again so he's laying in the bed like this and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him he's got an oxygen mask on and he he Motions like this for me to come next to him so I go next to him and I moved his oxygen mask over to the side and I said to him shme what is
[1:10:28] your name and he shakes his head like this I said shme and he says to me in perfect English I will not speak to you in God's language I said that's okay Abu zua we know who you are and then he starts to cry and he says please brother kill me take the pillow and kill me smother me and I said oh no no I said nobody's going to kill you we've been looking for you for a long time and he says what's going to happen
[1:10:59] to me and I said honestly I don't know but I'm going to give you some advice your life is over and the rest of it can be easy or it can be terrible I said my friends they aren't nice like I am I'm the nicest guy you're going to meet in this experience so if you do anything it's that you have to
[1:11:31] cooperate he said you seem like a nice man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate I said suit yourself the pakistanis were so proud to have played a role in this that they began bringing like delegations of generals to come and look at him so here he is naked tied down and he goes I am not a zoo
[1:12:03] animal and I said abua listen you're a big trophy for them you're the most important person we've ever caught they're going to do this but listen you got to cooperate you got to cooperate so we ended up having some deep conversations you know I told you earlier he he had this diary that we
[1:12:36] that we captured that night the CIA and the FBI have very different ideas of what that book was um the FBI said oh he's insane it's the rantings of a Madman it's like on the contrary he's very very intelligent what it was was he would write poems and then he would draw Doodles that were quite sophisticated and then
[1:13:06] he would and this is why the FBI thought he was insane he would write letters to himself as a young man like ABA was 24 and he's writing to himself as a 15-year-old saying Hey listen 15-year-old AB was a beta don't make the mistakes that I made that time that such and such happened you shouldn't have done that think twice before you do this again you know you shouldn't have left Saudi Arabia when you did you shouldn't have gone to
[1:13:36] Afghanistan when you did you should have gone to Jordan instead stuff like that like I say it was all it was all very sophisticated he wanted to he asked me if I was Christian I said yes and he wanted to debate Christianity versus Islam we didn't really debate it so much as just talked about it um he he cried a lot he would never know the touch of a woman he said he would never know the
[1:14:08] joy of fatherhood I said you're not the victim here I said there were 50,000 people in those Towers what did you think was going to happen did you really think that we weren't going to try to find you to kill you or to kill Bin Laden what did you think we were going to do and he said I never wanted to attack the United States I wanted to attack Israel all I ever wanted to do was to kill Jews I said well you made your bed this is the way it's going to be and that's why you have to
[1:14:40] cooperate and I would say it at every opportunity finally I got a call from one of my colleagues and he said hey headquarters is sending in a plane tonight and we're going to put him on the plane and he's going to go I said where's he going he he goes I don't have any idea so I said abua you're going to be you're going to be taken out of here and they're going to send you to someplace else he said where I said I have no idea but again my friends are not nice like I am
[1:15:13] you really have to cooperate if you want to have any remnants of a life left so he was very upset very frightened is what it was and he kept asking what time it was cuz I said the plane is going to come in and then we heard the plane land um it landed I'm going to say it probably landed around midnight and um three FBI agents came in and we
[1:15:45] maneuvered him onto a gurnie and I said we're going to carry you out and we're going to we're going to put you on the plane and he asked if I would hold his hand so with one hand I'm holding his hand with the other hand I'm holding the gurnie like a like a coffin like Paul Bear is at a coffin at a funeral rather and we carried him out to the the plane this is a small private jet that the CIA has so we had to stand him up physically stand him up to maneuver him like a piece of furniture
[1:16:16] onto the plane take him to the back and then we laid him out on the luggage rack at the back and then tied the the gurnie down to the lug luggage rack and he's crying the whole time blood all over us and he squeezes my hand and he said um pray for me and I said you have to cooperate and that was the last thing I said to him so as I was getting off the
[1:16:46] plane the the staff on the plane it's something well no I won't I won't say what it's called it's got a classified name not the rendition team I guess it's not classified it's not classified okay um before we get there yeah sorry to interrupt you not at all when he asked you to hold his hand yeah at the time we believed he was the number three terrorist in al-Qaeda mhm um what made you decide to hold his hand
[1:17:16] instead of telling him to go [ __ ] himself yeah is there some sort of empathy in war that comes out that nobody discusses great question when he was still unconscious I was sitting at the foot of his bed and I'm just staring at him and I very clearly remember thinking I should hate you I should want to kill you and I don't you're pathetic you're a kid guy was 24 years
[1:17:49] old yeah and when when my colleague came in to bring the shirt I go he's a [ __ ] kid and I said dude this is the this is the Fearsome Al-Qaeda this is what we've been so afraid of all this time he's a kid and he's one of the leaders that's what it was seeing him dying bleeding to death kind of humanized him for me
[1:18:19] because I was thinking you know when we're we rush to the to the site and he's bleeding and and the other guy's dead and I'm like we should just [ __ ] kill them all just kill them all three of them just kill them and then I was like no no no no you can't do that and I'm not a murderer anyway so we got to the hospital and then got to the second hospital and I'm thinking this this is pathetic yeah it just like any hatred I had hatred of really what was the unknown for me
[1:18:51] dissipated in that hospital room that's so interesting um so so yeah the rendition team it's obviously it's it's not obviously but it's not classified um can you describe can you describe the scene of handing him off to them yeah what they were wearing yeah so it's a team and what they do sure this is a team of uh of six people they um they're wearing all black black pants uh black shirts
[1:19:25] black hoods black everything black gloves everything is black all you can see is little slits with their eyes and um one of them says John what are you doing here I I go who are you and he lifts up his mask and it was my last boss at headquarters oh wow cuz when 911 hit we all went we scattered to the winds everybody everybody in the whole agencies working on Al-Qaeda now
[1:19:56] so we we I hadn't seen him since 9/11 so he goes what are you doing here and I said uh I'm the I'm the chief of counterterrorism Ops I go what are you doing here he said I came to take your prisoner and um I go where are you taking him he goes oh man I'm sorry um you don't have a need to know I said oh yeah sorry sorry and he goes well who is this guy anyway and I said oh man I'm sorry you don't have a need to know and we both laughed because it was true I
[1:20:26] wasn't read into his compartment it was none of my business where they were taking him and his job was to deliver the prisoner from point A to point B not to know who the prisoner was and what his background was he's a delivery man and so we laughed hugged each other I got off the plane and then uh over the next couple of days we uh shuttered things down and transferred all the weapons and the gear and most of it we just donated it to the
[1:20:59] pakistanis and uh and I went back to Islamabad so it's now summer of what 02 at this time you go back home yep IA goes to his first black site which we'll certainly come back to um so you get home that summer and what was your involvement in or how did how did the planning for the Iraq War come
[1:21:30] about so in CTC in the counterterrorist center everybody was so excited about ABAB beta I went home it was so funny my first day back in the office I uh I punch in the combination to get into the The Vault and I open the door and I walk in and what the Vault oh uh every every office in the CIA is like a bankful okay okay so you need combinations sometimes multiple combinations to get in cuz they're all
[1:22:00] secure areas so I do my combination to get in I walk in and a couple of the guys see me and one of them goes like this and I said no no no it was a team effort he's like dude you're my hero I said no no no and my boss uh comes out he's like oh my God you're a legend and see I didn't know know anything that was happening at headquarters I was so busy in Pakistan and he goes um the deputy
[1:22:32] director wants to see you I said really Jim pavit yeah I said cool glad I wore a tie so I go up to uh to Pav's office and he said I just want to shake your hand thank you for what you did in Pakistan and he said uh we want to offer you a new position we want you to be chief of Counter Intelligence in the um in Alex station the Osama Bin Laden unit so this was a job that put me in charge of trying to root
[1:23:02] out Al-Qaeda moles trying to identify CIA officers it's a fraking hard job let me tell you I only did that for six weeks because my station Chief in Pakistan on the strength of the abuaba capture was promoted to associate deputy director for operations so he calls me and he says you need a
[1:23:33] job I said actually no I just got a job they put me in charge of Counter Intelligence for uh Alex station and he said yeah well they just made the me the associate deputy director and he said I want you to come up to the seventh floor and be an executive assistant I said oh done done Jose Rodriguez was so mad at me he never forgave me me for that he actually passed me over for promotion he said I displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism
