[00:00] Who here is ready for war? >> The third world war is not only inevitable, but is already taking place. >> What begins as a regional war could very [music] rapidly escalate out of control. >> The problem with wars is easier to start than to stop them and it always gets out of hands. >> The Ukraine war is accelerating the decline of the West. >> Painfiltrators will be unavoidable. >> Iran will be our Srausa. That will be our end.
[00:38] In this interview, I spoke with John Keryaku, who's a former CI officer who blew the whistle on waterboarding and had his life taken away from him. Now he's a journalist who speaks out against America's biggest foreign policy blunders, such as our unwavering support for Israel, even though it's dragging us into a third world war. >> My name is John Kiryaku. K I R I A K O U. I am a uh what am I? I am a I guess I'm a journalist, an author, podcaster. I was
[01:09] former senior counterterrorism intelligence officer at the CIA for 15 years. Uh I was the uh senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and um >> prior to going to the CIA or >> after well well after. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I left the CIA in 200 four. My resignation was official in 2005 and I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009 and um gained a little bit of notoriety for blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program.
[01:41] >> And what what made you first go into that line of work? >> I was uh recruited by my grad school adviser. He was actually a CIA uh officer undercover as a professor. He liked my analysis. He thought that I had a personality that would fit into the CIA's culture and so he recruited me into this into the CIA. >> And would you have done it again if you could go back or >> I struggle with that question? >> Um, no, probably not.
[02:12] >> Why is that, you think? >> Cuz I ended up in prison. >> It really is that simple. I ended up in prison. I blew the whistle in the torture program. The government fell on my head. They sent me to prison for two years. Cost me everything. Everything. My pension, my family, my job, my home, my future, everything. >> Do you think that the US has gone astray and it's the military intelligence apparatus? >> Absolutely. And it's far worse than when I was at the CIA. I I left 20 years ago. It's gone arry because it's been taken
[02:45] over by private contractors. time was until the September 11th attacks that the purpose of the CIA was quite simply to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and to analyze those secrets so that the policymakers could make the best informed policy. And then after 9/11, the CIA became a paramilitary organization, sending teams around the world every week to kill people who had never been formally accused of a crime, who certainly had never been convicted
[03:16] of having committed a crime. And then at the same time it got into bed with big tech to the point where Inqoutell the CIA's um venture capital arm provided the seed money for for companies like Palunteer for example and then has partnered with with uh Elon Musk and with Jeff Bezos and you know the biggest richest tech companies in the world to violate our civil
[03:47] liberty. liberties. I believe strongly that that American oligarchs are running the economy. They're running the government. Yes. Running the country. Yes. And it's not just, you know, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and we use Amazon. Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post. So Jeff Bezos gets to decide what we read every day, at least in the Washington area. Jeff Bezos controls much of the uh the cloud. Elon Musk controls much of the cloud. You can't
[04:18] get away from these guys. I think American foreign policy is a response to the US's position on the backside of its empire. I really believe our best days are behind us. I believe that we are growing weaker and weaker in terms of of our foreign policy and foreign reach and that every time we impose a new sanction or send troops to another country that in turn further
[04:51] weakens us. The Chinese meanwhile compare the United States to the Chinese. The Chinese don't invade other countries. Uh, and they're flush with money. And what they do with their money is not to spend $1 trillion a year on the military budget. They spend it um giving loans to third world countries, building highways and schools and airports and hospitals and and gendering goodwill. You know, even in the Middle East, the Chinese and the Russians are perfectly
[05:22] happy to watch the United States get involved in the situation in Gaza while they just sit back and watch us die a slow death. The reason why these foreign diances are so destructive is that they bankrupt us. You know, we we turn out high school graduates who can't read. Um, a humongous minority of uh of people working on PhDs in the hard sciences in the United States are foreign nationals.
