[00:00] John Kiriakou, welcome to Straight Talk, mate. >> Thank you. Thank you. Very happy to be with you. It's a mad time at the moment, like geopolitically across the world, so it's actually very timely to have an opportunity to speak to someone like you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I've been following your stuff for a long time. Huge fan. Like we love what you do. The fact that you got Greek surname that helps, by the way. >> I know, right? We got to stick together. >> [laughter] >> Someone called Boris and someone talking to someone called Kiriakou, cool. Okay.
[00:30] So, maybe you could just John, you could just give me a little bit of a background on you as cuz cuz our audience here in Australia in particular loves to know how you grew up, you know, what were the influences in your life, particularly as a kid, your mom, your dad, your grandfather, your grandmother, your your regional area. Where did you grow up? Give me a little bit of a background on you. Sure. I was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania in a very rural, tiny town in Amish country, north of Pittsburgh by about 1 hour.
[01:00] Really, my biggest influences in my life were were my dad and my grandfather, my father's father. My my entire family emigrated to the United States from Greece, from the island of Rhodes. All four of the grandparents in 1931, on my dad's side, 1934 on my mother's side. The week after I turned 18, I went to Washington, D.C., went to school at George Washington University. I earned a I earned a bachelor's degree in Middle
[01:30] Eastern studies, and I stayed for a master's degree in legislative affairs with a focus on American foreign policy analysis. My graduate school advisor, it turned out, was undercover as a graduate school advisor. He was a CIA officer looking for people who might fit into the CIA's culture. He believed that I would fit into the CIA's culture, and he recruited me into the CIA. I spent uh 15 years there. The first half of my career was in uh
[02:00] analysis, specifically on Iraq. And then the second half of my career was in counterterrorism operations. I served many tours overseas in counterterrorism. I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan just after the 9/11 attacks. And um that's where things sort of begin to turn. I was uh I'm sorry to say that I was the only person who objected to the CIA torture program. I did so internally, which just fell on deaf
[02:30] ears. And then after I left the CIA, I decided finally to go public in a nationally televised um uh interview. And I I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, and that the policy had been personally approved by the president. Um all hell broke loose, as you might imagine. But in the meantime, I took a job as the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
[03:00] working for John Kerry. After I left the Foreign Relations Committee, the government fell on my head. And uh I was arrested and charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for that interview with ABC News, in which I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. Uh to make a long story short, I was facing 45 years in prison. They offered me 23 months. >> Whoa. If I would just take a plea, I turned down the plea,
[03:30] much to the consternation of my attorneys, who then told me that they would resign as my attorneys if I didn't take the plea, because I was realistically, they said, facing 12 to 18 years. Take the 23 months and make it go away. And so I did. And you know, the funny thing, Mark, is that I was at the CIA a long time, and I would have assumed that they knew me. And if they thought that prison would silence me, they didn't know me at all.
[04:00] So, I did my 23 months, and I've been a vocal critic of the CIA and of torture and of human rights abuses ever since. That's pretty crazy story. So, but if I go back to period when you decided to go to university and study Middle Eastern studies, um like that that probably a bit out there back then. Well, I'll tell you something that's more out there. When I was 9 years old, my father took me to an auction, and he bought a box of junk. I still
[04:30] remember he paid 50 cents for it. It was just a box of just junk that was left over. But that junk happened to include a shortwave radio, and it opened up an entire new world for me. And I told my parents when I was 9 years old that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. >> Wow. And they thought that was cute, and they bought me they bought me a set of walkie-talkies that year for Christmas. And then when I was 16, I told them I wanted to be a spy in the Middle East.
[05:00] And my father said, "Come on, you still with the spy? With the spy thing? Can't you be a dentist or something?" And I said, "Dad, I'm serious. I want to be a spy in the Middle East." And so, I became a spy in the Middle East, and I loved every minute of it. I learned to speak fluent Arabic. I immersed myself in the culture, the history, the the poetry, and the literature, and and and succeeded there. But what was
[05:30] driving you to do Middle East? I mean, did you feel as though they were doing the wrong thing and it was something you needed to spy on for your country? Or was it more Was it more trending at the time? I mean, what what was the deal there? Like I can't imagine why. It was decidedly trending. The Iranian the Shah of Iran had been overthrown. The Ayatollahs had come into into power and they took the American Embassy and then held 55 American diplomats hostage for 444 days and I was obsessed
[06:00] with this hostage crisis. And wanted to learn as much about the Middle East as I could. I can't tell you why I was more interested in the Arab side of things than the Iranian. But Arab culture just has always fascinated me. And um even when I was in college, I went backpacking one one summer with my girlfriend. We spent 3 months and she wanted to go to London and Paris and
[06:30] Rome and we did all that, but then we also went to, you know, Istanbul and Jerusalem and Cairo at my insistence and I I was hooked. How did that end up? With that girlfriend? You know, we're still Facebook friends. But I will admit to you that she's the one who got away. So John, was it more of a curiosity from your point of view? Were you insanely curious about what's going on in the Middle East, their culture, what driving drives them to be that way? Or were you doing this for country? No, in other
[07:00] words, for your nation. Did you feel as though I have a duty to understand the region and protect my country? Which which was it? That's a good question. It was it was kind of a combination of the two. On on the one hand Yeah, I I was so fascinated by the whole place. Like for example, even as a teenager, I wanted to know how these little royal families in these little tiny countries got to be royal families and why was, for example, the
[07:30] Kuwaiti family a ruling family and not a royal family and all the others were royal families and why were some emirs and shaikhs and the others were princes and kings and I loved it. What made the job easy easier was that uh the United States has always had very close relations with these countries. And so, we were always seen as as the good guy and uh you know, relations were close and we weren't targeting these countries for
[08:00] recruitment because, you know, our intelligence liaison relationships were close enough that they were giving everything to us anyway. So, when I was working there, it was Iranians that I wanted to go after or Iraqis that I was going after or or Syrians or Russians and Chinese for that matter. Um it wasn't we didn't have this um we didn't we didn't have the kind of relationship with these different countries that would have caused any kind of friction or difficulty and it made life very, very easy for me there.
