[00:02] Hi, I'm former CIA officer John Kiriakou and you're watching the Break It Down Show. Yeah, I love I love what I get to do. How many times have you you've been interviewed by someone who's got legitimate intel counter-intel chops? Not a ton. Um I'm going to say in the last five years I could probably count it on less than two hands. Yeah. Why are we so afraid to talk out loud to each other? And like you see
[00:32] I look at what we do, whether you're in the Department of Defense, CI, wherever you're at. This is a very specialized job and even within that, you know how this is. Like we're so you know, we could probably count over a hundred jobs in counter-intelligence alone. We're not even talking about SIGINT or anything else. And it's so hard to know when someone's good, so hard to know what direction to go, so hard to develop yourself. Like what books to read? I'm like all of them. Read all of the books. You know, a a great friend of mine, a Bruce Fein, not just one of my closest friends, but my attorney as well. He was
[01:03] the Deputy Attorney General under Reagan. He he maintains a list of 100 books that every American should read. And he's really serious about this. Every American needs to read these 100 books. And I think he's absolutely right. And to get back to your point that you made just a second ago why is it that we don't talk about these issues? Why why is it that we're not out there? You know, I I was on the Danny Jones podcast, I'm going to say three or
[01:34] four months ago and I debated a guy a former agency guy named Andrew Bustamante. And Andrew's got his own following, he's a popular guy. And it ended up getting kind of explosive, which was fun. It was all in good fun. But we ended up, even though we came at this from completely diametrically opposed sides, we ended up agreeing on like 80% of what we wanted. Right. You know, it's not like we're out to to bash each other. It's not like we're out
[02:05] to, you know, make a point at the expense of somebody else. You can have You can have a serious conversation with another professional and you can disagree like gentlemen while respecting each other. And that's missing from so many outlets. It's just missing. It's uh I want to dig back into what you're talking about and it's a great way to We'll say just take all of the theory out, all of the politics out. If you and I were to go out and we're working together as a team and I'm sitting in on
[02:35] your meeting, I you know, my job is to shut up. Maybe I get to ask a question. Maybe I send you a note, but I'm staying the [ __ ] out of your way. There is nothing more uncomfortable than being the guy who it's not your meeting. You're just like, oh my god. Yeah, cuz you're so dying to say something. I know, right? And and you know, that's part of that is is I Like if you and I were to sit down, you know, we would get to know each other real fast and be like, okay, good. I trust you to do it and get done what you're going to do and you're going to trust me. But you like sailing and I
[03:07] like boxing as an approach to getting the answer. And and I'm like, what are you doing? Yes. So hard to sit in and not do anything other than be completely like just Oh my gosh. And that's That goes to the bigger thing of these conversations. There's so many different ways to approach this job. So true. You just reminded me of something. I I had no intention of bringing up, but the last time I was in Afghanistan, I went with with John Kerry. I was the
[03:39] chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So there were four of us all went together and um you know, when you go with a CODEL, it's a congressional delegation, it's a big deal. But when you go with the chairman of the oversight committee, it's a very, very big deal. So, they they laid out this briefing. And you know how military briefings are with all the PowerPoints and the different slides and decks. So, we're all sitting around this this conference room table, and it's 12
[04:09] generals from one star to four stars and Kerry and my boss, me, and then sort of an assistant. So, they're doing an order of battle. I hate order of battle briefings cuz they're so incredibly boring to me, and they change every 15 minutes, and they mean nothing. So, they're saying, well, we've got elements of the first platoon here and elements of the third mountain division there and we, you know, blah, blah, blah. We come out of that briefing, and Kerry
[04:40] says, now mind you, this is 10 years after the start of the war. Kerry says, "We may actually win this thing." And I said, "No, we're not going to win this thing. This is the same briefing that they've been giving for the last 10 years. I said, 'Hamid Karzai is the mayor of Kabul. That's it. The Taliban's got the rest of the country. We're not going to win this thing. That's just happy talk from the generals because they know that you have the ability to hold up their budget.' That's all this
[05:10] was about. Oh my god." It's the amount that we lied to ourselves without necessarily lying. It It's It's amazing. You know, I I I got to stay in the areas for a long time. I got to learn how we were each iteration. So, when we showed up, I'm like, I already know what you guys are going to do. I already know the mistakes you're going to make. And all I can do, and this is the intel guy talking, is try to get you I I look at my job, tactical combat collection, is is help the commander win more, lose less, help the enemy lose
[05:40] more, win less. That's right. And I I I understand like the mission statements cuz they're all the same, right? That's not a knock. That's just how the machine works. And then you have to mix in State Department or US Ag or contractors for all these things. And so I'm just looking at all of this and I'm just trying to go to the top boss that I can get to and be like, "Here is the input that you guys are putting in your staff meetings everything else. Here's what they're telling you what's happening." And then I go out after all that stuff and I talk to the locals and I say, "Hey, what's going on here?" And they're
[06:11] like, "These motherfuckers." And then they're not talking about the things, you know? And and you start to going ahead of their decisions. So I'm like, "Here's the status quo. Here's the status quo and in between there's all this [ __ ] where we're not being honest." And commanders who got it got it right away and they started slowing down their operations. Go. You just reminded me of something else. So I went to Afghanistan by myself in 2009, again with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wanted to do a study a formal committee uh research project on
[06:43] um heroin poppy cultivation. Mhm. At the time, Afghanistan produced 93% of the world's heroin. 93% of the world's heroin. So I flew into Bagram God bless the guys at the Missouri National Guard. They flew me from Dubai to uh to Bagram directly. And um I got to Bagram. They said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to go to Kandahar and Lashkar Gah and I want to go into the poppy fields." They were like, "Absolutely not." Well, it is not
[07:15] my nature. It has never been my nature to pull rank, ever. Right. And I said, "Look, with all due respect, I'm a senior congressional staffer. I outrank all of you. I have general officer rank here. So with all due respect, if I say we're going to to Kandahar and Helmand, we're going to Kandahar and Helmand." Hour later, we get on a helicopter. We go to Kandahar. They have, you know, their briefing set up for me. Then we go to to Helmand province to the the
[07:47] village of Lashkar Gah. Now there was a State Department outpost there. Um that only had maybe a dozen people. So it's in literally in the midst of the poppy fields. And these guys couldn't have been in any more danger, right? So I get there and they said, "Well, we have this briefing set up." And I said, "No, I appreciate it, but I want to get in a Jeep and I want to go out into the poppy fields. And I want to talk to poppy farmers." They hated that idea. But we got into the Jeep with a
[08:17] translator and a security detail. We went out, we find a poppy farmer. So we drive up to him and we're talking. And I said, I asked him this very naive question. I said, "Why do you grow poppy instead of growing crops with two growing seasons? Why don't Why don't you grow I mean, Why don't you grow onions or tomatoes or pomegranates?" And he goes like this, he goes, "The Americans told me in 2001
[08:50] that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted." There it is. And I said, "What American told you you could grow poppy?" And my handler's like, "Meeting over. This is too dangerous." He physically pulls me back into the Jeep. We go back to Lashkar Gah. And then I fly back to Bagram and then God bless the guys from this time the North Dakota National Guard, they send me back to Dubai and back to Washington. So I write this up.
