John Kiriakou: Why your metadata makes privacy impossible

1. 0:00 – 2:50

   Intro

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou0:00

      Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's NSA or CIA or the FBI. And to make matters worse, we know that the CIA can take control remotely of a car's computer system in order to crash the car, take it off a bridge, or take control of your smart TV and turn the speaker into a microphone, even though the TV is off, and broadcast back to the CIA.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:22

      Can they do that with devices?

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou0:24

      Absolutely, and I'll tell you how we know. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled, and he downloaded tens of thousands of documents classified above top secret. And instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he went to WikiLeaks, and they became the Vault 7 documents. So our whole lives are out there, potentially, for someone to use against us, and every country has these capabilities. Listen, I spent fifteen years in the CIA. I love this country, but one of the most important things in my life is the issue of ethics, which is why I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program because my superiors kept repeating that torture worked. But besides being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true, and I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do. I mean, we know that they were experimenting on American citizens and spreading diseases in American cities.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:13

      This is the stuff of movies.

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14

      It is.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:15

      And because you've been in this world that the average person really has no idea about, I have to ask you, who do you think is the real adversary of the West? What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? And what about everything that's going on with Trump and Venezuela and Greenland? And then do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?

   7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:30

      Yes.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

      Who do you think he was working for?

   9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:31

      The Israelis.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:32

       Why? [upbeat music] Listen, my, my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just gonna ask you, um, in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you, first and foremost, for choosing to subscribe to this channel. It is, um... It's been one of the most incredible, crazy years of my life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback is something I will always be appreciative of, and I almost carry a weight, a sort of burden of, uh, responsibility to pay you back. And the favor I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to the channel, if you, um, would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about forty-seven percent of you that listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those people, please come and join us. Hit the subscribe button. It's the single free thing you can do to make this channel better, and every subscriber sort of pays into this show and allows us to do things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe button, I promise you. And if I do, please do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you. [upbeat music] John Kiriakou, the world knows your name. Why [laughing] Why does the world know your name?

2. 2:50 – 4:26

   I Blew the Whistle on the CIA

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:50

      I can give you two answers. One, I'm proud to say that I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in a nationally televised interview with ABC News. The second reason is I blew the whistle a long time ago, and just in the past eighteen months, I seem to have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm sweet spot, and all of a sudden, my message is getting out there.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:21

      And you went to prison for blowing the whistle?

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou3:23

      I did, and I would do it again tomorrow. I really would. You know, I was, I was giving an interview to the BBC the day after I got out of prison. They were the first, uh, outlet to ask for an interview, and so I gladly gave it to them. And the interviewer said, kind of perturbedly, "You're not showing any remorse or contrition?" And I said, "No, I'm not remorseful. I'm not contrite. I would do it again. I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do."

   4. SBSteven Bartlett4:00

      And you were a spy in the CIA?

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou4:02

      Yeah, I was quite an accomplished spy in the CIA. I spent fifteen years in the CIA. The first half of my career was in analysis, and uh, and I got bored, frankly. And so I made an unusual, at the time, change to counterterrorism operations. And then I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett4:24

      And if I'd never heard about

3. 4:26 – 12:44

   What Was Your Role in the CIA?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett4:26

      the CIA before, and I had never heard about your role in the CIA before, and I was a sixteen-year-old-

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou4:33

      Right

   3. SBSteven Bartlett4:33

      ... How would you explain to me what you did there, what your role was, and what the CIA is?

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou4:39

      Sure. The CIA is an intelligence service whose job it is, at its most basic level, to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and to analyze those secrets so that the policymakers can make the best-informed policy. After 9/11, we were expecting an attack, to use Osama bin Laden's words, that would dwarf 9/11, and so my job was to infiltrate Al-Qaeda by recruiting members of Al-Qaeda to tell us when and where that next attack was going to come so that we could disrupt it, we could kill or capture the leadership and destroy the organization.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett5:26

      And give me a range of the things that you did during your time in the CIA, just for a very top-line range of the types of things you worked on.

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou5:34

      Oh, sure. Um, as an analyst, it was actually quite straightforward. Uh, we would write for the president, the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, and the national security advisor.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett5:46

      And who were the presidents during that, that time?

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou5:47

      Uh, when I started, it was George H.W. Bush, the father, and then it was Bill Clinton, then George W. Bush. There are several different publications. There's the President's Daily Brief, which is the most important. I covered Iraq-... the entire time that I was in analysis, from well before most Americans had ever heard of Iraq. I was told, actually, that it was a training account because nothing ever happened there, nothing ever changed, and then Iraq invaded Kuwait. The next day, I got to the office early. I was 25 years old, 26 years old, and, uh, my boss said, "Don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House." I had never been to the White House before, except as a tourist. And so we got in a car, went to the White House, we're ushered into the Oval Office. It's the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, the director of the CIA, my boss, and me, and then we all sit down. The president tells us, "Sit down." We sit down, and the president says, "Well, now what do we do?" And everybody turns and looks at me, and it took me a second, and I said, "I, uh, yes." I said, "Mr. President, as you know, Iraqi troops crossed the border at two o'clock this morning. They... The royal family has, uh, has run away to, uh, Saudi Arabia. They've named a new occupation governor," et cetera, et cetera. "Do we know who that is?" I said, "Yes, sir." I gave him the name, and I said, "Actually, he, uh, he's the co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine." The vice president shouts, "Jesus Christ!" And then the president says, "Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you. We'll take it from here." And I remember saying to myself, "My friends would never believe in a thousand years what I was doing right now. They wouldn't even believe me if I told them." That's what an analyst does. When I switched to operations, again, the, the job was very straightforward. It was to recruit spies to steal secrets. But then, if you're involved in counterterrorism operations, there are a lot of extras that you have to be trained in. So you go through the normal spy training. This is how you ingratiate yourself. It's something called the asset acquisition cycle: spot, assess, develop, recruit. I meet you at a cocktail party. You seem like a nice guy. I introduce myself. I ask, uh, "So what do you do for a living?" Well, if you tell me you manage a shoe store, I'm gonna say, "Well, it was very nice meeting you," and I'm gonna go on to the next guy. But if you tell me you work at the port, you work in the Ministry of Defense, you work in the Chinese Embassy, I'm gonna invite you to lunch. I've spotted you, I've assessed you, and my assessment is, I'd like to get to know you. Then I begin to develop you. I'll give you an example. I was in Pakistan. I got a tip that, uh, that Al-Qaeda, a group of mid-level Al-Qaeda fighters, was meeting every single day in a coffee shop at ten o'clock in the morning. My Arabic was absolutely flawless at the time, and so I had a bushy beard that I grew for operational reasons.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett9:04

      Can I hear some of your Arabic?

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou9:06

       Yeah. Uh, "... It's nice to meet you." [chuckles] Or, "... " Uh, so I, uh, I bought an Arabic newspaper, and I went to the coffee shop, and I just sat there, and sure enough, at ten o'clock, the four of them came in. One of them looked at me, and I looked at him, and that was it. We made eye contact. I did that for a week. The second week, I was there, drinking my coffee, sitting with my Arabic newspaper, and the one who had looked at me the week before, he nodded, so I nodded back. That was it. No communication otherwise. The third week, I'm a regular now. He recognizes me. So he says to me, "Salaam Alaikum." I said, "Wa Alaikum Salaam. May peace be upon you." And I say, "And upon you, peace." One day, he came in alone, and I said, "... Please, have a seat. Sit with me. No sense in you sitting alone and me sitting alone." So he sat down, we started talking, and, um, I asked him how long he had been in Pakistan. He said, "Oh, I've been here for five years. I was in Afghanistan. I was making jihad against the Americans." And I said, "Oh, that must have been hell on earth." He said, "Oh" -- He said that the bombing of Tora Bora was hideous. That was the word that he used. It was hideous. And I said: "And what about your family? How's your family?" He said, "My wife and, and son and daughter are in Cairo. I've never met my son. He was born just after I left to make jihad." I said, "I'm so sorry." And he said, "Yes, I'm, I'm lonely, and I, I wanna go home." And we continued this relationship, and finally, I said to him, "Let me take you to dinner. Let's get out of the coffee shop." The truth was, I didn't want one of his friends to walk in and see us. So we went to a restaurant for dinner, and I said, "Listen, there's something that I haven't been truthful with you about. I'm not Lebanese." And I said, "And actually, I'm American. Are you okay with that?" And he says, "I think so." I said, "Well, actually, I'm a CIA officer." And he says, "Okay." So he didn't run screaming from the room or pull a gun or anything, and he said, "Why do you want me? Why do you want to talk to me?" I said, "Actually, you have access to something that I want." It was very specific, and I told him what it was, and he says, "And what will you do for me?" And I said, "Anything your heart desires." And he said, "I wanna go home." I said, "I can do that."