[08:30] So, what like you were posted to Bahrain, for example, and you were with the American Embassy, um but you know, with the CIA, what I mean, we see the movies, etc., but what what are you actually doing when you're sitting in there? I mean, obviously, I don't want you to give any away any state secrets, but what what's your process? Are you trying to recruit somebody to give you information about what's going on in the region or are you, you know, interrupting their telephone lines or you you what are you doing? Like what happens day-to-day,
[09:00] generally? Well, I I'll I'll answer you in two ways. I I worked for a deputy director at the CIA. I was his assistant. My my last headquarters position. And he had a mantra that he used to repeat every single day that the job of the CIA is to recruit spies to steal secrets and then to analyze those secrets so that the president can make the best informed policy. That was the bottom line. The tech and
[09:30] the fancy stuff, that that's all layered on top of it, but the bottom line is we recruit spies to steal secrets. And then when you're in the field actually in the act of recruiting a spy to steal a secret, there's a there's a process there that we call the asset acquisition cycle. It was spot, assess, develop, recruit. So, you and I are at a diplomatic cocktail party. I go up and introduce myself just like I'm going to
[10:00] introduce myself to the other 50 people in the party, but you happen to be from you know, North Korea or China or Russia or Cuba. So, you I'd like to get to know and I'm going to invite you to lunch. So, I'm assessing your your uh your uh ability to to have information that I would find useful. And then I begin developing you. That's the fun part actually and that's
[10:30] the longest part of this where we're going to start with lunch. And then in a year's time or 6 months or 24 months or however long it takes me, I'm going to make you my best friend. I'm going to spend an a ridiculous amount of money on you. We're going to vacation together. Our wives are going to be friends. Our children are going to play together. And eventually
[11:00] when the time feels right in my gut, I'm going to ask you to commit espionage for me. Treason maybe in some cases. And you're going to do it. Maybe because you think I'm great and you love me and you love this friendship we've developed. Maybe it's for the money. Maybe it's because you've been passed over for promotion and you want to get revenge against your boss. Maybe it's because you just love the United States because you love these Hollywood movies and you want a piece of it. Or
[11:30] maybe you're an adrenaline junkie And you just love the excitement of the clandestinity. But one for one reason or another, you're going to say yes to that pitch. Does the CIA, the organization, profile these individuals for you? They say, "Okay, John, you're going to a cocktail party tonight. There's a dude there from Syria or Korea or whatever the case may be. We've already profiled this individual. He fits He fits in the profile some of these categories." Or you Are you just randomly walking the
[12:00] room and sort of saying, you know, I meet 50 people out of those 50 people I'm going to profile six, target myself. Nine times out of 10, you just go in cold. And you have a pocket full of business cards and you just hand them out to everybody. Once in a while, I can count twice in my career, where headquarters sent me a cable and saying, "There's this party at such and such an embassy. We heard the North Koreans are going to be there.
[12:30] Or the Russians are going to be there." And so I say, "Okay." And then I make sure that I go and I you know, in in one case I I actually did surveillance on the North Korean for several days before the party and I noticed that he was literally going fishing every day after work so that he could eat. Wow. And I thought, "Okay, well, if he doesn't If he doesn't run screaming from the room, I'm going to take him to a nice restaurant."
[13:00] I'm sorry to say that he ran screaming from the room. But um not literally, figuratively. Uh so, that went nowhere. But But usually, you just go work the room. Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm John Kiriakou from the American Embassy. So nice to see you. Oh, what do you do for a living? Oh, you work at the port? That sounds fascinating. What do you do at the port? You know, whatever it is, it's fascinating and I want to hear more about it. So, you got to be good on the chat. I mean, you got to be Is that something naturally you're good at? Like, were you always good at
[13:30] good on the chat? Yes. You know the sweet spots. You know where the sweet spots you you know from their reactions. You must have been Were you trained to say, "Here's a bodily reaction that is actually in your favor and here's a bodily reaction which is against your favor." You know, body language type of stuff. I mean, did you get into all that sort of secret techniques? Sure. Sure. There is an enormous staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists at the CIA. Enormous staff. And so, you're well
[14:00] trained in what to look for and then what to do once you've spotted what we call a vulnerability. Now, a vulnerability doesn't necessarily have to be negative. Maybe your vulnerability is you really really love your kids. And in your country, whatever country you happen to be from, your kids don't really have the kind of educational and economic opportunities that they might have in the United States. So, if you want your kid to go
[14:30] to Harvard, done. Wow. We can put your son or daughter in any university in America and if you give me 2 hours in your code room, I'll pay for it. Wow. Mhm. I said I said naked. Yeah. Nine times out of 10, this is strictly a financial agreement. You give me money I'm sorry you give me information I give you money. It's as simple as that. Can you talk to me about when you were posted to Athens in Greece
[15:00] and what you were doing there? Sure. That was very specifically a counterterrorism position. There were several groups. You know, it's funny. When I first saw the position was open, it said this was for a counterterrorism operations officer working against two Greek groups, one called Revolutionary Organization 17 November, the other called Popular revolutionary struggle, but also working against Arab groups, most specifically the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP General Command, and
[15:30] the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the Abu Nidal organization and the Libyans. They said that the successful candidate will have either Greek or Arabic language fluency. As it turned out, I was the only person in the CIA that was fluent in both Greek and Arabic. And so I got the job. It was just about then that communist Arab terrorism went away.
