[00:00] Hey detoxers, welcome to another episode of the disinfo detox. I'm excited today to be joined by John Kuraku and a American whistleblower, an author, a journalist, former intelligence officer, and a podcaster. He's got two podcasts out right now, which are both very exciting, and you can see them on the screen if you're watching, but if you're listening, he's host of the Deep Focus podcast and the Deep Program Podcast. John Karaku, welcome to the Disinfo Detox. >> Thanks, Nolan. Good to be with you. >> Absolutely. I haven't talked to you in a while. Uh it's always a pleasure. Uh
[00:31] your act of bravery while I was kind of uh figuring out my political identity uh left a indelible mark on me. So it's always cool to chat with you. >> Thank you for that. >> Absolutely. And I want to get into that. But before we do, I want to talk a little bit about your your background because uh you have a background that typically most people who come on my program don't have. Um, so can you talk a little bit about your work in the intelligence community, how you got involved, what you saw and why you left, and then we'll talk about um, of course what happened after that. >> Sure. I was recruited into the CIA uh,
[01:01] when I was in graduate school at George Washington University. I joined as an analyst in January of 1990. I did that for seven and a half years and then I made a kind of an unusual actually was a very unusual switch to counterterrorism operations in 1997. Um I went on to be the um chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11. Caught a whole bunch of al-Qaeda fighters and and mid and higher level um uh al-Qaeda people and then um
[01:34] went back to the CIA. Uh I finished at headquarters as the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. Finished my career at the United Nations and then I resigned. I opposed the CIA torture program um internally. That did nothing. It accomplished nothing. And I waited for somebody to say something about the torture program that it was illegal. It was immoral. It was unethical. And nobody said anything. >> And John, just to just for folks who may not remember, this is happening in the
[02:05] context of the war on terror. The Bush administration is trying to push for a war in Iraq. and you're behind the scenes seeing that uh these human rights abuses and forms of torture are taking place and you're trying to report it to your superiors but but hitting a brick wall, right? >> Yeah. What I was running into, what that brick wall was was the fact that my superiors had created the torture program. So John complaining to them wasn't going to accomplish anything. Uh in December of 2007, I went public and um to make a long story short, uh I
[02:39] was I was later indicted in J in uh 2012 on for three counts of espionage for going public and um and two other felonies. I hadn't committed espionage and those those charges were dropped. But I ended up uh taking a plea to a to a lesser charge just to make things go away. I was facing 45 years in prison. I had five kids at home and so they offered me 23 months or 30 months I would do 23
[03:09] months versus rolling the dice at 45 years. I took the deal and uh got out uh oh a little bit more than 10 years ago. It's been a while now. >> Yeah. And so uh you know what you were charged with essentially was they were trying to say you outed a CIA agent, right? But but this information was already known. Can you talk a little bit about that? >> Yeah. What they charged me with, and I'm only the second American in history that's been charged with this. They charged me with um with uh outing the
[03:39] the true name of a CIA officer. Uh the the name was never made public. You can't find it anywhere. Um what happened was a a an author called me and asked me if I could introduce him to any of this list of 12 people that he sent me. I said, "I don't know any of these people." And then he sent me a second list of 12. And I said, "Look, clearly you know this issue better than I do. I don't know any of these people." And then he said, "What about the guy that you mention on page whatever of your first book? I think his name is John."
[04:12] And I said, "Oh, that's John Doe." I said, "I I don't know what ever happened to him. He's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere is what I said." But I confirmed the last name. He already had the last name. I confirmed it. It was never made public, but that's what they used to get me. >> Yeah. And so, uh, the reason why I wanted to have you on is is a couple of things. You you have this, uh, internal knowledge of of working in the intelligence community and and, uh, certainly there's a lot of debate right now about the intelligence community.
