[00:00] oh hey ladies and gentlemen didn't you see you there you scared me uh welcome back today we've got none other than uh xcia whistleblower John kiraku what's going on John hey good to be back Chris uh I'm always happy to see you um I just wanted to read off some of the titles look you you have published so many books in in such a short amount of time you have The Reluctant spy my secret life of the CIA war on terror uh a convenient the convenient terrorist Abu Zeda and the weird Wonderland of
[00:31] America's Secret Wars you have doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me how to survive and thrive in prison which again you blew the whistle on the whole torture program and all you got was a lousy t-shirt and a and a prison time not not so great um no also you got these new ones which the cia's inside gu Guide to the Iran crisis maybe we could talk about that a little bit um how to disappear and live off the grid a CIA insiders guy uh lying and lied to detection a CIA Insider
[01:02] guide uh and what the latest is surveillance and surveillance detection a c CIA insiders guide uh you just you must have a callus on your rear end from writing so much and you know I have another one coming out in a couple of weeks I decided to do something completely different so I wrote one called Remains of the Day The Ultimate Guide to Washington DC's historic cemeteries interesting something different can you give us a little inside about what that ever since I was a little kid I've been
[01:32] fascinated by cemeteries I find them to be incredibly relaxing I like the uh the architecture the symbolism and and mostly you know everybody's got a story you don't have to be famous um to be interesting and uh God knows dozens of books have been written about Arlington Cemetery and it it shocked me to learn that nobody had ever written a book about Washington DC's cemeteries so I did I love it I love it they are they're
[02:05] quite peaceful it's a nice place to go like an easy riter go drop some acid and you know relax with the prostitutes um but so last time we talked we were talking about the um your pardon and everything and I just wrote this article I was trying to tell people hey this guy deserves a pardon thank you you know I think manfor got a pardon all these these monkeys got a pardon what's is it dead in the water what's the what's the latest on that there's actually a story behind it you know I I had some really great support When Donald Trump was
[02:36] President uh to pardon me and um I had hired a I had hired a republican lobbyist who really didn't do anything to help but I also struck up a friendship with Tucker Carlson and Tucker carried the water for me and um and so I applied for the pardon and I knew I was close right I could feel it I could feel feel like I was close and then Tucker call Tucker called me on the final day of the uh Trump
[03:10] Administration can I swear on this podcast oh [ __ ] yeah oh good okay so he calls me and he's like are you sitting down I said what what are you hearing he goes he's going to Pardon little [ __ ] Wayne and I said what he goes yeah little [ __ ] Wayne is going to get a pardon today and I said what about my pardon and he said there's a story he said let me call you right back he calls me back about two hours later he said it's not
[03:41] going to happen he said you were on the list with Julian Assange and Ed Snowden the three of you and Mitch McConnell got wind of it and McConnell called Trump and and said if you pardon Assange and Snowden Mitch McConnell doesn't know who the heck I am if you pardon Assange and Snowden he said you will lose every Republican in the Senate and you'll be convicted on the impeachment uh uh counts
[04:12] so he just dropped all of us now why I had to be tied with Assange and Snowden I don't know I mean I my own personal belief is they deserve pardons but uh but we all three got dropped and then that was the end of it so I've reapplied under Biden now I've got great amazing support in the Greek American community and uh you know I'm just going to hope for the best we'll see what happens yeah I we'll always be in your
[04:44] corner rooting for you like you said Julian Assange also another one of these guys who deserves to be pardoned we we'll see I find it interesting where you have uh Tucker Carlson doing this 180 and actually doing some pretty good stuff even from the perspective of a leftist doing some good stuff but then the rest of the time talking about aliens and Jesus and stuff and so I'm like okay that's strange I'll take what I strange tell I went on Fox a couple of days ago um only because they're they're like wholly supportive of a pardon and
[05:16] they're wholly supportive of of Julian Assange now part of that is is because they believe that Assange helped to give us Donald Trump and we can agree or disagree about that it doesn't really make any difference but I'll go on Fox just like I'll go on CNN or MSNBC If the message is right and it always surprises me at um how many people will unfriend me on social media if I've gone on Fox