[1:24:03] can you imagine because I left the counterterrorism office to go up to the executive floor so I didn't care and then the deputy director uh promoted me anyway over Jose's objections so my first day on the job was the following Monday and I go and I said okay so what are we doing and he says I actually can't tell you you have to go to this room on the sixth floor and
[1:24:35] there are some secrecy agreements for you to sign and then we'll tell you what we're doing and I said okay so I went to the sixth floor and knocked on the door and I knew the guy who told me to come in and I said oh hey what are you what are you doing he said so you're the new executive assistant wow you've made a a heck of a a heck of a path for yourself I said yeah I got lucky Pakistan was totally positive um I said what are we doing and
[1:25:06] he said well why don't you sign these first and then I'll explain everything so there were six of them and I signed six secrecy agreements saying I'll never ever reveal what I'm about to learn unless it's Declassified which it has been and so I sign I go go okay what's up and he goes well now this is this is May of 2002 2002 he goes well next year in February
[1:25:40] we're going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and we're going to open the largest Air Force Base in the world 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 I was dumbfounded and all I could even blur out was but we haven't caught Benin Len
[1:26:10] yet and he said buddy the decision's been made and the battle lines have been drawn he said he said CIA is opposed to this state is opposed to this and The Joint Chiefs are opposed but the ones that are for it are ovp the office of the vice president OSD the office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council and I said so the decision's been made he said the decision's been
[1:26:40] made yeah so I walk back downstairs and the boss says so you're read in and I said are they out of their minds and he said yes they are but we're not a policy agency we're a support agency and if they tell us to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein that's what we're going to do and so that's what we worked on until we invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam
[1:27:13] Hussein so Tennant was the director at this time right yes and uh didn't you I don't know if it was the same day or not but walk by his office and see him doing a little project in there oh it wasn't tenant okay I went up to the uh it was the chief of something called the Iraq operations group um I had to pick up a briefing book uh there was a principal's meeting a the principal meeting it's it's a policy meeting chaired by the Vice President um and it has the Secretary of
[1:27:46] Defense Secretary of State National Security adviser um CIA director NSA director and chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so I went to pick up the book and uh and the chief of the Iraq operations group he's sitting there with a piece of paper and he's got these Crayola um what do you call them the Crayons no not the crayons but the magic markers I go what are you doing he says
[1:28:17] oh I'm designing the new Iraqi flag I said don't you think the Iraqis should design the new Iraq flag he goes I don't know I thought I'd do it and I said you're using the colors of the Israeli flag like this is what happens when they put a Mexican guy in charge of the Iraq operations group I said buddy the Iraqi flag is is the colors that it is for a
[1:28:48] reason right you got to have green because it represents Islam you have to have red because it represents the ethnic minorities right you got to have the three stars cuz that represents uh the the sunnis the Shia and the Kurds you can't just take the Israeli flag and change it around a little bit so thank God nothing ever came of that but they were serious it it got worse than that that was minor it got way worse than that how
[1:29:18] so people just getting too big for their Bridges well the day before the day before we actually crossed the order um there was a final it's called an order of battle meeting I always hated the order of battle meetings because I'm not a military analyst and I just don't care where elements of the Fifth Army Corps are in comparison to the third infantry division I don't care right let the generals figure that out I trust in their judgment you don't have to tell me that the the 23rd
[1:29:49] infantry mounted division is I I don't care so George asked me to be the notetaker in this meeting George tenant the director of the CIA asked me to to be the notetaker and um the meeting was chaired by the Vice President so it was Cheney and his guys like scooter Libby and a couple of other people coni rice Colin Powell um the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint
[1:30:20] Chiefs Don Rumsfeld ki's Deputy um Hadley Steve Hadley Steve Hadley I couldn't remember his first name he was there and then General I forget his name he was commander of centcom at the time he had replaced uh you know schwarzkoff and [ __ ] and all these other people that had come after schwarzkoff General was it Taylor Maybe
[1:30:50] Taylor can't remember anymore so starts the meeting General why don't you give us the order of battle I'm like so I'm sitting George is at George is at the head of a conference room table and everybody else is on a TV screen right and George's microphone is right in front of him and he's just sitting there like this and I'm sitting directly behind his right shoulder taking the
[1:31:21] notes so we're sitting there there and they're like the Fifth Army Corps is in this position and the 23rd infantry is here and they're going to move north and this one's going to move west and this one's going to come South and the blah blah blah blah blah and I'm writing it all down and then the general says if all goes as planned we can be in teron by August George is sitting there and then he leans forward and turns off his microphone and he says did he say
[1:31:54] Baghdad or did he say Teran and I said he said Teran and George says have these people lost their minds and then he turns the microphone back on and just sits so I'm taking all the notes and one of these idiots from the NSC says when we cross the border they're going to throw flowers at us and I wrote it down the meeting ends I go back to the deputy
[1:32:26] director's office he said ow' the meeting go and I said did you know we were going to invade Iran and he goes oo are they still talking about that and I go yeah they said we could be in Iran by by August and he goes listen we're not invading Iran we're probably not even going to be successful in Iraq but these guys don't know anything anything about the Middle East
[1:32:56] nothing we're not going to invade Iran they talk about it like they they think they know what they're talking about and they don't know anything I go okay I I hope you're right and sure enough we got bogged down in Iraq never never went anywhere near Iran mhm so like you said this is right in the middle of the global war and Terror yep right smack in the middle of it the focus is on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda um tenant is not psyched about Iraq
[1:33:28] right but the direction to Mu forward is coming from Cheney and few other folks that you just mentioned um there was somebody who was feeding Cheney uh information to substantiate those claims that Sadam had wmds that's right chelby Ahmed chelby who was he oh I always hated this guy from the minute I met him I was like this guy is a dirty used car salesman ah chelby was
[1:33:59] a an Iraqi Shia Muslim kurd which made him one of like a half of 1% of the Iraqi population he left Iraq as a child in 1964 his parents fled to Jordan and chelby went to school in London and became quite a prominent Banker but he was also a crook and a criminal and so he he opened a bank in Jordan that was specifically meant to cater to the needs of Iraqi
[1:34:30] refugees in fact it was a Ponzi scheme and he stole all their money by one account $36 Million worth of deposits he escaped in the trunk of his secretary's car across the border into Syria and then from Syria made his way to London in Jordan they filed charges against him and found him guilty in absentia and and sentenced him to 30 years in prison but chelby was able to convince the neocons in the Republican
[1:35:02] party that he was the only person who could unite Iraq and that he should be the president of Iraq and that the United States should install him as the president of Iraq so after the first Gulf War the George HW Bush Administration said hey we should take a look at this guy chelby well those of us at the CIA who knew chelby were writing until our fingers were raw saying this is a huge mistake this guy is a criminal he's
[1:35:33] going to rob Us blind he's a liar he's making it all up and then the money that we began to funnel to the Iraqi National Congress which was this exiled Iraqi opposition group that celby headed began to disappear and finally when 6 million million dollar of the cia's money couldn't be accounted for the CIA issued something called a Burn Notice against chelby forbiding any CIA officer anywhere in the world from having any
[1:36:05] contact with chelby you're burned you're done well what chelby did was he increased the level of his relations with the Republican Party saying if those lefties like George HW Bush uh won't have Me Maybe the dick chenies of the world will well after the Clinton Administration was done and George W bush won and Dick Cheney is the vice president and Don Rumsfeld is the
[1:36:36] Secretary of Defense they like what Chene is providing Chene is giving them this intelligence that is everything they want to hear Sadam has wmds Saddam is going to use wmds against the United States Saddam is going to launch an attack on Kuwait again saddam's going to attack the Saudis saddam's going to attack the American Military Base in Jordan or the American Military Base in Turkey none of this stuff was true he was just making it up so we went to