[04:44] Um, but I want to start somewhere else. So, um, the Trump administration has, you know, made it a focal point to kind of dismiss a lot of the US government as the the so-called deep state and and wants to dismantle it. You know, as someone who understands kind of the the culture and the people in the the CIA, one, how does Trump's kind of assessment match up with your experience of the CIA? And then two, what do you think the reaction is internally of the CIA? How do you think the CIA culture would would feel about someone like Trump and what he's saying? It's actually a more complicated
[05:15] question than it than it appears to be um on its face. I I know I have friends who are close to Trump and they tell me that Trump is is legitimately concerned about what he calls the deep state. Now, we don't have to call it the deep state. We can call it the federal bureaucracy, right? It's just it's just that unelected group of senior government officials that serve through presidential administrations. Presidents come and go. These guys are around for
[05:45] 30 35 years. So sure there's a deep state. Even if you don't want to call it that, you can call it whatever you want. But yeah, there are these people in the intelligence community who are around forever. On the one hand, I can understand why Trump feels threatened by these people. I understand it. The likes of John Brennan and and Jim Comey and Jim Clapper and all these people that that meant him ill. I get it. But then at the
[06:18] same time, it was Trump who named Gina Haspel, who's like the queen of the deep state. He named her as the CIA director. Made zero sense to me. And she and you went to jail for essentially exposing what she covered up. >> She was doing. Yes. >> Yeah. Gina was the godmother of the of the torture program. Um Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo was the consumate intelligence insider. And you name Mike Pompeo as the CIA
[06:50] director and then Secretary of State. Oh my god. So on the one hand, I get Trump's unease. On the other hand, I don't understand why he doesn't clean house. Keep this in mind, too. One of the first things that I was told when I was first hired is that the CIA is unusual in government in that it is not covered by the protections of the Civil Service Act. We serve at the pleasure of the president. So, if the president doesn't like your face or he doesn't
[07:21] like your tie and he says you're fired, you're fired. That's it. It's done. And sorry to interrupt you. The Civil Service Act um creates some sort of um criteria for who can be fired and how and hired and and you're saying the CIA doesn't have that. They they serve at the >> right. So if there is no Civil Service Act protection at the CIA, why doesn't Trump just fire the people that he doesn't like? That's what I would do if I were president. If I legitimately believe that these people were plotting my overthrow, I'd fire them. Okay,
[07:53] that's on the one hand. On the other hand, he actually has fired people. >> He fired all of the DEI people, right? The CIA had this DEI office that nobody gave two shits about. Nobody paid any attention to. Those were the people that got fired. He didn't like the conclusion um uh in the the Russia national intelligence estimate. So, he fires all the Russia analysts. Well, that's not going to help you in any way to fire the Russia analysts. And then a third point,
[08:23] this is something that was a story that was broken by the uh New York Times just a few days ago that that that Seal Team 6 in 2018 was sent by boat to go to North Korea to plant a bug in the building that the North Koreans were going to be staying in while negotiating diplomatic um uh recognition with the United States. Remember briefly in 2017 2018
[08:56] we're talking to the North Koreans. Trump and Kim Jong-un um meet I think first in Singapore and then right on the border. So Trump apparently sent Seal Team 6 by boat to go ashore in North Korea, plant the bug and leave. Instead, some fishermen spot the boat, North Korean fishermen, and so they're puttering over to the SEAL team boat to see, hey, you know, who are you guys and
[09:27] why are you fishing in our area? And the seals killed everybody on the boat. Just killed everybody and then aborted the mission and went back. By law, you must report such a covert action operation to the o congressional oversight committees beforehand. If it's that sensitive, and this would have been, you would report it either to what's called the gang of four or the gang of eight. The gang of four are the
[09:58] chairman and vice chairman. So the Republican and the Democrat on the Senate committee and the House committee. The gang of eight are the next person down on each of those committees, too. Never said a word to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Never said a word to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And then when it went bad and the SEALs killed everybody, that would require by law a second report to the oversight committees, they never said a word. So, I I am genuinely perplexed
[10:31] as to Donald Trump's view of the CIA and whether it means him harm or it strengthens his administration. And I'm not sure that he's sure what to do about it. >> Yeah. And you know, that's interesting you say that because I always think what he partially what he's playing into, this doesn't speak to his motive necessarily, partially what he's he's playing into is I think the American public kind of has this perception of the CIA as this uh rogue organization that's all over the world uh you know,
[11:03] manipulating elections, assassinating people, and they have no oversight. >> You know, as someone who was in the CIA, what do you think of the that kind of characterization of the organization? >> In in part that's true. Um, they can be rogue. Uh, they do overthrow governments. They do steal elections. They do assassinate people. They kidnap them. They have they used to have at least secret prisons. They used to have a torture program, but that was all with oversight. This is a beef that I have with the overseers,
[11:36] um, is that they're not really overseers like they were in the in the second half of the 1970s and mostly through the 1980s. They're just cheerleaders for the CIA. Well, anything the CIA wants to do, Congress rubber stamps it. Or not even Congress, just the oversight committees because the rest of Congress doesn't know what the CIA is up to. The information is too highly classified to let them know. So, I I just I'm not seeing oversight. I'm seeing cheerleading. and and maybe you can um help us with
[12:08] this because one of the things I I've been doing recently I read um James Ryzen's book on uh Senator Frank Church which I highly recommend to folks. It was really awesome. >> Yeah. And a great profile in in courage >> and um I think we're looking for folks to do that today. Um I think a lot of American citizens are looking for that type of of figure and I think in some respect you were that type of figure. So, so what was it that finally finally drove you to to to do it to to resign and and to become somewhat critical of an organization you'd worked really hard to be a part of?