[05:50] it's it's nuts it's like why why why do you put yourself in a corner where you're only going to associate with the people who agree with you on all the issues that doesn't make any sense to me and you know what let me tell you if I so I am single and um and I'm I'm looking so I'm on these apps like so many other people are and I meet this woman and she is
[06:21] absolutely stunning and not just stunning smart she has a master's degree in archaeology and she did a dig in Greece and a dig in in Israel and she's in a very senior position um in government at at at a deputy assistant secretary position right so we start texting we start calling and I said listen I I want to be transparent and
[06:53] upfront um you should know a little bit about me and she said oh I know who you are Mr kiraku I never used my last name but she said I know who you are Mr kako I said okay great well if it's okay with you then it's great with me can't wait to go out we go out to dinner have a fantastic time I ask her out a second time we go out the second time fantastic time and then I say to her hey there's this little town outside Washington called uh Shepherdstown West Virginia I
[07:23] said it's a it's got like art galleries and boutiques and bars and restaurants let's go on Saturday and we'll walk around town we'll have lunch and you know hang out she said great I pick her up 10:00 on a Saturday morning as soon as she gets in my my car I can tell something's wrong so I said are you okay what's wrong nothing nothing she goes nothing everything's fine I said well clearly something's bothering you what is it and she
[07:54] says well I have doubts about your progress credentials and I said excuse me I said I went to prison for my Progressive credentials and then she says I saw a YouTube video of you last night in which you quoted Ronald Reagan and I said all right I know what quote you're talking
[08:25] about I said Ronald Reagan was right when he said that government is the problem it's not the solution to the problem but the rest of that quote was I said even a broken clock is right twice a day and she says I just need to process this I need to think about it I'm like okay whatever we go to Shepherd's toown have a nice time but she's kind of cool
[08:56] for the for the day finally around around 3:00 it starts to rain and it's raining kind of heavily so I said look why don't we just get in the car we'll go back to DC so we get in the car and I don't like to sit on my phone when I'm in the car so I take my phone out of my back pocket I put it in the cup holder and we're driving and I get a text message it goes so I I look and I thought [ __ ] it was a text
[09:28] message from soer Carlson and it said it said hey buddy haven't heard from you in a while let me know if you're free for a beer so I kind of I give her the side eye like this just to see you know has she noticed and she's like that John yeah looking at the text message so I pretend I didn't notice and then she goes do you know Tucker Carlson and I said yes and he's a l l
[09:59] guy you don't have to agree with him I disagree with him on 95% of the issues but he's a nice guy and she says take me home right now and don't ever call me again oh so I did but that's Washington in 2024 that's isn't that on par with your tagline from your show the red team blue team everybody needs to have this tribalistic it's either red team blue team no in between no nuance that's it can you imagine just as
[10:32] recently as the 1990s Republican and Democratic members of Congress used to live together in group houses on Capitol Hill play poker together on Fridays go to church together on Sundays now they would just to soon kill each other yeah yeah that's the level of the discourse but the Democratic party is is in horrible horrible shape terrible the neoliberal they have lost their minds and it's led by this old mummified uh guy walking around who's barely sentient
[11:04] he doesn't know where he is half the time can't find a chair to sit down and all wandering off the stage um and and then beyond that just um imperialist genocidal kind of yeah foreign policy even Kissinger said I see no aim in the current U uh United States foreign policy even Kissinger was like you guys are doing it wrong you know it's funny that you say that because just last night I had a similar convers ation in which I told a friend of mine that as much of a genocidal
[11:35] Maniac as Kissinger was he at least had goals in foreign policy you know you can disagree about what he did in Chile and Cyprus and Vietnam and a dozen other places around the world but you knew what his policy was you knew what the goal was and real politique was real it was only because of Kissinger that Nixon went to China it was only because of Kissinger that that Nixon and bnv were able to negotiate
[12:05] deant and you're right there there's no discernable policy from this Administration or the last one for that matter and even the one before Barack Obama I mean it was it was just kind of a standard run-of-the-mill neoliberal war-loving you know lead from behind and still pretend to be the leader kind of kind of traditional policy nothing bold nothing special