[09:20] Yep. And I send it to Kerry. And um and he says, uh "No, we're we're not going to we're not going to publish this." And I said, "Why not?" And he said, "Look." And in fact, I said, I said, "Afghanistan produces 93 of percent of the world's heroin. And he said, "Almost all of that heroin goes to Russia and Iran, and we want them to be addicted to heroin. It makes them weak. It weakens their
[09:53] cultures and their societies, and we want that heroin to go there." So, I ended up publishing a paper that was maybe 20% of what it was supposed to have been. Yeah. And it's not really about heroin. Yeah, I am not surprised to hear that. And when I say this to you, you'll know that I'm coming from a position of respect for what you've done. When you show up in that poppy field and talk to that farmer, you are naive, right? Yeah. You need a guy like me. You need a guy
[10:24] like me. And like when these generals would show up, and they're like, "I can see the future. I can see bizarre." And they get their hands in the air, and I'm like, "You are like a little child out there." You're a civilian. You know what I'm talking about. We're going to bring this harvest in. Like I talked to an army major one time on the I'm hard on the ag teams cuz look, they deserve it. They want the job, you [ __ ] it up, here's the cost. And they wanted to build these collection centers, which is you know, it's it's like a a roof with some sort
[10:55] of shielding around the sides, and the farmers were going to bring their wares and put them down, and then the buyers would come be like, "Oh my gosh." Nobody's ever thought of creating a market. And so, um and then you know, so the buyers and not buyers like customers, but like, you know, the the mass buyers Yes. would be impressed, and then they would, you know, sell more. They There's all this whole thing. We would never ask the governor where we should put this thing if they wanted it in at all. We never talked to the farmers. And they would they would say, "Do they understand? Do they understand what this
[11:25] thing's for?" And I'm I'd say to the major, I'm like, "What What's the process? What's What's market chain from farmer to Pakistan or wherever these things go and they're in, you know, somebody's house and they're going to eat it. What what's that market chain look like? Well, I don't know. And I'm like, well, why are you [ __ ] with it? You know, and Yeah. I had to write these things up and and these guys had no idea. So, you know what I do? I go out and talk to the farmers and I'm like That's it. That's what you have to do. How does Yeah, how does the harvest work? Tell me everything. I'm fascinated. And they tell me everything. And they had a system, it was established and good change it if you
[11:57] want to, America, but at least know that it exists. And then you can decide if you want to [ __ ] with it. We hate that. We hate that. You know, I I went to Afghanistan as a private citizen in 2007. I I had consulted on a film called The Kite Runner based on the book. Right. Right. And by Khaled Hosseini. And um And I uh I went to Afghanistan to get the child actors out of the country. And so, I had a I had a
[12:28] free day and I had a bunch of friends in the American Embassy both CIA and State Department. So, I went over to the Embassy. Hey, how you doing? We had lunch and they just happened to have this marketplace set up across the street from the Embassy where local Afghans came and sold, you know, food or bread or you know, souvenirs or coins or whatever. We had to take a tunnel from the Embassy across the street
[13:00] to the market because it was too dangerous to cross the street in a secure zone surrounded by the American military. So, I wrote this up as an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times when I got when I got back. And um The The LA Times entitled it The Other War We're Losing because everybody was so focused on Iraq in 2007. They weren't really paying attention to Afghanistan anymore. So, they called it the other war we're
[13:30] losing. Then a couple of the days later, I get an email from the editor. And he says that they got an email from OVP, the office of the vice president. It was Dick Cheney at the time. And I said an email for me? From Dick Cheney? They said, "Yeah, he wanted to comment on the on the op-ed." I said, "What did he say?" All the email said was, "This guy's full of shit."
[14:00] Yeah. "Thank you, Dick Cheney." Yeah. There's There's a I'm not on a where it is, but there's a line where no long like I call it the spaceship. That's the best way to describe it. It's like Star Trek. You got all the people up in the spaceship, and they're going to come down, and they're going to fix the people's lives. And And the axiom I've come up with is you cannot presume to improve the condition of someone something that you refuse to understand the condition of. Yeah. You know, we import the problem, we import the solution, and don't bother with the
[14:32] results. You know, it's just like Pete, I got to tell you, my my very best friend from high school, um joined the army as soon as we graduated. It was he army reserve, but he he did very well for himself, and he ended up getting promoted to full bird colonel. And he was stationed in Iraq as we used to call him the garbage the garbage king of Iraq because he was in charge of solid waste disposal. Right. He actually died at 44,
[15:02] from a a very rare brain cancer that came from the burn pits that he was in charge of. Yeah. But anyway, I was at the CIA at the time. He was in the military at the time stationed in Iraq. And um And he said something to me that was just shocking. Cuz I've known this guy I had known this guy all my life. And he said, "You know, the only solution here is we have to kill everybody." And I said, "What in God's name would possess you to say something like that?" And he
[15:34] said, "Well, they don't want freedom and democracy. So, we have to force them." And I I was like, "Dave, what are you talking about?" But, you know, that was the conventional wisdom in the Pentagon at the time, and at the CIA, and at the State Department, and at the White House. You know, the only people who who never agreed with that, in my personal experience, were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were the most reluctant to commit big numbers to these to these
[16:06] wars, and nobody paid any attention to them. Yeah. There's a belief, and maybe it's accurate, you know, that we shouldn't be nation building. I would say state building, cuz there's a difference there, and it's more academically driven, but we never bothered with a license to come in and do the thing that we wanted to do. You know what I mean? I'm even weird about language, and I and the way I illustrate this usually is I talk to all of my SEAL friends and all of my Green Beret friends, and I'm like, "Have you fired more rounds in combat in these places, or conversations?" And they're like, "Oh, it's conversations by far."