   11. SBSteven Bartlett11:59

       And you wanted information, presumably?

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou12:00

       I wanted information, very specific information.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett12:03

       Which you can't share.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou12:04

       No. I'll go right back to prison. [chuckles] So, uh, so, um-... we got him a passport, I bought him a first class ticket, and I took him to the airport, gave him some cash to get himself started again, and I said: "Before you go, I have to ask you, why did you agree to give me this information? I mean, presumably, I'm the enemy." And he said, "I've been here five years, and you're the first person who ever asked me about my family." So I said, "Best of luck." Never saw him again. That's the job.

4. 12:44 – 15:04

   How Did You End Up Being a Spy?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett12:44

      I have to ask you-

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou12:45

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett12:47

      Take me on the journey of you being a young man-

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou12:51

      Mm-hmm

   5. SBSteven Bartlett12:52

      ... in West Pennsylvania-

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou12:53

      [chuckles] Right

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:54

      ... to becoming a spy. What happened? Because-

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou12:58

      Oh, yeah

   9. SBSteven Bartlett12:58

      ... I'll be, I'll be honest, you know, I don't un- really know what my perception of spies is, but it's not you.

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou13:03

       [laughs] That's good!

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:05

       [laughs] Yeah.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou13:06

       That's good. See, because I kind of work under the radar.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett13:09

       Hmm. So what's really interesting is I, [laughs] there's, there's so many, um... Once you learn about spies as a pod- like, say, if you go back a couple of years and someone had told me about spies, I wouldn't have believed them. I wouldn't have believed that these things actually happened.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou13:23

       Oh, yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett13:24

       You know-

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou13:24

       Oh, they have, though

   17. SBSteven Bartlett13:24

       ... you hear about people going undercover-

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou13:26

       Mm-hmm

   19. SBSteven Bartlett13:27

       ... and going to other countries and getting secrets and, and all of these things, and it's not until you meet the people that said, "Yes, that's me, I used to do that"-

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou13:38

       Mm-hmm

   21. SBSteven Bartlett13:38

       ... that you're sort of, you have this paradigm shift in your mind, and you go, "Oh, my God, what else might be going on?"

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou13:42

       Right.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett13:42

       Because I lived in this world probably up until the age of, I don't know, 30 years old, where I kind of just assumed things are what they are-

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou13:49

       Ah!

   25. SBSteven Bartlett13:49

       ... like, as I see them.

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou13:50

       Right.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett13:50

       And then, you know, you, you start to discover that there's layers of secrecy, nations are against each other, they're doing all of these covert operations. And even like as a podcaster now, I have moments where I go, like, "H- how do I know that y- you're not s- you're not here to steal secrets from me?"

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou14:07

       Right.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett14:08

       So you know what's funny?

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou14:09

       Right.
5. 15:04 – 17:46

   The CIA’s Strategy With Podcasters

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou15:04

      of control.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:05

      Do you think the CIA are- have a strategy for podcasters and for podcasting?

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou15:09

      I think yes, now they do. It took them a little while to, to get current, but just like they over time developed a strategy with Hollywood, sure, they're developing a strategy with podcasters. You know, it was only in the last 10 years that the CIA opened a branch within the Office of Public Affairs, whose job it is solely to liaise with Hollywood studios. The FBI's been doing this since the, since the '40s, and the goal is that everything that comes out of Hollywood should be pro-CIA. And, you know, we end up with, with Zero Dark Thirty and, you know, The Recruit and the CIA... Argo. The CIA is always the hero in these movies.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett15:53

      If you were still at the CIA now, and your job was to inf- infiltrate and, uh, use creators or podcasters as an asset f- for the CIA's objectives, how might you design that plan if we were just hypothesizing?

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou16:11

      You would have to have a goal that would be specific enough that you could actually track the progress to it. So you can't just say, "Well, I'm gonna pay this podcaster X amount of money, and we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna do something with the algorithm to make him vastly popular among men, you know, 18 to 30," let's say. There's gotta be more to it than that. It has to be a message. You've got to be able to get a, a specific, well-honed message out there, and the message can be anything. It could be, you know, "Love the CIA, we're the good guys." It could be, "Support the overthrow of the Iranian government." It could be, you know, "Any criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is antisemitism." It could be anything you want it to be. You just have to make sure that it's repeated enough. See, this was the danger with the torture program. This is one of the very important reasons that I went public when I did because my colleagues, my superiors at the CIA, kept repeating this lie over and over and over again that torture worked and that torture got us information that saved American lives, and that was just simply not true. It was a lie. Besides being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true, and so I decided, "Before we go down this road anymore, I'm gonna go public."

   6. SBSteven Bartlett17:43

      So can you take me back then? We got a little bit sidetracked

6. 17:46 – 23:32

   How Did You Get Into the CIA?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett17:46

      there, but-

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou17:46

      Sure.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett17:48

      John, how did you come to be a CIA-

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou17:50

      Right

   5. SBSteven Bartlett17:50

      ... spy?

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou17:51

      When I was nine years old, I told my parents that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. It came time to apply for college, and I only applied at one university, George Washington University in Washington, because it was two blocks from the White House, and it was one of only three schools in America that offered a Middle Eastern studies program.... I was one of only four people in that brand-new Middle Eastern Studies program. I stayed for a master's degree in legislative affairs, with a focus on foreign policy analysis. I was taking a class in that program called the Psychology of Leadership. It was taught by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Post, and he gave us an assignment one, uh, one day, where we had to shadow our bosses. We had to just follow our bosses for a week.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett18:44

      Your bosses?

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou18:45

      Yeah, I worked at a labor union called the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, and so we were just supposed to follow our boss around for a week, and then write a psychological profile. I used dozens of, you know, footnotes from psychological, you know, psychology texts, and I ended up saying that he was a sociopath with psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies, and, you know, I had these citations. I passed the paper in. Dr. Post gives it back to me a week later, gave me an A, and then he wrote, "Please see me after class." So I went up to him after the class, and I said, "Dr. Post, you wanted to see me?" He says, "Come to my office." So we went down there, he closed the door, and he says, "Listen, I'm not really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here, and I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a spy?" And I said, "Yes, I would." He picked up the phone and called a number, and he said, "Bob, this is Jerry. I've got a good one for you. Do you have some time?" And he said, "Sure." He writes an address on a scrap of paper, and he says, "Be at this address in twenty minutes." It was only one subway stop away, so I jumped on the metro. I went to Rosslyn, Virginia, just across the river. I had to buzz to be let in, and a woman opens the door. She says, "Are you here for Bob?" And I said, "Yes." She says, "Come on in." I'm sitting there for a moment, and then this, like, six-foot-six, three hundred and fifty-pound giant barrels out of his office, and he says, "John? Bob, how the hell are you? I want you to be at the George Washington University Medical School Saturday morning at eight o'clock. We've got some tests for you." I said, "Okay," and then we shook hands, and I left. So Saturday morning, I went to the GW Medical School auditorium. There were like, I don't know, two hundred people there, and they hand us a, a test. My wife picked me up. She said: "How did you do?" I said, "I have no idea!"

   9. SBSteven Bartlett21:00

      Does your wife at this point know that you are applying for the CIA?

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou21:03

       Yes, and that was going to be pretty much the extent of what she ended up knowing, 'cause once I got in, that was it.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett21:11

       But you weren't allowed to tell her.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou21:12

       I was not allowed to tell her, no.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett21:15

       So you told her anyway?

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou21:16

       Yeah. When I first applied, they said: "Listen, don't tell anybody, because you may go undercover, you may go under deep cover, and we can't have people out there who know that you're a CIA officer."

   15. SBSteven Bartlett21:29

       Presumably, the CIA are smart enough to be able to check if you've told her.

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou21:33

       Yeah, and they ask you on the polygraph, "Did you tell her?"

   17. SBSteven Bartlett21:36

       Re-really?

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou21:37

       And I said, "Yeah, I told her. She's my wife, what am I gonna do?" You know, but it got to the point where I'd get home from a day where, you know, I broke into some guy's house and, and planted a camera and a bug, and I'd get home, and she'd say, "How was your day?" I'd say, "Great." "What'd you do?" "Not a darn thing." And then my phone would ring at, you know, midnight, and a guy would say, "The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain." And I'd say, "Uh, mairzy dotes and dozy dotes and little lambsy Davy," and that means, "Meet me at the yacht club parking lot in three hours," and then I'd leave. She's b- she would say, "Where, where are you going? It's midnight." "I gotta work." So I'd leave. I'd do my meeting. I'd come home six o'clock in the morning, just in time to shower and shave and get dressed to go to work, and she would say, "What was her name?" And I, I remember this one terrible time. That's what she said to me: "What was her name?" The truth is, I had been sitting in a garbage dumpster, waiting for a guy to drive by down the alley and throw a bag of documents in, and I stunk of garbage, and I said to her, "Do I seriously smell to you like I've been with a woman? [chuckles] Seriously?" So we ended up getting a divorce. [laughing]

   19. SBSteven Bartlett22:59

       So you do the assessment. Uh, presumably, you get in-

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou23:02

       Yeah, well, uh-

   21. SBSteven Bartlett23:02

       ... and then you do training.