[16:00] It just the PFLP and the DFLP and Abu Nidal, they don't exist anymore. These were old men, they retired, they moved to Damascus, and they lived happily ever after. The Greeks were out killing people all the time. They killed the British defense attaché when I was there. They had previously killed the American CIA station chief, two American defense attachés, the Turkish ambassador, the Turkish deputy ambassador, the Greek
[16:30] Minister of Finance, the Minister of Communications, the head of the Central Bank. This was a terrible, terrible group. Wow. And so my job was to work with the Greek National Intelligence Service and the Greek National Police to try to infiltrate these two groups and to destroy them from the inside. And what happened? We stirred up a hornet's nest. And they murdered my next door neighbor, the British defense attaché Steven Saunders. I liked Steven very much.
[17:00] Um Steven had a a huge personality. We used to joke that he was a media [ __ ] because he just as soon as he saw camera, he would run right in front of it. And say, "Would anybody like an interview? I am the British defense attaché." And we would all laugh. One one night we were at a party at the French uh defense attache's house and I had just gotten a new car that day that the CIA had bought me. It was a a level four armored BMW 540.
[17:30] It was the first 540 in Greece. To the point where we couldn't even insure it. We had to insure it through a company in Germany because I needed a big engine to carry all that armor. And Steven was making fun of me. We were standing it was Steven, the French, the American attache and me and Steven was making fun of me in a friendly way and he said, "You Americans, you're so paranoid about security." He says, "This is an EU country. It's a NATO country. What are you so afraid
[18:00] of?" And everybody chuckled. And I said, "You Brits live in a dream world if you think that because they have pretty beaches and palm trees that they're not going to kill you if they have the chance. Believe me, if they have the chance, they're going to kill you." And then they killed him. As an assassination? They assassinated him in broad daylight on the main road from our neighborhood to the British and American embassies
[18:30] in April of 2000. I was about a quarter of a mile behind him when they killed him. Um a a a taxi driver pulled him out of the car and and rushed him to a hospital. He died 20 minutes after they got there. Uh 17 November usually would drop a manifesto at the site of the hit. Sometimes they would put it in a garbage can and call a leftist newspaper and tell them where to find it. Rarely they would mail it to the newspaper. They
[19:00] didn't leave a manifesto when they killed Steven. And so four months passed and I went into work one day like I did, you know, every day and my boss runs into my office and he said, "Did you see the manifesto?" I said, "What manifesto?" He said, "The Saunders manifesto." I said, "They didn't drop a manifesto." He said, "No, they dropped it today. Have you seen it?" And I said, "No." He said, "They talk about you." And I said, "Me? That's not possible." I
[19:30] said, "I've I've been so careful with my security. I'm more careful than anybody I know." He shows me the manifesto. It says in Greek, "Eedame ton megalokataskopous. We saw the big spy." It says, "But we we knew he was armed and he was driving an armored car. And so we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders." Whoa. And my boss said, "You have to go." Yeah, I said, "Go where?" He said, "You have to go home, like right now." I
[20:00] said, "I just took my kids to school. I can't go just go home now." He said, "We'll pick up your kids. We'll pick up your wife. You have to go now." I I went to the airport in an armored car. They had an armored car pick up my two sons. And my sons were little. They were like six and three. And they picked up my wife. We got to the airport and I said to her, "I am so sorry." And she said, "I want a divorce. I'm not doing this anymore."
[20:30] >> Wow. So, we flew to New York. She flew to She flew to Cleveland. I flew to Washington. And started working again 17 November from headquarters. They lasted it another like 18 months. Um one of the bomb makers was uh carrying a bomb to put under the car of a Greek uh shipping magnate. And the bomb went off and it blew his hands off and it blew his right eye out. And as he was bleeding to death, he confessed to a policeman that he was
[21:00] 17 November. He gave the names of all of his comrades and the location of their weapons cache. and then the cops saved his life. And so, the entire group was destroyed in April of 2002, and most of them are still in prison. A couple of them have done their time and have gotten out, but the the founder, the lead assassin, and the two lead bomb makers, three lead bomb makers, are doing sentences of 1,765
[21:30] years. You were the target, in actual fact. Mhm. Did you ever think to yourself, is this worth it? I mean, is my country worth it? >> Oh, yeah. >> curiosity worth it? At that [clears throat] point At that point, did you think that? Yes, I did. Um and my solution, in my deluded state, was to then divorce her and marry a CIA officer. Ha. So, that's what I did. And not not long after this, we have 9/11. Um and uh and of course, 9/11 was
[22:00] was tragic and um but bigger news than probably anything we've had in the last 50 years. Yeah. >> Um and then, you got posted to Where did you get posted from there? Pakistan, as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations. Wow. It was It was the biggest job I ever had in my life. >> That's a big deal. >> Yeah. That's a big job. Yeah. The Whereabouts in Pakistan? Primarily in Islamabad, but wherever we needed to do the raid, we went and did the raid. I
[22:30] saw the four corners of Pakistan and everything in between. Uh and there were a lot of moving parts at the time. You know, it wasn't just us operating in a bubble and trying to, you know, destroy Al-Qaeda. At the same time, the White House is working with the CIA to come up with what became a torture program, a rendition program, an archipelago of secret prisons all around the world, and none of us had any idea that this
[23:00] was happening. The first inkling that I got that something was up was when the Pakistanis came to me one day. We had had several weeks several very successful weeks of of counterterrorism raids where we're just breaking down the door of Al-Qaeda safe houses with battering rams and just grabbing everybody. And the Pakistanis came to me one day and said, "Listen, the jail is full. You've got to do something with all these guys. We can't just hold these guys indefinitely." So, I called CIA headquarters, the
[23:30] Counterterrorism Center, and I said, "The Pakistanis came to me and said that the jail is full." We were keeping everybody in the Rawalpindi jail outside of Islamabad. They said the jail's literally full and they want these guys out. What do you want me to do with them? And they said, "We want you to put them on a C-12 cargo plane, a transport plane, and send them to Guantanamo." And I said, "Guantanamo, Cuba?" And they said, "Yes." I said, "Why in
[24:00] the world would we send them to Cuba?" And they said, and I thought this was a great idea, "We're going to keep them in Cuba for two or three weeks until we can figure out which federal district court to charge them with." The idea was that we would charge all of them with terrorism or conspiracy or providing material support for terrorism. And we would charge them in in Washington, New York, or Pennsylvania because that's where the fourth plane went down. I said, "That's a great idea."