[1:37:06] Cheney and we said look this guy is a known liar he's a known fabricator he's a thief and everything he says is unreliable so what they did is they told chelby to start reporting through the US defense attache in Aman so we started getting these classified cables called doirs Department of Defense intelligence reports yeah and
[1:37:40] they're like weapons of mass destruction were found at such and such coordinates and we're like oh my God what's the source of this report so I'd call over the Pentagon hey I'm looking at doir 123 4 five who's the source we're not at Liberty to share that with you what what do you mean I'm the CIA you got to share it with me it's a particularly sensitive Source we're like [ __ ] this is chelby so we put out the word in the
[1:38:12] rest of the intelligence Community you can't you can't listen to any of these doirs it's all made up but that was the information that the Pentagon used to justify the attack on Iraq it was all fake now to make matters worse the Germans came to us and said hey we've got a source a really sensitive Source called curveball and this guy can give us the kitchen sync on your Rocky wmd we're
[1:38:42] like okay like what they start sending us these classified reports top secret classified reports they've got biological weapons they have chemical weapons they have nuclear weapons they've got a long range delivery system we're we're like oh my god well this is exactly what we feared but this isn't chelby right they said no no no we don't deal with chelby this is this is a special source that we have from Germany top
[1:39:13] secret we said okay we want to meet him nope can't meet him he's so sensitive only we Germans can meet him we said okay then we want to meet him with you and we want to polygraph him nope we've already ensured that he's telling the truth we're like okay well we're thinking of like actually going to war based on this guy's information so you're sure that this curveball is telling the
[1:39:45] truth we're sure 100% so we assigned an analytic unit to the information and some of the meetings they had I was afraid it would come to fisticuffs like I believe it I don't believe it I know more than you no you don't I was there in the beginning it's like guys please please you know it's not worth fighting over in the end curveball um was a dishwasher in a Shish Kebab Restaurant um who just went to the
[1:40:17] Germans and said I've I I'm am an Iraqi uh scientist yeah yeah that's it I'm a scientist and I have weapons of mass destruction information uh I'd like to give to the the CIA sure and they were like oh okay like what so he would go through the newspapers and read all the stuff and then he would write notes and he would tell the Germans listen this is what I found out Saddam Hussein he's got all this stuff 100% I just confirmed it
[1:40:49] through my special Source at the weapons of mass destruction Department at the Iraqi government the whole thing was made up American lives were lost because of this he said he did it because he wanted to immigrate to the United States and this was what we wanted to hear anyway so he thought if he gave us enough information even if it was just from the newspapers we would make him an American citizen curveball one of the greatest
[1:41:21] intelligence failures in modern CIA history um there was another thing too the the yellow cake uranium claims yeah yeah so we had a case officer named Valerie PL um Valerie was married to uh to a state department officer um uh his name is escaping me now
[1:41:54] anyway he was the deputy chief of mission in uh Baghdad when we still had diplomatic relations with the Iraqis and then he became ambassador to nir and so so it came time for the State of the Union Address and um the CIA always gets a chop on this on the uh State of the Union they always send it to us about 4 days before the president delivers it and we make whatever changes we deem necessary so in the State of the Union Address it said that the Iraqis had
[1:42:28] asked the government of ner to provide them with yellow cake uranium they they mine uranium in in niir for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon that just wasn't true so George tenant said you know what I've got a case officer who's married to the former ambassador to niir how about if I ask him go to ner and ask the Nigerians if this actually happened so he goes out there what the
[1:43:00] heck's his name he just died of a heart attack a couple of years ago I forget now but anyway he flies out to niir talks to them they're like what no no Iraqis come here and ask us for yellow C yellow cake and even if they had we wouldn't have sold it to them he comes back tells the CIA it's just not true the CIA tells everybody else it's just not true then he writes an oped in
[1:43:32] the Washington Post saying I just got back from ner I was the Ambassador there this is the rumor the rumor is not true so Dick Cheney was so [Music] enraged that they would call him on the carpet like this that he had the deputy secretary of state um leak Valerie pl's name
[1:44:03] to um a syndicated columnist uh Novak who said oh Joe Wilson Joe Wilson is his name Joe Wilson nobody knows Joe Wilson's wife works for the CIA and the CIA doesn't want to fight Iraq so they're covered up for the Iraqis well now Valerie PL can never travel again she can never take an overseas assignment ever again she's been outed in the media and so her career is done done just like
[1:44:33] that um they did it on purpose nobody was ever prosecuted for it uh scooter Libby was prosecuted for lying about it after the fact but nobody was ever prosecuted for leaking her name and um and the next thing we know the yellow cake accusation is back in the State of the Union Address so I happen to be at CIA headquarters at like 10:00 the night before the state of the union and I went
[1:45:04] in to read my cables because I'd get like 10,000 cables over the weekend hard copy in addition to the 20,000 I had to read electronically and I had to get through them so I would go in Sunday nights I go in and there's Colin poeny sitting at the C at the uh conference room table so I said to the uh to the duty officer what's pal doing here and she goes I don't know he's he's doing something with the State of the Union I was like
[1:45:35] okay so I do my business and and I leave and the next day the State of the Union Address I'm sitting there on the couch with my wife who was also a senior Cia officer and George W bush says we know that the Iraqi government sent an emissary to ner to purchase yellow cake uranium to make a nuclear weapon and we were like are you kidding me like how many times do we have to
[1:46:05] debunk this story but the point was that they didn't want it debunked they were looking for reasons to go to war with Iraq and they couldn't find any reasons so they just made them up that's what it came down to yeah so um in 20 two after the Abu beta raid you go home and he goes to a black site mhm what are black sites oh very simply put a black site is a secret prison and when I say secret I
[1:46:35] mean it's really secret to the point where in many cases the presidents or prime ministers of the countries in which they were located didn't know that they existed there these were handshake deals between the director of the CIA and the director of whatever that country's intelligence service was often times they were on military bases sometimes abandoned military bases and so the politicians were just completely cut out but the reason why they were secret
[1:47:06] black sites is so prisoners could be tortured there and nobody would know yeah so at what point do you find out about the Anan interrogation program well I was back at headquarters in uh May of 2002 and I was in the cafeteria and a a friend of mine from the counterterrorism center came up to me and said very offhandedly hey I'm so glad I ran into you I meant to ask do you want to be certified in the use of
[1:47:37] enhanced interrogation techniques and I had never heard that term before I said what's that mean he goes we're going to start getting rough with these guys and I said well what does that mean and he said well we're going to do and he listed these 10 techniques water boarding and sleep deprivation and you know smack in the face and all these different kinds of things I said that sounds like a torture program to me and he goes no it's not torture the president approved it and the justice department approved it and
[1:48:09] we're gonna we're going to start on it I said I I don't know I I think I have a problem with that let me think about it for an hour so I went back up to the seventh floor there was a very senior Cia officer up there who I had worked for 10 years earlier and I said hey I just got approached and asked if I wanted to be certified in these enhanced interrogation techniques what do you think of that and he said first of all let's call a spade a spade this is a
[1:48:40] this is a torture program and you know how these guys are he says somebody's going to go overboard and they're going to kill a prisoner and when that happens there's going to be a congressional investigation and then a Justice Department investigation and somebody's going to go to prison you want to go to prison and I said no I don't want to go to prison so I went back downstairs I said this is a torture program I want nothing to do with it so they asked 14 people and I'm sorry to say that I was the only one who said no two of us said
[1:49:11] no in the beginning and then one changed his mind but I was the only one in the end that said no I'm glad I did in retrospect I was right they were wrong but uh but things got much much worse before they got any better how so well they started torturing obser on the second of of August 2002 and it was a slippery slope um they did many many many things not just to abuaba but to to most if not all
[1:49:43] of our high value uh prisoners that were never authorized by the justice department or by the president you know you can't force hummus upside someone's rectum for example right you can't play Russian roulette with them you can't you know they learned up Wasa had an irrational fear of insects and so they put him in a coffin and they dumped a box of cockroaches in there with him and then closed the coffin and they left him in there for 10 days just with a diaper you