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou23:03

       Uh, he, he called me like two weeks later, Bob did, and he said, "You blew the doors off those tests!" I said, "Oh, great! Okay." So a month later, they summoned me to headquarters, and, uh, I was interviewed by the Office of Near Eastern Operations, the Office of Near Eastern Analysis, and the Office of Leadership Analysis. I was offered the analysis job on the Iraq desk.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett23:30

       And what is the sum total

7. 23:32 – 27:56

   What Was Your Training Like?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett23:32

      of the training you were given in the variety of different roles that you had? Like, how do they train a spy?

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou23:37

      Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question, and the answer is vastly different depending on where you start your career.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett23:45

      Okay.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou23:45

      So because I started mine in analysis, the immediate training was in mastering the CIA's writing style. So the most important product that the CIA writes every day is the PDB, the President's Daily Brief.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett24:01

      And it tells the president what?

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou24:03

      What you think he needs to know.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett24:05

      Okay.

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou24:06

      So for example, when the Iraqis began moving to the, to the Kuwaiti border, we had this big debate: Are they gonna, are they gonna cross the border, yes or no? So I said, "Listen, why don't I call-... the American defense attaché in Baghdad, and I'll just ask him to drive down there and look, and tell us what he sees." He drives down there, drives back, he calls me, and he says, "Literally, the entire Iraqi military is on its way to the Kuwaiti border." So we wrote a thing for the president saying, "Iraq is gonna invade Kuwait, and it's probably gonna happen in the next 48 hours."

   9. SBSteven Bartlett24:44

      And when, when did the president see that particular briefing?

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou24:47

       At 7:00 AM the next morning.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett24:49

       Okay. And is there ever situations where the president would get it in the middle of the night?

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou24:52

       Yes. Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett24:54

       And be told in the middle of the night that-

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou24:56

       Yes. There, there are these levels of immediacy. There's routine, which is like, "Who cares?" And then there is, um, priority, which means, "Eh, I'll get to it sometime today." Then there's immediate, which means, "You should probably read it first." But then there's flash, which means, "Oh, my God, something terrible just happened. You should probably wake the president." And then there's critic, which means, "They're coming over the embassy walls. We're at war. Wake up the president-

   15. SBSteven Bartlett25:31

       Nine-

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou25:31

       ... scramble the jets."

   17. SBSteven Bartlett25:32

       9/11.

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou25:33

       9/11.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett25:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou25:34

       That's a critic.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett25:36

       Hmm. So going back to this question of your training.

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou25:41

       Yeah.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett25:41

       What is it that the s- CIA teach you about human nature and how to use human nature to your advantage, that could be transferable to other disciplines in life, like business or...?

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou25:55

       Well, this is gonna sound not very nice, but it's, it's real life, it's everyday life, especially in, in business. The CIA actively seeks to hire people who have what they call sociopathic tendencies. Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no conscience. They'll just blow right through a polygraph exam, but they're impossible to corral, they're impossible to, to, you know, keep under reign. Uh, and it's because they're not able, their brains won't allow them to feel regret or remorse. Now, in business, most CEOs are sociopaths. Most, not all, but most, especially in big companies, because they claw their way to the top, usually on the backs of the people around them. They don't feel bad screwing the next guy to get that next promotion. The CIA wants people like that, because those are the people who are gonna break into a foreign embassy. A normal person would not advocate breaking into a foreign embassy. That's sovereign territory of a foreign country. I would. I'd be glad to do it.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett27:12

       Why?

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou27:13

       Because we're the good guys, and-

   27. SBSteven Bartlett27:15

       So do you have sociopathic tendencies?

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou27:17

       Absolutely.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett27:19

       And what are your sociopathic tendencies?

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou27:22

       My sociopathic tendency was to operate in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas. Specifically, that's what it was.
8. 27:56 – 31:30

   People’s Vulnerabilities

   1. SBSteven Bartlett27:56

      um, it seems like there's transferables. I guess for some people it's family, I guess for some people it's something else, that, that, that hook-

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou28:04

      Yeah

   3. SBSteven Bartlett28:04

      ... that you're talking about, that thing that gets them.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou28:06

      And the word that they use at the CIA for the hook is a vulnerability, and it's not really a vulnerability in every case. Now, 95%, studies have been done about this internally at the CIA, 95% of the people who agree to become spies for us do it for the money, right? It's, it's a simple cash transaction. You give me money, I'll give you secrets. 95%.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett28:35

      So you're telling me that you think human motivation is 95% driven by money?

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou28:40

      Yes.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett28:40

      Really?

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou28:41

      Yes. The rest was love and family, um, ideology, revenge, and excitement. You're gonna get a handful of people who are hooked on James Bond movies, and they will do it... I mean, you're gonna pay them anyway, but they will do it just for the adrenaline rush.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett29:02

      It's interesting, 'cause when I look at this list of things, and I compare it to business, it- I would say it's slightly different from my experience-

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou29:12

       Ah

   11. SBSteven Bartlett29:12

       ... of hiring people.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou29:13

       Okay.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett29:13

       Specifically of hiring people. I tend to think that, you know, w- you could- one would ask themselves, "Like, why would someone leave a company right now, like, I don't know, OpenAI, and go work at a startup?" They're gonna get paid way more at OpenAI.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou29:27

       Mm-hmm.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett29:27

       You've got these e- this equity and these grants, and the people are en masse doing that. And even when I think about the early days of Google, people left the big conglomerates that would pay them more, and they went and worked for Larry and Sergey, um-

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou29:39

       [chuckles]

   17. SBSteven Bartlett29:39

       ... getting paid way less.

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou29:40

       [chuckles] Right.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett29:40

       But to be involved in something-

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou29:42

       Yeah

   21. SBSteven Bartlett29:42

       ... small-

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou29:42

       From the ground floor

   23. SBSteven Bartlett29:43

       ... scrappy, exciting.

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou29:44

       Uh-huh.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett29:45

       And, and so I- and this is what, what I think about when I sit... You know, probably I've hired thousands of people in my life now, across my businesses, and money is a factor, but it doesn't tend to be the biggest factor.

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou29:57

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett29:58

       It tends to be, in my experience, there's a particular hero's journey in their mind that they want to be seen through, they wanna complete.

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou30:08

       Uh-huh.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett30:08

       You know, there's a particular w- way that they see themselves, and they want to fulfill that.

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou30:13

       Oh, I could get that. I, I work with a, with a very, very tiny startup right now called Ivy Cyber, and, uh, it, it focuses on privacy software. You know, things like, you know, scrambling your data so it can't be intercepted, that, that sort of thing. And-... I've participated in a couple of pitches to, uh, to angel investors, and they all say exactly the same thing that you did.
9. 31:30 – 33:17

   What Can the CIA Really Get for Someone?

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou31:30

      that was it.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett31:31

      What's the extent of the things that the CIA can get as a incentive for someone to turn against their nation to give secrets?

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou31:40

      Quite literally anything you can imagine.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett31:42

      Even if it's against the law?

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou31:44

      Well, like, they're not gonna get, like, drugs or, you know, child prostitutes or... No, n- not stuff like that.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett31:52

      What if someone said, "I want you to, um, get me a s- uh, a green card?"

   7. JKJohn Kiriakou32:00

      Oh, yeah. Sure.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett32:01

      What if they said-

   9. JKJohn Kiriakou32:02

      If the information's good enough, not a problem.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett32:04

       What if they said, "I want you to... I've got this tax bill. I want you to make the tax bill go away?"

   11. JKJohn Kiriakou32:11

       Okay. Give, give me the plans to that Russian tank, we'll make it happen.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett32:15

       What if it was an American? Would they speak to the IRS here and just get rid of it?

   13. JKJohn Kiriakou32:19

       Oh, if it was an American citizen, you mean?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett32:21

       Yeah.

   15. JKJohn Kiriakou32:22

       Uh, n- no.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett32:24

       But they... Why?

