[00:00] Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has carried out covert operations around the world. From overthrowing governments and abducting suspected enemies to operating secret prisons and committing acts of torture, including waterboarding. But after decades of investigations and controversy and public scrutiny, has the agency really changed? This week on Upfront, I'll be asking that question and more to former CIA officer turned whistleblower, John Kiriakou.
[00:33] John Kiriakou, thank you so much for joining me on Upfront. >> Pleasure's mine. Thanks for the invitation. >> So, your story is a fascinating one to me. You were studying at George Washington University. >> Yes. >> Then you get approached by a professor >> Yes. >> who happens to be a recruiter for the CIA. And suddenly, your whole career trajectory changes. >> My whole life. >> First of all, what persuaded you to join? >> Well, I came from an immigrant family. Um all four of my grandparents uh emigrated to the United States from the
[01:05] island of Rhodes in Greece, which at the time was under Italian occupation and had just come out from under Ottoman occupation. And so, you know, to hear my grandfather tell it, you know, Franklin Roosevelt was standing there at Ellis Island to welcome him into the country and give him a passport and give him a job. We had a framed picture of Franklin Roosevelt on the TV until until my grandfather died. So, he always instilled in us, all four of my grandparents, instilled in us this sense that that we had to give back because the country had been so good to us. And
[01:36] so, I only considered public service. I was thinking, oh, I'll end up in the foreign service or on Capitol Hill. And then, this professor approached me in graduate school. And the next thing I knew, >> They made you an offer you couldn't refuse? >> Yeah, something like that. To tell you the truth, I wanted to see the world. And this sounded like a good way to do it. >> You've done some pretty big things since you've joined. I mean, you helped capture Abu Zubaydah. >> I did. >> Uh who of course is the first CIA detainee post-9/11, someone who seems to be connected to the 9/11
[02:07] attacks and all kinds of >> We thought he was. In in retrospect, he wasn't. He was a bad guy. At the time, he we we believed he was the number three in Al-Qaeda. He wasn't the number three, but he was something of a logistician for Al-Qaeda in that he created what was called the House of Martyrs, the Al-Qaeda safe house in Peshawar, Pakistan. He founded and staffed Al-Qaeda's two training camps in Helmand province and Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. And if you, this is even more important, if you
[02:38] wanted to go to Afghanistan to make jihad, he would get you in. >> Got you. >> If you were tired of the fight and you wanted to go home, he would get you a fake passport. He would book you a ticket and he would get you home. So, he was instrumental in sort of the day-to-day operations of Al-Qaeda, but he was not one of the planners of 9/11. We were wrong about that. And he was definitely not the number three. >> And yet he still remains >> And yet he still remains at Guantanamo for 24 years he's been in American
[03:08] custody. I'm ashamed that I had anything to do with it. >> But not just the custody. I I want us let's stay there for a sec. >> worse than just custody. >> Right. I mean >> Yeah. >> torture. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. Now, when we talk about torture, that could be a lots of things. But the thing that was very big in the public discourse uh and human rights groups were speaking out against was waterboarding. >> Yeah, actually I'm glad you brought it up that way. Because a lot of the approved so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were not torture. If I grab you by the shirt and
[03:39] I say, "Hey, answer my questions." That's not torture. >> Is that enhanced interrogation? >> Yeah. That was the entry-level enhanced interrogation technique called the attention grab or attention grasp. Um that's not torture. But, you know, we get to waterboarding, we get to sleep deprivation, we get to the cold cell, and then we get to a whole lot of things that were never approved by the Justice Department. That was torture. >> For you, enhanced interrogation is okay, torture is not, and there's a distinction between the two. Where does sleep deprivation fall in that field?