[24:30] Loaded everybody onto a series of C-12s, flew them to Guantanamo. We put 770 people there at one point. But then someone in Vice President Dick Cheney's office observed, "You know, they don't really have any rights in Guantanamo. It's ours. We control it, but it's not American territory. So, they don't have any US legal rights.
[25:00] Why don't we just keep them there forever? And then that became the policy. I presume that maybe you can help me out here, but as a result of not having any rights, um and it's not being on US soil, you can pretty much do to them whatever you want to do in order to find out whatever you need to find out. And that's where the big split came for me. I I did not yet know that there was a formal torture program. I learned that in May of 2002. Torture actually began
[25:30] on August the 2nd, 2002. >> [gasps] >> But I remember saying to my boss, "This is illegal. This is clearly a violation of the Geneva Convention. And it's a violation of US law, as well. We shouldn't be doing this." And he said, "Listen to me, cuz I'm only going to say it once." He said, "This has already been worked out at a pay grade far above yours or mine.
[26:00] We're not here to make these decisions. We're here to do as we're told." And that didn't sit right with me. So, I went back to headquarters at the end of my tour in Pakistan. May of 2002. I was in the sandwich line in the CIA cafeteria. And one of the senior officers from the Counterterrorism Center came up to me very casually and said, "Oh, hey, I'm so glad I ran into
[26:30] you. I meant to ask you, do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?" I had never heard that term before. And I said, "Enhanced interrog- I said, what does that mean?" And he said, "We're going to start getting rough with these guys." I said, "Well, what does that mean?" And then he describes these 10 techniques. Everything from a smack across the face to waterboarding and sleep deprivation
[27:00] and and freezing. Freezing. They called it the cold cell. I can describe it in a moment. I said, "That sounds like a torture program." He said, "It's not torture. The president approved it and the Justice Department said we can do it." I said, "Ah, give me an hour. I need to think about this." I walked out of the cafeteria. I went up to the seventh floor of the CIA. That's the executive floor. And I asked a very very senior official, for whom I had worked in the Middle East 10 years earlier,
[27:30] for some advice. I knocked on his door, no appointment, and I said, "Listen, I was just approached and asked if I wanted to be trained in these enhanced interrogation techniques. What do you think of that?" And he said, "First of all, let's call a spade a spade. They can use whatever euphemism they want. This is a torture program. And torture is a slippery slope. And you know how these guys are. Some of them are cowboys and somebody's going to kill a prisoner. And then there's going to be a congressional investigation and then a Justice Department investigation and
[28:00] somebody's going to go to prison. Do you want to go to prison?" And I said, "No, I don't want to go to prison." As it turned out, I was the only person who went to prison. But I went back downstairs and I said, "This is a torture program. I have a moral and ethical problem with it. I think it's illegal and I don't want to have anything to do with it." And uh and so they cut me out. Which was fine. I I preferred to not know anything. I preferred to not be read into the program.
[28:30] But then, on the strength of my work in Pakistan, I was promoted and I was named the executive assistant to the CIA's Deputy Director. And in that position, I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world. And it was on August 2nd that we began torturing Abu Zubaydah, who was the first high-value prisoner that we had. I I led his capture in Faisalabad, Pakistan in in uh March March 28th. And
[29:00] he was shot he got shot prior to that prior to his interrogation. Yeah, you know, I was standing on a coffee table in the safe house with 60 people arrayed in front of me and I said, "Listen, the orders are to take them alive. Do not shoot them." And of course, as soon as the proverbial [ __ ] hits the fan, a Pakistani policeman just opens fire and shoots him three times with an AK-47
[29:30] in the thigh, the groin, and the stomach. And um yeah, the rest is history. And your your objection to him being um interrogated, where did it end up with you? Where did Where did it end up putting you? Well, in in the immediate term, I was passed over for promotion, which was kind of funny to me because I had just captured with these two hands the number three in Al-Qaeda. And in my promotion panel, the chief of counterterrorism said, exact words, I had displayed a shocking lack of
[30:00] commitment to counterterrorism. Whoa. Well, the deputy director then then promoted me just with the stroke of his pen. So, no big deal. But then a friend of mine at the agency, who happened to be He happened to be a lot of things. We we go to the same church. We were in the same men's group. He happens to be a psychiatrist and he happens to also be a brigadier general in the US Army. Um he's a CIA psychiatrist. He came up to me and he said, "Hey, buddy, I got to
[30:30] tell you, you know, they call you the human rights guy behind your back." And I said, "Yeah, I know. I've heard that." And he said, "Uh you know, that's that's not a compliment." And I said, "Steve, I'm on the right side of this. They're not. I said I'm not going to change my point of view just because they say something behind my back. And um I kept that up for another couple of years. I did uh another tour and then decided, "Listen, I have five children.