[05:54] And most of them are, you know, Chinese and Indian. >> Mhm. >> And so they're going to go back to their countries. They're going to serve their governments. They're going to build companies in their countries. And uh and they're going to be competing against us. and we're just not producing the kind of minds that we need to uh compete. When you make a strategic decision to spend more money on the military than on anything else, you're not going to have
[06:24] the best schools. You're not going to have the best facilities. You're not going to have the the the finest minds learning the latest, you know, scientific procedures or whatever it is. you're just going to you're just going to raise more soldiers with more sophisticated weapons and that's not a winning strategy. >> How would you characterize the US posturing with Russia? Now, >> I'm far less worried about the Russians than I am about the Chinese. I mean,
[06:54] look, Russian population growth is actually negative growth to the point where in 150 years there won't be any Russians unless they start allowing more people to immigrate to Russia. and who really wants to immigrate to Russia? There aren't that many people. So, I'm I'm not really worried about the Russians. And when push comes to shove, you know, Russia is a Russia is a a Christian country that is more oriented toward the West, whether it will admit that or not, than it is
[07:25] toward the East. I'm far more worried about the Chinese. I I would characterize our foreign policy toward Russia as aggressive, and it's been aggressive for a long time. Keep in mind too that the Russians twice asked the United States about joining NATO. Uh Boris Yeltson asked Bill Clinton and Clinton laughed at him and Vladimir Putin asked George W. Bush and Bush laughed at him and said it was never going to happen. It should have happened. You know, we wouldn't be in this position maybe if the uh Russians were members of NATO, but the West
[07:57] wouldn't take them seriously. And then we kept poking Putin and poking and poking to the point where in 2015 we essentially overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine and installed a pro-American government and uh finally the Russians didn't want to take it anymore and so they crossed the border. Germany sees itself as a major leader in both NATO and the European Union. And if there's going to be a conflict with Russia, even
[08:28] an indirect one, using the Ukrainians, the Germans are going to have to be at or near the top uh on the on the western side. >> How would you characterize US foreign policy visa v China at this time? >> I'm genuinely worried about US foreign policy visa v China. I'm worried because the Chinese, first of all, do not have a history of interventionism. Just since the communists took over China in the 1940s, they had one minor
[09:01] border skirmish with with the Vietnamese in the 1970s. They've had a couple of minor border skirmishes with India. The Chinese have one single military base overseas and they share it with the United States. It's in Djibouti. And there's a fence that goes right down the middle of it. I'm telling you because I've been there and I've seen it. And the left half is Chinese and the right half is Americans. That's the only foreign Chinese base. But it's the United States that projects its military
[09:33] authority overseas. So while the Chinese are continuing to grow this already massive economy, the United States is wasting its money on military hardware. It's unsustainable. When you couple this outofc control military budget with the national debt that we have that we have to pay interest on every year, what do we have? 10, 15 more years before we're going to have to make draconian cuts to the budget or raise taxes.
[10:03] The Chinese don't have to worry about things like that. And then you have to ask yourself too, is it really that important for us to keep a constant presence of carrier fighter fighter groups in the South China Sea? For what reason? Just in case someday the Chinese might rattle their saber at the Philippines? It just seems like money wasted to me. >> What about the cost to project power on the other side of the world? >> That's what I'm talking about. >> Yeah.
[10:34] >> It's it's on it's very high, right? I mean it's >> as I said we have a a trillion dollar plus military budget. It's unsustainable. >> And so and also then being our n our biggest trading partner, right? >> Mhm. See, and this is another thing too. China is our largest trading partner. It has been for a while now. And so if our goal is to the Chinese economy, why would we do that when the Chinese are the second biggest owner of of
[11:06] Treasury bonds in the world? If we were to collapse the Chinese economy, we would collapse our own economy. At the same time, I I'm all for a more even playing field. I think in some odd ways Donald Trump's uh tariffs might be a good idea, especially if the Chinese are dumping uh in the United States, and I think they are. We're focused on the wrong things. We shouldn't be focused on on a global military like we are. And
[11:37] >> so do do you think like a a confrontation is possible with China and the US or >> I think a confrontation is possible, but it's unlikely. You know, it's it's it's a mantra that we have here in the United States, especially on Capitol Hill, that the Chinese are going to invade Taiwan. Well, number one, half of the people of Taiwan wouldn't object to that. Number two, the Chinese have always said
[12:08] that Taiwan will be reunified with the Chinese mainland someday and that they are willing to conduct negotiations to determine when that day will be. It's the United States that's always talking about China invading Taiwan. It's not China talking about invading Taiwan. Mhm. >> Is it in our interest to be aggravating the two biggest other powers like China? >> Oh, no. I think it is I think it is very strongly against American national
[12:40] interests to constantly be predicting war or a state of near war with China and Russia and preparing for a state of war with China and Russia. I don't know why as a country we stopped allowing our diplomats to do what they're paid to do to to carry out diplomacy. I don't know why our diplomacy is always gunboat diplomacy coming from the from the Pentagon.