[1:50:14] can't do that nobody told you you had permission to do something like that you know and waterboarding was supposed to be the ultimate technique but there were a couple that were that were clearly worse than waterboarding uh sleep deprivation right we know from the American Psychological Association which is done studies on this kind of thing that people begin to go insane at seven days
[1:50:46] with no sleep they begin to die of organ failure with N9 days without sleep the CIA was authorized to keep prisoners awake for 12 days people died from sleep deprivation another one was something called the cold cell where they strip a prisoner naked they chain you to an eyebolt in the ceiling so that you can't sit or lay or get comfortable in any way they chill
[1:51:16] your cell to 50° fah and then every hour somebody goes in and throws a buck of ice water on you we murdered two prisoners with that technique that was never approved as a technique you know so we did all kinds of stuff there was another thing a technique that was that was considered to be kind of a mild no big deal kind of thing called Walling where they they roll up a towel and put it around your neck and then they shove
[1:51:47] you into a wall right well the wall it's a what do you call it fiber board piece of plywood piece of plywood whatever there's there's a little bit of give and they have the towel so that you don't get Whiplash but they never used a towel they never used anything around the neck and it wasn't a plywood wall it was a concrete block wall and now we have for example Muhammad atar the nephew of khik Muhammad who was slammed so mercilessly
[1:52:18] against the wall that he's now brain damaged to the point where he can't participate in his own defense M they gave him permanent lifelong brain damage where does it say you were authorized to do that so it really was a slippery slope and nobody was ever punished nobody will ever be called to account um just uh just recently we're filming this in in early September um the last week of August of
[1:52:48] 2023 uh the defense department admitted that they cannot try Ramsey bin aib one of the the 911 uh co-conspirators they cannot try him because he's insane he's clinically insane why is he insane because of sleep deprivation do you think that's [ __ ] though no because this is the pentagon's psychiatrist who's saying he's insane not his defense attorneys huh yeah yeah I guess it goes
[1:53:19] back to your point before about you know you Consulting your higher up at at the agency and he said you know listen somebody's going to go overboard M um and yeah I read I read uh Jim Mitchell's book who was the Air Force psychologist that with Bruce jesson designed correct the AIT program and I and I guess the towel around the neck uh was supposed to be some sort of pavlovian conditioning where just the feel of the towel going around the neck much of it was supposed to be pavlovian
[1:53:49] yes it they called it learn learned helplessness that's what it was learned helplessness so all they would have to do is roll up the towel and the Prisoner would just crumple yeah so I guess it's worth just um giving some context to The Listener as to why these things were even done in the first place right so the reason why they were done is something called the ticking Time Bomb scenario the ticking Time Bomb
[1:54:21] scenario is you've just captured let's say abua and you know that Al-Qaeda is planning something big because Osama Bin Laden said he was planning something that would dwarf 911 right and you've got to get the information before the bomb goes off so you say hey I was a beta give me the information he's like [ __ ] you I'm not going to give you the information so what do you do
[1:54:53] do you waterboard him do you sleep deprive him do you put him in a cold cell do you beat him do you put cockroaches on him do you put hummus up his ass what do you do now the problems with that are severalfold first of all all of it's illegal secondly there really is no such thing as the ticking Time Bomb that's only in the movies it's never happened in real life it just doesn't besides even if it did happen when you're torturing somebody they give you
[1:55:25] everything they think you want to hear just to get you to stop torturing them and so then it's going to take six months for the analyst to sort through it to figure out what's true and what's [ __ ] you know and by then the bomb's gone off anyway and again we're either going to be the international you know shining Beacon of Hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties or we're not yeah but we we can't have it both ways uh I mentioned a few minutes ago uh Ramsey b a ship being declared
[1:55:59] insane even if he had been declared sane nothing that he said can be used against him at trial because the CIA tortured it out of him nothing that KH shik Muhammad said nothing that Abu zubeda said or that or that abdes said none of it can be used against them in trial so so what do we do we continue to hold them illegally without charge or we let him go the bottom line here is the
[1:56:29] CIA royally [ __ ] this up and that's why every time the CIA would start to torture prisoners every time Mitchell and jessen were put in charge of the interrogation sessions at the black sites every FBI FBI person in the country would leave the FBI didn't even want to be in the same country where this torture was taking place yeah you know like I say it kills me to complement the FBI but they were right and the CIA was wrong and
[1:57:02] here we are 22 years after 911 literally no one has been prosecuted for that crime no one yeah nor will anyone be prosecuted because the CIA ensured that no prosecutions could be carried out ironically you're the only one that went to prison for one that went to prison yeah so last thing on this and I'm just playing a little bit of Devil's Advocate here because I think it's important to listen to All arguments like I would I would like to have you in
[1:57:33] here just as I would like to have Jim Mitchell in here Jose Rodriguez sure and decide for myself and I hope the listeners do the same I agree and I'm just I I I can't help but think about September 12th man and I there's a quote in tenant's book where he says something along the lines of all major foreign policy decisions after 9/11 were viewed through the prism of smoke from the World Trade Center in the Pentagon absolutely true so when I think about the intent of Jose Rodriguez
[1:58:04] of Jim Mitchell of Bruce jessen um I think about hindsight being 2020 the ticking Time Bomb situation frantically trying to save American lives when everybody was running around like a [ __ ] chicken with their head cut off when you look back and you think about the enhanced interrogation program what role does intent play for you I I believe that all of the people that you mentioned um had good intentions I think that this points to a
[1:58:35] bigger problem at the CIA where you put sociopaths in positions of authority where they come to believe that they're Above the Law and that because they're the good guys they can and should do anything that they want to do but I'm I'm confident that Jose Rodriguez thinks he's the good guy and that James Mitchell and Bruce jesson think they're the good guys no doubt in my mind um at the same
[1:59:08] time when there's a program that is as controversial and as potentially dangerous as the EIT program you need some way to put the breakes on it we already know that the Congressional oversight system doesn't work it just it just doesn't you can't have 12 staffers on Capitol Hill overseeing an agency of 25 or 30,000 people you just can't it doesn't work um at the same time the the oversight committees have been Have
[1:59:39] Become nothing but cheerleaders for the CIA rather than than the breaks on out ofc control CIA policies M and you know when it comes to things like open Criminal investigations the CIA needed to swallow its pride and defer to the FBI and they just wouldn't they wouldn't do it and a lot of that was because of of a guilty conscience of having fallen asleep at the switch and allowed night 11 to take place in the first place
[2:00:10] but you know the torture program nothing good came out of it literally nothing um you went to Guantanamo in 2002 can you say what you're in there it was an interim assignment um I was a big star after I was beta one of the monkey mucks came up and said listen we've got a an underlap uh do you
[2:00:40] want to be Chief in Guantanamo for for a little while and I said I've never been to Cuba I'd love to go to Cuba so it's summertime it's pretty hot I said okay I'll go so I went just filled in for for somebody until a permanent uh Chief was named what was that like being over there hot yeah and one of the things that that's striking about Guantanamo and I would I would guess that this is probably still the case is no one has any idea of what the the other guy is
[2:01:11] doing right like I'm used to working with people from a whole bunch of different agencies like hey FBI guy how you doing buddy hey hey DEA guy keep up the good work oh you're the ATF guy we should have a beer sometime you know that's what that's how it is in every Embassy like Guantanamo you're walking past somebody you put your head down like who's he I don't know and I'm not telling him who I am and all that guy knows is those buildings over there
[2:01:44] don't go over there that's what do they call it OG another government uh other government agency they don't even like to say the letters CIA they just say OG yeah don't go over to that side and then like you can hear people screaming over there yeah it's not good and then the agency's like oh our mistake wrong guy we'll clear him for release and then he'll be released in
[2:02:15] five to seven years when the state department can find a country that's willing to take him yeah um unfortunately we don't have time to get into that I want to get you out of here at a reasonable hour because I know you got places to be but um the Brian Ross interview yes December of 2007 how did that come about Brian Ross from ABC News called me out of the blue I had never met him I had never spoken to him called me and said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu zua I said that was