[12:37] certainly nothing advocating peace in any way no and yeah I mean kinger didn't advocate for peace necessarily but at the same time the the end result was at least and not that I'm for imperialism at all but at least the end goal was to strengthen the United States but in in the case of everything Bush it's been actually to create more enemies abroad that's right it seems or maybe that's uh on accident or whatever but yeah it just seems like there's not anything clear
[13:09] now you we're steeped in Ukraine and everything like this and and look at the Drone program just as one example um you know so many of us thought this was a fluke of the George W Bush Administration and it wasn't the Drone program is probably the single biggest the single most important recruiting tool for terrorist groups that exists I can't tell you how many Al-Qaeda
[13:40] Fighters I captured or helped to capture who told exactly the same thing that they had no beef with the American government until our drones killed their dads their brothers their uncles their Imam Blew Up The Village blew up the school blew up the hospital and then they were compelled to take up arms against us well you know in George W Bush's last month as president he killed 24 people with drones and in Barack Obama's last
[14:13] month as president he killed more than 400 people with drones so you know what kind of policy is that it's a policy of failure and what do we get out of it I mean what you can say that the war on terror was some vague idea going and getting Vengeance and all these people but were we trying to get oil out of Iraq or what right just stealing the resource was that that's really the goal I guess um so I did I did want to ask
[14:44] you about go ahead yeah I I did want to ask you because you know we got right now there's conflict in Georgia uh that seems to be instigated without any credibility we don't know for sure but it seems like the CIA is behind this color Revolution that's going on in Georgia um Ukraine is obviously being backed by the United States pretty heavily uh and Naval now navali was an interesting character and I wanted to get your take on it because he went to Yale and and you were you were actually
[15:15] the one who was recruited from a university he went to Yale which is like one of the places that they are known to have CIA recruitment programs what's your take on naoli what's your take on Georgia and these kind of things well let's talk about Georgia first I'm fascinated by what's happening in Georgia um but I think that the bottom line there is actually quite clear um the bottom line is that our policy whether it's stated or not is to create as many problems for the Russians
[15:46] especially on their borders as we possibly can so you know we're we're pumping tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine uh we're not going to stop you know that joke that we'll fight to the last Ukrainian that's actually not a joke it's the policy right we will fight to the last Ukrainian um so we've got that we've got the policy of of encirclement you know the the Baltic countries are all in NATO
[16:18] Poland's in NATO Ukraine is de facto NATO and um and why not stir up trouble in Georgia you know whether it's over this stupid uh foreign agent registration copycat law or just stirring you know poking The Hornet's Nest to to draw the Russians in I'm surprised we're only doing it in Georgia I'm surprised we're not also doing it in Armenia you know the Russians have tried
[16:48] hard to to walk a tight rope between the Armenians and the and the aaries we don't give a [ __ ] about the aaries I'm surprised we haven't jumped in with both feet on the side of the Armenians if only I mean it's not because we even care about the Armenians if only to to upset the Russians so to me that's that's sort of the the easy issue now naali I don't have the foggiest idea if naali was working for the CIA or the FBI or if they even ever approached him I have no idea but I can
[17:21] speculate and my speculation would be that at the very very least he had been approached probably more than once probably by the FBI because it's the FBI that does that kind of thing on us soil they're jealously protective of their Turf when it comes to their bureaucratic uh fights with the CIA the FBI would have had to been a a gaggle of fools to not Approach naali at at Yale and I I would bet money that they did right even if he had told them
[17:52] to go [ __ ] themselves they would have been remiss in their in their jobs had they not approached him um I would have approached him but you're right and you know I want to point something out too cuz I get this question a lot you know the story of how I uh joined the CIA I was recruited in graduate school my my grad school adviser was actually undercover as a grad school adviser looking for people who might fit into the CIA culture he
[18:24] recruited me into the CIA the truth was I was getting married 6 weeks after gradu I had no job lined up I wanted to see the world I wanted to be involved in public service so it was kind of a a nice match for a while um that's different now it's different since passage in 1993 of the um of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act you can't you can't just do that because what was happening is all these these white male Eastern liberal undercover