[13:10] >> If you look at the media here, it's always like, oh, the Russians are aggressive and the on the conservative media, it's the chai chaoms. They're always trying to get us. They're on their every rock. >> Yeah. I mean, >> yeah. And conservatives in America don't even say the Chinese. They say the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. Like, it's this monolith that we have to confront. >> It's funny to me. Clearly, they've never been to China. They've never studied China. They don't know any Chinese. They don't follow the issue very closely. It's it's easier just to sort of throw
[13:42] out these uh these tropes. >> In Europe, it's just this incessant thing baiting on Russia. The Russians are, you know, behind every of Iraq. They're trying to get us. >> I mean, how is is is the media in the US and Europe doing doing our countries a service by >> I think drum up these conflicts. I think the media, especially in the United States, are doing the country a great disservice by just constantly reinforcing this nonsense that we're on
[14:13] the brink of something catastrophic or cataclysmic with the Russians and the Chinese. And I'll tell you what, as a journalist, I I have to see what everybody's saying. I watch all the news networks. I'm constantly flipping between the the various news networks, and I appear on all of them. But I find very little difference at the end of the day between those on the hard right and those on the hard left. And uh you know like MSNBC for example, MSNBC would have us go to war with Russia
[14:44] today if it were up to MSNBC. And Fox and O and Newsmax would have us go to war with the Chinese today if they had that uh >> the ability to to make that decision. >> Why is that? because they believe their own propaganda. >> But it's I mean, do you think there's some interest? What what what is what is behind that? >> Propaganda is is what's behind it. They they they say it so frequently that they end up believing it. Look, we're not dealing with professional foreign policy
[15:16] analysts here. >> We're dealing with people who who live and die by the sound bite. People who have attention spans of a minute or two or five. They're not the deep thinkers of foreign policy. There must be some oligarchs of interest that serve through the propagating of these narratives that I mean what what what's the who's b who would benefit from a world war? >> Well, nobody would benefit from a world war. Nobody because we would be destroyed all of us. Everybody dies.
[15:46] There's no such thing as a limited world war, >> right? >> Yeah. The 40s are gone. They're not coming back now. Now it's nuclear and uh and uh I mean we're getting to the point very quickly in the next decade where we probably won't even need soldiers, troops on the ground. It's going to be these little robot dogs and robot soldiers and drones and we're not even going to have humans fighting these wars. And so the way to win, the way to defeat uh is to take out uh power
[16:18] centers, policy centers. And you do that with nuclear weapons. So I don't think it's in anybody's interest. The way the world has changed, we've arrived at a point where it leads to the possibility of a nuclear option more quickly than it uh than it did in the past. I think we have a bigger problem reigning in some of our friends than we have in reigning in our enemies.
[16:50] I think the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, even will always be willing to talk. They have in the past. The Israelis will not. And if there's going to be a nuclear war, I think it's going to be initiated by the Israelis. At the CIA, we used to say all the time that if there was going to be a nuclear war, it was obviously going to be between India and Pakistan >> because of the depth of their hatred of one another. and the fact that they both
[17:20] have relatively unstable governments and we're not really sure who's in charge of the nuclear arsenals. That's where the war is going to be. And I think that that has passed. I think now it's going to be Israel nuking Iran, whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not. And the CIA has published two national intelligence estimates saying that they do not. So I think that's where the next real fight's going to be. How would you characterize the USIsraeli relationship?