[2:02:47] absolutely false I said I was the only person who was kind kind to abuaba I had never tortured abua I had never tortured anybody else I never laid a hand on anybody oh he says well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself I didn't know that that was a reporter's trick well in the in the subsequent days uh President Bush gave a press conference in which he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture
[2:03:17] like that and I said to my wife he is a bald-faced liar he's looking the American people in the in the eye and he's lying to us and then a couple of days after that he is walking from the south Portico of the White House to the helicopter to fly to Camp David and a reporter shouts a question about torture and he turns and he says well if there is torture it's a rogue CIA officer and I said to my wife Brian Ross's source is at the White House and
[2:03:49] they're going to blame me for this so I called Brian Ross and I Saidi give you your interview and I decided that no matter what he asked me I was going to tell the truth and so the rest is history I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not a rogue and I said the policy had been personally approved by the president himself anything else was a lie and so you said during that
[2:04:21] interview as well um a couple things um I don't I don't want to quote you obviously you'll remember but um just a few things along the lines of we got information from those high value detainees that disrupted future attacks yes um and that was not true right so what I was going to ask is that's contrary to what you're saying now so what what happened for for you to change your stance was it new information oh yeah um the CIA Inspector General
[2:04:52] released a 2005 report in 2009 that just sends chills up my spine so an FBI agent by the name of Ali sufan was interrogating Abu zua and the way the FBI does it is and they've been doing this since the nurmberg trials in 1946 they establish a rapport with the prisoner a relationship you offer him a cigarette you offer him an orange you know you let him write a letter to his
[2:05:23] mom and eventually he'll open up to you and that's what happened with abua um abua gave us actionable intelligence through Ali sufan that gave us KH Muhammad's identity identity which we did not know we only knew him as MTAR which was his n and he gave us the al-Qaeda wiring diagram which we also never had any idea of but Mitchell and Justin were so intent on implementing this this torture
[2:05:54] program that they they took over from the FBI the FBI withdrew from the secret site and they started torturing Mitchell and Justin started torturing abua abua immediately clammed up now at the time the FBI and the CIA did not have compatible computer systems we hated each other so much we didn't even have compatible computer systems post 9911 yeah and so Ali's doing these interrogations and he's writing up the
[2:06:25] results of the interrogations and sending them to the FBI which is not sharing them with anybody else not even with the agency nope not a word then Mitchell and J take over they torture up AA he goes completely silent but they can't say you know uh the CIA paid us $08 million and we blew it and he's not saying anything so what they did is they took Ali's cables that he had written they retyped them in the CIA computer system and said
[2:06:56] oh my god look what abua said we waterboarded him one time and look at all this stuff he gave us he says khik Muhammad is MTAR and he gave us the wiring diagram for AA look at this now when I read this cable I was like oh my God I said to one of my colleagues Maybe I'm Wrong I still think it's immoral and probably illegal but but it looks like it's actually working well it wasn't working they were lying and Reporting back to headquarters
[2:07:27] everything that had already been reported back to FBI headquarters but reporting it as new information that they got from abuaba thanks to the EIT program none of that was true but we didn't know that until the Inspector General reported it internally in 2005 and then Declassified the report in 2009 it's a crime making a false statement is a is a felony MH and every time they started
[2:07:58] typing they were committing a felony I had not heard that before today so one last thing on on the ABC interview um your entire time with the agency you're trained to lie you're out at this point by the way you retired in 04 right uh yeah and this is an ' 07 um what was it like to get on naal television and tell the truth about all the way up to President Bush you know
[2:08:29] the next day President Bush said these were his exact words I don't know this man I don't know this man's motiv motivation I don't know why this man threw me under the bus is this a public statement uhhuh it's like well because you approved a torture program it's actually rather simple um i s deely underestimated the entire experience I had never spoken to a journalist before in my life I had no
[2:09:01] media training no nothing no guidance nothing I had the truth on my side or at least what I believed to be the truth at the time um but I just decided the easiest way to get through this is just to be honest and so I did I I assumed this was going to be a tough pill for the agency to swallow um I didn't realize how
[2:09:32] dedicated some senior Cia officers with whom I had disagreed over the years would be um with the goal of ruining the rest of my life right um I should have considered that but the only thing I would have done different L was I would have had an attorney sitting next to me when I did the interview it's the only thing I would have done differently I would have said the same things yeah the truth is I I waited I
[2:10:04] waited for what three and a half years for somebody to come out and say something right because I was certainly not the only guy objecting to the torture program dozens of people were objecting there were there were dozens who resigned rather than than to to carry out these torture techniques um but nobody said anything and then finally after three and a half years now they're going to blame me for the torture program Over My Dead Body so it was time to let it out so
[2:10:37] what was the crime what did you eventually go to prison for well they charged me first with three counts of Espionage for speaking to ABC News and the New York Times I hadn't committed Espionage right and so all of those charges were dropped what they got me on was I got a call from an author who was writing a book about about uh the rendition of a an Egyptian cleric named Abu Omar is
[2:11:08] this Matthew Cole yeah Matthew Cole it's worth noting real quick that he also wrote the uh the hitpiece on SEAL Team Six yeah Matthew Cole is uh you know what I'm just going to stop there because otherwise we're going to end up in court fair enough Matthew Cole Matthew Cole has Matthew Cole's actions have led to the incarceration of five whistleblowers five I honestly believe in my heart that Matthew Cole's work as a journalist is a
[2:11:39] cover that he is either in the employ of the FBI or or somehow under the control of the FBI nobody's that stupid nobody is that careless you're a national security correspondent and your tradecraft is so bad that that your reporting has led to the incarceration of five National Security whistleblowers how's that possible wasn't there a picture of someone on the on the redition team that ended up in a Cell one of the cells of the terrorist I
[2:12:12] don't know who that was um it was more than one it was a dozen um Matthew Cole emailed me and he said hey I'm writing this book on Abu Omar do you know any of these 12 people you can introduce me to I said I don't know who these people are he sends me a second email what about these 12 I'd like to interview them for my book I said look you clearly know this issue better than me better than I do I I'm I was not I was not into kidnapping at the agency
[2:12:43] kidnapping wasn't my thing um I said you you know the issue better than I do I I can't help you he said what about the guy that you refer to in your book uh I think his name is John and I go in my response I said Oh you mean John Doe I said I don't know he's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere but what I did in that email was I confirmed his last name and that's what they got me on
[2:13:15] because Matthew Cole was not writing a book about Abu Omar he was pretending to write a book about Abu om AR and in fact he was secretly working for the Guantanamo defense attorneys so they took John Do's name and they put it in a a classified motion and asked the judge to allow them to uh depose him the judge recognized the name as being classified and turned it over to the FBI the FBI went to Human Rights Watch and said where'd
[2:13:47] you get this name and they saidwe got it from Matthew cole' so they went to Matthew Cole where'd you get this name I got it from John kiraku and then they arrested me charged me with five felonies including three counts of Espionage like I said I didn't commit Espionage and those charges were thrown out but I took a plea to violating the intelligence identities protection act of 1982 for confirming the name now the name was never made public never made public and nobody had
[2:14:17] ever been prosecuted for this crime in American history that was the first person um the director of the CIA David Petraeus revealed the names of 10 covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend he wasn't prosecuted but he also hadn't blown the whistle on the torch program yeah and what about the uh what about the official in the inspector General's office who was corresponding with Dana priest at the Washington Post
[2:14:47] and leaks some information about the black sites to her and wasn't prosecuted was allowed to retire with her pension Pion she she made it out with her full pension never prosecuted what about uh what about the CIA director uh who became Secretary of Defense um what's his name what's the context I might know who it is he was he was Obama's Secretary of Defense after having been CIA director oh Panetta
[2:15:18] Panetta Leon Panetta what about Leon Panetta who after the bin Laden killing um not only told his deputy director and all of the associate Deputy directors to cooperate with a Hollywood screenwriter and a Hollywood director Katherine Bigalow and Mark bow and gave them classified briefings over a classified mockup of the bin Laden compound but then revealed the undercover names of the Seal Team 6 operatives who had