[16:37] And I'm like, "Which one did you train harder on?" And they're like, "No, no, we don't train at all to talk to people, but we shoot a lot of rounds." Absolutely right. Absolutely right. So, we don't even know if we can do this or not, right? And so, we make these statements like, "We have to kill everybody, cuz that is our hammer." And we're like, "If we just kill more people, we'll kill our way out of it." And that's never the case. Historically, that has never worked. Never. You can't kill your way out of it. Yeah. And the whole point is to win hearts and
[17:07] minds. Um doing that with bullets isn't going to work. Here's a great one for you. When you topple another government and try to put one up, you are the insurgents. So, we were the insurgents and we wanted the hearts and minds for us. Commanders all the time would say that. They're like, don't don't think that way. The governor needs the hearts and minds. The governor is the boss. Stop being the boss. Stop being the most influential man in this valley. Right. slowly slowly would get But by the time they figured that out and really started to grasp it and really drove their unit
[17:37] in the right direction, they had to start boxing things up and and then the next unit it wasn't that there were 20 in Okay, it is true that there were 20 individual wars over 20 years, but we had complete amnesia that anybody else had done this and we just would not could not accept that this problem I don't know how many times they asked me, John, how many schools are in that valley? And I'm like, why don't you already know that? You know, I'm going to find it out. And by the way, I'm going to go ask the Afghan or I'm going to go ask the shake and they're going to tell me. And I can do that all day long. You
[18:08] should be asking harder questions by now. And this is one of the reasons I'm part of the on the GOs and everything. You got You all are over your careers because you couldn't handle the past 20 years. Quite literally. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you know, this is an ongoing theme. And it doesn't matter who happens to be in the White House. It doesn't matter who is making the decisions. They're all the same. Yeah. They're all the same. This goes back to that Kerry thing about
[18:39] let's enfeeble these people. I know that we have a problem with opiates in our country and have had for quite a while. I know where those opiates come from, too. Yep. So, when we look at these problems, we make these statements like let's let's you know, we've done this in Ukraine. We do this in a lot of places where we pick this like we'll call we snap snap the chalk line. Anybody on that side of the chalk line, bad news. Amen. And and they're When you talk to those people, they're like, I'm a vendor. I don't care what you guys do. That's right. What do you mean I'm a bad guy? I I, you
[19:11] know, and or I'm a businessman and I don't I never have done business with the US cuz I don't care. That's not my world. And and we'll decide at the at the foreign policy class of people. They they write these papers, you know, like all the people that Look, you know these guys. And and again, God bless. Everybody's doing their best, right? It's really hard things to figure out. And like, this is how the Russian war is going to go down. Put a PhD behind my name. There you go. PhD. And so, they're desperate for that always to be the answer. They can never be wrong. So true. And then you go on the ground and talk
[19:42] to people, it's nothing to do with what they're talking about. I've said many, many times in podcasts that I've done that the day before we invaded, the night before we invaded Iraq, uh the senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council said in a secure video teleconference, his exact words, "They're going to throw flowers at us when we cross the border." It's like, no, we're the occupiers. We're invading their country and occupying them. They're not going to throw flowers at us. And certainly they didn't.
[20:13] Right. Yeah. And then we came and they wanted us Yeah, I know. They wanted us to be great. You know, I talked to a lot of Iraqis. You know, like, it was so great. We had our country back, and you guys [ __ ] it up. Yes. Yes. And now look what happened. Now there's no Sunni bulwark against Iran. Um Iraq is essentially a weak client state of of Iran. And uh and uh the the Gulf Arabs are going to be forever in fear for their safety.
[20:45] If we looked at the Yeah, no, we did that. And and I took me a long time to learn this. So, let's not act like Pete's omnipotent. I had to talk to a lot of Iraqis. I had to really like try to And I don't know that I still grasp it cuz all these things I'm not of that place, and so it's very hard to get. But uh one guy taught me, and basically he said is it's not sectarian. This is not Nobody cares that much about Muhammad around here. We're pretty western if you guys would let us be. Yes. He's like, the problem is and you guys have a problem like this. This is like
[21:16] whites and blacks. And when you can't solve that problem in your country, you for sure can't solve that problem in our country. And I was like, "Oh [ __ ] he's right. He's right." Got that right. That is absolutely true. We just don't get I can't tell you how many times I had to speak at little classes being held at um at the the Pentagon or the State Department to try to explain to people in the most basic terms the difference
[21:49] between a Sunni Muslim and a Shia Muslim. Yeah. And that there are different varieties of Shias depending on where they are. Are they from Oman or from Yemen or from Syria or from Iraq? And people just their eyes glaze over and it just goes over their heads. Like it just doesn't make any sense to them. I I was in Kuwait. I went into Kuwait in 1991. In In February of 1991, I went to Kuwait with the Marines on Liberation Day. And there was a general there. He wasn't the commanding general
[22:21] in Kuwait. He was like the deputy. And um the Kuwaitis have this tradition of something called the diwaniya. So it's a it's like a political discussion group for men. And so they have these these big living rooms set up in their houses that they called uh diwans. Or it translates to salon. And men will come over one night a week. Everybody's got their diwaniya on a different night. Come over, you drink tea, you drink coffee, you eat little cookies, and you
[22:52] talk politics. And it's it's a free-flowing thing. So this general says to me, "When are you going to take me one of to one of those diwaniyas. And I said, "Oh, a diwaniya?" I said, "Yeah, I'd love to take you to diwaniya." I said, "Actually, tonight I was going to go to one that's being hosted by the Kuwaiti ambassador to Mauritania, who was kind of a kind of a character in Kuwaiti politics. So, we go to the diwaniya. Uh and uh
[23:24] you're supposed to take off your shoes when you walk in, just out of good manners. Not only did he not take off his shoes, but he was wearing obviously combat boots. And then when we sat down, they gave the general the the seat of honor next to the host. The general puts his combat boot up on the coffee table. Listen, there is nothing more offensive in Arab culture than to show the sole of your foot because the sole of your foot is where you step into [ __ ] outside. Right? So, it's
[23:56] considered exceedingly bad manners to expose the sole of your foot. And his foot I kept whispering to him, "General, put your foot down. General, put your foot down. You can't put your foot up there, General." Afterwards, Mohammad Kadiri, the the ambassador, he said to me, "Please don't ever bring that man to my house again." Right. It's like talk about how to win friends and influence people. Like, dude, all you had to do was 5 seconds of cultural sensitivity.
[24:26] Yeah. To not offend everybody in that room. And that's the basics that you owe to have that license to go over cross-culturally. I Yes. you know, if you were to handle that in a different way and say, "Hey, you know, my uniform requires that I keep my boots on. What do you guys think about that?" Exactly right, Pete. You know. Exactly right. Now, you've just liberated their country three or four days earlier, and they're going to say, "Oh my god, by all means keep your keep your boots on. We totally understand.
