# Zbigniew Brzezinski

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Zbigniew Brzezinski," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/zbigniew-brzezinski/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*National security adviser to Jimmy Carter, named in John Kiriakou's account of Afghanistan as an architect of the policy of luring the Soviet Union into a war there — a policy Kiriakou says literally destroyed the country and set the conditions for the Taliban.*

- **Role:** National security adviser to Jimmy Carter
- **In Kiriakou's account:** Architect of the policy of drawing the USSR into Afghanistan

**Zbigniew Brzezinski** was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. He enters [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of Afghanistan as one of the architects — with Carter and Ronald Reagan — of the policy of drawing the Soviet Union into a war there. Presented with that characterization, Kiriakou's answer was *"Correct"*: the country was in utter chaos as a result, and *"it was literally destroyed."*[1][2]

Asked in 2022 about the observation that Brzezinski had bragged about tricking the Russians into Afghanistan in order to give them their own Vietnam, Kiriakou answered *"absolutely,"* and drew the parallel forward to Ukraine: the United States, he said, wants the Russians bogged down forever, even at the cost of every last Ukrainian life, and has no interest in peace.[3][4]

## What followed in the ruins

Kiriakou's own contribution to the story picks up in the wreckage. Into that chaos, he says, came Pakistan: [Benazir Bhutto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/benazir-bhutto) — *"that great champion of democracy and human rights"* — created the [Taliban](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taliban-embassy-raid), and the original reason was to protect Pakistani truck traffic driving across Afghanistan to deliver goods to Iran.[5][2] The escalation was incremental: the Taliban began by protecting the trucks, then set up posts in villages along the truck routes, then took the villages, then the regions, then the states, and then the whole country.[1]

Kiriakou grants that the movement was genuinely popular in its early days, even among secular, modern Afghans in Kabul, because in those years people were not being killed in shootouts in the street or having relatives kidnapped and lynched over property disputes. *"They really did bring law and order in those early days,"* he says — and then everything spun out of control.[6]

## See also

- [Benazir Bhutto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/benazir-bhutto)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. The Real News Network (2015-05-04), at 02:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82OrQF9nkY&t=173s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-05-04-the-real-news-network-the-real-news-network/
2. Real News — Reality Asserts Itself (2023-04-25), at 02:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh5MxKJ1cWY&t=154s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-04-25-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-real-news-reality-asserts-itself-Sh5MxK/
3. Scheer Intelligence: Kiriakou on Biden's Groveling (2022-07-24), at 34:27. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj4fhopkfc&t=2067s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-07-24-scheerpost-scheer-intelligence-kiriakou-on-biden-s-grove/
4. Scheer Intelligence: Kiriakou on Biden's Groveling (2022-07-24), at 34:59. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj4fhopkfc&t=2099s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-07-24-scheerpost-scheer-intelligence-kiriakou-on-biden-s-grove/
5. The Real News Network (2015-05-04), at 02:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82OrQF9nkY&t=142s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-05-04-the-real-news-network-the-real-news-network/
6. The Real News Network (2015-05-04), at 03:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82OrQF9nkY&t=204s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-05-04-the-real-news-network-the-real-news-network/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/zbigniew-brzezinski/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt