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Maduro's Capture - CIA Led? Deadliest Day for the CIA? I Going Deeper w/ John Kiriakou

The Deep Focus Show · 2026-01-06 · 40:48

This page is a transcript of a public appearance by John Kiriakou, used as a citable source for articles on KiriPedia. The transcript was auto-generated from the video's captions; minor errors may be present. Timestamps link directly into the video.

[00:00] Hi everybody. I'm John Kuryaku and thanks for joining me for another Q&A episode of Deep Focus. I love these the most as I've told you about a 100,000 times. So, please keep the questions coming. Just put them there in the chat and uh and I'm happy to get on them in the very next uh next episode of Q&A that we do. So, our first question is from Jodie Johnson and she says, "Hey, John, are

[00:30] you planning to comment on events in Venezuela this morning? Specifically, I'm wondering if the narot terrorist boat destructions and the crude ships intercepted were intended to poke Maduro to keep him in one place or maybe narrow his exact location or force him into a position that made this morning's events possible or easier." Uh, what do you say? How would the CIA handle the weeks leading up to a mission like Maduro's capture? That's actually the question. So, over the weekend, um, of course, the United States sent in a team of Delta

[01:00] Force commandos. They literally snatched President Nicholas Maduro and his wife out of their beds and uh and made off with him in a in a helicopter. He faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted. His wife faces 20 years in prison. We're not really sure yet what the charges are going to be with her. It looks like it's going to be conspiracy, but this operation had CIA written all over it.

[01:30] Now, over the weekend, the New York Times said that the way we knew where Maduro was was that we had a CIA agent, a recruited agent, uh, inside the presidential palace. So, one of the members of Maduro's inner circle was actually working secretly for the CIA. Called and said, "Hey, he went to bed. He's sound asleep. If you're going to do it, do it now."

[02:00] And they did it. Now, what ended up happening was we we killed at least 80 people in this operation, including at least 35 Cubans. We made this odd decision to blow up um the mausoleum of former president Ugo Chavez. That's just that's just mean. Um but but we kidnapped Maduro and essentially rendered him back to New York. So the CIA would have been working

[02:30] this for many months. Uh and they they did that in a number of ways. Number one, they recruited somebody in the inner circle. But number two, you might recall that in August of 2025, Maduro's private pilot, his personal pilot, came out and said, "Hey, the CIA tried to recruit me. They wanted me to fly President Maduro

[03:00] to Key West. and to tell him that we were flying to Cuba so that the Americans could just snatch him when we landed in Key West. I told them to go fly a kite. So, we all knew and Maduro knew that the CIA was looking to get him. I'm surprised, frankly, that there wasn't more counterintelligence taking place on the Venezuelan side. I think what probably ended up doing it was the CIA offered an enormous reward

[03:30] for Maduro. What was it? 10, 20, $50 million? I don't know. But I can tell you from firthand experience when we offer a reward like that and we make the capture because of information provided by a source, we pay cash on the barrel head within 48 hours. Well, if you're a secretary or whatever your job is in the presidential palace in Venezuela and then the next day you

[04:00] have $50 million, that's kind of a giveaway. So, my guess is the CIA is in the process right now of resettling this person, maybe in the United States, maybe in Spain or wherever the guy wants to go. Frankly, the CIA director has um statutory authority to resettle up to 16 people per year, right? What that means is the CIA director can with the stroke of a pen declare up to 16 people per

[04:30] year American citizens and resettle them in the United States. My guess is that's what we're seeing today or yesterday. Um, this is different than the operation to capture President Manuel Noriega of Panama. In 1989, President George HW Bush actually invaded Panama with the

[05:00] military. Noriega fled to the Vatican embassy. Um, we occupied Panama City. We set up sound systems around the Vatican embassy. We played death metal at a volume of 11 247 until the Vatican ambassador went to President Noriega and said, "Please just get out of the embassy. We can't live like this anymore." And he walked out and we grabbed him and you know the rest is history. This was uh much quicker and

[05:30] much more live and lean. Um, not to say it was legal, not to say it's something that we should be proud of because what does this do at the end of the day? It tells Xihinping he can go snatch the president of Taiwan. It tells Vladimir Putin he can go snatch Wimir Zalinski. No problem. You have charges pending against someone, just

[06:00] kidnap them. Just send in a team of special forces, kidnap them, and take them back. If the Americans do it, then it must be okay for everybody else to do it, too. So, I think we're in very dangerous territory right here. Thanks for that, Jody. Good question. Mike Brophy says, "Hi, John. Two questions. Have you ever considered writing spy novels? And what's your favorite spy novel or movie?"