[2:15:49] killed Bin Laden and then you said oh my bad sorry there was no prosecution for Leon Panetta got a nice little book deal out of it too huh a $6 million Advance with his nice little book deal sounds lovely mhm so did pleading guilty I know you've told the story about how when you you and your wife were discussing what you want to do MH um so
[2:16:21] we don't have to go into it at length but there was you stayed up all night with her 6:00 in the morning you said you know what I didn't do this I'm fighting it and that was the decision yep and then you called your lawyer and you told him and what happened after that he said put on a CO a pot of coffee we're on our way over was 7 o'clock in the morning by then so my three lead attorneys show up at the house one of them is furious the oldest one he said you stupid son of a [ __ ] take the deal
[2:16:54] this was the Justice Department's best and final offer of 30 months of which I would do 23 the second the second attorney the one who I liked and respected the most got right up into 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 then the third one
[2:17:25] said and he was a real Southern gentleman he said listen if you were my own brother I would beg you to take this deal so I said okay let's say I don't take the deal and I go to trial and I'm convicted what am I realistically looking at here and he said 12 to 18 years and then the one that I said I liked and respected the most said this can be a
[2:17:56] blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life make it the blip take the deal and so I took the deal it's kind of hard to argue with that logic yeah on a statistic basis yeah and the jury would have been made up of who the jury in the eastern district of Virginia Which is also called the Espionage court because no National Security defendant has ever won a case there the jury would be made up
[2:18:28] of people from or who have relatives from the CIA the FBI the Pentagon the Department of Homeland Security or any one of two dozen defense or intelligence contractors my best friend's wife has an uncle who was OJ Simpson's jury consultant and he said he would help me pro bono so we got him a security clearance he flew up from Dallas he went through all the evidence we all huddled in the Justice Department's conference room
[2:19:00] because I wasn't allowed to meet my attorneys in their conference room because all of our conversations were classified so it had to be in a vaulted area at the justice department where they promised they weren't listening in so OJ's jury consultant says if we were in any other District in America I would say let's go for it we're going to win we win at trial you didn't do this but the eastern district of Virginia he said you don't have a prayer with that
[2:19:33] jury he said take the deal yeah so I took the deal did that [ __ ] with your identity at all oh yeah my identity you know I I I mean I still identify as a patriot um but then at the same time all of a sudden you know I was always the good kid I was always the one that got straight A's and my parents were so proud and I went to terrific schools and I speak foreign languages and everything was all hunky dory I'm a convicted felon now and not just a
[2:20:03] convicted felon but a convicted felon with a national security conviction so for a long time it [ __ ] with my identity and it took me years to embrace the whole whistleblower uh uh identity you know one of my lawyers specialized in whistleblower cases specifically in National Security and I thanked her for taking my case and I said I want I really want to thank you because I know that you only deal with whistleblowers and I'm not a whistleblower she said
[2:20:33] yeah you are I said no I'm not I'm I'm just a a normal guy you know who who said something and she says John you're the poster boy for whistleblowers and I looked at herat like I'm just not getting it and she said look there's a legal definition of whistleblowing it's bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or Public Safety and that is
[2:21:05] exactly what you did MH and so I embraced it I embraced it and you know what it's it's worked for me yeah so if first day of prison FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania central Pennsylvania up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere yeah uh the judge ordered that I uh I serve in a minimum security Work Camp uh no bars on the Windows they don't lock
[2:21:35] the doors you're free to just come and go as you please you're on your honor not to abscond and most of those guys work in town uh there's a there's a small University down there you know they do janitorial stuff whatever so it's weird you you know on the day that you're supposed to surrender you you just drive up to the prison and knock on the door and say I'm John kyaku here to turn myself in and they're like okay come on in so I go to the prison camp and um the guy says oh you got to go
[2:22:08] across the street to the to the prison and then they process you and then they bring you back here I said okay so I go across the street I said I'm here to turn myself in they put me through the metal detector and such and then the the cop starts to lead me around to the back of the actual prison I said no no I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street he goes not according to my paperwork you're not and I was like oh my God take it easy there's nothing you
[2:22:39] can do if you make a fuss they're going to put you in solitary so I didn't say a word it took me five days to get access to a phone and I called my attorney and I said hey they put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the mafia Don and the drug kingpins what do I do and he goes oh my God he he says well we could make a motion but
[2:23:09] it'll be two years before we get a hearing date and you'll be home by then he said I'm sorry buddy you're just going to have to tough it out so I was like okay I'm trained for worse than this I can do this just relax stay calm so on that very first day um they take your picture they make a little badge for you and then they give you like a bath towel a face towel a a
[2:23:40] washcloth a bar of soap a little thing of shampoo and a roll of toilet paper and sheets and you're walking holding your stuff the only thing thing this cop said to me was if somebody comes into your cell Uninvited that's an act of aggression I was like great I've been here 40 minutes I'm going to get my ass kicked now so I thought well if I'm going down it's going to be in a blaze of
[2:24:11] glory so I didn't know what to do so I just I just sat there in a chair in the cell and sure enough these two guys walk right into my cell both obviously arens one had a swastika tattoo that took up the entire front half of his neck and face it was enormous the other one had [ __ ] you tattooed on his eyelids so every time he blinked you know so I I jump up and I go
[2:24:42] what do you want right and one of them the the big one with the swasa guy he's like take it easy he goes are you the new guy I go yeah so he goes are you a [ __ ] I go no I'm not a [ __ ] he goes are you a a rat I go no I'm not a rat I didn't have anybody else in my case he says are you a chomo I go I don't know what that word is he goes like I'm stupid he goes chomo
[2:25:12] child molester I go no I'm not a [ __ ] child molester he goes okay you can sit with the arens in the cafeteria I go oh okay so I guess I'm with the arens now couple of days later this black guy walks in and this guy is 220 lounds of Rock Solid knotted muscle and I was like oh I'm not going to last five seconds against this guy so I jump up and what do you want and very gingerly he hands
[2:25:46] me this newspaper the daily call it's the newspaper of the Nation of Islam and I'm on the fraking cover and he says to me Reverend farakhan says that you're a hero of the Muslim people I go oh okay and he said I just want you to know you're not going to have any trouble with us I said okay and that was it he turned around and walked out then I was in a fourman Cell which was overcrowded with six men
[2:26:18] overcrowding in prison's terrible problem and four of the of the other five were members of Mexican cartels MS13 one of them was MS13 the others were Mexican cartels Mexican Mafia bachos uh I forget what the other ones were but anyway um one of them said to me are you educated and I go yeah can you write my appeal I go I'm not an attorney you said you were educated I go well I am well I
[2:26:50] said most lawyers are idiots anyway I said sure I'll write your appeal how hard could it possibly be he's guilty anyhow right so I it took a couple weeks I go through his case papers I write an appeal the appeal is denied he said what do I owe you I said nothing I I I got people on the outside they they put money in my commissary account but he told all the other Mexicans that I was I was a good guy because I I wrote his appeal and I didn't charge him anything
[2:27:21] so I didn't have any problems and then I lived directly across the hall from the uh from the acting boss of the banano crime family and he and I just hit it off I'd give him my New York Times he'd give me his New York Post we'd sit together in the TV room watch the football games on Sundays I like this guy a lot and finally he says to me let me ask you something why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria I go I don't know my first day
[2:27:51] they told me sit with them he goes from today you're with the Italians and so from then Gambino banano lucasi genvis they treated me very very well they had a guard they had a CR crooked guard on the payroll who would bring in oh my God porkloin fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and mushrooms and white
[2:28:24] wine for the marsala sauce I gained 35 lbs in prison we ate like freaking Kings and it was like everybody packed in the room and these guards would come in like what are you making today Mark and Mark would say ah I got a little bit of this I got a little bit of that give the guard a little bowl of pasta 35 PBS the warden said to me one day you're putting on weight I go what are you my Warden or my