[24:57] God bless I am the standard bearer, right? My guys see me without my shoes on, I go, "Now listen, you guys tell me, do I should I take them off or not?" And they'll be like, "Cuz I did this, right?" And so I I would say, "Hey, um we're all eating, we're on the floor eating with our hands." And I said, "You know, this is an interesting thing. You guys know I'm from California. Um I eat with my left hand, but I'm told that you guys don't like that." There you go. And they go, "Pete, you're from California. You're not in Iraq. Eat with whatever hand you want. We're just glad to be your host." And I
[25:27] was like, see and I when I did these things, I would do these a lot with my interpreter. I'd say, "I'm going to ask questions and say things that you know I know, but I'm doing that for a different reason." And oftentimes just to show my partners, you know, in on the American side. And again, I'm not omnipotent. I [ __ ] all these things up. But when I go out into an area, if they're not wearing kit and gear and helmets, all my stuff comes off. It'll stay next to me on the ground cuz I've got to keep track of it. That's a very important point. And you know, when we first crossed into Iraq in 2003, um and moved into Basra, that's
[25:59] exactly what we did. All the gear came off. Even the helmets came off when we first approached the the leaders in Basra, both both civic and religious, everything came off. They put their hands over their hearts. Oh, thank you for liberating us. We see why you're here. Everything is great. And then little by little, and mostly it was cuz we were so jumpy about our own security, all that gear went back on and then we looked like occupiers. Right. Once we looked like occupiers, we were
[26:30] treated like occupiers. I'm going to put a picture up here. This is me talking to a bunch of sheikhs. Awesome. see right behind me, my gear is on the ground. I I do. Awesome. I'm talking directly across, not my interpreter, but the guy just off his right, that guy is dead. Sheikh Case, right? He lived in a place where his involvement politically was dangerous and would ultimately kill him within a year of that of that photo. And you know, it was dangerous, but these guys do live in that life and they do
[27:02] not wear gear, right? Cuz they have a different uniform. You've seen Sheikhs and how they kind of float around the room when they have that shake walk and everything. Oh, yes. We have to understand that if we're if we presume to go in somewhere and improve that place, we have to know the Sheikh cases of the world and understand that how they got to where they got to is a path that we need to understand before we start offering different next steps for them cuz they have a different world than us. You know, that that was especially true in Afghanistan.
[27:33] In in 2001, starting around November or December of 2001, where we had for all intents and purposes, we had destroyed Al-Qaeda. Um we had killed many of them. The rest were just pushed out into Pakistan. So in terms of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, we had destroyed them. So then George Bush George W. Bush used that god-awful word nation-building. Well, Afghanistan had a 3,000-year-old
[28:04] tradition of um of something called the Loya Jirga. The Loya Loya Jirga was a committee of Sheikhs who ran the place. Right? If you had a dispute with your neighbor, you would go to the Loya Jirga, you'd argue your sides of the issue, they would make a decision. It was their form of democracy. Well, we didn't like their form of democracy. We liked our form of democracy, and so we imposed it on them.
[28:35] This is a country that had literally zero experience with Western-style democracy, but we thought we were smarter than they were, we knew better than they did, and so damn it, they're going to use our way or it's going to be the highway. And 20 years later, we bug out and the Taliban uh comes back to power. And I I want to say one other thing about the Taliban. This is something that we never understood, and I mean, White House, State Department, and DOD under
[29:06] presidents of both parties. What we didn't understand was that the Taliban did not descend from the moon and just float down and impose themselves on Afghan society. These are the husbands, the fathers, the brothers, the sons of Afghans. Mhm. And so, whether we like it or not, whether we understand it or not, they would rather have the Taliban
[29:37] than have us. And so, we had no business being there. Yeah. And if you're going to have business being in there, understand that that barrier is in front of you. That's right. And we didn't understand it. Right. Right. When When you talk about jirgas, and I'll say the word shura as well. These are both meetings of a kind, and we would say, "Oh, well, you have to go to the education shura." You know, and they would tell the Afghans how to run their lives. Yeah. And again, it took me a long time to figure this out, but a shura is not a shura, a jirga is not a jirga unless
[30:08] there's holy men there, because it turns out most of the world doesn't separate government and religion. And so, we hate that. And we like like uh you you have General Order Number One, it's like, "Pete, you got to stay out of them mosques. You don't you dare go in a mosque. If I get invited to a mosque, guess where I'm going." I went. I'm going to go right on in. I've lost I've lost count of the number of mosques I've been to. Yeah. One of the mosques I went to wasn't even a mosque. It was a pad of dirt. That That's where they That's what the mosque was there. And And I stood there, and I didn't do that I didn't ape
[30:40] being Islamic, and they call that, as you know. But I was someone's guest while he prayed, you know? And so every day I'd go to prayer with him. And I was in a mosque every day, right? Yeah, and because we're afraid of the the culture, because we don't want to offend, we don't ever get to leverage this to our advantage. And so when we go to these meetings that we gen up and call the shura, they're like, "Yeah, sure. I'll go to the shura." But um guess who's not there? The Taliban. The the holy men are not there. And when you see those guys, when you go to a meeting that's not
[31:10] driven by Americans, and you see them actually make community decisions, yeah, there are Taliban members there. And they go, "Yeah, cool. That's part of the deal. We can do that." But where I worked, and this is just for everybody, I know you know this, but I worked in the area where a guy named Mullah Omar was from, and he was living there in his house, and we never caught him. A mile from all our close we didn't even know he died until 6 years afterwards. I'm true. I was there when he was still alive, you know? You think my god, Pete's a great spy. He could have find
[31:40] it out. I could I had no clue. But I also wasn't looking for him. I was trying to understand when we were like, you know, just leave the Taliban. And I'm like, "Dude, that guy's brother is in the Taliban." You know, of course he's tied to it. Doesn't mean he's a bad guy. Doesn't mean his Taliban brother's a bad guy. But they are they are of this place. You can't wipe them out. You can't ignore them. No one's going to trust you who's not going to stay. Well, this is where they're from. And people people couldn't accept or understand that the Taliban is part of
[32:10] that community. And and I'll add this next piece and then I'm going to shut up and let you go, but there's a guy at every PRT and and he gets to wear civilian clothes. He's in the military. And his job is to run the "Hey, Taliban, come in from the cold. We'll give you a package of goods and aid, and we'll get you back on the right path." That guy is in every province, and that guy can go there for a year, 6 months, whatever it is, and convert zero people and get a high five. "Good job." And no one ever goes, the [ __ ] we doing? A buddy of mine from the State Department wrote a book about it and it was
[32:41] entitled how I helped to lose the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Yeah. But it's not the only book written like that. No. Now, you're absolutely right. It's um uh I'm thinking about Peter um what's his last name? I know him because we were in the same area. Anyhow, he was Oh, this is very much Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's him. That's him. Yeah. I I I'll think of his name when I think about it. Department whistleblower. Uh Right. Just like you, he's like, "Hey,
[33:13] this isn't working." And just like you, they're like, "You know how you had that retirement and all these other things? Actually, we we think we want to throw you in jail instead." Yep. There it goes. You know? Yeah. There it goes. And he just barely And then the And the No, uh the ACLU came and fought for him because of what he did, right? He was the ACLU. It was the ACLU and it was the Government Accountability Project, GAP, whistleblowers.org. And
[33:44] Yeah. they they ended up having to go to court and he was that rare victory. Uh but Hillary Clinton personally tried to ruin his life. Yes. Right. Mhm. Peter Van Buren was his Peter Van Buren, thank you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, he and I worked in the same part Actually, Wow. Peter Van Buren uh Bradley Manning at the time and myself all sat within maybe 25 circular feet of each other in three different offices, but no no difference at all, all at the same time, right? god. Bradley Manning, now Chelsea
[34:15] Manning, got arrested day before yesterday. Oh, no. Protesting in front of the Speaker of the House's office. Well, you know. I don't know. I don't know what to do. You know, Peter and I both had this conversation about what we would have done if and again, I'm using in the tense of the time, if Bradley Manning would have sat one of us down, which happened for me all the time. Yeah, soldier be like, "Hey Peter, I want to talk to you. Go let's go have lunch." Or let's have
[34:45] midnight chow. If Bradley Manning would have sat down with me and said, "Hey, I have this thing. I have this information." You know, and I would have said, "You have to report to superior chain of command." And if he's like, "I don't think I can." I don't know what I would have told him. I don't know what I would have told him. I can tell you from my own experience what I would have done differently. I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program. And my situation was unusual in that I couldn't go through the chain of command because my chain of command created the torture program.