[06:30] That's a That's a great question. It's a little hard to refine my answer. I I I'll tell you my favorite espionage movie, spy movie, and nobody will see this coming, but it has to be North by Northwest directed by Alfred Hitchcock. One of the greatest movies ever made. It's not about the CIA specifically. It's more like a kind of a CIA, FBI

[07:00] conglomeration working against what is probably the KGB, but we're not really sure. I've seen that movie. I'm not exaggerating. I have seen that movie a hundred times, and I enjoy it just as much every single time I see it. Now, in terms of spy novels, you know, I tell you a funny thing. I had never read a spy novel until 1991.

[07:30] I went into Kuwait City with the Marines on lab on liberation day um February 1991 and the only English language book that I could find in the ruins that was Kuwait was Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy by John Lare. Um, it was revoly. Uh, everything that happened in that book and I I've read the others afterwards. I

[08:00] read I read this by Who Came from the Cold, of course. I read, you know, Smiley's People, The Most Wanted Man. I went through all of them. They're all acts of brilliance. I can't think of an American author that can approach John Lare on on the espionage novel. It's he we just can't do it. You know, we have Robert Llam and Frederick Forsythe and people like that. Although, you know, Day the

[08:30] Jackal was pretty dog on good. Um the movie was just as good as the uh as the the film. Tom Clansancy, the early Tom Clansancy stuff, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, awesome books. clear and present danger I wasn't so uh so thrilled about. But um but I think those are my favorites. John Lare by far number one. You can't go wrong with the whole James Bond movie franchise. Um I thought Casino Royale was particularly

[09:00] good, particularly modern. I'm biased in favor of the Bourne movies because I was the script consultant for the Bourne ultimatum. I'm very proud of that. Uh, but North by Northwest was something special. One of the greatest films I've ever seen of any kind and in my view the the the greatest spy movie of all time. Thank you, Mike. Uh, Mike Castell says, "Happy holidays,

[09:30] John." Happy holidays, Mike. Hope your mouth heals soon. Thank you. Oh my god. I've ground my teeth since I was six years old. I'm 61. So 55 years of grinding my teeth so hard that I broke the roots of five teeth. I had to have five teeth removed. And people say, "Why didn't you get a a mouthpiece?" That's

[10:00] with the mouthpiece. I broke the mouthpiece. I was grinding my teeth so hard. Anyway, I'm going to have three implants done uh day after tomorrow and then in six months I'm going to have two done up here. It's miserable. Thanks for asking. Okay, question. At what point in learning a language do you start to recognize regional accents? Ah, that's a good question. And do native Arab speakers say you have a particular regional accent or do they

[10:30] say that you sound like an American speaking Arabic? Are there certain regions more difficult to understand? All excellent questions. So, I'm going to take them one at a time. At what point in learning a language do you start to recognize regional accents? I started learning Arabic in August of 193. It wasn't until April of 1994 that I began to discern

[11:00] regional accents. Golf Arabic, the accent is very easy to discern because a lot of the pronunciations are akin to the pronunciations in Farsy. Like in Arabic, the word I or me is ana. A N A. Anna. In the Gulf, they say, which is weird. I didn't learn on. I learned Anna. When I went to Bahrain, everybody was saying on, which like I say was weird. I never

[11:30] I never liked it. Um, but it took me that many months to be able to discern differences in um in regional accents. Do native Arab speakers say that I have a particular accent? Yes. So, so I recruited a guy from North Africa. He did not know I was American

[12:00] until I told him I was American. And he said to me, you know, I wondered, he said, you've got an accent that I can't quite pin down. He said, "Sometimes you have a Lebanese accent. Other times you have like a Saudi accent." And I said, "Well, I'm I'm American." And I said, "My my Arabic teachers, two of them were Lebanese and one was Egyptian but

[12:30] speaking in what's called Fussa, high standard Arabic, which is more akin to Yemen um Arabic." Uh but one of the ways in which we learned Arabic, we started off by watching Sesame Street in Arabic and then little by little by little we graduated to Voice of America news broadcast in Arabic which is in fussa but we also watched soap operas and movies. Now, the the odd thing back in