[17:51] >> I think the USIsraeli relationship is um is inappropriate. It's dangerous and I think that it will inevitably drag us into war. Our support of Israel borders on irrationality. There are so many problems in this relationship. you almost don't know where to begin. Uh and now we've gotten
[18:22] to the point where if you disagree even a little bit with official Israeli government policy, you're an anti-semite. I I say all the time, Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving Israeli prime minister in history, but he has never received more than 27% of the vote. So in his best year, 73% of Israelis opposed him. But if you or I oppose him,
[18:54] we're anti-semmites. And I think that when Americans come to believe that nonsense, that's what's dangerous for us and that's what will drag us into war. >> How much of their behavior now is driven by their their esquetology, you think? Yeah, I think that a lot of Israeli leaders um are blinded by by a fantasy that they've read uh in
[19:28] religious texts. I think that they really believe and American evangelicals along with them believe that they can hasten uh the reappearance of you know Jesus Christ or the arrival of the Jewish Messiah by by helping Jews to return to return to Israel. I think it's all fantasy, fairy tale nonsense, but at the same time, it gets a lot of people
[19:58] killed. And so this this craziness that the Jews are somehow some sort of chosen people because they said so. Um God told them, but we're just going to have to take their word for it because we didn't hear God say it. I I think is one of the most dangerous forces in the world. >> Yeah, it's certainly kind of nuts, huh? >> It is nuts. [clears throat] So is this is this is this relationship beneficial for us then? >> Um I really believe that
[20:29] that the USIsraeli relationship weakens the United States. I really do >> in low ways or visav other the rest. >> Well, you know, when we have when we have issues that come up in in the United Nations General Assembly for example and you have you know 200 countries voting against us and on the other side it's the US, Israel, Palao and sometimes Costa Rica then there's a problem there.
[21:00] You know it can't be that every country in the world is wrong. every single year. And we also cut the Israelis breaks that we would invade other countries for. The genocide in Gaza, for example. Did the Israelis learn nothing from World War II? I I just don't understand the Israeli position. And I I have even more difficulty understanding the American position of supporting Israel in their uh atrocities in in Gaza and
[21:30] the West Bank. I don't believe that Israel's current policy, whether it's in the West Bank or Gaza or visav Iran or Hezbollah or the Middle East at large, is sustainable. You can't have as as a policy just to kill everybody. That's not a policy. And eventually, you're either going to be overwhelmed or you're going to have to use nuclear weapons on all of your neighbors.
[22:02] neither one of which is a viable policy. And so all that leaves is diplomacy. And you who who would have thought that it would be an unacceptable form of radicalism to respect human rights? Why is it that only anti-semites respect Palestinian human rights? Why are they mutually exclusive? You know, I've always been pro-Israel, but I also have always been pro- human
[22:33] rights. And just recently, the political adviser to the Israeli foreign minister wrote an article in a in a scholarly journal in which he called me a virulent anti-semite because I said in a podcast that I supported human rights for the Palestinians. So that I'm a virulent anti-semite now. But this is the strategy that the Israelis have. They call everybody an anti-semite so that you bend over backwards to support them so that they won't call you an anti-semite. But it's
[23:05] it's a policy of self-defeat. It's unsustainable over the long term. When it comes right down to the to the brass tax of it, the policy is just to kill everybody and it's not going to work. >> Is that term being overused now? And is it causing a public opinion shift? Yeah, >> many many people in the West, not just leaders in the West, but just rank and file Western citizens are on to the Israelis now and they're not buying this anti-semitism fingerpointing.
[23:36] You know, we all have TVs. We all see what's happening in Gaza. We all see that, you know, of the between 70 and 150,000 people killed, most were women, children, and the elderly. >> Mhm. >> Right. You can't just have as your policy to kill everybody and hope that among the giant number of people you're killing, you kill the bad guys, too. You know, this is something that's that's that's unique to Israeli military policy. Let's
[24:07] say the Israelis identify a uh a Hezbollah leader >> and he lives in an apartment building on a very heavily populated city block in Beirut. They will blow up the entire block and kill 5,000 people if they think they can get that Hezbollah leader. And that strategy is unique among nations. Most other countries in the world wouldn't dream of committing a crime against humanity of slaughtering
[24:39] civilians just to get one bad guy. That's a uniquely Israeli policy. And as I said, all it does is makes people angry and it makes people turn away from you. It's really hard now to argue that the Israelis are the good guys. People say, "Oh, October 7th, yeah, October 7th was terrible." That doesn't mean you can kill a 100,000 women and children. You know, Israel has 9 million people. Iran has 92 million people. And you can't keep all those people
[25:12] cowed forever. you're going to have to come to some sort of an agreement, even if it's an indirect agreement. The the JCPOA um the joint comprehensive uh plan of action that was negotiated during the Obama administration was modeled on was almost identical to the United Nations inspection regime uh for Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge in Iraq. >> It was actually working. Uh the lead
[25:44] seals were intact on the nuclear sites in Iran. Uh the cameras were working and the IAEA was able to do unannounced inspections. It was working. Donald Trump pulled us out. That was a terrible, terrible mistake because then the then the Iranians said, "Well, if you're not going to abide by the agreement, then why should we?" And so they started to enrich uranium again. So where does that leave us? You can't just keep bombing them and hope for the best.