[35:16] Right. Um I would say go to the oversight committees. Now, in my case, the oversight committees approved the torture program and funded the torture program. So, I was stuck there, too. But I think I think Manning should have gone to the um to the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. She would have gotten some some measure of satisfaction, I think, doing that. Uh I ended up going to the media. Manning went to WikiLeaks, and then the rest is history. But those oversight committees, for
[35:47] better or for worse, are there for a reason. And um that should probably be the first step. If I was sitting down with PFC Manning at the time. And again, to ask a PFC to go stand in front of an oversight committee. Yeah, that's that's a bridge too far. Right. But um I I at one point was in Bosnia um during the the main push, right? During '96. And I end up getting no pay due. No pay due, everybody, is is when it's the monthly payday and no money comes in. And I got no pay due.
[36:18] And it was a problem. Something had gotten screwed up. And so, I said heard of that before. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's procedural, right? And no commander wants to see a soldier get a no pay due. Looks bad on them. And so I went to my commander, shoulder shrug. And I'm like, all right, why I have to fix this? And again, I'm a specialist. I don't know how to fix these things. And so I go to the IG. And the IG um says, okay, great. Look into this, but also call like your upper level personnel people and see if they can tell you what's wrong. And they had turned me into a divorced Mexican lady.
[36:49] And I'm like, wait, hold on. I'm not that. You know? And And so like, well, okay, obviously you're not a lady. And obviously you're you're not a a Mexican lady. You're you're this guy Pete. Okay, so we see a problem here, but how can you prove you're not divorced? And I'm like, how do you prove I am divorced? You know? So I filed this IG complaint and they came back and it was like, nah, no problem. And I'm like, what do you mean no problem? You know? And so when you have that, when you've done that thing before, and if I'm sitting with PFC Manning, I'm like, I wouldn't trust anybody internally. That's what exactly what I
[37:19] probably would have said. I think because how could you? If If I couldn't I couldn't have anybody prove externally that I wasn't If I didn't fix this myself E4, um I would have kept getting no pay dues and they would have said I was a Mexican lady with a divorce. It sounds crazy as I say that. I'm like, it's like I'm making it up, but it absolutely happened. That just makes me It makes my brain want to explode. Yeah. Yeah. And how can you be an IG, which is the Inspector General everybody? These people look into things
[37:50] like this and they go, here's what's going on. And And look, I'm not saying all Inspector Generals are bad, but how do you When they When one element compromises your integrity, But you know what? The The DOD Inspector General actually has a reputation for being among the worst Inspectors General in government. And And I'll add too that the IG at the CIA is literally the only bright spot at the CIA. The The IG is literally the only person in the CIA that you can trust. It's the opposite at the Pentagon. Do you know Do
[38:21] you know Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower Tom Drake? No, I don't. Uh-huh. Oh, Tom Tom's got a story, man. Tom's Tom was an Air Force uh an Air Force colonel. And um his very first day on the job at NSA uh as a civilian in the Senior Intelligence Service, his very first day was September 11th, 2001. Wow. And so the attacks take place and uh General Mike Hayden, who at the time was the
[38:52] head of NSA, later became the head of the CIA, decided to implement um a collection program called um uh Thin Thread. Uh Thin Thread just vacuumed up all communications from all Americans. Emails, phone calls, text messages, voicemails, everything. Well, they had also developed a second uh technology called Stellar Wind.
[39:23] Right. And Stellar Wind used AI to discern what was a potential threat and what wasn't. And so Tom said, "Hey, you know, this this Thin Thread, this is this is wrong. This is a mistake. It's a violation of law. We can't collect data from American citizens or from US persons. That's an American citizen or anybody in the United States on a green card." He was told to mind his own business. So, he did exactly what you're supposed
[39:53] to do. He went through the chain of command. He went to his boss, who told him, "Keep your big mouth shut." Yeah. Mind you, he's been on the job for a day. Then he went to the Inspector General. Well, the Inspector General wasn't read into the compartment. So, the Inspector General didn't know what in the world he was talking about. Right. Then he went to the General Counsel. The General Counsel said, "Buddy, this is way over your pay grade. You need to stop. So then he gathered all the information that he could on paper and he went to the Pentagon Inspector General.
[40:24] The Pentagon Inspector General reported him to the FBI and then destroyed the evidence that he brought out. Then he goes to the Congressional Oversight Committee. He goes to the the uh sorry, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and reports, you know, I think I've stumbled on a crime being committed by NSA. What happens? The FBI raids his house, takes all of his electronics, which he has never gotten back. Mhm.
[40:55] And they arrest him and charge him with nine felonies including seven counts of espionage and two counts of theft of government property. The government property being the information that he walked out of the building with in his head. Yeah. They offered him a deal. 20 years. Do 20 years in prison on an espionage charge. He told them to go [ __ ] themselves. Now, he was broke because they they also confiscated his uh bank accounts. So he had a public
[41:27] defender. The night before the trial, the entire case fell apart and they dismissed all the charges. Yeah. But Tom spent the rest of his career working at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Bethesda, Maryland. They took his pension. They took his security clearance. They uh they described him as an insider threat, which he was not, of course. And his wife, who was also an NSA employee, left
[41:59] him. Yeah. That's what they do. They do. They do. They do exactly that. And they do it And they is it's a lot it's a lot of theys out there. Um there's a guy named Richard Caruso who worked in the prison system. You know, it's big 6'4 former Marine. He was the first guy through the door when they had to go knock heads with you know, an inmate. Yeah. And his prison, Corcoran in California, was the deadliest prison in the nation. Right. And he was the one that said no
[42:30] more. But he had to and this goes back to Chelsea Manning's, you know, benefit. He had to smuggle out evidence over a long period of time. And he had to record every phone call. Because not only did California turn you know, not only did his peers turn on him, but California state turned on him. And then the FBI turned on him. All of them trying to put him in jail. And he always had the receipts and he had a badass lawyer and that lawyer is like ching that's going to cost you money. Should I play the tape now or you just want to shut up? And they'd be like, no, play the tape. And he's like, k- k- k-
[43:04] And so they paid him a lot of money because but only because he knew like because he had some investigation background and he knew just to constantly record everything they said. You know, they would put up these bogus investigations against him and everything and and then they would go away and they would say, well, there was that investigation and he was like, and it was bogus and it was disproven and I have the file for that. I know you probably can't find it, but luckily I have a copy. And these things happen. Man, they happen all the time. You know, and All the time. It's
[43:34] It and we don't realize how badly it destroys lives. Yeah, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. There's there's no end in sight and nobody learns a lesson from these things. You know, it just happens over and over and over again. It's precious when people like want to come after somebody's clearance and livelihood and then you look and and look and this is not political. So you just look at all of the compromising things that happened in Congress and and in the executive branch, you know, where we know Donald
[44:05] Trump broke the law. We know that Joe Biden broke the law. It was a classification. We know that a secretary Clinton broke the law. We know that all these things happened. But nobody held her accountable. Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her chief of staff in California. No problem. Adam Schiff constantly leaked classified. No problem. So, they all and if Here's the things. Guys on our side of the table, if we worked for an adversarial country, I'd bet get me to DC cuz I'm going to run some sources. Yeah, I'm going to make my career because they don't they won't hold themselves accountable.