[13:00] the '9s was all Arabic language soap operas were filmed in Egypt. And so they spoke Egyptian dialect, Arabic, but all movies were filmed in Damascus. So while the while the soap operas were in Egyptian dialect, which is very unique, the movies were in Syrian dialect, which is more broadly understood, and it's it's softer. It's less harsh than both

[13:30] Egyptian and Gulf dialect. Like with golf dialect, another thing besides on um they use a hard J, like the word golf, the golf, like the Persian Gulf. Um the word Gulf is khalish. Everywhere else in the Middle East, the J is a soft J. Khal. in the peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Gutter, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. It's

[14:00] Khalij. The other Arabs don't like that hard, Jay. But it's a it's a Gulf thing. And your third question was, are there certain regions more difficult to understand? Oh my god. Yes. I can't understand a word that they say in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, but especially Libya. And I'll I'll venture to to go deeper there. No Arab outside of Libya can understand a single word that the Libyans are

[14:30] saying. I don't even know what that language is. That's how oddly difficult it is cuz it's a mix of Arabic and French and Berber and Italian and God knows what. I can't understand a word those people say. Okay. Muffin Cooper says, "John, I see you as a true American hero. Thank you, brother. I truly believe you'll get that muchdeserved pardon. I was kind of hoping it would come at Christmas, but still hoping. My question today is, did

[15:00] you know the officers killed in Afghanistan at the Chapman base in 2009? Oh boy, did I. And what did what did the agency change, if anything, in terms of operational procedures? Great question. So, not only did I know those officers, I sat 10 ft away from the officer who was in charge of the base. She died completely unnecessarily. She died because the CIA sent her to her

[15:30] death. And I'll explain what I mean. Joby Warick of the Washington Post, multiple uh Pulitzer Prize winner, Joby War wrote a a book about this. And um I was one of the sources for the book. I think he thanks me in the book. But um I worked with the woman. Listen, when when you when you work at the CIA and you get to be a GS14, right? The the last grade in the GS scale is a 15. And

[16:00] then above that is what's called the Senior Intelligence Service. So in order to be promoted to the senior intelligence service, you have to do a a rotation of one or two years into another directorate which is easy and a rotation of two or three years in the policy community. So I had seven and a half years of experience in the director of intelligence and then

[16:30] seven and a half years of experience in the director of operations. So I had the two directorate thing done and then I did 3 years secunded to the state department. So I also had that done. Well my colleague had the whole DODI thing. She was a DI analyst but she was on rotation to the Alex station the Osama bin Laden unit. So she had that done but she had to have a um a rotation in the policy community.

[17:00] So technically Fort Chapman or Chapman base it was it was called a forward operating base. FOP Chapman was a DoD facility, not a CIA facility. And so this was her opportunity to check that box that would make her eligible for promotion to the senior intelligence service. So they came to her and they said, "Hey, you want to check that box? You want to you want to head a base uh in Afghanistan?" She says

[17:30] yes. Okay. Now, if she's going to say yes, the CIA owes it to her to put her through at least 6 weeks of security training. Right? So, not only did I have four months of security training, I had another month of weapons training. I had a week of bomb training where I learned how to diffuse bombs. And then I had six weeks of advanced counterterrorist operations

[18:00] training and another week of advanced counterterrorist driving training. She had literally none of that. She went from her desk to Dulles airport to Afghanistan. And just to put a cherry on top of this perversion, the operation against us was

[18:30] Osama bin Laden's doctor walked into the American consulate in Istanbul and said, "I'm Osama bin Laden's doctor. I'm a Jordanian national. My family has convinced me to walk away from jihad and to volunteer to the Americans." Okay, that's that that's a recruitment that's going to make anybody's career if that's true. So what do you do? You put them on a polygraph. Number one, they never did. They wanted so badly for this to be

[19:00] true. They just said, "Great. You're working for us now. We're the good guys. You're with the good guys. We're going to make you rich. We're going to take care of you. Here's what we want you to do. We want you to go back to Afghanistan, find out where Osama bin Laden is, and then come to our base, and you can tell us at our base where he is so we can go snatch him. He goes back to Afghanistan. To make a long story short, he straps an enormous bomb onto his onto his torso,

[19:30] covers it up, you know, with his with his clothes. Uh, two of the Marines pick him up. It happens to be his birthday and so my colleagues baked him a birthday cake if you can imagine. And then the woman that I worked with who's chief of the forward operating base told everybody, "Listen, listen. Instead of having him come through the metal detector, let's just meet him outside at the car when he arrives and