[31:00] I need to put them through college. I have to start making some real money." So, I resigned from the CIA, went into the private sector. And in the private sector and this is the changed the course of the rest of my life. I got a call from Brian Ross, a very prominent um journalist with ABC News in the United States, a a seven-time Emmy Award winner. And he said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. I
[31:30] said, "That was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah." And he said, "Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself." I had no idea that was a reporter's trick because I had never spoken to a reporter before. And so, I said I'd think about it. Well, that was on a Monday. On a on Wednesday, President Bush gave a press conference and one of the reporters there asked him
[32:00] about these rumors that the CIA was torturing prisoners. And he looked right in the camera and he said, "We do not torture." And I said to my wife, who was a senior CIA officer, I said, "He's a bald-faced liar. He's looking the American people right in the eye and he's just lying to us." Two days later was Friday. The president leaves the White House from the South Portico, the the back door of the White House, and he's
[32:30] walking to the presidential helicopter to go to Camp David for the weekend. And a a reporter shouts a question about torture and the CIA and he stops and he turns and he says, "Well, if there is torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer." And I said to my wife, "Brian Ross's source is at the White House and they're going to pin this on me." So, I called Brian Ross and I said, "I'll give you your interview."
[33:00] And I decided that no matter what he asked, I was simply going to tell the truth. And I'm proud to say I brought down torture in the United States. Um John McCain, God bless his soul, I probably disagreed with John McCain on 99% of the issues. But, he became my champion in the US Senate. And
[33:30] he wrote the what became the McCain-Feinstein Amendment banning torture. And then, while I was at prison, I was incarcerated, he not only spoke on the floor of the Senate urging the president to pardon me and release me. But, he gave a speech on the floor of the Senate saying that the country owed me a debt of gratitude because without my revelations, the American people would not have had any
[34:00] idea what the CIA was doing in their name, the carrying out this abomination. And um And so, I did my 23 months. I came out. And I'll tell you one funny thing. I was on this British show, the first interview I gave I gave when I got out the BBC, what's it called? CrossTalk? Crossfire? I forget the name of it. It's very popular. >> Yeah, yeah, I know the show. I don't know the name, but I know the show. The guy and it's one guy who asks the questions. >> One guy who asks the questions and he comes out swinging.
[34:30] So, he asked me a couple of very provocative, very mean-spirited questions, and I answered them just like I'm speaking to you now. And finally, he grew a little frustrated, and he said, "You know, you you are not showing any contrition at all. You have not apologized for your crime. You haven't said anything about about having revealed this classified information." And I said, "Contrition? I'm not contrite. I'm not apologizing. I would do it again
[35:00] today if I had the opportunity." I said, "I'm not afraid of these people. I took their best shot, and I came out stronger on the other end." And I said again, same thing that I said earlier, I said, "I am on the right side of history, and they are not. When their obituaries are written, the obituaries are going to say that they were war criminals." It's a very interesting mindset, John. Like I I I just wanted to you know, the um the process for governments and/or
[35:30] organizations, for example, like the CIA I A and others, to carry out torture in order to get information or data would be probably justified on they would say justified on the basis that we are condemning one person to pain and torture in order to protect a whole lot of people. Then on the flip side of it, some like John Kiriakou is saying, "I will not um compromise my personal principles
[36:00] in order to reach that achievement." How is this Did you ever go through a process where you had to try to reconcile those two completely uh opposite processes? You know, one is for country, I'll do whatever it takes for me to protect my my the my country and the people in it versus no, I will not cross a line when it comes to my principles relative to an individual being tortured, for example, that cuz that's just wrong. How How do you How did you ever see a
[36:30] reconciliation of that? Is it Will we ever have a reconciliation of those two principles? You know what? I didn't I did not struggle with that. I'm glad that you brought it up because I think this is a very important point. I did not have that internal struggle because it has been proven time and time again, after years and years of research, that torture simply doesn't work. Now, there was a real reason why we were torturing, and that was revenge. I
[37:00] understand that. I disagree with it, but I understand. But don't torture and then pretend that you're doing it because there's a ticking time bomb somewhere and you're trying to prevent the next attack. You're not trying to prevent the next attack. 9/11 was the greatest intelligence failure in American history, far worse than the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. And it was because the CIA was asleep at the switch. The deaths of 3,000 Americans in one day
[37:30] was on us because we didn't do our jobs. So, I get that these guys wanted revenge. That doesn't make it right. But then to pretend that you're you you have to do these these torture techniques because, well, the next attack could be worse and we need to disrupt the next attack. Come on. We're not stupid. And so, I never bought it. Never Never bought it. Do Do you mind if I just and
[38:00] and tell me if I, you know, asking questions that are inappropriate of you given your past and, you know, your you've got to look after your family, etc. But if we could just move to Iran at the moment and what's going on with Iran and um and you know, Trump's, you know, view on it and also Israel's view on it and probably the view of some other countries, but not the majority, it seems, Mhm. particularly when it comes to NATO countries and Australia for that matter. Um what do you think of what's going on there? Because the question is becomes
[38:30] um was Iran a proper nuclear threat relative to um what you know, your equivalent what is now spies and what the intelligence community was finding out about Iran? Do you have any views on this? I I do. Um they're not going to be popular with the current occupant of the White House, but this was a war of choice. Um and it was a war that we chose to
[39:00] participate in after being browbeaten by Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing uh government. You know, it was my experience at the CIA where literally every Israeli Prime Minister since the 1980s would come to Washington, which they do all the time. And no matter who happened to be in the White House, they would say, "Please bomb Iran. Please bomb Iran. Please bomb Iran." And every president would say, "We're not going to do that."
[39:30] until this president. Now, the CIA published two, not one, two national intelligence estimates, which are the the highest level sense of the intelligence community publication that exists, saying that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Not only that, but Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa back in the '80s forbidding the creation of a nuclear
[40:00] weapons program. They were certainly enriching uranium, but not up to any anything near weapons-grade levels. I understand. I get it that Iran is this existential threat to the Israelis. But Israeli national interests don't necessarily coincide with American national interests. And I want my government to represent American national interests. If the Israelis have a problem with Iran, that's for the
[40:30] Israelis to deal with, but the intelligence was very clear that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Okay, just for the benefit of the doubt, let's pretend that they did have a nuclear weapons program. President Trump said in October that the US Air Force had obliterated it with a 30,000 lb bunker buster bomb, a MOAB, the mother of all bombs. We had obliterated it.