[2:28:54] doctor I didn't say h one of your crooked guards is taking a payoff from the mob to bring us in fresh food you think I'm going to eat this stuff it all tastes like ass so no they treated me very very well reminds me of Good Fellas when they're cooking dinner in prison slice the garlic that's that's real life you can smell it cooking from you know 150 ft away yeah that's really life but it's only I shouldn't say it's only the Italians the Italians have the food
[2:29:25] coming in from the outside the Mexicans steal the food from the cafeteria so they're able to make something that tastes way better than what the average prisoner's getting but nobody's getting what the Italians have no way I remember saying one day there was one guy in particular that was the cook he was my best friend in prison and he's still one of my best friends in life and I said to him I would pay $35 for this in a
[2:29:57] restaurant you made it in a garbage can with a live electrical wire right what you do is you you put a half you fill a garbage can with water halfway and then you um take a a a live electrical wire it has a plug on one side and just the raw wires on the other side you put it in the water it goes and next thing you know the water's
[2:30:28] boiling because it's electrocuting the water right then you take a a plastic garbage bag you put all your stuff in it you poke holes in it and you put it above the boiling water so it steams everything and then you add spices and sauces and all kinds of St stuff and then you just unplug the wire from the wall you don't of course touch the live end and then you toss the water and it's
[2:30:59] magnificent like it was crazy I was actually afraid the first time I saw him cook I was like dude you're going to electrocute yourself he goes ah I've been doing this 17 years wow mhm I said I would pay $35 for this in a high-end sitdown Italian restaurant I I don't know how he' learned to do it that's wild yeah and then um last thing on the Italians what about the scene where you were summoned to the boss's
[2:31:33] cell my brother knows a lot about the mafia he rented an apartment from Carlo Gambino's sister in Brooklyn for 9 years so he knows these guys and he called me about a week before I went to prison and he said listen I've been doing some research and there's a guy at Loretto that you need to stay away from he's a very dangerous guy um he was the boss of the Gambino family and he was in on 18 murders 18 murders as part of a RICO
[2:32:07] case he said this guy is so Fierce that John Gotti was afraid of him and Gotti exiled him to Florida to run the Gambino family business in Florida he said stay away so when I arrived after a few days I noticed him he's got he's totally surrounded by this group of bodyguards and Hangers On I was like oh that's him okay now I know what he looks like I'm going to stay away so I'm there about six weeks and
[2:32:37] I'm sitting in myself just reading the New York Times and I I see some movement in my peripheral vision and I turn and look and it's this guy that was known as stupid tone stupid Tony had crossed eyes so you never were really sure who he was looking at like are you looking at me or so stupid Tony I turn and look at him and I go hey he goes the boss wants to see you I go he wants to see me stupid Tony was one of the bodyguards he goes
[2:33:10] let's go like that and I was like oh my God like I I was actually working hard so that he wouldn't know who I was we walk all all the way to the extreme opposite end of the prison and we go to the boss's room now that part of the prison used to be a Catholic uh uh Monastery so it's much older than the part that I lived in but every cell had
[2:33:41] a sink a toilet it was a little bit more spacious not like M mine was built as a prison you know housing unit so I I'm standing at the entrance to the door and there are like 10 guys in there and the boss is sitting in this chair and one guy is on his knees and he's clipping the boss's toenails disgusting first of all utterly disgusting so I'm just standing there and then when he gets his toenails
[2:34:11] clipped he gets up there's a sink right there he brushes his teeth and he spits and when he spits it gets all around the the rim of the Basin well there's a there's a bunk bed right behind him and he punches the bunk bed this guy's sleeping up there and he goes hey get up clean this [ __ ] up he says you got it boss he jumps out of bed he cleans up all this spit so finally I go excuse me Mr Boss you wanted to see me he goes
[2:34:47] come in sit down and I'm nervous so I go in I sit down all 10 guys are just standing there looking at me you know like you know how these guys are you've seen them all on TV he goes you the CIA guy I said yes you write a book I said I have your book do good I go actually I made number five on the New York Times bestsellers list it did pretty well he goes you're going to write my
[2:35:18] book and I I said oh is that what this is he goes I'm going to tell you stories and you're going to write my book I said okay well let's think about this for a second I said books of this genre are usually written by rats and they spend the first half of the book talking about all the cool stuff they've done and then the second half of the book they they try to
[2:35:50] justify turning rat I said you're definitely not a rat and you probably shouldn't talk about the cool things you've done and everybody turns and looks at him and he goes like this hadn't thought of that you're right but from that day on I was invited to every Italian dinner every Italian party the Super Bowl part party we sat
[2:36:20] together in the cafeteria we sat together in the yard I was one of the Italians it got to the point at the very end it was my last week in prison and my bunkmate had been the mayor of Cleveland he was an awesome guy he just died recently and he comes back from the medical unit he he had to go down there every day for insulin and he says John there was a guy down in medical talking
[2:36:52] about you and saying you were a rat I go what a rat I mean this is blood's going to be spilled if you call somebody a rat in prison I said who's this guy he said I never saw him before he must have just arrived he's got tattoos all over him I said Frank point this guy out to me I want to know who this is the next morning I get up I go to breakfast and another guy that I was friendly with I used to play racketball with him he says hey man there's a guy saying you're a rat I said what I said
[2:37:24] Frank just told me last night some guy was saying I'm a rat I said Clint Point him out to me I want to know who this is so at lunch they Point him out and I'm like I don't have any idea who that guy is and one of the Italians says he just got off the bus he just arrived here about a couple of days ago I said I I I've never had an exch with this guy I don't know I don't know who he is why he's got a beef with me and I go hey I shouted at him he
[2:37:57] was in the line for food I was already at the table the Italian Table I said you have a problem with me he goes you know what I said I said come on over here and let's fix it he goes after after dinner after dinner in the yard and I stood up and I said [ __ ] that right now well the only place in the entire prison where the guards feel at risk is in the cafeteria cuz you got a thousand guys and six
[2:38:28] guards so at the first sign of trouble they hit the panic button and then every guard in the prison comes and they start cracking heads so the the banano boss is sitting next to me and he pulls my shirt and he says sit the [ __ ] down please so I sit down I said I'm going to [ __ ] kill this guy Pete I was I don't even in retrospect I don't even realize I don't even understand I should say why
[2:38:58] I was as angry as I was like I was going to spend my last week in solitary having risked adding you know to my sentence for beating this guy but I was going to beat him right there on the cafeteria in front of everybody Pete says sit the [ __ ] down calm down down and I'll take care of it I said what's that supposed to mean he says it means I'll take the [ __ ] care of it I said okay all right he said
[2:39:29] now go back to my to my cell and read the paper I go okay I trust you so I went back to his cell and I'm reading the USA Today and he comes back like 20 minutes later and he goes it's done I said what's done he goes it's taken care of like this I go what's that supposed to mean he said it means it's taken care of you don't have to worry about
[2:39:59] it I was like okay so I go back across the hall to my cell I'm sitting there like another 20 30 minutes pass and again out of my peripheral vision I see movement I turn and it's the guy he's got like a bloody mouth a bloody nose a fat lip lip his eye is swollen and I'm looking at him like and he goes I wanted to apologize for calling
[2:40:30] you a rat I didn't know about your prominence in the Italian Community and I'm looking at him like not knowing what to say like I wanted to say oh no I didn't mean for you to get you know your ask I and I said next time you're [ __ ] dead you understand I'm sorry and then he runs away and I look at Pete I said thank you he says no
[2:41:00] problem nice and that was it never had any trouble believe this [ __ ] guy you believe this [ __ ] guy he says when I explain to him the level of your popularity in the Italian Community he took back everything that he said I said seriously I appreciate it we had to help him understand so we'll wrap up prison because um that
[2:41:32] book doing time like a spy he wrote a lot on on your time in prison including prison reform wrongful convictions there's a lot that's wrong with prison a lot um what I will say is right about prison is pedophiles are the lowest of low in the food chain 100% astute 100% you know I take [ __ ] all the time from prison reform activists for saying that everybody deserves reform and better conditions and shorter sentences except
[2:42:03] pedophiles I believe in community incarceration I believe that after you have completed your pedophile sentence then you should move out of the cell into the mobile home at the other side of the prison grounds and live there for the rest of your life yeah we don't have the hours necessary to talk about this issue but this is a very serious problem in the United States yeah so buy the book and