[20:00] we'll sing happy birthday to him and it'll show him how much we want to be friends and how excited we are to work together." Okay. It didn't occur to anybody that it was odd that it's like 115° and he's wearing winter clothes to cover up the bomb. Of course, it also didn't strike anybody as funny that when he got out of

[20:30] the car, he was praying softly. Alhamdulillah. You don't think that's odd? And then when everybody gathered around him, he blew them all up. He killed seven seven CIA officers, wounded more than a dozen, something like two dozen. It was the deadliest single day in the history of the CIA. And now Jennifer's in the

[21:00] ground. And her three children, three daughters grew up motherless. Like, was it really worth it? I would say not. I have to take a short break because I'm proud to say we are monetized. So listen to this. Three billionaires, four major banks, one respected economist, all pointing to the same thing. A historic move in gold is coming. You saw the way it was going crazy at the end of the year 2025.

[21:30] Goldman Sachs says gold could surge another 20%. JP Morgan says 25%. Ray Dallio, Jeffrey Gunlock, and even a legendary 72-year-old investor are now calling for gold between$10,000 and $12,000 an ounce. That's not far away. But here's what they're not saying publicly. One economist believes the US government will deliberately raise gold's official price to deal with the debt crisis. Not speculation, not a

[22:00] guess, an actual policy decision. And nobody's really talking about it. Well, Alternative American Alternative Assets just released a free report that breaks it all down. It's called the surprising case for $10,000 gold. It's yours for free. Just call 888 gold053. Or even easier, go to johnloves.com to get that free copy. That's 888 gold053 or johnloves.com.

[22:30] By the time this story hits the headlines, the real opportunity will be gone. So, don't wait. Alrighty. John Pauly says, "John, I don't know if you read all comments." I do. I I read literally all the comments, but I'm older and just getting into foreign relations. It's never too late, my friend. What do you think of the Israelis getting involved with that new country, Somaliand? Thanks. Love your show. Thank you. Um,

[23:00] you know, I am one of the very few Americans who has actually been to Somali land. I was in Djibouti, which is in on the Horn of Africa in 2011. I was the senior investigator in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And I went there to investigate um terrorism in Yemen and Somalia. And I was in Djibouti this one day and the ambassador asked me if I wanted to go to Somalia

[23:30] the next day. I had never been to Somalia. I said, "Sure, why not?" He said, "We're going to drive." I said, "Great." So the ambassador, the defense attaches, and the chief of security picked me up at my hotel the next morning. We drove to Somalia, and we went specifically to Somali land. Now, Somali land until a week ago was not recognized as a country by any country in the world. It happens to be the northernmost state inside

[24:00] Somalia. Somali land is actually an okay place. I wouldn't want to live there for the rest of my life, but it's an okay place. It's got a functioning city with, you know, tens of thousands of people in it. and they have nothing to do with what is going on in Moadishu. They have nothing to do with terrorism or Shabbab or al-Qaeda or any of that stuff. They just

[24:30] want a functioning country. And the ambassador said to me, you know, if it was up to me, he said, "If I was the president or the secretary of state, I would recognize these people. They just want to have good relations with their neighbors. They want to trade. They want to build a port. They want to have friendly relations with the United States, but they can't because they're stuck in this god-forsaken hell hole that calls itself Somalia. So, um, so we drove over there and we met with the president of Somalia and a couple of

[25:00] other officials who, you know, aren't really officials. Uh, and had a perfectly nice day of conversations. And then we got in a car and we drove back to Djibouti again. So why is this Israeli recognition of Somali land so important? First of all, nobody else in the entire on the entire planet is going to follow the Israelis and recognize Somali land. The Israelis did this for a very selfish but very smart reason.

[25:30] Somali land borders Djibouti. It borders Ethiopia and it's coastal right just south of the Babal Mandeb um in the um in the north western Arabian Sea. It is about 20 miles right across the water from Yemen and it's right in the heart of of pirate central. You saw

[26:00] the movie Captain Phillips. They're all Somali. So the the people of Somali land want international recognition. They just got it in the form of Israeli recognition. What do the Israelis get? They get a base. They get an air base which they can use to bomb Yemen back into the stone age. So instead of having to launch rockets across Saudi territory

[26:30] from Israel, they just put a couple of F-35s in Somali land and, you know, they're there and back, drop their load of bombs before their cup of coffee gets cold, right? Pretty good deal if you're Israeli. Um, nobody else is going to follow that uh that decision. Ed Zangerro uh says, "I asked a friend once, a retired intelligence officer, why can't you guys use all that available electronics, tradecraftraft, and