[44:37] And I can find the guys who are like you or like Van Buren or whoever. I can find those guys and I know what to do with them and I can turn that into my advantage. Let let me if if I may. I want to read to you the short text of a of an email that I received on Saturday. This is the third third time this has happened in the last 10 years. Okay. Dear John, it's nice to finally speak with you. I've been watching your YouTube interviews and I love all the content and I've been wanting to reach out to you for many years. I'm one of
[45:09] the FBI agents who would like to personally apologize to you for the disgraceful way the FBI and our government treated you. I worked with both the headquarters and the Washington field office teams on your case and I know many of the personnel that you're familiar with. That case was directed and driven by senior officials. It was a political case. Many mid-level and street personnel were against it but nevertheless, we followed orders. Anyway, I've always felt bad about what I did and for you and the way you were treated and I wanted to personally
[45:40] apologize to you. Sincerely and then he signs it. Yeah. Third time in the last 10 years. Right. And there are good people that will, you know, try to do the right thing but anybody anybody can get swamped. Like when you get your position working with Carrie, there's only so much you can do. Right? You want to do way more. And there's only so much he can do. And so like if you find yourself and you don't these boundaries are not visible to you. Find out when it's like So you've gone past it.
[46:11] Oh, listen. I I was doing a I was doing a study for Carrie and and so I wrote a letter to the CIA under Carrie's signature asking for clarification on on a on a classified issue. And a colleague of mine like 6 weeks passed. A colleague of mine comes into my office and he said Oh hey, I saw the agency responded to your your inquiry. I said I didn't see a response. I just checked my my mail an hour ago. And he said oh, they classified it top secret.
[46:42] So it's in the vault. And I said well, what did it say? And he said it says go [ __ ] yourself. And I said okay, that's how they want to play it. Yeah, it's it is how how it works. I want to I'm going to put a link up here for this First of all, before I do that, let's put a link up here because I want to support what you're doing and everybody If you guys are enjoying this, John's Substack is packed full of things. I'm going to be subscribing as soon as we get off air. I'm going to put a link up here. Just Thanks, Pete. Yeah. Because we need to have these
[47:12] voices, your voice, my voice because the other option is you get the Afghan War Commission from the United States Senate, which I sent my I sent my resume to. I've emailed all of the important people and said hey, I'd love to understand more, love to be involved in some way. You don't have to hire me, right? But I've got a lot of expertise in my head. I've done the stuff at the ground level. There's no way they have enough of that. And every person that they've hired is an academic. God bless. Love our academics. You don't have any dudes that have a thousand combat patrols talking to a local so we can They will not talk
[47:43] So I have no respect for the commission just because they don't understand that that is more of the problem. They're not going to get to anywhere. And then what's anybody going to do anyhow? Like we have a center for lessons learned and all of those It makes you laugh. A stinger for lessons learned. Come on. Yeah. Like the CIA, this woman I sat next to for years, she said to me one day, I'm transferring. And I said, oh, what are you transferring to? And she says, I'm going
[48:15] to the center on Nazi war crimes. And I said, is there such a thing? And she said, yeah. I said, but the CIA wasn't even created until 1947. And she said, yeah, I know, but there's still some documents that need to be declassified. I'm like, what? Okay. All right. It's like the center for lessons learned. Okay. Yeah. Knock yourselves out. Yeah. It's It's uh when I tell people I Look, my friend
[48:45] came back from Afghanistan, he was doing some private work out there. And he's really knowledgeable. And he got a little too high up, I guess, and he said to me, you know, I don't know how long the government's going to last, you know, maybe 6 months, 2 years, something like that. I'm like, no, John, it's gone. It's There's no government. Those guys all are going to about-face the second that we leave, because there's no reason to stay alive if if you don't. And he's like, no, it'll last a little longer than that. I'm like, I don't know what you're reading, but I saw these guys. They were terrified to be where they were. They
[49:15] had no provision So, so, I'm going to tell you this little story, and I know you'll appreciate this. So, again, I'm an intel guy. I'm looking wherever the intel is, wherever I can help the commander win more. So, uh we get into this firefight, and it's the Afghan police, and you know, our little contingent, but mostly the Afghan police, and they fire a bunch of [ __ ] off and everything. So, I go to the chief of police. He's the young guy. And I cuz we're in the For everybody listening, we're in the middle of nowhere. You can't picture how desolate this place is. Right. And I said to him, hey, what are you going to do to re-provision your your people? And he's like, oh, it's no big deal. I just um send something up a
[49:46] request up, and they'll, you know, pretty soon they'll they'll send um ammo back to us, right? Cuz these guys don't have a giant store. These guys live in mud houses. They have nothing. Oh, yeah. And and money was already a problem. Getting these guys paid reliably and and even sorting out what was true, what was not. So, I I followed the request to to take up our chain that goes up their chain as well. Same request. And I you know, I don't have to do this every day cuz you have to let the process work and I've got other things to do. But if I went back into the main part of town, I would ask, "Hey, where's that thing?" "Oh, yeah, I sent it over to so-and-so." In this case, it was a
[50:17] sergeant first class in the army. And he's like, "Yeah, I killed that request." And I'm like, "You killed that request? Oh, that guy's a bad guy. He's tied to the Taliban." And I'm like, "What the [ __ ] are we living in Zabul? Everybody's from the Taliban." Everybody's really everybody. Every man over the age of 14 is in the Taliban. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way to Like you can't not Oh, is the government going to work or not? Cuz it's not even your call, dude. I mean, okay, sure, maybe position in the army. But there's an actual guy that just got into a firefight with the Taliban. I I
[50:48] I was there, you know? Like I I know. And couldn't It didn't bother him. He didn't even have a second to think about the fact that his complete ignorance as to like what's going on when you're maybe 40 miles away from where he was sitting. Just complete unawareness of that, you know, denied the government the ability to do what the government needed to do to to create at least with the dudes within the government some connection. Right. Right. And still, they just don't
[51:21] learn the lesson. It happens over and over again. Yeah. We'll do the same things in Ukraine once we get a calm down. We're going to take people that have energy erupting out of the ground. We're going to be like, "You guys need green energy." Yeah. You know? And Exactly. we're going to take I learned quite a bit about Ukraine because of this. Um I was working on a project and the people that know how to build big, powerful industrial businesses, those are all called oligarchs, you see. Yeah. Exactly. We only use that word for Russians and Ukrainians. We don't call Jeff Bezos an oligarch.