   17. JKJohn Kiriakou32:25

       No. They- w- we normally don't recruit American citizens. By law, the CIA can't operate domestically. Although they have offices all over the country, those offices are generally to, to debrief business leaders, C-suite officers, who travel to denied areas. For example, if, if you take a trip to North Korea, let's say, I'm gonna call you, and I'm gonna say: "You don't know me, but I'm from the CIA, and I understand you just went to North Korea, and I was wondering if I could come over to your office for an hour and just ask you about your trip?" Ninety-nine point nine nine percent are gonna say yes, because they're patriots. So I go to your office, I give you my business card, and we just chat about, you know, your impressions of the place and that kind of thing.

10. 33:17 – 37:52

    Lying and Lie Detection

    1. SBSteven Bartlett33:17

       Just to close off on this point, are there any skills that the CIA taught you or trained you in, that you think are transferable for business that we haven't talked about?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou33:28

       They, they trained us also in lying and lie detection. That was actually quite important. You know, you, you... At the CIA, you're a, you're a trained liar, and this is why the divorce rate's so high. It's the highest divorce rate of any, uh, entity in, in the US government. It's, it's upwards of 80%.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett33:47

       Trained to lie?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou33:48

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett33:48

       How do they train you to lie?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou33:50

       "Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. Uh, I work for an import-export company."

    7. SBSteven Bartlett33:55

       But do they teach you the art of lying?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou33:57

       Oh, yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett33:57

       And what is the art?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou33:59

        You know, it's, it's hard to, like, it's hard to pin down. You just sort of have to have it. You have to have that ability, but the hard part is you have to keep the lies straight. I'll give you another example. I've never told this story before. I was asked by headquarters... I was overseas in the Middle East, and I was asked by headquarters to target one specific officer of this foreign country.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett34:25

        Target?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou34:26

        Yeah. "Hi, how are you?"

    13. SBSteven Bartlett34:28

        Okay.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou34:29

        "Well, we've never met. I'm John. So nice to meet you. Let me take you to lunch." He had access to, to information that we really needed. Uh, so they told me to accidentally bump into him, so I surveilled him for a week. And he was single, and on Saturday morning, he went to a coffee shop. So I go into the coffee shop, and I'm looking at him, and he's looking at me, and I said, "I know you. Ministry of Foreign Affairs?" He said, "Yes. Do I know you?" I said, "I am John from the American Embassy." "Oh, nice to, nice to see you." I said, "Hey, good to see you, too. Do you live in the area?" "Yes, I do." I said, "Oh, so do I." I didn't. I lived, like, across town. "Oh, fancy meeting you here at this coffee shop. I come here all the time. Do you?" "Yeah," he says, "I come here all the time. Why don't you have a seat?" he says, so I sit down. At the end of the conversation, I go back to the embassy, and I write a cable, and I said, "He's gay. I'm 100% sure he's gay." So then we started this conversation, headquarters and I, "How can we use that to our benefit?"

    15. SBSteven Bartlett35:29

        Did he have a wife?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou35:30

        No.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett35:31

        He was single.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou35:31

        Which was unusual at his age. And-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett35:34

        How did you know he was gay?

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou35:35

        Oh, I, I just... It was a vibe.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett35:38

        [chuckles] Okay.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou35:40

        So headquarters says, "We want you to pretend that you're gay." I said, "Oh, come on, you guys." "No, we really need the information. You've got to pretend that you're gay." I said, "Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle Sam."

    23. SBSteven Bartlett35:57

        [chuckles]

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou35:58

        So I call him, and I said, "Hey, I have two tickets to this show, and I was hoping maybe you'd be free. Maybe we'll grab some sushi afterwards." [chuckles] He said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So we go to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it, and we go for sushi afterwards, and then we go out again, and he says, "Why don't you come over to my place some night, and I'll, I'll make dinner?" I said, "Great." So I go over to his place. He made a lovely dinner, and then I thought, "Well, I have to invite him to my place." So I told my wife, "You're gonna have to, like, get out-... So she left. I made dinner. I removed all the pictures of us together, and we had just gotten married, so we had, like, our wedding picture up and everything. At the dinner, he leaned in to kiss me, and I instinctively backed off, and he said, "Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I thought you're gay." And I said, "Oh, no, I, I am gay. I'm J- I'm, I'm not into hairy guys." And he's like, "Oh, okay." I said, "I'm sorry. I think you're great, but, uh, y- I'm, I'm not feeling it."

    25. SBSteven Bartlett37:08

        You didn't kiss him?

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou37:09

        No. [chuckles] So we remained friends, and in the end, he gave me the information because we were friends, and then he, he opened up. He's like: "I can't tell anybody I'm gay. They suspect I am, and they passed me over for promotion, and my boss asked me, 'Is there something in your personal life that you're not telling me?' He knows I'm gay." I said, "Listen, your culture's backwards. Don't tell them you're gay. Just say that you've just never met the right woman, and Inshallah, the right woman is coming, you know, in your life at some point." And I actually Googled him a couple of years ago, and he did become an ambassador finally.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett37:47

        And he's still working in that country now?

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou37:49

        Mm-hmm.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett37:50

        Does that kind of stuff happen a lot in the CIA,

11. 37:52 – 41:31

    Do You Often Have to ‘Take One for the Team’ in the CIA?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett37:52

       where y- you have to take one for the team?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou37:53

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett37:55

       Have you ever taken one for the team?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou37:56

       No.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett37:57

       You, [chuckles] I'm not sure you're telling the truth.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou37:59

       Well, I... It came close.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett38:01

       When did it c- come close?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou38:02

       So I was overseas. I was a brand-new operations officer, and there was a woman in this foreign intelligence service who was the ugliest woman I've ever seen in my life. Like, you wanna avert your eyes. Like, she came off the side of Notre Dame. She was a, you know, a stone gargoyle with a giant mole right here with a giant hair coming out of it, that kind of ugly. So, so I took her to lunch, and she was very nice, and then I thought... I did something kind of gutsy by st- CIA standards, 'cause it was early on in our relationship. I invited her to go to lunch on a Saturday. Now, as a rule, the people in this country were not allowed to socialize with us privately. It had to be, like, their whole office, you know, or several of them together. So I asked her just to meet me privately for lunch on Saturday. "Don't tell anybody."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett39:05

       So she was someone from the Middle East?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou39:07

        Yes, and she agreed, and I was like, "Oh, my God, she said yes," and I ran back to the office. I was like, "She said yes to a lunch on Saturday alone," and my boss says, "Okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to fuck her." And I said, "What?" I said, "Have you ever seen her?" And he said, "I know, but we're the good guys, and you're gonna have to take one for the team." And I go, "Oh, my God," I said... I go, "Okay, I'll do it." And he says, "No, you're not gonna fuck her. We don't do that." I said, "Well, I don't know. I just started this. I've never been an operations guy before. How am I supposed to know?" He said, "Come on." He said, "Just develop her like a normal person. You don't have to fuck her." I said, "Oh, my God, you almost gave me a heart attack."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett39:58

        But they, they might not be mad if you did.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou40:02

        So long as I reported it, and I got the recruitment out of it.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett40:05

        It wasn't illegal to a- you know, sleep with assets.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou40:09

        Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with assets. It has happened to a couple people I know, and, um, they end up being pulled back to the United States. You have to sit in the penalty box if you do that. You're not supposed to do that. But, yeah, it happens sometimes.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett40:21

        So sextortion isn't a real thing?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou40:23

        It can be. We don't... [sighs] When I first got hired, one of the old-timers told me this story of, about an ayatollah that they were trying to recruit, and they set this ayatollah up with a prostitute, and it was... He, he had sex with this prostitute in a room where they had cameras everywhere, and so they bumped him afterwards. They bumped into him and said, "Hey, we have all these pictures," and they laid out the pictures of him, you know, butt naked with this prostitute. And he said, "Yeah? Give me that one in eight by 10. Give me two five-by-sevens of that one. How about some wallet size for this?"