[41:00] And then like magic, 4 weeks ago, they're 6 weeks away from building a bomb again. Well, they were 6 weeks away from building a bomb in 1986, and still there was no bomb. So, I think it's high time that we start acting in the best interests of the United States, rather than in the best interests of Israel. And frankly, I don't think attacking Iran was in the best interests of Israel, either. I have no idea, but do you really take the view or really believe that
[41:30] Benjamin Netanyahu has the ability to manipulate Donald Trump? I mean, I know Trump a many months or twice, but I don't I don't understand whether he could be manipulated. Oh, yeah, I believe that very strongly. Not because Trump is weak. I don't think Trump is weak. I think he's actually very strong. Um, but because of the the construct of the American political system, you know, politics run on money. And
[42:00] the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, is incredibly well-funded, and they will run candidates against you if you are not 100% pro-Israel and five times out of six, at least in the in the last election, they would win those races. And so, would you rather take would you rather take $150 million for your campaign from wealthy donors and
[42:30] tow the Israeli line, or do you want to risk having them run a candidate against you and then not winning re-election? Most American politicians fall into line. You know, these ideas finally came to a head during the presidency of someone who could be pressured by Benjamin Netanyahu, where previous presidents couldn't, and now we're in this war. Doesn't within the the USI organization, um, which must have unbelievably vast assets,
[43:00] don't all those things all those the data and information from those assets filter up the line to the president and or his most senior advisors to say, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, Prez, we're going to make a mistake here. Let's be careful." I mean, how does that work? I mean, how do those two things sort of interact? I'll give you two answers. The the first one, the easy one, is uh a reporter for the Wall Street Journal asked President Trump 2 weeks ago, >> [gasps] >> "Who is your closest advisor on these politico-military
[43:30] um, issues?" And his answer was, "I don't have an advisor. I just trust my gut." That is very, very dangerous. You need a team of rivals. You need the best and the brightest. You need to surround yourself with the the smartest thinkers on these issues, and he hasn't done that. That's answer number one. Answer number two is over the course of decades, the CIA has been demonstrably weak
[44:00] in developing human intelligence inside Iran. It's what what we call a denied area, where we can't just, you know, walk out of the American Embassy in Tehran and you know, target some Iranian government official for recruitment because there is no American Embassy in Iran and there hasn't been since 1979. And so we rely on liaison services, which really means Mossad. Now, if there's one thing Mossad's really, really great at, it's targeting
[44:30] intelligence because they'll recruit every Afghan refugee in the country and give him $10 a month to just tell them where the generals live, where the nuclear scientists live, so they know where to target the cruise missiles. On the other hand, the intelligence that they get on the day-to-day operation of the Iranian government, on
[45:00] the policies of the Iranian government, largely come from Iranian Jews who live in the West or from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the MEK, which until the Obama administration was was a terrorist group listed on the State Department's, you know, list of international terrorist groups, which had murdered an American ambassador in Tehran in the '70s and attempted to murder an American general in the '70s, but now we're friends with them because
[45:30] they hate the Iranians and they're taking Israeli funding. Well, the Mujahedin-e Khalq has a vested interest in the United States going to war in Iran because they want to lead Iran. And so, you know, we we got ourselves into this with bad intelligence and bad policy and no exit strategy. One final point, the president it was my experience at the CIA that the people
[46:00] who most wanted to stay out of war were the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Those people who have seen war are the least likely to want to go fight it again. And so what President Trump Trump did over the last year was he fired all the generals on the on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced them with his own hand-picked people who are perfectly happy to accept Israeli intelligence
[46:30] and go to war in Iran. So like now now we've got a big problem. I mean we're feeling it here in Australia, of course, you know, because we import 80% of our petrol and oil and etc. Um you guys are a lot more self-sustaining, but how do we see the end of this? I mean what's his way out? I'm I'm going to give you two answers. My own personal answer is having watched President Trump all these years I think that we're going to wake up one morning and we're going to see a posting on Truth Social in which he just
[47:00] announces that we won. The war's over. We won. We're I'm bringing the troops home. We're going to have a big military parade on Constitution Avenue. Congratulations to our victorious heroes in the military. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. I really believe that he's just going to declare victory and come home. But I was at a dinner last week with several um
[47:30] professors full professors who are also part-time advisors paid advisors to the Pentagon leadership. And they are genuinely concerned that the Israelis are going to use a nuclear weapon. Woah. That you know the that the Iranians the Iranians have proven to be far tougher than anybody expected. Anybody who's you know, blind, deaf, and dumb, anyway.
[48:00] And um and they really believed that the Iranian government was a house of cards, where as soon as we fired the first rocket, the whole thing would collapse. Um these Democrats would rise up, and uh everybody would live happily ever after. And that hasn't happened. And not only has that not happened, but the Iron Dome hasn't been so iron, after all. Just this weekend, the Iranians were able to bomb Dimona, which is where the Israelis
[48:30] uh enrich their own uranium for their own nuclear uh weapons, which apparently we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of. Um Israelis are being killed. We have no idea how many, because it's now a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison if you reveal any bomb damage assessment uh information, including the number of Israeli casualties. So, how do we get out of this? If we decide just to come home, where does
[49:00] that leave the Israelis? It leaves the Israelis standing alone. And they can't they can't abide that. And so, there these professors believe that there's this real danger of the Israelis finally using a nuclear weapon. I think what the professors are saying is that um if US pulls out, Israel can't be sort of standing there naked in the region on its own. So, it's got to do something it sort of uh completes the mission and doing something that's quite devastating. I think that's it. Right there. There is some logic associated with
[49:30] that. I'm not saying not there's no ethics associated with it, but lo- there's definitely some logic associated with that process. Um did What happened What I mean, like you're someone who's been living in this world for a long time. You know when something seems far-fetched or something, you know, maybe close to reality. Does your heart skip a beat when you hear something like that? I was shocked when I heard to tell you the truth because I respected these guys. I've known them for decades and these are serious thinkers.