[51:52] No, he owns a media company. Well, that's different. Right, democracy dies in darkness. Yeah, I mean it's we're laughing cuz it's it's patently ridiculous. It is. It's absurd. anything we can do about this? I mean, look, you take your crack and look what happens. Yeah, they smack you right down. Yeah. You know, I Yeah. My my ex-wife once criticized me saying that I never saw a bridge I didn't want to burn. Uh but the truth is, I figure I
[52:23] I might as well just go out there with my opinion and and appear on on podcasts and shows and talk to guys like you where we can have a a mature informed conversation and hope that maybe we get people out there to thinking. And maybe that translates into electing more responsible, better informed uh public officials. I mean, you know, it's a it's a long-term it's a long-term project. Yeah, I I've got a nonprofit that I'm
[52:54] trying to start, you know, and it's like you only have so many hours in a year to put into something like that when it's not funded and everything else. And I got people wanting to like give me money, but they're like, "Hey, I've got to figure out how do I" So, all these things can only move at the pace they move at, but it's exactly this where you're going to go into Congress and you're like, "Hey, I need to find somebody who knows this stuff from the ground point of view." Even if it's not that specific conflict, guys like you and I can say, "Ooh, slow down right here." That's just too much. indeed. Right. And get that expertise in house. And And by the way, it's not just
[53:26] combat. So, I I was talking to you, do you remember the the show Little House on the Prairie? Sure. And then the girl that played Nellie Olson, her name is Allison. And she was on the front line cuz she's a Hollywood girl, right? So, she's on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic back in the olden days. And here's like the mighty lefty, you know, I'm from California so I can make I can talk [ __ ] about California. Um But here they are like we know how to fix the AIDS epidemic. We're going to put out flyers that say don't have male-to-male sex unprotected. You know, she's like that.
[53:57] Yeah, exactly. We made flyers, right? And and people think oh that's not what they do. Guess what? You go all around the government. Their way communicating is putting out a flyer that sits right there in their lobby and anybody can have it and they never get rid of them. So that's I went to see Abbie Hoffman speak when I was in college. I saw Abbie Hoffman speak at George Washington University. It was in the midst of the just say no campaign. You remember this? Just say no to drugs. It was Nancy Reagan's thing. And he said how preposterous it was that telling telling a drug addict to just say no is like telling a
[54:28] manic-depressive to just cheer up. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Yeah. And and and so you know like this whole ground truth institute thing it is about that. It's about getting an Allison to say uh how about we start at a different step, you know, like let's get to know some of these guys. And you know, look case management is hard. I'm sorry. It's going to be hard. Fixing a country that's broken and full of criminals and and crime and death and destruction, it's just not going to be easy. You're going to have to say the whole thing that I was saying about
[54:59] instability is instability like we are a net destabilizer. When we show up [ __ ] gets broken even worse and everybody except for us is good at instability. And we want these stable machines to work all the time and inexorably go up the screen and to the to prosperity, you know, that's the arrow. But everything's a cloud and as soon as you try to grab a cloud you're like why did I do that? You know, you never get the cloud. So true. So true. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. It's it's uh It's great to talk to someone who gets
[55:30] this at this level. We know here's the thing I struggle with is we know so many smart people, well-intentioned people, well-read, well-written, But for whatever reason, they don't have the ability one to hear someone like I always say it like our first mistake is not realizing that that we're making the first mistake. Like we just we cannot seem to wrap our heads around. Why is that? Why do we have these incredible people, hyper talented, who can't seem to I'm going to use a story to
[56:00] accentuate this. I had I was working just south of Sadr City and I had a guy a rocky guy who going to Sadr City tell me all about it. So I happen to be the main palace and talking to this PhD guy that that kind of worked in my organization. And he was like, "I'm writing a paper on Sadr City." I'm like, "Oh, you're in luck. I've got a guy inside there who can tell you whatever." He's like, "Oh, I don't need that." These guys, how do we How do we treat these guys? How do we figure out what to do with them? I I can tell you from the CIA perspective that the problem is one of
[56:32] group think. Um In fact, I'll give you an example. It's a little bit dated, but in order to get my uh promotion to GS-15, I needed to write a national intelligence estimate, an NIE. And uh so the national intelligence officer asked me to write one of these. And what a national intelligence estimate is for people who don't know the term is it's a paper that is coordinated by every single intelligence agency in the American
[57:02] government. So it is the opinion of the entire intelligence community. So the NIO, the national intelligence officer said he wanted this paper to be called Iraq: Saddam's next 12 months. This is back in 1997. And so I said without getting into details, Saddam could uh threaten the Kurds, he could threaten the Shia, he could threaten Kuwait, and he could interfere with the weapons
[57:33] inspectors. So, the NIO calls him a coordination meeting and it's members of all 18 intelligence agencies in the American government. It's chaired by the NIO. And what you do is he reads aloud the first sentence. What does everybody think about the first sentence? DIA, what do you think? Department of the Air Force, what do you think? Department of Energy, what do you think? Okay, then when that's all settled, you read the next sentence. Okay, so sometimes these things take
[58:04] weeks to coordinate. Mine took 4 hours. And at the end of it, yeah, at the end of it, he said to me, "That is the fastest coordination session I have ever participated in. Congratulations." And I said, "Ben, I said, "I'm ashamed of this paper." All we needed to do was take last year's NIE and change the date. We didn't say anything new. Nobody had any outside-the-box thinking or analysis. I said, "I'm ashamed of this thing." But that's the curse
[58:35] of of intelligence, especially intelligence analysis. You're just not going to get people who are willing to risk their next promotion, their hallway reputation by going on a limb and saying, "You know, I think Bashar al-Assad may be overthrown in the next couple of days." You know, nobody's going to say that. No. When I When I worked in the I worked in the DOD for part of my time and we
[59:05] had to write up our annual review and to see if we could get a bonus. Everybody like you can get a bonus in in these government departments. And so they always kind of figure out like how to work these programs. And so I had to justify what I'd done. And so scale of the one to five, nobody gets a one and basically nobody gets a five. And when you do get a five, it's like you've changed the industry. Like it does things different. That's sort of the standard. And I'm like, "Well, I'm doing things that are like five level. I'm going to claim a five until they say no. But like, yeah, well, you'll never get it. I'm like, oh, okay, great. So, I spent hours writing this thing cuz
[59:35] that's what you're supposed to do. And build the government a lot of money. And then my boss has to read it. And and then talk to me and then revise and then read it. And so, I would say this process took 75 hours of my of my time, right? Pulls me off the battlefield, but I've got to do it. And they come back and and here's what I had done during this time. I got a brigade sergeant major. Brigade is 5,000 people. And he said, Pete, you came in for us. Well, actually, we I got to them. But