    17. SBSteven Bartlett41:01

        [chuckles]

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou41:01

        He's like, "Get out of here." And he said, "You know, after that, we just stopped doing that. It doesn't work." When you recruit somebody, you really do need the relationship to be based on mutual trust.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett41:14

        Not coercion or pressure-

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou41:15

        No

    21. SBSteven Bartlett41:16

        ... or threats.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou41:16

        Threatening somebody, it's, it's not gonna result in a productive relationship. The Russians do it, the Israelis do it, but most intelligence services around the world don't.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett41:27

        Because you've been in this world, what is it that you know

12. 41:31 – 47:39

    What Does the Average Person Not Know About the World?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett41:31

       about the nature of the reality that we all live in, that the average person really has no idea about? Do you know what I mean?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou41:40

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett41:41

       Because, you know, going back to what I said earlier, three years ago, before I started doing all this podcast stuff and started interviewing people that, that had been involved in spy work and the CIA and all this, I was kind of, like, naive to the way that the world worked.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou41:52

       Sure.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett41:53

       I thought, I thought, "If I have a password on my device, my device is secure," and I thought that, you know?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou41:59

       Right.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett42:00

       All these kind of just simple things, but what is it that you know about the nature of reality that most people don't?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou42:06

       Well, I, I guess it's a couple of things. You know, John Kennedy called the CIA "the best and the brightest," and we're not. We're just average people, and we're not as smart as we think we are. We're not as worldly as we think we are. We've pretty much missed every major global development since 1947, from the, you know, the rise of the Berlin Wall, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the fall of the Soviet Union, to the Suez Crisis, and the Iran hostage crisis, and 9/11, and everything else. We missed it!... we're really good at day-to-day, you know, updates for the president. We're really good at recruiting minor hangers-on around terrorist groups, but the, the big picture items, we're just not good at it, number one. Number two, until 9/11, it was against the law, like in stone, to spy on Americans, and now billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's NSA or CIA or, or FBI or intelligence community contractors. Nothing is secret. Nothing! And to make matters worse, let's say maybe you did do something that law enforcement might be interested in, they don't need a warrant anymore. They don't need to go to a judge and say, "Well, we have reason to believe, you know, blah, blah, blah." All they have to do is just buy your metadata, 'cause it's for sale. Just go to the, go to the carrier, and just buy it. They don't need a judge's order to do that. It's all out there. We've made all- we've made ourselves vulnerable. All of our lives are out there, whether it's on Facebook or X or Insta or whatever. If they really wanna get you, they're gonna get you, which reminds me of a book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate. He's a professor of law at Harvard, and it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he argues in this book that we are so over-criminalized, so over-regulated in this country, that the average American, on the average day, going about his or her normal business, commits three felonies every day. You may not mean to, but you do, every day. So if they decide they want you, they don't like your politics, they can get your metadata. They can go through that metadata, find crimes that they can charge you with, and ruin your life, and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett44:46

       To some extent, they did that to you.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou44:48

        Yeah, they did. They did that to me.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett44:50

        Because you spoke out about a torture program-

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou44:52

        Mm-hmm

    13. SBSteven Bartlett44:53

        ... that was happening in the CIA.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou44:54

        Yeah, John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said, "Charge him with espionage," and Holder wrote back. Eric Holder was the Attorney General. Holder wrote back and said, "My people don't think he committed espionage." And John Brennan wrote back to Holder and said, "Charge him anyway and make him defend himself." So they arrested me and charged me with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. Espionage can be a death penalty case. Charged me with espionage. They waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with $2 million in legal fees, and then they dropped the espionage charges. And they said, "We can re-add the espionage charges, or you can take a plea to this lesser charge." What are you gonna do? Roll the dice, knowing that the government wins 98.2% of its cases, according to ProPublica, or do you just take the deal and make it go away? And that's what I did.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett45:52

        And you got roughly two years in jail?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou45:54

        Yeah. I, uh, ended up doing 23 months.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett45:57

        Mm-hmm. And for anyone that doesn't know, this was because at some point in your career, you spoke out about torture programs that were happening-

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou46:06

        Mm-hmm

    19. SBSteven Bartlett46:06

        ... in Guantanamo Bay and, and, and elsewhere.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou46:08

        Uh, yeah, and at secret prisons that the CIA had set up around the world. Right.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett46:13

        And going back up to the top of my question here, I, I, I'm really trying to speak to Jane, Dave, who's listening to this right now.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou46:19

        Sure.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett46:20

        They have a normal life.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou46:21

        Yep.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett46:22

        They're not really aware that spies exist and the extent of the work they do. They kind of assume that everything they see and people in- they interact with are normal, and they think their devices and everything else is secure. What message do you have for them, a, a word of warning or caution about the reality?

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou46:35

        Yeah, that's a good question. Eliot Spitzer, the former, um, Governor of New York, when he was Attorney General of New York, he said, "Don't nod when you can motion. Don't speak when you can nod, and don't ever put anything in a text message." At the CIA, on our very first day, they told us not to ever say or do anything that we would be ashamed to see on the front page of The Washington Post. I took that seriously. The truth of the matter is, because of technology, the way it is today, our whole lives are out there, potentially, for someone to see, for someone to use against us. So be careful what you say, be careful what you write, even in jest, because it can be taken out of context to target you.

13. 47:39 – 52:06

    Digital Security

    1. SBSteven Bartlett47:39

       And what about digital security? You talked about the fact that it's possible for these, these forces, and not just the US, but other countries, to be able to hack and crack your devices and see anything on your devices. I think we all go around assuming that our devices are secure.

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou47:54

       They're not secure at all. At all. It's not just, you know, NSA, CIA, FBI that you have to worry about. It's the British, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. I mean, everybody has these capabilities. Everybody. So you've got to be very, very careful.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:18

       Capabilities to do what?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou48:19

       To intercept communications.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:21

       I've heard you say that they can hack car systems. They could- so they could theoretically hack into my car?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou48:28

       Yes, we know that from, uh, WikiLeaks. There was something in 2017 called the Vault 7 revelations. There was a, a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled, and instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese-... he went to WikiLeaks, and he downloaded thousands, tens of thousands of pages of documents classified above top secret, and they became what WikiLeaks called the Vault 7 documents. So they included things like the CIA, for example, will hack into, let's say, the Iranian Ministry of Interior computer system, but they'll leave little electronic clues all written in Cyrillic.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett49:16

       Uh, Cyrillic is what?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou49:17

       Cyrillic is the, is the alphabet, the Russian alphabet.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett49:20

       Oh, okay.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou49:21

        Yep. Uh, or they can take control of your smart TV remotely, and they can make the speaker turn into a, a microphone. So even though the TV is off, it can still hear everything that's being said in the room and broadcast back to the CIA.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett49:41

        Can they do that with-

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou49:42

        Ingenious

    13. SBSteven Bartlett49:42

        ... devices? Do they?

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou49:43

        Oh, they could do that. When I first got hired, they were able to do that. Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett49:48

        So they could be doing that right now with my-

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou49:49

        Oh, totally

    17. SBSteven Bartlett49:50

        ... my iPad.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou49:50

        Absolutely, yes. That's old technology. And then the thing about the car, this was revelatory. They can take control, again, remotely, of a car's computer system in order to... Well, I mean, in order to, to kill you.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett50:09

        Crash the car.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou50:10

        Crash the car, take it off a bridge, take it into a tree. Sure. [paper rustling]

    21. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

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14. 52:06 – 56:37

    Sleeper Agents: Training Spies From Birth

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:07

       I've heard you talk about sleeper agents before.

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou52:09

       Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett52:10

       What is a, what is a sleeper agent?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou52:12

       Yeah, the Russians are very good with sleeper agents. W- we Americans don't have... Uh, no, no other country that we know of uses sleeper agents. A sleeper agent is someone who is taken virtually from birth and trained to be of another nationality. For example, let's say you're born in Russia, and from the age of, you know, two, they take you from your family, with your family's acquiescence, and they take you to an American-style town that they've built out in the hinterland in Russia, and they teach you to speak English with an American accent. You watch American TV shows, you watch American movies, you eat American food, you get an American-style education, so I have no idea that you're not American. You speak English just like I do. You know all the same, you know, social references that I make. You follow the Philadelphia Eagles, you know, or, or the, you know, the San Francisco 49ers or whatever. And then they send you to the United States on a, on a fake- with a fake ID. What they'll do is they'll go through... Uh, I was born in 1964, so they'll go through death records from 1964, and they'll look for, for deaths where the person was only a day or two old. And they'll take that name and the birth date, and they'll get a Social Security card with the birth date, and then they'll use the Social Security card to get you a passport, an American passport. So you come here on your American passport. Everything's legit. Now, your name is, you know, Bob Smith, which was really that baby's name that died, and you get a job, let's say, as a travel agent, and you may work as a travel agent for twenty years and never hear from them, but then they'll activate you, and they'll say: "We want you to go take care of this target over here."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett54:23

       Kill him.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou54:23

       Yeah, or, "We want you to get a job at the Defense Department and give us everything that you, that you can steal." Whatever. There's a woman in my neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper about a year ago. She was an elementary school teacher, and they grabbed her, and they ended up trading her back to the Russians for two Americans. So they're, they're out there. I, I interviewed a, a sleeper, a former sleeper, on my own podcast a couple of weeks ago. He was-... from the East German Intelligence Service, and he was raised as an American and sent to New York. He got a job, I forget doing what, like restaurant supply company or something like that, and he got married, and he had a daughter. And he told me, "As soon as I looked at her face the day she was born, I realized this life wasn't for me anymore." So they sent him an activation. What they do is they'll send you a radio message, and he didn't respond to it. [sniffs] And he told me he was on the subway one day, he's just standing there holding the strap, and this guy came up to him, and the guy grabs the strap next to him and whispers in his ear, "If you don't report back, I have to kill you." And so he ran straight to the FBI field office in New York, and he said, "I'm an East German sleeper, and I wanna turn myself in." And he became a prolific source for the FBI.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett56:00

       So he was r- taken as a young person?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou56:04

       Yes.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett56:04

       What was his story?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou56:05

        Yeah, taken as a young person, sent to Russia to become American.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett56:11

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou56:11

        They set him up with this phony identity.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett56:13

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou56:13

        And then after he had gone through all the training... He came over here young. He was, like, 20 or 22, and, uh, and did this for 25 years, and then he said as soon as his daughter was born, he was like, "Wow, this is what life is for, not being a sleeper."