[27:00] infrastructure to catch child traffickers? Silence. Isn't that the truth?" You know, I was always vaguely aware that pedophilia and ch and child trafficking was a problem. like vaguely aware in the back of my mind that's an FBI issue for the most part. It also can be a CIA issue, but it was never anything that it was it was not a part of our um what's called an OD, an

[27:30] operating directive. I think I mentioned a week ago or two weeks ago that the CIA every every year in December the CIA is given its OD um for the coming year. It used to come directly from the White House, from the National Security Adviser. Now it comes from the director of national intelligence. And it goes from tier zero, meaning they're coming over the embassy walls to tier five, which means nobody gives a So tier zero is like

[28:00] Venezuela, Russia, China, you know, war in the Middle East. Uh, tier one is going to be counterterrorism, counter proliferation, maybe counter narcotics, probably not. Tier two is probably counter narcotics. Tier three is, you know, the Sahel, uh, rare earth metals, Taiwan, say. Tier four is like whatever, Western Europe. Tier five is, you know,

[28:30] child sex trafficking because the CIA's position is that the FBI is going to worry about it. But this is a very serious problem. When I finally went to prison in 2013 and was literally surrounded literally by pedophiles, only then did I realize what a significant problem this is. Um, this should be a tier zero issue or tier one at at the least and we

[29:00] should be spending millions of dollars to break it, to destroy it and make sure that it never comes back. I don't know why the silence, Ed, I don't get it. There's no downside to protecting children. So, I I honestly don't know why we're not working as hard as we possibly can work to get that done. Alex Jame Mitchell. Hi, John. Love your

[29:30] channel. Thank you, sir. With great authority and credibility, someone I know in Defense Reconcalled a physicsdefying UFO maneuver off the coast of Israel. Through your work, have you acquired any reason to believe or disbelieve in either UFOs or paranormal activity? Literally the very first question I asked of my new boss on my very first day at the CIA is where's the UFO stuff? And he laughed at me and he said, "That's the first question from all of

[30:00] us." And so I'll give you the answer that was given to me. It's all at the Pentagon. That's the Pentagon's Bailey week bailey wick. We collect foreign intelligence and we analyze foreign intelligence here. We don't have anything to do with UFOs. I found that to be true, but I also found it to be true that there were a lot of people at the Pentagon working on the UFO issue, if only because so many pilots, like almost every pilot in the Air Force and

[30:30] the Navy and the Marine Corps, has had an encounter with a UFO. I don't know if you happen to see a couple of weeks ago, there was a video that was leaked on Capitol Hill from September of of an American drone off the coast of Yemen tracking an orb of some sort. And an order was given to fire a rocket

[31:00] at this orb and destroy it. The rocket literally bounced off of the thing. It's changed directions in a way that is just that defied the laws of physics and then it just kept flying again. It's clearly a a shiny silver orb. And in the comments on YouTube, people are like, "Oh, it's a it's a balloon. It's a weather balloon." We shot it with a Hellfire missile. If it was a balloon, I think it would have popped.

[31:30] not change directions in defiance of the laws of physics. So yeah, I I believe in UFOs, besides the fact that I saw one, which I've talked about in the past with my dad. Eli Khan says, "Hi, John. As an 18-year-old male, a significant amount of content I consume comes through social media. I'm curious about your perspective on figures like Nick Fuentes and the broader America First movement, which is extremely popular with the people I interact with who are my age.

[32:00] I'm wondering if you think this will lead to any substantial changes in young people's views on domestic and foreign policy and if a change in young people's understanding in of the United States role in the world will lead to real political changes. That's a very smart question. Um, so let's let's pick through it. Um,

[32:30] Nick Fuentes has a lot of followers. I I think that's very dangerous. I think Nick Fuentes I think that we would be better off as Americans to just pretend that Nick Fuentes doesn't exist because by elevating him like we have, we've made him a player. Um, he's a racist, he's a misogynist, he's a a homophobe, he's a bigot, and he's an incel. Um, I think that his views are not just outside the mainstream, they're so far outside the mainstream that he'll never

[33:00] be able to pull the mainstream to his political perspective. With that said, you are correct that he's very popular among people in that 18 to 25 cohort or 14 to 25 cohort. Um, if our political leaders and if