[1:00:07] he's like, you came in to us and we didn't know who you were and you had said that you were going to help us correct our mistakes before we start to make them. And you did that. I didn't believe you. And now, within a very short amount of time, you and your buddy Rich have turned this entire brigade 180° to get us going a different direction. And we couldn't have done it without you. I didn't ask for that. Right? And they're like, yeah, Pete, my my organization, yeah, not that impressed. You get a three. Middle of the road, $1,200 bonus or whatever it was. And and I'm like, yeah, see, this
[1:00:38] is the thing is I already got more money by writing this stupid thing cuz I didn't trust anybody in my organization, but Good thinking. We were we were changing things in a positive way that saves all of us money, saves all, you know, and it was enormously successful on the intel side. And you couldn't get people in the institution to see something different. People did get fives. They all work right by the flagpole and they were all connected in a way. And I'm not saying anything bad about them. Maybe they did incredible things, but I can't believe they changed how that part of the industry worked. And that's part of our
[1:01:09] problem is is we have these entrenched people that that can't have a field guy come in and say, "Hold on, ground truth is going to matter here." You know, I'm going to give you another story then I'm going to shut up and let you wrap it and then we'll be done. But we have these aerostats and we think that all you got to do is throw it up there and you can see everything and it's cool. It's great and I'm like, yeah, but people don't understand people on the ground don't understand what that is. And so they get to invent whatever reality they want from it. And one of the realities I've uncovered is that my buddy built it this, is they thought it had x-ray vision and could see their
[1:01:39] wives naked bodies and they hated it. Right? And you tell it to a commander like, "What doesn't do that?" I'm like, "It doesn't matter if it doesn't. It doesn't matter." it does it. Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh, you know, I'll tell you one thing. I was part of an analytic unit. Um I had this personal rule that if you met with a source and you did not come out with an intelligence report, you failed. Yeah. Okay, you're going to a lot of trouble.
[1:02:12] There's a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of danger in meeting with a clandestine source. So, if you come out of there without having anything to write, you have failed. So, there was 1 month where this unit of six of us wrote 54 intelligence reports. I wrote 36 of those 54. And I thought, man, I'm going to get promoted so fast, I'm going to get a bonus. I got a call from my boss.
[1:02:43] And he was a little bit mad. And he said, "You need to slow down and back off." I said, "What are you talking about? I'm like kicking my own butt here to be productive." He said, "You're making everybody else look bad and it's pissing people off." Yeah. "Okay." So, you know what I started doing? In the middle of the work day, I would go to the gym for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you got to get changed, you got to take a shower. So,
[1:03:14] my hour at the gym was really 2 hours. So, instead of working my 8-hour day, I'm working a 6-hour day. I slowed down a little bit. And then that made them happy. And another thing, I had a boss, my very first boss. I used to get You could set your watch to when I would get to the office every single day at 6:00 a.m. Right. And my boss, the big boss, my boss's boss, would saunter in at 9:00 for his 9:30 meeting. Well, the work day was 8:00 to 4:30. I'm
[1:03:46] in there at 6:00. So, I was working 6:00 to 4:30. Well, he would come in at 9:00 and then he would wander around at 5:00 to see who was still at the office. So, he told my immediate supervisor, "Hey, there's a problem with Kiriakou. He's a clock watcher. He's always out of here at 4:00." Well, I'm in 3 hours before he is. Right. So, my I said, "But I I'm working I'm working 10 and 1/2 hour days." Yeah. rather than 8 and 1/2 hours.
[1:04:17] And he says, "You're going to have to stay till till 5:00 till he walks around." And I said, "Fine." So, instead of going in every day in at 6:00, I started going in every day at 8:00. So, I was working an hour and a half a day less. Yeah. And I got the thumbs up. It's uh it's crazy. It's I mean, these things can happen. That's That's government. It is. I would purposely cuz I I I knew how to do my job and a lot of people I was with had not deployed like I have. You know,
[1:04:48] I I've just I've got a lot of time. And so, I would figure out where the command needed me. I would compel my team to let me go. Sometimes these things got me fired and kicked out of country. But, you know, look, I've got to work the way I work. And so, then I would say like, "I'm going to kick all of your asses in terms of production and not like quantity of a quality. I'm going to have better products. I'm going to be enmeshed with the command." My goal was if the commander, battalion, brigade, whatever it is, they didn't know everybody had to know me best. Pete, Pete, hey, Pete was
[1:05:18] here. I had to build a read This is all my own demand on myself. I had to build a reading list for my reports. I had to go follow up, make sure these guys were going to get caught unaware by not reading my reports. Cuz I would look, I would find things out that mattered, you know? And the commander would look around and be like, he's kicking your And this is this is in the unit, not even my team. My team would become irrelevant. So, the commander's like, Pete, wherever I go, you're going to go. If you want to go anywhere in the battlefield, you say the word. If I want to go to poppy field, guess where we'd go. Cuz I'd be like, this is going to matter. And I would give them information no one else could give them, right?
[1:05:48] Yeah. And and then my headquarters way back way back in the United States are like, hey, uh you're working over 100 hours a week. Oh, that's not possible. And I'm like, you Yeah, actually it is. Yeah. Yeah, that that was my whole existence in Pakistan. I had I made so much overtime overtime, post differential, danger pay, and language differential, and per diem, I came home and bought a house. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, you can work 100 hours a week. It's no fun, but when it has to be
[1:06:20] done, you do it. And when you're in Pakistan or in Afghanistan, whatever, you have to do that. It's the only time to be there, and no one else look, no one else in that area is better than you or me at going out and finding gold. You know, we know what the standard is. You're 100% right. Like, if you can't bring something back valuable, then you shouldn't be on that mission. And I was hardly doing it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's all about the mission. Listen, this has been a great conversation, and I don't want to keep you any longer. Uh we'll have to do this again. The pleasure's all mine, Pete. This was
[1:06:50] fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh anything you want to say in closing? Otherwise, everybody make sure you go to the Substack. The uh link is down there. Uh thank you. I I put literally everything I do on Substack. So, if you want to have some fun, check it out there. All right, there we go. Stand by. I'll be right back to you. And I'll say goodbye to everybody else. See you tomorrow. Hey, thanks for watching the show. I really appreciate it. Right here, you can subscribe. Please do that. It makes the show grow. Hit that notification bell so you know which incredible guest is coming up next. Down below is the PayPal link. You can put a small subscription in. That is an enormous
[1:07:21] help. All that money goes right back into the show. And then right up over here are the next episodes you should listen to, curated by yours truly. Thank you so