[50:00] But they were they were adamant that that nuclear weapons are the final taboo. And that part of the Israeli calculation is if they break that taboo, it'll free up other countries to use nuclear weapons which might not be a bad thing. And I said, "How is using a nuclear weapon not a bad thing?" And the response was fascinating. One of them said to me, "We're not talking about North Korea in this conversation. Do you know why?
[50:30] Because North Korea has a nuclear weapon. So nobody is going to mess with North Korea. The only reason that the United States and Israel attacked Iran is because they didn't yet have a nuclear weapon. If they had, there would have been no war because that would have been the deterrent." Wow, that makes sense. Yeah, it does. >> a lot of sense. Another but the very reason why they were justifying attacking Iran is cuz they thought they may have nuclear
[51:00] capability but in fact, the opposite applies because they did not have capability, they were attacked. Exactly. But what do you think this means for people like, you know, like Putin sitting back watching this you know, President Xi sitting back watching this, countries who do have nuclear weapons? What do you think that they might if if for example Israel did drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear weapon on Iran, what are those other other countries going to think to themselves? It's now okay is would they
[51:30] think to themselves it's now okay to do the same? Absolutely not. Because at that point they've won. The the United States The United States already is the only country in the history of the planet to use a nuclear weapon and we've done it twice. If we did it a third time or allowed the Israelis to do it, I mean that that's going to be the end of the American Empire. It it really would be. We have a satirical paper here in the United States called The Onion.
[52:00] A very funny um newspaper. And they had a headline last week, um Chinese happy to sit back and watch US destroy itself. And that that's really I think what we're seeing right now. But what you have you in our country we have two groups who are let's say the equivalent to with the organization you work for CIA. One's called ASIO and the other one's called ASIS. Um and uh in our country they're extraordinarily secretive. No one I've
[52:30] never met anyone who works for them. Um we don't hear much about them. Every now and then the head will come out and say it may a few statements about terrorism in Australia or the the you know the the bubbling up of terrorism in Australia. And of course we had a recently had a problem in Bondi which you would have heard about. Um What experience did you ever have with our Australian intelligence community if at any at all? Almost none. Um of course Australia is a member of Five Eyes like the United States is along with Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Um
[53:00] you know I um I never visited Australia while I was with the CIA. Never came a single time. I can count my my meetings with Australian intelligence officials on these two fingers over the course of a 15-year career. But you know it was always my understanding that the Australians were far more interested in China than they were in the area where I was, whether it was you know European. It's quaint now, but European communist terrorism uh or uh or the Middle East. I
[53:30] just never really encountered them. But do you But do you think that Australia needs to I am up a bit more because uh you know we get a lot of criticism around the world um but rightly or wrongly to say that we don't spend enough money on our um defense. We, you know, as And by the way, you know, this 5% of GDP um sort of formula that's floating around the world, we spend nowhere near that. Yeah, we spend nowhere near that um in Australia. Do you have any advice for Australians or we should be thinking about and to
[54:00] advise our government? If I were in a position where my opinion actually had some uh some heft behind it, I would say ignore this 5% number. It's economically um untenable over the long term. Uh you know, it's funny. When President Trump was in his first term, there was only one country in NATO besides the United States that spent 2% of GDP on
[54:30] defense. That was Greece, because they're petrified of Turkey. Now, we've got this 5% number floating around. Here in the United States, we have a 32 trillion-dollar, trillion with a T, trillion-dollar national debt. The Chinese own a plurality of that debt. And so, we just keep selling the Chinese more long-term government bonds. If they really wanted to just completely
[55:00] collapse the the economy, they would just sell the sell the bonds. And and for all intents and purposes, the American economy would cease to exist. Um so, over the long term, I just think that no country is able to keep this this up. Australia should do what's right for Australia, regardless of of American political pressure. And you know, Australia is also blessed like the United States is um with with oceans.
[55:30] And so, we we have oceans that help to protect us. Now, listen, I I'm not a I'm not a naif. I understand that that, you know, China is a strategic threat, that North Korea might be a strategic threat, that Australia's going to have to work with Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and Thailand and others to to, you know, make the South Pacific as as safe as possible. But, the it's not the Chinese who have a history of hegemony in the region.
[56:00] They just don't. The Chinese, you know, except for Tibet aside and a handful of little border skirmishes with the Indians and the Vietnamese, the Chinese don't invade other countries. The United States invades other countries. And what about Taiwan? Yeah, I think that the Chinese really believe that Taiwan will someday be reunited with the mainland, but I think the Chinese are are The Chinese have a
[56:30] very long view. It's a 5,000-year-old civilization. I think that they are willing to willing to look at this like the Hong Kong model rather than, you know, the invasion and occupation model. It just doesn't make sense for them to do. It's It's interesting that um when you look at the various news medias, um not so much here in Australia, our local ones, but, you know, we also watch, you know, CNN, Fox, blah blah blah, all the rest
[57:00] of them, at least I do, here in Australia. Um we tend to get um hyped up by media. Um and media tends to lead us down a path. It's like it's their agenda. It's not a real agenda, it's their agenda. They want us to believe that, and it's nearly like they know who who does believe that, therefore they feed us more and more. It's nearly like they're doing data room. They're nearly profiling us like you used to profile your potential recruits. Right. They're profiling us as potential recruits to watch their show,
[57:30] and they want to retain us, so they keep feeding us the same stuff over and over again. And every now and then I've got to give myself a an uppercut and say, "Mark, what are you doing? Um turn the channel, watch the other side. Uh watch the other view." And then the other view that, by the way, is the opposite view, but it's just filling me up with the opposite views. It's not giving me both sides of the both sides of the argument. Are we being led down a garden path by our media outlets today? Because it seems to be more divided than I've ever seen before, as politics is. Are we being led down the garden path by our media? I think we are.