[33:30] influencers on the left are not able to counter him, he will continue to grow in importance to the point where I think that he will actually have an impact on members of the Republican party, especially those activist members who, you know, get themselves elected delegate and then go to the the national convention every four years and and help to choose a presidential nominee. To me, that's different. Nick Fuentes is

[34:00] different than a true America first movement. I approach this from the left. And I think the America first movement is actually a good thing. This is one of the reasons why I'm so grossly disappointed in Donald Trump's decision to um to move into Venezuela and snatch Maduro. It's less about Maduro as it is about the president's comments about the oil fields. Like he's proactively telling the American people, "I'm planning to commit a war crime and

[34:30] here's how I'm going to do it. So let's get moving." Like come on, man. You You can't do that. The America First Movement, which many of us for a long time called the MAGA movement, was supposed to be an anti-war movement. And that's why MAGA was so appealing to so many people on the left on foreign policy issues, cuz God knows the Democrats,

[35:00] you know, can't turn their heads without seeing five wars that they'd love to jump into with both feet, right? The Democratic Party is not the party of peace. And I was kind of hoping that on that one issue of war and peace, the left would be able to agree with the right. And I was wrong. There's a difference between MAGA and America first. There's a difference between MAGA and Donald Trump. So,

[35:30] I think that this move into into Venezuela coupled with the continuing rise of Nick Fuentes and people like him will result in a split in the Republican party. We've already seen a split in the Democratic party uh you know between people considered to be on the the left of the Democratic party and then the mainstream Democrats like you know pretty much every Democrat in Congress.

[36:00] We're going to see the same thing on the right. You have the neocons who are who are just crowing over Venezuela today led by her majesty Lindsey Graham. And number two, you've got the the true MAGA people who are saying, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We jumped in with Donald Trump because he was the guy who was going to keep us out of foreign entanglements. He

[36:30] was the guy who was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize because he was busy making peace all over the place. And now that just goes up in smoke. So this is going to get really complicated really quickly. And our last question is from Aaron Harris. Hi John. Thank you for all you've done you've done and everything you've brought to light. Thank you. I know I'm not the only one when I say that I have tremendous respect for you. Thank you. If you had access to a public platform with the power of the presidency, what single intelligence

[37:00] reform would you implement first and why? You know what? I'm going to go all in. Um, for the last 10 years, my friend and attorney Bruce Fine, former deputy attorney general of the United States, we have been planning to write a book. We've we've written the outline, an outline that you shop to publishers is a completed first chapter and then an

[37:30] outline of uh all the other chapters. Our overarching theme is that the CIA has missed every major international development since it was created. Everything from the creation of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Suez crisis to 9/11, the six- day war, the Yam Kapoor war. You name it, the CIA's missed it. They've just gotten

[38:00] it wrong. every single time. But it's gotten worse since Barack Obama was elected president. It was Barack Obama and his minion, John Brennan, who began to use the CIA as a weapon against people whose politics they didn't like, like me, like seven other whistleblowers.

[38:30] And so the conclusion of our book is that the CIA should be disbanded. Not that we shouldn't have an intelligence agency. We have 18 intelligence agencies in the US government. Most countries have two, a domestic one and a and a foreign policy, foreign affairs one, right? MI5, MI6, FBI, CIA. We have 18. If does the Coast Guard really need a Coast Guard intelligence service? Seriously.

[39:00] So everything is redundant. Everything that the CIA does is redundant. If you're looking at analysis, I'll tell you who does analysis better than the CIA is the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. If you're looking for recruiting spies to steal secrets, what the CIA's Director of of Operations does, Defense Human Services does it better. If you're looking for the development of new technologies, including through, you know, INQEL and

[39:30] uh and the high-tech companies that INQEL invests in, DARPA does it better at the Pentagon. If you're looking at electronic intelligence, come on, NSA does it better. Everything that the CIA does, somebody does better. So, we don't need a CIA. And right now, besides doing it not as good as other agencies do, the CIA is uh used as a weapon out there hunting down

[40:00] perceived enemies of whoever happens to be in the White House. It's time for them to go. That was a great question. [gasps] Okay, that's it for today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching Deep Focus, our Q&A session. We are up to 97,500 subscribers. Please continue to like, to comment, and to share, and ask your friends and family members to subscribe. We're almost at 100,000. And once we get to that number, the algorithm changes

[40:30] for us, and then we can really start to grow. Thanks. I'll see you again next week. Bye-bye.