[18:56] people were recruiting other white male Eastern liberal you know grad students and so you know I remember 1993 when it like dawned on them at the agency that that we had no African-Americans or women the women were all in support positions it's like nobody's black nobody's Hispanic nobody's Asian like what are we doing it's 1993 For Heaven's Sake so that changed and when that Chang
[19:30] changed the CIA became more overt in its campus uh I'm going to use the word operations in air quotes so instead of being undercover as a grad school adviser instead of being undercover as a you know an international Affairs Professor they just did it all overtly and so what they would do is take people in the last three years of their careers and put them in these academic positions um intelligence
[20:04] fellow right at universities All Over America hundreds of them so if you're senior intelligence service you've been a station Chief or you're a gs-15 former station Chief uh and you're getting ready to retire in two or three years well wouldn't you like a cushy position I have a friend for example wanted to retire to the Midwest to his hometown and um he had been a Soviet um focused case officer during the Cold
[20:35] War and so they said okay why don't we send you to this major university in the midwest with 50,000 students uh why don't you teach a course on Espionage in Soviet literature that was one that they helped him make up uh you can do one on um the history of Soviet operations in the United States from like 1950 to 1980 and there was some other history
[21:07] class that he did so he would teach these three courses he did it for three years and then he retired You Know Rich and fat and happy and then they brought in the next would be CIA retiree well multiply that by 150 universities all across the country what better recruitment tool could you possibly have I mean to be able to stand up there on on stage in a lecture hall that's holding three or
[21:38] four or 500 people and say I spent the last 32 years at the CIA and I'm going to teach you about X Y and Z there there's going to be a a line of 20 20 people at the end of the semester who are going to want to know if you can help them apply if you can write them a letter of recommendation so instead of having it all be undercover you're doing it overtly in front of everybody's face and you're even more successful that
[22:08] way incredible incredible that that's the the base morality of college students that that many of them would stand up and say I want to sign up to travel the world and learn meet interesting people and learn to kill them um yes what what has the CIA changed much since do do you still have within do you understand how do they operate differently now yeah they operate much differently um it's much more
[22:39] um it's a much deadlier place now for a couple of reasons I've been out I've been out for 20 years but I have friends who are still there um you know after 9911 I was only around at the agency for another two and a half three years after 911 but the agency has has become a military organization it was never a paramilitary organization before I mean they sort of dabbled in that during the vetnam war but it was essentially well I'll tell
[23:10] you what the deputy director told me one time he said you know the mission of the agency is incredibly simple it is to recruit spies to steal secrets and to analyze those secrets to give policy makers the best informed policy options available it's really that simple it was that simple until September 11th 2001 and now the CIA has you know entire divisions of people whose job it is to operate fleets of
[23:44] deadly drones to manage kidnapping and rendition teams to manage assassination teams to work with um foreign liaison uh or organizations to kidnap to to kill in some cases uh to interrogate people who have never been charged with any crime I mean we can I I can give you a dozen different examples some of them are famous like Mahar arar
[34:20] democracy okay it's not the Crooked judges for example in Pennsylvania Who Sold children to these to these Kitty jails right it's not the Crooked for cash yeah yeah kids for cash Scandal exactly in Pennsylvania it's not the Crooked uh prosecutors who withheld exculpatory evidence or Brady material in order to run their their conviction numbers up I was the one who was weakening our democracy by reporting
[34:53] it yeah that's what on you John I know right we're kind of American am I dude Putin could say the sky was blue and then if you agreed with him you would be spreading Russian disinformation this is true yes and I'll tell you one of the things it's about Sputnik you know Sputnik offered me spudnik offered me a show in 201 16 and I turned it down because I didn't want to work for the
[35:23] Russians and then they came back in 2017 and they offered me a show again and I said well I don't know I said listen if I were to to accept a show I would want guarantees that I could say anything I wanted and I could criticize anyone I wanted including Vladimir Putin and the DC bureau chief said done and I said really I said are you willing to put that in writing put that in the contract he said done and he