    15. SBSteven Bartlett56:33

        Do you think the average person listening to this conversation right now

15. 56:37 – 58:27

    Is the Average Person Interacting With a Spy?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett56:37

       is interacting in their life at this exact moment in time with someone who is involved in espionage, spying, the CIA, or some international equivalent?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou56:50

       Probably not, because they're mostly focused... Foreign intelligence officers are gonna be spread out all over America. If, if, uh, if a listener of this podcast is working in a defense company, a defense contractor anywhere in America, then my answer is yes. Yes, you're probably encountering espionage of some sort or somebody committing espionage, whether it's Russian, Chinese, or Israeli. They're the three biggest ones that go after us. Um, in Washington, I mean, foreign spies, there, there could be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I remember my first wife, um, she was teaching ballet at a small private school, and one of the, uh, the students there, they were all, like, four, five, and six years old. One of the students there, her father was a Belgian diplomat, and so we would sit and talk, and, "Oh, aren't the kids talented?" and, "Oh, this is so much fun. They look so cute in their little tutus." And then I went to work one day, and as I was walking in, he was walking in, and I said, "Oh, come on, Peter." And he's like: "You know, I thought you were a spy." And I said, "I actually didn't think you were a spy." And he was just going for a liaison meeting. And we had a good chuckle about it, and I said: "Listen, don't tell anybody, right?" "Right, right, right. Sorry." [chuckles]

    3. SBSteven Bartlett58:26

       So I'm trying to figure out, how

16. 58:27 – 1:04:04

    How Many Spies Are There in the US?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett58:27

       many s- how many spies do you think there are in the United States? If you think about for-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou58:32

       Foreign spies.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett58:33

       Foreign spies, domestic spies, people that are basically undercover.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou58:38

       Including Americans, you mean?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett58:39

       Including Americans.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou58:40

       The number of CIA employees is classified. The number of CIA employees undercover is actually even more highly classified. I can give you a guesstimate-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett58:50

       But also, you know-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou58:51

       ... of-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett58:51

       Russia, China.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou58:52

        Yeah, 50 to 60,000 altogether.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett58:56

        50 or 60,000 in the United States?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou58:58

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett58:59

        So by a couple of degrees of separation, if you know 100 people-

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou59:03

        Yeah, you're probably gonna know one. Sure.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett59:09

        You said there's probably about 50,000 in the United States, so I've, I've just done some quick math on my notepad here, which means that in order to know one, you'd need to meet 6,600 people.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou59:22

        Okay.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett59:23

        Because the US population is roughly 330 million people.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou59:25

        That's right.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett59:26

        And I... And then I did some other maths and did some research, and I asked- [chuckles] um, the question I was trying to figure out is how many people does the average person meet a year? And it's roughly about 3 to 10,000 people.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou59:37

        Mm.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett59:38

        So theoretically-

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou59:39

        So the chances are good?

    23. SBSteven Bartlett59:41

        Every year, [chuckles] statistically, according to my napkin math, you're meeting one of these undercover- [chuckles] ... spies. One a year.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou59:54

        There it is.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett59:56

        There you go.

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou59:56

        Now, that number I gave you is... I'm lumping, like, all CIA people and all foreign intelligence officers in the United States.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:06

        Interesting.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:00:07

        But again, if you work for an American defense company, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, any of them, your chances of encountering a foreign intelligence officer are even money.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:22

        Can't you, as a spy with the United States, ask the United States to give you loads of money? Like, can't you say, "Ugh, you really want me to go do that? Can I have a million dollars?"

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:00:31

        Mm-hmm.
17. 1:04:04 – 1:05:29

    Conspiracy Theories

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:04

       the more I've done this as a job, the more I go: Hmm, conspiracy theorists are right, more than I expected them to be.

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:04:10

       See, and that's an important point. I [exhales] I hate conspiracy theories that run amok, but, you know, the, the, the... A former CIA director is the one who came up with the term conspiracy theory.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:26

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:04:27

       And it was, it was a way for the CIA to discredit people by making them sound like crazy people, when in fact, there was such a thing called MKUltra. There was such a thing called, you know, Operation Grasshopper or, or MKCHICKWIT, or... You know, the CIA did crazy, crazy stuff from roughly 1952 to 1975. For example, they, um, experimented with a, a virus that they, that they released in San Francisco. They waited for a, an unusually foggy, like, heavily foggy day. They released it into the atmosphere just to see if it would make people sick, and 11 people went to the emergency room with this rare upper respiratory infection. And then they were like, [claps] you know, high fives, "Yeah, it works." And then they, they started experimenting with LSD. LSD was a big thing at the CIA in the early days. We were convinced... See, and this,

18. 1:05:29 – 1:08:51

    Dosing Americans With LSD

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou1:05:29

       this is, this is where counterintelligence is, is important. The Chinese told us in, like, 1951, that the Russians were using LSD to try to engineer it to be used as a mind control drug. That wasn't true. That was disinformation. The truth was, the Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese did. So they tried to throw us off the, off the scent by blaming the Russians. We panicked, and by 1952, we started this program called MKUltra, which began by using LSD, um, experimentally. What the CIA did was they, they started by dosing their own employees, without telling them. Um, several committed suicide. One jumped out of a hotel window.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:30

       With the hope that-

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou1:06:31

       "Yeah, we'll just see what happens, see what they say, see how it feels. You know, see if we can control them, see if we can plant memories that didn't actually happen." And then they decided, "No, it's not a good idea to dose our own people. Let's just dose strangers out in public." So they went to San Francisco, they rented a safe house, and they hired prostitutes to go out on the street, pick up johns, bring them back to the safe house-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:00

       Johns?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:01

       Johns, people who hire prostitutes, men who hire prostitutes. Dose the johns with, uh, LSD-... and just see what happens. But, I mean, these are like serious crimes you're committing against people.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:18

       Just reading about it here, it says, "Under Operation Midnight Climax-

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:21

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:22

       Interesting name, Operation Midnight Climax.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:25

       That's right.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:26

        The CIA pa- paid sex workers to lure men to safe houses, where agents drugged them and then watched them through one-way mirrors-

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:34

        Mirrors

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:34

        ... and recorded their behavior."

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:35

        Exactly.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:36

        "They tried to erase their personality."

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:40

        Nice, huh?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:42

        "The goal was often to break and rebuild the human mind. In 1973, the CIA director ordered mass destruction of the-

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:50

        Yeah

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:50

        ... MKUltra files. What we know comes from accidentally surviving documents, meaning this is a sanitized version."

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:57

        That day, he testified before the Church Committee. The Church Committee specifically told him, "Do not destroy any documents." He went back that afternoon to the CIA and said, "Destroy everything."

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:14

        Why?

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou1:08:15

        Because it, it was damning. They were experimenting on American citizens. They were, they were experimenting by spreading diseases in American cities. And so he was held in contempt of Congress. He was fined, like, $150, and, um, about 15% of the documents were overlooked and survived. We'll never know exactly what happened under MKUltra.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:49

        As we sit here now, there's people

19. 1:08:51 – 1:11:07

    Are the CIA Involved in Iran?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:51

       on the streets of Iran that are protesting-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:08:54

       Mm-hmm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:55

       ... the leadership there, and the CAR, the CIA are often associated with some of the coups going back to the 1950s-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:03

       Yes

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:03

       ... and other countries-

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:04

       Yes

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:04

       ... toppling elected leaders to protect US interests.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:07

       Yes.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:09

       Do you think the CIA are involved in Iran at the moment?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:12

        Probably. I think the Israelis are heavily involved in Iran at the moment. I'll tell you why, for a couple of reasons, more than a couple. Number one, in the so-called 12-Day War that we saw last year, the Israelis were absolutely masterful in the way they went after the Iranian leadership. What they did was they focused on recruiting Afghan refugees. Iran was home to more than two million Afghan refugees.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:43

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:44

        And as essentially illegal aliens, they could not avail themselves of medical care, the welfare system. They're starving, right? They only eat if they can beg for enough to, to buy food. And so the Israelis went to these people very discreetly and said, "Hey, you know, we'll give you $200 a month if you tell us where the generals live. In which apartments do the generals live? Where do the nuclear scientists live?" The Israelis killed the top 12 generals across the entire Iranian military and killed almost every Iranian nuclear scientist, because what they were able to do was to recruit these Afghans, to not just tell them where they were living, where the generals and the scientists were living, but what their cell phone numbers were. And so the Israelis were able to geolocate the cell phones, and then that's where you fire the missile. They killed all of them, and then after the Iranians finally realized it's the cell phones, they ordered that no senior military officials and no scientists could carry cell phones. But it never dawned on them to tell the bodyguards not to carry cell phones, and so the Israelis started rocketing the bodyguards and just killed everybody else.