[12:38] >> You know, Nolan, I I wish that I could tell you that, you know, I stood up and I told them and and that that wasn't it at all. I I mean, I wish I was that heroic figure. I'm not. Um, to tell you the truth, the overriding concern in my or the overriding issue in my in my decision to resign was that I had just gotten a divorce and my ex-wife and my two sons who were young, they were they were nine and six, had moved back to Ohio.
[13:10] And, you know, little kids, especially boys, they need their father in their life. And so, I decided to resign. and um and spend those weekends, you know, with my kids that I otherwise would have spent in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq dodging bullets and and car bombs. And so that was my decision. With that said, I kept waiting for somebody to say something about the torture program. It
[13:42] was just so patently illegal to me. I I couldn't imagine that somebody wouldn't come forward. And then in December of 2007, Brian Ross from ABC News called me and said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubeda, who we believed when we captured him was the number three in al-Qaeda. He wasn't. I said that was absolutely untrue. I was kind to Abu Zubeda. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zuba. And I said, 'I never laid a hand on him or on
[14:14] any other prisoner. And he said, and I I had no idea this was an old reporter's trick. He said, 'Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. Well, you know what? I I wasn't even going to do that. But in the in the five or six days between that phone call and when I actually, you know, decided to to give him an interview, President Bush gave a press conference in which he lied and said that we did not have a torture program.
[14:45] And then a couple of days after that, he said, "Well, if there is a torture program, it's because of a CIA guy who's just gone wrong." And my wife was still in the CIA and she's like, "You got to defend yourself." My second wife and um and I said, "You know, Brian Ross's source is at the White House. Has to be. And they're going to pin this on me." So I went on and I I I called him and I said, "I I'll I'll answer your questions." And I decided that whatever
[15:16] he asked me, I was going to tell the truth. And so that's what I did. And I said three things. I said, "The CIA was torturing its prisoners." I said that torture was official US government policy. It was not the result of a rogue CIA officer. And I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself. And so um all hell broke loose from there and I thought, well, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound and I just I went with
[15:47] it. >> Yeah. And I I remember also um I believe you also uh wrote a public letter while you were in prison to to Edward Snowden giving advice >> uh to him about how to you know best approach his uh whistleblowing activity and I imagine you've done that to others. So I think that story is going to be critically important. >> Um what's some advice you have to folks maybe who are in government who are you know seeing what's going on there right now who are you know wrestling with their kind of ethics and morals and commitment to the country? Oh yeah.