[04:10] >> Oh, I think sleep deprivation was worse than waterboarding. >> Mhm. >> We killed people with sleep deprivation. The American Psychological Association says that that for people suffering from sleep deprivation, they begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep. They begin to die of organ failure at day nine with no sleep. The CIA was authorized to keep people awake for up to 12 days. We We killed people. And when I say sleep deprivation, I mean,
[04:43] you're chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling, so you can't sit or lay or get comfortable or support your own weight. You have to stand for 12 days. >> Let's take the ethical piece away for just a moment. Just for one moment. >> Sure. >> Is the information even credible? >> Ah. See, that's really the $64,000 question. The answer is no. Listen, people are going to tell you anything that they think you want to hear to get you to stop torturing them. John McCain used to tell this story about
[05:15] when he was being tortured in North Vietnam, and they would always start with the names of the people in your unit. And they would beat him senseless. And what he would do just to get them to stop torturing him was to give them the names of the members of the um Green Bay Packers offensive line. >> Mhm. >> They were just names. >> Yeah. >> And then they would finally stop torturing him. There's something called the uh the ticking time bomb scenario. We see it in movies all the time. >> Jack Bauer 24 thing. >> Bauer thing. Exactly.
[05:46] >> argument, right? >> It is. That's the best argument. >> If the bomb is going >> Exactly. >> We got to do something to stop it. >> But the thing that they won't tell you is that that never happens in real life. >> Why? >> What if What if it is nonsense? What if it is real? It's going to take months to figure out what this information actually means. Teams of analysts are going to be pouring over it. By then the bomb's long gone off. Yeah, it just doesn't happen in real life. >> So if it if it's not ethical if it's not legal
[06:17] and if it doesn't work this seems like a pretty compelling argument for not doing it. And these are some pretty smart people. >> Sure. >> Why are you the lone voices in the room sometimes? Or one of the few voices? >> I believe that they were overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. 9/11 was the worst intelligence failure in the history of the Republic. Worse, far worse than Pearl Harbor. 3,000 Americans died on the same morning
[06:48] because we didn't do our jobs. And so there was this feeling that we had to exact revenge. I'll give you another example. Um like everybody in the building, I volunteered like every day over and over. You got to send me. You got to send me. You got to send me. Finally they're like, "All right, all right, stop. We'll send you to Pakistan." I said, "Great. What do you What do you want me to do there?" "Want you to be chief of counterterrorism ops." I said, "Great. When do you want me to go?" "Tomorrow." "Done." So I met my girlfriend met me at my apartment, packed up all my stuff.
[07:21] Was going to go to the airport the next day and I decided to stop at headquarters first cuz I wanted to say goodbye. I was thinking in the back of my mind, you know, not everybody's going to make it home. >> Yeah. >> And I don't know what's going to happen out there. So I'm going to go say goodbye to to everybody. And I worked for a guy. He was a very elegant, very bright guy. Always with the thousand dollar suits. He We always joked that he really belonged in the State Department. He would have been sort of the stereotypical ambassador. >> Yeah. >> And he gave me a hug and wished me best
[07:52] of luck. And when he leaned in, he whispered to me, "Kill them all." >> Wow. >> And I said, "Really, John?" His name was John, as well. I said, "We're already there." And he backs up and he's holding my my shoulders and he says, "Kill them all." But that was typical of the leadership at the CIA. Like, well, we can't bring back these 3,000 people, but we sure can kill a lot of the bad guys. >> Mhm. >> And that's what they set out to do.