20. 1:11:07 – 1:15:06

    Have You Ever Killed Anyone?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:07

       Have you ever killed anybody?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:08

       No, thank God. My children asked me that, and I told them very proudly that I have never taken any action that resulted in the death of another human being. There's one kind of half exception, and I think about this all the time. In 1993, I guess it was, I was sitting in the morning meeting... I told you earlier that every unit meets every day at nine o'clock, and you just talk about what happened in the country that you cover overnight. I was in the morning meeting, and the secretary came in, and she said, "John, General Powell is on the phone for you. Colin Powell." I said, "General Powell? How does he know who I am?" And she said: "I don't know, but he asked for you by name." My boss is like: "Well, go answer the phone." So I went to my desk, and I said, "Good morning, General Powell. This is John Kiriakou." And he says, "John, if the Iraqis were going to kill the president, who would actually be in charge of that operation?" And I said, "Well, if you're talking about the attempt to kill President Bush, George H.W. Bush," he had been visiting Kuwait. I said, "Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi Intelligence Services Basra station, but Basra station is headed by, um, Sabr Abdul Aziz Adori, the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service." He says, "Where does he sit?" I said, "Baghdad." "Where exactly in Baghdad?" I said, "If you hold on a second, I'll look up the address." So I looked it up. I gave him the address. He says, "Thank you," and he hangs up the phone. I go back in the meeting. They were like: "What did he want?" I said, "He wanted to know about Sabr Adori and the, the attempt to kill President Bush." I'm like, "Okay." Eight hours later, we fired 47 cruise missiles into Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters, but by then it was the middle of the night in Baghdad, and we killed the janitor.... So the next day, I said to my boss, "I killed that janitor." And he said, "I knew you were gonna say that. You didn't kill the janitor. You had no idea what Powell was gonna do with the, with the information." I said, "I know, but I still feel guilty about it." Other than that, thank God, I never had to do it. I'm not sure how I would sleep at night.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:34

       Do the US still assassinate people by the CIA?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:13:38

       Absolutely, yes. When Barack Obama was president, John Brennan, uh, in the first term, was the deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism, and he started something called the Tuesday Morning Kill List Meeting. So it would be Brennan, it would be the National Security Council attorney, somebody from the CIA, uh, General Counsel's office, and a representative of the director of the Counterterrorism Center. And every Tuesday morning, they would meet at the White House, come up with a list of people to kill that week. The teams would fan out around the world, kill their targets, and then go back and meet next Tuesday morning.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:16

       And are these world leaders, or are they normal people?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:19

       No, these are, these are ground-level terrorists.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:22

       Okay, so it could be someone that appears to be a normal civilian, but is doing something that they don't like?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:30

       The law is pretty clear on this. It, it's supposed to be somebody who poses a clear and present danger to the United States, to an American citizen, or to an American installation.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:45

       Which can be quite a vague briefing.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:48

        See, that's the thing. It sounds like it's clear. It's actually not at all clear, and when they get back from these missions, we just have to take their word for it.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:59

        Which, um, spy force around the world did you think was the most impressive?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:05

        Oh, the Israelis.

21. 1:15:06 – 1:21:33

    Which Spy Force Is the Most Impressive?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:07

       Really?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:07

       Yeah. The Israelis have no rules. They'll kill anybody. Uh, what was it, three years ago? This, uh, this pager operation.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:20

       Oh, it was so fascinating.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:21

       Good Lord, it was, it was a work of genius.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:24

       It is genius. It is-

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:26

       It was totally illegal.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:27

       Totally illegal.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:28

       But it was genius. The, the moving parts-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:32

       I, I-

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:32

        -involved

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:32

        ... didn't believe it was real. I had to, like, re- I was like: There's no way that this is real. This is the stuff of movies.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:38

        It is.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:39

        For anyone that doesn't know, what was the story?

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:15:42

        Ah, yeah. Okay. So the Israelis knew that Hezbollah, the terrorist group Hezbollah from Lebanon, was communicating using pagers. They didn't wanna use cell phones 'cause they didn't want the Israelis to intercept their phone calls, and they thought, "Oh, pagers, th- those are safe." So the [chuckles] Israelis bought a company in, like, Hungary, I think it was, that made pagers, and they got Hezbollah to order the pagers from this company. They were able to insert explosives in the pagers, and the pagers went to, like, Taiwan, and from Taiwan to Thailand, and then from Thailand to I forget where, Syria, I guess, and then from Syria to Lebanon. And so what the Israelis did was they were able to activate the explosives in all the pagers simultaneously.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:41

        Killing people?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:16:41

        They killed everybody of any import in Hezbollah. They essentially decapitated Hezbollah, and then the ones they didn't kill in that operation, they bombed the apartment buildings where they lived. See, this is the thing, too, about the Israelis. If they wanna kill you, they won't, they won't, like, just do a close-in hit. They'll blow up the entire city block where you live. They'll kill a thousand people just to get you, and they don't care, and then, then, then they say, "What are you gonna do about it? You're gonna go to the International Court of Justice?"

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:18

        Do they-

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:17:18

        Go ahead

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:18

        ... Do they really do this?

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:17:19

        Yeah. Uh-huh.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:22

        Did, did you ever interact with them?

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:17:23

        Yes.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:24

        And how did you find them to be?

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:17:26

        Miserable. My very first briefing that I ever gave as a junior analyst was to the Israelis. My boss said, "Okay," he says, "you're gonna give your first classified liaison briefing, so it's gonna be the Israelis, and there are a couple things you should know." I said, "Okay." He said, "We don't allow the Israelis into the building, ever." I said, "Why not?" He said, " 'Cause they spy on us." Not only do they spy on us, they would always bring gifts, like, "Oh, we brought this wonderful gift for you," and they're... You, you- every, every time somebody tries to bring something in, you have to X-ray it, and it's got, like, listening devices, and it's packed with two years' worth of batteries. We're like, "You guys, you have to stop doing this. Every time you come here, you try to bug our conference rooms. You gotta... It's bad form. You have to stop doing it." And then they're like, [laughing] "Oh, okay, okay. We knew you would find it. We're just kidding." Come on. So we have to meet them miles away from headquarters in a place that we rent. So he said, "Nothing over the secret level. No top secret information, just up to secret." I'm like, "Okay." So I go with, like, a dozen analysts, and because I'm the junior-most analyst, I've only been on the job at this point, I'm gonna say six weeks or so, I went last. So the first analyst says, "I'm the chief analyst, and this is my briefing," and then the next guy says, "I'm the political analyst," and, "I'm the econ analyst," and, "I'm the military analyst," and, "I'm the oil analyst," and, you know, the tech analyst, and, and it comes to me. So I said... Because I was overt at the time, I was not undercover. I said, "My name is John Kiriakou, and I'm going to brief you on Saddam Hussein's psychological state of mind."... Well, there were two Israelis there. One was from Mossad, and one was from Shin Bet. Shin Bet is the FBI of Israel, and Mossad is the CIA of Israel. So the Shin Bet guy, he has his glasses down like this, and he, he, he goes like this, he says: "Spell your name?" So I spell it, K-I-R, I spell it. And he goes, "You are, uh, Jewish?" I said: "Don't you dare! I am not recruitable. Don't you dare even try it." I was furious. We went out of the briefing, I was gonna explode. Everybody started laughing at me. They're like, "They do that to every one of us. Every one of us."

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:03

        They try and recruit you?

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:04

        Yeah.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:05

        To turn against the United States?

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:07

        Yeah. On my very first day at the CIA, we got a briefing from the CIA's director of security, and he said that all of us have to have, uh, in the very front of our minds, the concept of counterintelligence. "For example," he said, "there's a steakhouse right down the road on Route 123." It's the n- it's the nearest restaurant to the CIA. He goes, "Don't ever eat there. Why? Because the KGB thinks we all eat there, so all the customers are KGB officers waiting for CIA people to walk in and start talking about work. Don't ever eat there." I've never eaten there, to this day.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:49

        Because they're potential Russian spies.