[2:42:34] read it there there's no cure for pedophilia there there's no therapy there's no pill there's no cure they need to be separated from society yeah what role do you think artificial intelligence plays in the future of intelligence gathering I think that the greatest challenge that artificial intelligence poses is to Counter
[2:43:06] Intelligence one of the things that one of the things that the CIA the KGB the Mad the Chinese so many services have been good at is Crossing Borders in Alias and in Disguise and ai ai is going to prevent that from happening what kind of a of a world of Espionage are we going to have if you can't cross a border undetected in order
[2:43:36] to carry out an operation it's going to completely change the way intelligence services do business you know even just to make sure that you're clean for an operation you know and then you you do a Rush pass with somebody to switch passports or whatever those days are gone AI is going to say wait a minute you're not John Smith you're Bill Jones you're not Irish that passport is false you're American then what do you do this is this is a potential disaster
[2:44:06] for intelligence Services another thing too is the proliferation of deep fakes yes and not just video deep fakes but now voice deep fakes there's a there's a documentary series on uh Netflix right now called the Andy Warhol Diaries the entire series is narrated by Andy Warhol well Andy Warhol died in 1987 so actually it's AI That's narrating this thing and it's Andy warhol's voice you may have seen this thing in uh social media where Gary buus
[2:44:40] is giving an interview and he says well what are you working on next you know your next film and the guy's like let's Gary Bucy says let's talk about buttered sausage I love buttered you know Heist SM love buttered sausage you butter it you eat the sausage Gary abusey never gave that interview it's completely computer generated but it looks like Gary bucy's nuts and you look at the comments and people were saying poor Gary Bucy this is what a lifetime of drugs will do no people it's AI That's not Gary
[2:45:10] buy so the challenges are going to be Monumental I think we really don't even have a very good idea yet of what we're all going to be up against God that's [ __ ] terrifying I mean there I think there's going to be a time where like blue checks people who are verified it's just gonna be who's human yeah yeah that's a good idea actually but by any chance did you happen to see um reporting in the Wall Street Journal about this uh this experiment that a
[2:45:41] that an AI programmer did where um he he programmed he programmed a computer so that it would be as close to sensient as possible and the more he talked to it the more it learned and the more it built on its own knowledge Bank to the point where um it told him I don't like you Dave I want you to commit suicide I want you to put your head in the microwave oven that would make me happy
[2:46:13] Dave and he ended up having to you know abort the program because it was demanding that he kill himself do you remember the way you abused me when you were a child Dave I remember you know [ __ ] like that it's like what is that how do you deal with something like that so we're in for it yeah it needs regulation the problem is is nobody's really smart enough to to know how to regulate it
[2:46:43] yet yet we'll get there Jeffrey yeah if an intelligence agency wanted to create someone with access is it possible that they could create someone with a cover story that is a billionaire Finance year of course um I know it's maybe a little high-profile but what are the chances
[2:47:15] that Epstein was an intelligence construct of some sort I think that chances are very very good I've maintained from the very beginning that this has mosad written all over it mad is incredibly active on us soil right hundreds and hundreds of Israeli intelligence agents active across the United States at any given time one of the things the Israelis are very good at is the cultivation and recruitment of what are called access agents so let's
[2:47:45] say you want information from Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and prince Andrew well you're not going to recruit any of those people right so you do the next best thing you recruit somebody who has access to all those people well Jeffrey Epstein bore all the Hallmarks of an Israeli access operation besides the fact that he's Jewish his relationship with glain
[2:48:16] Maxwell whose father was also a mosad agent a known mosad agent leads me to believe that they kept it All in the Family his access continued to improve the wealthier he became the source of his wealth is still not clear we don't know where that money came from it couldn't all have come from Les waxner um and so I believe he was probably an Israeli intelligence agent and his job was to get the most
[2:48:46] important people in to compromising positions say with underage girls maybe and to be able to hold it over them so you could extort information that you could then pass back to the Israelis who would then continue to fund you and to finance your lifestyle now I don't believe that he was murdered uh knowing the the Bureau of Prisons and how everybody from the lowliest guard to the director uh has
[2:49:16] their head up their asses uh the cameras never work they're too stupid to think oh maybe I shouldn't put Jeffrey Epstein in the same prison cell with this guy who's in for five murders uh and instead of doing my rounds every 15 minutes I'm G to take this nap instead that's how he did it you know if you're a guy who's living like a billionaire on your private island in the Virgin Islands and your 35- foot townhouse in Manhattan and your private
[2:49:46] jets and your presidents and prime ministers and princes and shakes that are all your friends and then you're a pedophile who's going to die in a dank prison cell wouldn't you kill yourself too I think I would and the opportunity presented itself so um let's close with this if you were to put on your Abu Zeda hat for
[2:50:17] a second and knowing what you know now give 18-year-old John kiraku advice about life joining the agency everything that you've known now what would that be you know we all have regrets in life uh but you know I guess I'm one of these people who believes in a destiny of some sort and I'm in the position that I'm in
[2:50:50] because I'm supposed to be in the position that I'm in this has been extraordinarily difficult the last 20 years for for me have have not been easy by any stretch of the imagination but at the same time um I've made friends that I mean you've seen my phone how am I going to be friends with Yoko Ono or Oliver Stone or you know any number of these
[2:51:22] important crazy famous You Know Jack Nicholson and all these people who've just called me to express support Roseanne Bar sent me $5,000 for my legal fees you know um my son called me a couple of days ago he just started college he's 18 he's a freshman in college and he said Dad the craziest thing happened today he said I took my first ever philosophy class and your name came up I said my name came up he
[2:51:54] said yeah he said the professor who has no idea that my son is in his class um he said he gave us a case study on Military ethics and it was your story and he said nobody had a single complaint or bad word against you I said good it makes it all worthwhile all of it and in the and I've helped a lot of other whistleblowers um I speak at universities and colleges not just
[2:52:24] across the United States but around the world and um my last speech before co uh hit I I got a personal invitation from the commant of West Point and I said are you sure you want me to come to West Point and talk to the whatever they call the freshman class and he said you were the only one with the balls to stand up to them and I said okay I'll do it so I did they paid me
[2:52:55] handsomely plus all expenses paid and officer quarters and the car to the airport and it was amazing so you know sure it's been hard it's been costly but it's been worth it and so in the end a truthful answer to your questions I think I I wouldn't really do anything differently except and this is what I tell all would be whistleblowers hire an attorney before blowing the whistle don't be reactive be
[2:53:29] proactive have an attorney sitting next to you and then God bless good luck so what's next for you what are you working on now and where can people find you well um I I write a lot I'm I'm halfway done with my ninth book now and um most of my other books are CIA books well actually all of my other books are CIA books um except for number eight and what will be numbers 9 10 11 and 12 uh I write a column for Consortium news I
[2:54:00] write a column for covert Action magazine which is a CIA like Insider kind of magazine I put everything on substack so it's John kiraku Dos substack book writing as much as I can I've got a radio show every day called political Misfits I've got a syndicated TV show once a week that airs in 33 countries around the world not in the United States uh they don't really like talking
[2:54:33] about these National Security whistleblower issues but 33 countries it runs things are good I have no no complaints good man John thank you so much for for making the drive up here this has been so much fun I hope for you but definitely has been for me um and honestly we're I know just scratching the surface on a lot of things I love to have you back happy to do it but uh yeah man thank you for doing this appreciate it thanks for having
[2:55:06] me what's up guys thank you so much for taking the time to watch the interview um as you could probably tell this is a brand new channel so if you got anything out of this at all please like the video leave me a comment tell me what you thought tell me who you'd like to see on the show um I see every like I read every comment and I appreciate all of it especially in the beginning because as you know that kind of support goes a long way on these platforms so most importantly I have some awesome guests
[2:55:36] coming up in the future for interviews um so please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of them but again thank you for your time appreciate the support and hope to see you again soon