[08:23] >> And when you saw people coloring outside of the lines, you're not Your first response isn't to leave. Your first response is to walk away. Say something. >> Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said something. And I'll tell you where it started. The night that we captured Abu Zubaydah, we captured also many dozens. I'm not allowed to say the number, but dozens upon dozens of lower-level al-Qaeda fighters, plus three or four like serious mid-level bad guys. And we captured so many that we had to
[08:56] bring them to our safe house to interrogate them and to process them. The FBI was there to process them, mug shots and fingerprints and all that stuff. But in shifts, we could only handle 10 at a time. So, we're there, you know, 48 hours just bringing people in shifts. Well, there was this one idiot working for me. And um when the first shift of prisoners was coming in, they all had hoods on. And I said, "Why do they have hoods on?" And he said, "I don't want them to see our faces." I said, "Are you seriously
[09:27] telling me that you have never read the Geneva Convention? You cannot put hoods on them. That is a war crime." I I "Take the hoods off." And he says, "Wait. If you take the hoods off, I'm reporting you to headquarters." I said, "Oh, I'm already reporting you to headquarters. You've committed a war crime and we have to report it to Congress." >> So, so pause right there cuz that's a great moment to think about. Is it we don't know the Geneva Conventions or is it we don't care? >> about the Geneva Convention because Vice
[09:59] President Cheney had said they are they are non-state combatants. So, they don't get the Geneva Convention. The problem is is no court ever said that they can't get protections of the Geneva Convention. So, he to we he took the hoods off and we reported each other to headquarters and I got reprimanded. >> So, he won. >> Yeah, and I realized then like, "Okay, this is how they want to play it." >> So, once you realize that you're
[10:30] not going to win the argument by going up the chain of command or by following the rules, >> Right. >> how far were you prepared to go? Are you prepared to go to prison for this? >> No, not not initially. No. In the end, absolutely, yes. I was standing alone. I had to I had to lay down my marker, but I was perfectly willing at the time to make my complaints internally. I have a friend, we're still friends. Uh he he was
[11:00] the consummate overachiever. We worked together at the CIA, plus he was a Brigadier General in the Army Reserve and a psychiatrist. And uh he said, "I know, right?" And he said to me one day, "Hey, buddy, you know they call you the the human rights guy behind your back." And I said, "Yeah, I know." >> I love that it's like a um a negative moniker. >> Yeah, yeah. >> The human rights guy. >> And he said, "You know that's not a compliment." And I said, "Steve, I'm not afraid of them." I said, "I'm right and
[11:30] they're wrong." >> Let's turn to Iran, specifically the US war in Iran. You've seen firsthand how intelligence is assessed and used inside of government. The Trump administration is offering shifting justifications for the war from supporting the Iranian people, regime change, then it's this imminent nuclear threat that we have to stop. Give me the real deal here. How did the How did the United States reach the decision to go to war? >> Oh, yeah, cuz the Israelis asked us to. It really is as simple as that. Starting
[12:01] in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was the was the president, literally every single Israeli prime minister that came to the United States asked whomever happened to be president, "Please bomb Iran. Please bomb Iran. Please bomb Iran." Every president. And every president said no until this one. And it's because the Israel For the Israelis, Iran is an existential threat, just like Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an existential threat, and Muammar Gaddafi was an existential threat, and
[12:32] Hezbollah, and ISIS, and Hafez al-Assad, and Bashar al-Assad, and all these different existential threats. And so, they've they've worked hard over the decades to get the United States to do their dirty work for them. >> So, so right now, I mean, we see this with lots of stuff. I mean, every US president since the Clinton era has been asked to move the embassy to Jerusalem. And everyone else signs a waiver until you get to Trump. >> That's exactly right. >> Trump seems to be breaking a lot of streaks when it comes to the Middle East. >> Yes. >> Why does he decide to do what no other
[13:03] president since Reagan >> I think for two reasons. Yeah. Number one, I think he's weak. When it comes right down to it, I think he's weak. And I think he is >> What does weak mean? >> Politically weak in that he is susceptible to pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu. Number one. Number two, he has taken hundreds of millions of dollars from pro-Israel billionaires, from the likes of Miriam Adelson and her husband Sheldon Adelson. Uh not to these not to these numbers.
[13:36] No. No. Trump is unusual. He stands alone with the amount of money that he's taken. And I think that that the money coupled with just a political weakness caused him to to move the embassy, caused him to invade Iran. Another thing, too. And this is This is a story that's not really out there. I mean, it's been reported, but nobody paid attention to it. The traitor Jonathan Pollard was released after 30 years in prison.
[14:06] Uh I think he's lucky, very lucky that he got only 30 years in prison. He stole top-secret information from the American government. He was an analyst at the Department of the Navy. He gave it to the Israelis. The Israelis traded it to the Soviet Union in exchange for a plane load of refuseniks, Russian Jews allowed to immigrate to Israel. Okay. So, he got caught. He was convicted of espionage. President Reagan
[14:38] and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger called it the gravest incident of uh of uh espionage in modern American history since the Rosenbergs. And um he did his 30 years. So, he got out. And Miriam Adelson sent a private jet to pick him up at the at the prison. They flew him to Israel. He was met there by Benjamin Netanyahu himself. When he got off the plane, he kissed the ground. He was given Israeli citizenship.
[15:10] And then the American ambassador to Israel uh Ambassador Huckabee welcomed him to the American Embassy for a meeting. What kind of of is this when you welcome a traitor who did grave damage to the national security, you welcome him like a conquering hero into the American Embassy? And then when you go to the American Embassy, which shouldn't be in Jerusalem, because the deal was that it would be moved to Jerusalem when the Arab-Israeli peace treaty is signed and
[15:41] the dispute is settled. >> I want to turn to some domestic matters for a moment. Under Trump's second administration, we've seen increasingly aggressive ICE raids. We've seen the fatal shooting of civilians, including US citizens, during operations. Uh government agencies are increasingly relying on tech firms. >> Mhm. >> Uh I'm thinking about groups uh that do AI-powered surveillance. >> Mhm. >> Uh the data analytics firm uh Palantir has become central to ICE operations over the past few years. From your experience, do you see surveillance and
[16:13] uh targeting methods used against foreign adversaries being adopted in domestic uh immigration enforcement? Cuz that wasn't the original intent. >> Oh yeah, it it's worse than that. It's not just against foreign adversaries or people who may or may not be in the country without documentation. I happen to be in Sweden last week. And the Swedish government has just signed a a contract with Palantir to allow Palantir free reign in the Swedish Defense Ministry. We should add too for
[16:44] for viewers that don't know, Palantir is quite literally a creation of the CIA. Uh the CIA went to Congress and asked for a waiver allowing the CIA to invest in tech startups. Can you imagine that? >> I don't mean to laugh. It It's so absurd, it sounds like something >> Like I'm making it up out of out of thin air, cuz it sounds crazy. >> Or satirical even. It It's It doesn't sound like a legitimate possibility within the context of both a democratic society and a society that has >> And and it was illegal for 225 years
[17:16] >> Yeah. >> until it wasn't. >> Until it wasn't. >> And so the CIA was the very first investor in Palantir. It invested $15 million in Palantir, which is now not just a multi-billion dollar, you know, gargantuan heavyweight in tech and in data um data uh consumption, absorption, however you want to call it. It's the leading company in the world in AI and electronic surveillance.
[17:47] And so to answer your question, yes. AI being used by Palantir is being targeted against Americans or against more more appropriately US persons, which is American citizens and anybody in the country on a green card. But it's also being used against our enemies overseas and against our allies overseas. >> One of the jobs of intelligence agencies is to be able to spot
[18:17] the warning signs of fascism and authoritarianism, not just at the end, but as it kind of bubbles up from the surface. They would see the erosion of democratic institutions, the politicization of law enforcement, the use of state power against perceived threats. I mean >> The breakdown of the rule of law. >> Yeah. Y- given that and your expertise in this is the United States headed in that direction? >> I I hate to say yes.