[26:14] That's not a strategy. >> Well, rationalize an intervention, right? >> Yeah, but then are are you really gonna want to take on a country of 92 million people? >> Well, they seem to think they they they can pull it off. >> No, they don't say they can pull it off. A a country of 9 million can't defeat a country of 92 million. It can't unless you use nuclear weapons, in which case Israel will have lost the world. Well, both the Russians and the Chinese have been very clear to not say that Iran
[26:46] falls under their nuclear umbrella, right? And then when asked directly, President Putin said that Russia would not use nuclear weapons to protect Iran. Would not. But I could see the Iranians asking the Chinese for troops, the Pakistanis for troops, the North Koreans for troops, just like the Russians have. I could see that happening. and I could see those people fighting Israel. The nature of war has changed. And so
[27:16] it's not going to be armies meeting on battlefields. It's going to be doortodoor in every city in these countries that are affected. It's going to be an unwinable guerilla war. I mean, the United States has lost how many of these wars? We lost in Vietnam. We lost in Iraq. We lost in Afghanistan. Mhm. >> And we still can't figure out how to how to fight a war like that. The Israelis certainly don't have any idea. Again, the Israelis uh uh tactic is to
[27:49] just destroy everything. And look at Gaza today. It doesn't exist for all intents and purposes. It's just mounds of rubble. We don't even have any idea yet how many bodies are still buried in that rubble. So yeah, it's we're not going to have it's not going to be like, you know, the Second World War where we have the Battle of the Bulge and, you know, armies meeting on the battlefield or in the forest. And those days are long gone. We're not going to ever see we're not going to ever see military leaders of of opposing countries sitting
[28:20] across a conference room table signing, you know, articles of surrender. Never again. So, if we had a third world war, what would it look like? You're saying it'd be a robot war and then and then maybe co-uclear. >> Yes. I think a third world war would be almost immediately nuclear and where there would be actual fighting. It wouldn't necessarily be fighting between human beings so much as it would be between robots or these crazy robot dogs
[28:51] that are like right out of a science fiction movie. And if it did involve people, it would be this kind of >> guerilla fighting and lots and lots of air power. >> Weird, huh? >> Yeah. Terrible. I don't fully understand the reason why the Russia Ukraine war is still ongoing. The the bottom line today is the same as the bottom line was on the day of the Russian invasion. that the Ukrainians are going to have to give up Donetska Luhansk probably right off Crimea and
[29:22] the Ukrainians would be allowed to join the European Union but not to join NATO which is no big deal because the United States has already said that it would grant Ukraine major non-NATO ally status. So it's the same status that Australia has, that Japan has, that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have. You don't have to be in NATO. >> Yeah. It just it just doesn't make sense why the Russians wouldn't have gone into Kiev in the very beginning that he did surround Kiev,
[29:52] >> used air power, >> and surrounded it, and then just kind of like backed off after a couple weeks. >> Yeah. >> And then just sticking around in these provinces no one gives a about. >> Well, every Russia analyst will tell you that the Russians not only are winning the war, but the war is essentially over. >> Over, right? >> Yeah. It's It's pretty much over. And I think the I think the Russians should be taken at their word that they want the Russian speaking provinces. And Crimea, remember Crimea only became a part of Ukraine in the 50s. It was given by Nikita Kruev who was the secretary
[30:25] general of the uh of the Soviet Union. >> Yeah. >> Gave it to Ukraine as a gift for Ukraine's uh fight against the Nazis in the Second World War. And also keep in mind that Kruev was Ukrainian. So, a lot of people, most Russians never saw Crimea as legitimately Ukrainian. >> Yeah. Since 250 years, right? It's been the naval base. >> Yeah. It's not Ukrainian. Russian, right? >> Yeah. It's all Russian. They speak Russian there. >> Yeah. I visited Ukraine like six, seven
[30:57] years ago. I mean, everyone spoke Russian in Kiev. I mean, no one was speaking I didn't hear anyone speaking Ukrainian. >> So, it's a little weird to send, oh, it's >> Yeah. in ban Ukrainian or in banning Russian language. >> The only way to deescalate this is to let the diplomats do their job. When I was at the CIA, we used to we used to joke uh during the the George W. Bush administration that we had never seen an administration work so hard to not talk to our enemies. We weren't allowed to