[16:17] First of all, go with your heart. But even more importantly, the very first thing you do is hire an attorney. Not just an attorney, but an attorney who is skilled in whistleblower defense. Um, that's really the most important thing. Don't say a word to anybody unless your lawyer is sitting in the chair next to you. That's the the most important thing. >> Good. And a and a moment ago, I I meant to come back to this. I'll say it now,
[16:48] but you you mentioned how uh if you had not uh resigned, you'd be in Afghanistan or I think you said Pakistan or somewhere um >> dodging bullets, but you you actually were targeted in an assassination attempt. So, it's not just you're saying that this could have happened. Yeah, this did happen. Can you talk about those? >> Two. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Two within like 14 months of each other. So, not less than that. No, 14 months of each other. So the first one was in was in Athens. I was in Athens from 1998 to 2000 um working against a group called
[17:21] Revolutionary Organization 17 November. And uh 17 November was incredibly lethal. Killed 28 people including the CIA station chief, two US defense attaches, the minister of communications, the minister of finance, the governor of the central bank. I mean, these guys these guys did a lot of killing and never got caught. Not only had they never been caught, no one was ever able to identify a single member of this group. So,
[17:54] CIA um officers drove armored cars and I had just taken delivery of a fully armored BMW 540 and I needed that big engine to carry all that armor, right? Windows this thick. It was incredible. It was a great car. And um and I lived next door to the British defense ataché. He was a brigadier general named Steven Saunders. And Steve was a great guy. Fun, funny, life of the party kind of guy. He was also a media [ __ ] which was a problem
[18:26] where anywhere there was a camera, he would run right up to it and want to give an interview, right? And he had such a great sense of humor and always smiling and he was one of these guys that people wanted to be friends with. Our backyards abudded. So we're at a dinner party the night that I took delivery of the car and it was Steve. It was the US defense attaches, the French defense attaches and me. And we're just standing there, the four of us. And he's making fun of my car. And he said, he goes, "You
[18:58] Americans, you're so paranoid. What are you afraid of? This is an EU country. It's a NATO country. And I said, everybody chuckles. I said, you Brits live in a dream world. If you think that because they have palm trees and pretty beaches that they're not going to kill you, if you they have the chance to kill you. I said, if they have the chance, they're going to kill you. And two weeks later, they killed him. >> Oh, wow. >> In broad daylight during the morning
[19:29] rush hour on the main road, Kicas Boulevard. It's a long story. I I won't go into it, but what 17 November usually did was they would do the hit and then they would drop a manifesto at the site of the hit or they would put the manifesto in a garbage can and call a left-wing newspaper and tell them where to find it. When they killed Steven, they didn't drop a manifesto. That was April of 2000. August 16th, 2000. I go into the office
[20:02] like a normal day. My boss rushes into my office. He said, "Did you see the manifesto?" I said, "There wasn't a manifesto." He said, "No, they they released it today." I said, "No, I didn't see it." He said, "They talk about you." I said, "Me? Why would they talk about me?" I said, "No one was as careful with security as I was." and he he hands me the manifesto and it says in Greek megaloascopos it means we saw the big spy but he was
[20:32] in an armored car and we knew he was armed so we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders. >> Wow. >> So I had to leave Greece that day. Uh the the station sent an armored car to pick up my kids. They sent a sec second armored car to pick up my wife. We met up at the airport. We flew back. We were on the the 12:00 Delta flight back to JFK. Um, we figured out afterwards that, of
[21:02] course, they headquarters did an investigation and what they determined was that Steven was so public. He was on TV all the time that 17 November concluded, well, this is going to be an easy kill. So they found his house and then they saw my car and they said only a CIA man would drive an armored car. And so they thought I would be a bigger kill than Steven. But then I guess
[21:35] during the course of surveillance they saw that I was armed and I was heavily armed. We all were in Athens. I kept a 9mm in a tearway fanny pack on my waist with two extra extended magazines. So, I had 47 rounds on my waist. I had a Smith and Wesson Snubnse 38 six shooter on my ankle. And then just in case things turned to [ __ ] I I kept a I kept a buck knife in my back pocket. And he had nothing. He was just driving in a normal car, oblivious, playing the radio, looking at
[22:07] the pretty palm trees, and um and they killed him. And the second one was in the Middle East. Uh, I had a friend who was a station chief in the Middle East. He actually introduced me to my second wife and he called me one day. I was in the counterterrorism center. This is I since I was evacuated from Athens, I I was cooling my heels in the counterterrorism center and um and he calls me and he says, "Hey, listen. I've got a problem and I was wondering if you could help me." He
[22:38] said, "We've recruited a guy who's a double agent working for like one of our biggest enemies in the world. He doesn't know that we know he's a double agent, but his bad guy handler insists on speaking only to the station chief." He said, "Can you fly out here and pretend to be me and handle this this double?" I said, "Sure. I'm not doing anything else." And frankly, I I've always been an adrenaline junkie