[35:54] did and so I say anything I want now I've been there for seven years no one has ever asked me to say something or told me that I couldn't say something I'll give you an example do you remember a couple of years ago this uh ethnic Russian guy and his daughter were poisoned in York England with Novak this poison whatever it was residue or whatever so my co-host at the time he's like you know we we shouldn't
[36:26] jump to conclusions it could have been the ukrainians it could have been the the Russian mob and I said it was the KGB or whatever they're calling themselves today this is what they do they poison people right let's just call a spade a spade the Russians didn't care nobody objected to it I wasn't suspended or fired nobody even mentioned it to me you know because that's the deal I can say anything I want yeah I heard a colleague
[36:58] of yours somebody who called into the show they said you know Putin is a monster blah blah blah I was like wow he's on this Russia Network and he can say this openly this is totally against the narrative that Russian is so you know they're so constrictive and stuff but in the United States we're so free and yet you know most of our media is owned by like three people in their family yeah that's right it's become a big joke so we're both chronicling on your show you're chronicling the the decline of Western civilization in real time I I do the
[37:29] same I do a weekly show where it's like this week in Decline um and there's nothing we can do to stop it it's we're just sitting here watching a slow motion train wreck you know isn't that the truth you know we've got this uni party is that with with two candidates and it's like seriously this is the best we can do an 81y old and a 77 year old screaming at each other this is the best we can do shame on us you know I'll tell you a funny thing too in the 2020
[38:01] campaign yeah I I used to be a Democrat I I quit the Democratic party in 2012 um because it's not a progressive party it's it's a it's a right of Center party and if I want to be right of Center then you know what's the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans but anyway um it became apparent I'm sure you'll recall um that that Joe Biden was going to be the and so I I started paying closer attention I'm a political junkie anyway
[38:32] so I was paying attention but I paid even closer attention well you might remember in one of the debates one of the primary debates Biden is talking and his teeth fell out like his Dentures just fell he had to catch them and put them back in his mouth I'm like seriously and then he was doing a debate in Iowa and his eyeball started bleed you know how sometimes the white of your eye turns all red usually from high blood pressure his eyeball starts to
[39:04] bleed and then the week before the Iowa caucus he goes he goes out on stage to give a speech and the lights are really bright and people are chanting we want Joe we want Joe he was confused because he couldn't see from the lights where everybody was he gave his entire speech with his back to the audience his entire spee it's all on it's all on YouTube and and that was that was four
[39:36] and a half years ago it's only worse now oh man awful yeah I just geriatric cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster probably pumped full of Narcotics to get him to stand upright and go out on the stage Mitch McConnell also just this geriatric tortoise who can hardly know he's he needs to retire it's Feinstein till the last minute they're like buing her in like a museum exhibit here yeah
[40:07] she couldn't even wax museum yeah in her last couple of weeks uh in office she she tried to cast a vote against her own Amendment and they had to correct it because she was so demented she didn't even know what she was doing Mitch McConnell every time he stands up in front of a microphone he has a mini stroke like what's that all about one time when I was in college I went to a congressional hearing I went to a senate hearing and um and STM Thurman was uh was the chairman of the
[40:38] Senate Judiciary Committee and he pulled a sandwich out of his pocket and started eating a sandwich and Bob Dole's like Mr chairman Mr chairman Mr chairman like to get him to put the sandwich back in his pocket seriously what is this when Bob Dole has to tell you something you know you [ __ ] know right oh my God Bob do doesn't like that Bob do Bob do Bob do who ate Bob Do's peanut butter Bob
[41:08] do yeah and and somehow we you start longing for the days of like th those times because of how ludicrous it is now I remember seeing George W bush I was like oh this guy he's not as bad as where we right right I remember him W ah exactly that's wrong some kind of [ __ ] up Stockholm syndrome you've got from you know glorifying the past but um um yeah well look come back and do
[41:38] this again John I I love talking with you and everybody tune into your show I can't tell them where it is because I'll be crucified the but he's on Rumble who's on Rumble what political Misfits on Rumble yes yeah uh my dude hell of a human being uh stick around we'll talk right after this we'll sign off to everybody in TV Land bye everybody