[58:00] I struggle with the same things, Mark. I It's People ask me all the time, "Where do you get your news?" And the answer, I hate to say it, but is I get it everywhere. Because you can't trust just one or even two or even five outlets. You have to get it from everywhere and then immerse yourself in the information to the point where you can make an educated uh analytic conclusion. So, I start off with, you know, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the
[58:30] LA Times, the Times of London, the Wall Street Journal, my hometown paper just for the sports. And then I go to Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, then Al Jazeera. Uh I do a couple of the smaller Middle Eastern outlets. But you're hours every day just immersing yourself in the news, hoping to get bits and pieces. I I do the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz every morning. I have subscriptions to both. You You can't trust any one outlet.
[59:00] You have to trust in yourself and then trust in your ability to make that analysis make sense in your own position. But most of us don't have that analyst training like you do. And probably maybe we don't have the time, either. And we probably can't speak the languages of some of these um outlets. Um and and and therefore, which is why, by the way, I got quite excited when we had the opportunity to interview you. Um because you bring to the table
[59:30] um not only your analytical views, but you also bring bring strong views of with with experience sitting behind it. And give us us here in Australia at least perspective about someone who's been in the scrum, in the scramble. Like you literally have been in there and and come out the other end still alive. Um that that's really important to Australian audience. And you know, we've got a big audience who who will love listening to this. But most of us um struggle. Yeah. Do you think that for
[1:00:00] the future we perhaps should stop listening to media outlets and just maybe take no view and just live our lives and uh just assume everything's going to be okay or is that dangerous because we're then handing ourselves over to our politicians and all the system, which you know, you know how it can work against you. I am. And um that then then it's it's it's a problem. Um it's a bit of a quandary. I don't know which way to go. What what do you say? It is a quandary. What
[1:00:30] What I What I've done for a few years now is I've I've begun following people I respect on Twitter, X. And relying on them to give me the news that they think is important. So I'm getting the whole mainstream view from the mainstream outlets. But then I know, for example, that Alexander Mercouris at The Duran knows everything that's happening in Ukraine,
[1:01:00] for example. Or that Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone knows everything that's happening in Iran right now. Uh I have some friends who cover Latin America and I I trust them. I know how honest they are and what great analysts they are. So maybe maybe one of the things that you can do or that that any anybody can do is to identify people who really are seeking the truth without a political
[1:01:30] agenda and follow them. So maybe you could just mention those names again. So we're talking about X. Give me someone who you would look at in relation to say Middle East. Oh, Max Max Blumenthal or Aaron Maté, m a t e. They're both terrific writers and analysts, just excellent. Gideon Levy uh at Haaretz in Israel is one of the the clearest thinkers on these issues that I've ever encountered and and is
[1:02:00] not afraid of his own government. He just wants the truth of a story. He's fantastic. Um I do follow Al Jazeera just because I know so many of them at Al Jazeera and you can't rely on them for news about the Gulf because they're owned by the government of Qatar, but on the Arab-Israeli dispute, they're terrific. That's interesting. I've been watching a a good friend of mine who I walk with every weekend. He's an older gentleman um and he and I were talking
[1:02:30] about this on the weekend and both of us concluded that we no longer just watch Fox. We also now turn to CNN and we no longer just watch CNN. We now go to Al Jazeera. >> Yeah. Can I just want to go back to one point? Like just go right back. John Kiriakou absolutely besotted with what was going on in the Middle East, young um one of young want to be a spy, got the opportunity to do that, was um not only curious, but wanted to try and solve things through being a great analyst.
[1:03:00] Um had some great outcomes. When you're a young, enthusiastic, curious, energetic and and at that stage not let's call it not poisoned or um tormented by what was actually going on in ethical sense, what do you how do you feel reckon How do you reconcile the John Kiriakou today with that particular person? I I've changed dramatically in the intervening years. Um not just because I'm so much older and more worldly, more mature, but my
[1:03:30] my core my core beliefs about my own government have changed. Um you know, I used to think that it was just so easy, so clear there are good guys and bad guys and we're the good guys. And that's just not Life is not that clear-cut. It's not that simple. And I've also come around on the idea of foreign interventions. I I made my bones at the CIA with the
[1:04:00] Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait and I went into Kuwait City with Marines on Liberation Day, February 17th, 1991. It was formative for me. Um but then, you know, when we attacked Iraq in 2003, that's when I really began my my transformation. That was a war of choice. We all knew that the Iraqi government had literally nothing to do with 9/11. Literally nothing. That was a
[1:04:30] lie that was being fed to the American people. We knew that the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. I sat in on the meetings where the analysts were practically killing each other. The Department of Energy said, "Yes, there are new There are weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons." And the the CIA said, "No, there are none." There were none. We knew there were none. And so, I began to change my point of view in 2002. It really changed by 2003.
[1:05:00] And now, I can't even think of a righteous war that's taking place anywhere in the world right now. Wow. Well, this has been an amazing conversation and um I want to say to you look I've got a special year. Thank you very much. And uh >> [clears throat] >> Basically I said um good luck to you and um you know I want you to I wish him many years. In other words uh you know the best for him for the future and I
[1:05:30] appreciate your I really appreciate your honesty and your your straightforwardness and uh and I I dare say uh what is this going to love this but thanks very much. >> Ah thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity. It's great to meet you.