[23:10] and you know, sitting in a cubicle at headquarters just going like this all day long, not rewarding at all. So I said, "Sure." So I flew out to the Middle East and I met with the guy and um he said, "So you're the station chief?" I said, "You wanted the chief, you got him." And he said, "Oh, good, good." And I said, "Listen, this is our first meeting. We're going to need to get to know each other. We're going to become friends, but I want to stress your security. I said, for me, if I get caught meaning, I don't care. They're
[23:42] just going to throw me out of the country. If you get caught, they're going to charge you with espionage and you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. So, security, security, security. And I told him what a surveillance detection route was. He didn't know that we had a team of six guys on him. >> So, he'd come to the meetings and I'd say, "Did you do a surveillance detection route?" And he would say, "Yes." And I said, "Okay, tell me where you drove and where you stopped." And you'd say, "Oh, I drove to, you know, Walmart and I bought a light bulb and then I went to the dry cleaners and
[24:12] picked up my shirts and then it's like, no, you got in your car and you drove directly to the hotel." But I didn't tell him that we knew that, right? >> So, every time we would meet, he would call the the enemy embassy and report back and, you know, tell them tell them what we talked about and what I asked him to do. I asked him to, you know, rent a a post office box or I asked him to find location for whatever. This went on for 6 months. I would fly
[24:44] out there and pretend that I lived there. Now, I had back then what was called a triband cell phone. This is in 2001, the spring of 2001. So, you would dial a local number and no matter where I was in the world, it would ring. So, he had no idea that I wasn't in that country. >> So, he'd call me and say, "Hey, I I have something for you. Are you free for dinner tonight?" And I'd say, "I'm not, but I'm free for dinner tomorrow night." I'd go straight to Dulles airport, get
[25:14] on a plane, fly to the Middle East, do the meeting, and fly directly back. I wouldn't even spend the night in this country. So, I'm in headquarters one day after 6 months and we get this panicked call from a sister agency in Maryland and they said they're on to you and they've instructed him to kill you in the next meeting.
[25:45] >> Oh, wow. >> I said this guy's afraid of his own shadow. He's not going to kill me. He was 20 years older than me. He's He's not going to kill me. Headquarters is like, "No, no, no. We're aborting the whole operation." I said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Before we all lose our minds here, look, how about this? We do the next meeting at the Marriott because every Marriott in the world is exactly the same. As soon as you walk in, the bathroom's right there, right? Every Marriott in the world. So, we get
[26:16] two adjoining rooms. He's going to come in for the meeting. I'll have the door slightly a jar. He's going to knock. I'm gonna say, "Come in." He comes in. I grab him. You guys bust in from the next room and we take him down. They're like, "Okay, but you have to wear a bulletproof vest." I said, "Fine." So, again, to make a long story short, that's what we did. He comes in, knocks on the door. He comes in. I grab him. I
[26:46] slam him down on the ground. And I'm sitting on him like I'm I've pinned him down. He had been trying to get to the gun. >> Oh wow. >> And Yeah. And my colleagues and the host service come in from the next room. So we're all on him pinning him down and he's just going, "Allah abar, Allah abar." And I said to him, "Do you think I am so [ __ ] stupid that I didn't know you came here to kill me today? Do you think I'm that much of an amateur
[27:17] that I didn't know from the very beginning that you were a double agent?" He's like, "I will [ __ ] kill you." I said, "No, actually, you're not going to [ __ ] kill me." So what we did, we gave him a quick shot of of um demorall, knocked him out, put him on a gurnie, covered him up, and uh took him down the back elevator, put him in an ambulance like he was dead, and took him to the the host service uh intelligence service headquarters. In the meantime, our
[27:48] security guys were in the lobby with all their guns, and the bad guys were in the lobby with their guns. >> Oh, wow. And then they start saying, "Where is he? Why hasn't he called? We haven't heard a shot. What's going on up there? What happened to him?" You know, and finally our guys when when we called to give them the all clear, they just walked out. >> Wow. >> And um I ran into one of the guys involved in this operation two years ago, three years ago. And I
[28:19] said, "What happened to the to the guy, the double?" And he said, "Um, the last I heard he's still in prison." And this was this was 24 years ago. He was still in prison. But we took that entire terrorist group that he represented completely out of business. It no longer exists in that country. And we taught that enemy service a thing or two about professional intelligence operations. >> Gosh, it's such a fascinating story. And do you know um how much conspiracy you
[28:49] just created online? People are going to think uh the Marriott is part of the the CIA, but um >> No. No. I I guarantee, listen, I guarantee that it's not. I hated the Marriott because um well, because every room looks exactly the same. And when you're all around the world, I've been to 72 countries. I want to I want a little bit of the local flavor, you know, a locallyowned hotel. Plus, if you're in a if you're in a country where we, you know, it's not very safe or we don't have good relations. What's the first hotel they're going to blow up?