[18:48] I think it is. I think we should all be genuinely worried. And I want to take a swipe at the Democrats for this, too, because they have they have just accepted it from the very beginning. You know, we've got this duopoly. W- two supposedly separate opposing parties that really aren't. They're they're just two sides of the same coin. And they just trade power and authority back and forth. The Democrats have their turn and then the Republicans have their turn and sometimes it's split and
[19:19] sometimes it's not. But have you ever known a leader of either party to give back any of this authority? And then when you've got a Supreme Court that says quite literally that the President of the United States can do anything he wants, literally anything he wants and cannot be charged with a crime, then that's the breakdown of the rule of law. I'm not speaking specifically about Donald Trump. What a lot of Americans don't remember
[19:50] is is Barack Obama murdering American citizens who had never been charged with a crime. But >> Say what you mean by that. >> Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen born in Albuquerque, New Mexico who self-radicalized and became the spokesman for al-Qaeda. He had never committed a crime against the United States. He became a bad guy and we didn't like his politics,
[20:21] but he was never charged with any crime. He was never even accused of any crime against the United States. But we blew him up like to smithereens uh with a drone. And then a week later, just for good measure, we blew up his 16-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew while they sat at a cafe drinking tea. Children. Never never charged with a crime. But we didn't like that family or its politics.
[20:53] In fact, just after the killing of al-Awlaki and essentially the remainder of his family, uh and Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, asked Attorney General Eric Holder, is it legal for the President of the United States to kill an American citizen who has not been charged with a crime on American soldier American soil? Rand Paul wanted an answer. Is it legal for the President to murder an American citizen on US soil even if that citizen
[21:24] has not been charged with a crime? Yes. Well, the Democrats didn't concede that authority. So, now Donald Trump can, you know, sell, you know, his version of the Bitcoin or whatever it is and make literally $2 billion last year and enrich himself and enrich his family. You think the Democrats are going to change the law? They're not going to change the law. They're going to They're going to profit from it. >> Uh on a slightly lighter note, >> [laughter] >> you you've amassed a pretty amazing online following. People love >> How did that happen? It happened quite
[21:56] literally overnight. >> It's the natural progression, you know, GW, CIA. >> [laughter] >> Abu Zubaydah >> I I walked I walked here to come to this uh this interview. I walked 14 blocks and I was stopped five times for selfies. >> Wow. >> In New York, where people don't stop people. >> Yeah, that's I think the literal opposite of CIA life. >> Yeah, you can say that. >> People are drawn to it though. They love the stories. They also love the way you challenge power. They love the way you >> nothing to lose. >> [laughter]
[22:27] >> What are they going to do? Arrest me? They already did. >> Why is that so important to you now? >> It's kind of a complicated answer. At first, you know, if the whole thing was about waterboarding and these enhanced interrogation techniques, I convinced myself that I was right and they were wrong, right? And I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the rule of law. Either we're going to be the good guys or we're not. But we can't pretend to be the good
[22:57] guys. We are supposed to be a shining beacon of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties. But we're not. I want us to be. But we can't pretend that we're this, you know, this providentially created entity that can give hope to the rest of the world when we're not. We invade countries willy-nilly all the time. We don't respect human rights. We murder
[23:27] people on a grand scale. We don't respect our own people. We're the most over-criminalized country on the planet. In the United States, we have 5% of the world's population. We have 25% of the world's prison population. That's not normal. That's not something that we should aspire to. And so it started for me with human rights and it became something much bigger. And then they insisted on imprisoning me
[23:58] and they were stuck at 45 years in prison. I said, "I'm not going to do 45 minutes." And I thought to myself, "You know what? I have nothing to lose. So I'm going to go to the mat and I'm going to fight them." I was blessed that I had great lawyers. And I ended up taking a plea for 30 months, of which I would do 23 months and it made me a martyr. And I thought, "You know what? This is a once-in-a-lifetime unique opportunity to do good for the American people and
[24:29] for the human rights that I've always believed in." And so I decided that I am right and they are wrong. And so they tried to silence me. They didn't know me at all. >> At all. >> Mhm. >> John, thank you so much for joining me. >> Thank you so much for having the conversation. >> Absolutely. >> Mhm.