[31:29] talk to anybody. The Iranians, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Russians, the Chinese. you couldn't talk to anybody. And then when Barack Obama was elected, everybody thought things would change and nothing changed. We still didn't talk to our enemies with the exception of the JCPOA and we opened relations with the Cubans. But then when Joe Biden was elected, he didn't do anything to re-implement the JCPOA or to reopen relations with the Cubans. And again, we're not talking
[32:01] to our enemies. Why bother having a United Nations if you're not going to talk to anybody? Why bother having a State Department? If you're not going to talk to to anybody, it doesn't make any sense. >> What could US do to restore its position in the world? >> Donald Trump said something when he was first elected the second time that he wanted to cut the Pentagon's budget by 40% over the next 8 years. He didn't mean it and he probably thinks he should have never said it because he's never said it again. And there certainly has not been
[32:33] a cut to the Pentagon budget. There's been an increase to the Pentagon budget. So, I would say we have to seriously cut the Pentagon budget. Uh we probably should raise taxes and that money that we raise from the budget cut and the tax increase should go to infrastructure, education, foreign uh economic development. And I know that's probably going to be unpopular, but it was my own experience
[33:03] going up against al-Qaeda that the one thing that would have kept these young young men from joining al-Qaeda and going to Afghanistan to make jihad against the Americans was if they had had a job and if they had known how to read and write, but instead we cut foreign aid. It's like this situation we have right now with Venezuela. This bothers me very much. I have no love of Nicholas Maduro whatsoever. >> But we can't say, "Oh, look at the terrible economy that
[33:34] Maduro is is overseeing. It's in a state of collapse. It's in a state of freefall." Yeah. Because we've embargoed the country and we won't let anything in or out. At the same time, we used to buy almost all of Venezuela's oil. It's a very dirty oil, very high in sulfur. And it takes specialized refineries to clean the sulfur out of it. Where do you think those refineries are located? They're located in Texas. And so we had this fantastic arrangement for decades where
[34:06] we would buy all of Venezuela's oil. It was cheap because it's so dirty, heavy refining. And then we just release it here in the United States and then we say, "Oh, we're not allowed to buy Venezuelan oil anymore." So we have to buy it more expensive oil from the Saudis or the Libyans or, you know, the Amiradis or whomever. Yeah. >> And um and we're only hurting ourselves. >> Yeah. >> And now we're talking about covert action programs that the president announced for the first time in American history. When I was at the CIA, you couldn't even utter the words covert
[34:37] action program. They were classified. You couldn't say that there was any such thing as a covert action program. Now the president of the United States gets on TV and says, "I signed a covert action program. We're going to overthrow the government of Venezuela." Why? Why would we overthrow the government of Venezuela? >> I I don't understand it. >> Yeah. I mean, it's like where did that one come from? It's like got totally out of left field. No, >> out of left field. And it's funny, too, because right at the very start of Trump's second term, he not he, but the
[35:09] State Department negotiated this uh prisoner exchange, right? We sent some Venezuelans back. They sent these stupid idiot Americans who tried to overthrow the government and just got arrested as they came ashore. sent them back to us and I thought, "Oh, okay. We're actually carrying out diplomacy >> with Venezuela." And the next thing you know, no, we're gonna invade Venezuela and send the George, I'm sorry, the uh the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier battle group to Venezuela and covert action
[35:40] program to kill Maduro. And then his pilot, his personal pilot announced that he had been pitched by the CIA. So they wanted Madura to get on the plane to flee to, you know, Havana or Moscow, but instead the plane lands in Miami and then we grab him and and charge him with uh drug trafficking >> of all things. Yeah, >> we have used false flags to start wars in the past. I mean, the SpanishAmerican War famously was the result of a false flag. It was a boiler explosion um on a
[36:11] US ship in uh the Maine, the USS Maine in uh Havana Harbor. We blamed the Spanish. The Spanish had nothing to do with it, but we declared war and then we seized Cuba and Puerto Rico from the Spanish after the Spanish had agreed to meet all of our demands for concessions. Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War was another false flag. American ships were never attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin, but the president lied and said that they were rallied the American people to support a war that was
[36:42] absolutely unwinable. And then we were bogged down for another seven years. So, I I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something of a false flag.