[29:20] It's the Marriott. My first night in night I arrived in Pakistan um after 911 at like four o'clock in the morning. They took me to the Marriott. I said, "Are you kidding me? I'm not going to stay at the Marriott." Why not? We put everybody at the Marriott. I said, "What's the first place they're going to blow up?" So, I just spent like 3 hours at the Marriott. I slept. I went into work. They checked me out. They put me into a small guest house. And then 6 weeks later, they blew up the Marriott and killed likeund and something people. >> Wow. >> Yeah. Um something else occurred to me
[29:51] while you were you were uh chatting there. Um just from this month um you know there's been a lot of talk about uh how frightened a lot of Americans are at seeing um the government of India and and China and Russia and North Korea uh starting to normalize relations and you mentioned you know all the intelligence work you've done around the world for for folks out there who are maybe listening who think >> you know we spend too much money and too much time taking care of other countries or uh we don't need an intelligence agency. What's your kind of pitch for why good relations with these other countries matter and and having an
[30:23] intelligence agency matters for the United States? I'm in fact actually two minds on this but in intelligence services cooperation between intelligence services is always a positive thing even in a time of war for example we can cooperate with the Russians or the Chinese or whomever on counterterrorism counter narcotics counterp proliferation you know whatever there's always something that you can cooperate on and you know that tired old
[30:56] slogan, it's better to fight them over there than to fight them over here. >> Mhm. >> There's actually some truth to that. Now, with that said, most countries have an intelligence service. Some have two. They have a civilian and a military. We have 18 intelligence services. Seriously. Like, does the Coast Guard really need an intelligence service? Does it really? or the Department of Energy. And so I'm on I'm on record publicly as
[31:30] saying I don't think we need a CIA anymore. We've got it's it's the CIA's work is duplicated all over government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research does analysis that is at least as good as the CIA's analysis. I would posit that it's better. Um, DoD does human source intelligence with defense human source uh services, DHS, not to be confused with the Department of Homeland Security. Um, DoD also um has
[32:02] jurisdiction over NSA. DoD also has DARPA, which does better uh what the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology does. Um, DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, does order of battle intelligence on our enemies. So, we don't we don't need all these different intelligence services. One final point, I feel very strongly about this, too. Uh, so you're right. We have reason to be worried about, for example, the
[32:33] Shanghai uh conference where the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, the this one, the that one, the they're all meeting. The reason why they're meeting, the reason why there is a Shanghai conference is that we put so many sanctions on so many countries that they just decided they're going to go around us from now on. I was in China a year ago and I was surprised at how it was
[33:04] almost impossible to use my credit card. But everybody was everybody took what they call the um the octopus card. So you know Visa, Mastercard, American Express, they don't take those but they take the octopus card. So finally I said what is this octopus card that all the stores take? And they said yeah that's that's our credit card. I said, "Why don't you just take Visa and Mastercard?" And they said, "Because every Visa and Mastercard transaction goes through New York.
[33:34] Our card goes through Shanghai. And this way, we don't have to worry about your sanctions." Well, you get enough countries together, like bricks, for example, that no longer need the United States and are no longer liable for American sanctions. And we just removed ourselves as, you know, the unipolar, strongest, toughest, baddest country in the world. We did it to ourselves.
[34:07] And just wait, just wait until BRICS comes up with a unified currency like the euro. Everything's going to change. >> John Carco, it's a pleasure talking to you. Can you um remind folks where they can follow your work and access your podcast and all those kind of things? >> Sure. Thank you. I have two podcasts. One is called um drogram with John Kuryako and Ted R. It's on both um uh YouTube and Rumble. We do that every day Monday through Friday from 5 to 6. And then I have one called Deep Focus with
[34:37] John Kuryaku. They're they're much deeper interviews with experts and policy makers and retired ambassadors and professors and stuff like that. Um that's once a week. It's just on YouTube, but uh I think people will like it. And I've got a Substack. John Kuryaku, thanks for asking. >> Absolutely. John, thank you so much for coming on the Disinfo detox. It's been a pleasure. >> My pleasure. Take care. >> All right. Thank you, detoxers. We'll see you next time.