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:51

        Mm-hmm.
22. 1:21:33 – 1:26:57

    Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:34

       Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:38

       I believe very strongly he was a spy, yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:41

       And who do you think he was working for?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:42

       The Israelis. I'm confident it was the Israelis.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:46

       Why?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:48

       Jeffrey Epstein is kind of the stereotypical example that they give you in training for what's called an access agent. This is a different kind of recruit. So, for example, if you're a foreign intelligence service and you want information, like close-in information from a former president, from the CEO of the biggest company in the world, from a member of the British royal family, you're not gonna recruit these guys. You're not gonna recruit Bill Clinton or Bill Gates or Prince Andrew. So you do the next best thing: you recruit somebody who has regular access to them, and that person that you recruit is gonna need to make these people feel comfortable and appreciated, and so you give him plenty of money, so he has this, uh, house on an island, or he has the whole island, and maybe you bring in young girls, you get them in compromising positions, just in case you need to use what's called kompromat, compromising pictures. We known... We know now that Jeffrey Epstein's house on the island had video cameras, hidden video cameras, in literally every room, including the bathrooms. Why? Uh, why would he care what was going on, unless it was to use that information against people? As I said, only the Israelis and the Russians use extortion as a motivator.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:33

       So would they have made Jeffrey Epstein rich-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:23:36

       Yeah

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:36

       ... in order to give him that access?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:23:38

        Yes.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:38

        How could they have done that?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:23:40

        Oh, that's easy. I mean, you, you do... I, I mean, governments are the only ones really that can money la- that can launder money unfettered. And you can also do it through real estate, through fine art, and through horses. Those are the three easiest ways to launder money today: fine art, real estate, and racehorses.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:02

        But presumably, he would have spoken out at some point, no? He would have said something or-

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:24:08

        No, but it would explain why he got a sweetheart deal in 2006. I mean, this is a guy that's been convicted of child sex crimes, and he gets six months of house arrest with an ankle bracelet? We have mandatory minimums in this country. That's a five-year mandatory minimum, first offense.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:26

        He definitely had some interesting power, didn't he?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:24:29

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, and Alex Acosta, who was the prosecuting attorney at the time, and then later became Secretary of Labor under Trump, Trump won. Alex Acosta said that he was ordered by the attorney general to give Epstein the sweetheart deal. Well, who's the only person that can order the attorney general to do something? It's the president. So w- was it because-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:59

        So

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:24:59

        ... Epstein was, was working on Clinton? Most of the people down there were Democrats. I mean, what, what was the reason?

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:08

        Maybe he was working for the US government.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:25:11

        It's possible that he could have been doubled against the Israelis or others, sure. Sure, that's possible.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:18

        If you had to bet-

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:25:19

        Mm-hmm

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:19

        ... what would you say? If you had to bet everything you have-... on either him being a spy or not a spy?

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:25:28

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:28

        What would you bet on?

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:25:29

        He was a spy. I feel very confident in that assessment. I debated Alan Dershowitz about this on The Piers Morgan Show one time. It was, it was Scott Horton and me who said that he was an Israeli spy, and it was Alan Dershowitz and General Danny Ayalon, the former head of Mossad. Ayalon was kinda into it in terms of having a fun time. He was just having a fun time with the conversation. He wasn't gonna admit to anything. Dershowitz was Epstein's attorney, so I said that, that I believed Epstein was an Israeli spy, and Dershowitz interrupts me, like attorneys do, and he says, "That is outrageous! If he had been a spy, he would've told me, because I was his attorney, and I could have gone to the White House, and I could have gotten him a better sentence." And I said, "Wait a minute. You could have gone to the White House to say, 'Go easy on Jeffrey Epstein because he's an Israeli spy, collecting information from American politicians?' If I were the president, I would've hung him from a tree." And then Piers Morgan said, "General Ayalon, was he a spy?" And he goes, [laughing] "Who knows?"

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:50

        Who knows? [laughing]

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:26:52

        [laughing] It's like, come on, man.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:54

        Who do you think is the real adversary

23. 1:26:57 – 1:29:12

    Who Is the Real Adversary?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:57

       of the West? 'Cause we often talk about it being Russia or-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:00

       I think it's China.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:01

       Why? What is it that we don't realize about China and their agenda?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:05

       Oh, wow, so much. The Chinese are so good at what they do, and the Chinese are so patient. You know, i- in the United States, we, we don't have long-term timelines for, for anything. When we want something, we want it now.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:21

       Is that in part because we have this four-year election cycle?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:23

       Yes, I believe that it is. The Chinese will plan for something 25 years down the road.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:30

       Because they'll still be in power then?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:31

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, you know, the- they're really good at stealing technology. There are more Chinese PhD students in the har- hard sciences here in the United States than you can shake a stick at. They're everywhere. They're, they're at every major university, and they're really, really smart. And then oftentimes they'll say, "Oh, you know, I've had such a great experience here. I'd like to stay in the United States." Yeah, I bet you would. I bet you would, so you can spy for China.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:02

       Do you think that's happening?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:04

        Every single day.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:06

        You think that Chinese students are in America spying on behalf of China?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:11

        Yes. Yes.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:14

        How could you be so sure?

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:15

        I'm 1,000% sure.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:17

        How could you be so sure?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:18

        Because we frequently arrest them and then trade them for Americans who are in Chinese prisons.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:25

        Hmm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:27

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:28

        And they're masquerading as students?

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:31

        Mm-hmm. PhD candidates, always in the hard sciences, always.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:37

        So China are the long-term adversary?

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:39

        I think so.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:40

        And what is it that Chi- China, uh, want? What is it they're doing, and what is the outcome?

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:44

        I think they want a couple of things. I think that on a more immediate basis, they want reunification with Taiwan. It's gonna happen someday. Even the Taiwanese will tell you, "Yes, we're a part of China, but we're kinda not a part of China. We're not really independent, but we are kind of independent." Even American policy is that Taiwan is a part of China, and eventually, someday they'll be reunited.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:09

        Do you think with everything that's going on at

24. 1:29:12 – 1:33:22

    Is Venezuela a Cover for Something Else?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:12

       the moment with Trump and Venezuela and Greenland, this is gonna create cover for-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:29:16

       Oh, I was hoping you would ask me a question like that. I think that's very, uh... That's a very important issue that, that the media really aren't talking about. So let's put it in the context of what happened last week in Venezuela, because it, th- they're all m- moving parts of the same, of the same policy. So we, we sent a Delta Force squad into Venezuela a week ago, and we snatched President Maduro, and he faces international narcotics trafficking charges in New York. Okay, some people are for that, some people are against it. Whether you're for it or against it, it's happened. There's nothing we can do about it now. But that operation may have inadvertently given the green light to something that both the Russians and the Chinese have long sought. The United States really is the only true superpower in the world. You know, the Chinese have a lot more people, they have lots of nuclear missiles, but they have one aircraft carrier. We have 12, soon to be 14. We have way more long-distance bombers. We have way more fighters. The Russians are bogged down in a war in, in, uh, Ukraine. They're winning the war, but they're bogged down nonetheless. So did this, did this reinstitution of the Monroe Doctrine, saying that, you know, from 1814, that, that the Western Hemisphere is the, is the territory of the United States, it's up to us to protect it from foreign powers. Well, in 1814, that meant the British Navy. We don't really need a Monroe Doctrine, and it's not up to us whether the Argentines wanna have good relations with China, for example. We invoked the Monroe Doctrine in this operation to snatch Maduro. So does that mean then that if we have a sphere of influence, that is the Western Hemisphere, that the Chinese have a sphere of influence that includes Taiwan, that the Russians have a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine? 'Cause that's kinda what it seems. It looks like we've given the green light to both of those countries, and that we're conceding the fact that it's a unipolar world-... right now in favor of a multipolar world. Now, personally, I think a multipolar world is safer.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:31:41

       What's a multipolar world?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:31:42

       Multipolar world is where there's not just one superpower, there are three or more. So in terms of policy, this simple act of just sending a team in to grab Maduro has turned international diplomacy on its head. What do we do if the Chinese invade Taiwan? Do we really wanna send American soldiers to, you know, to fight and die for Taiwan?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:11

       What, what do you think would happen if China tomorrow said, "You know what? We're gonna take Taiwan"?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32:15

       You know what? Honest to God, I think nothing would happen. I think we would rush to protect Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand. We'd rush to protect them.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:30

       Why?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32:30

       Because they're, they're major non-NATO allies. They're good friends, close friends. But in terms of going to Taiwan to fight Chinese soldiers, I can't imagine it.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:40

       Trump told The New York Times that whether China moves on Taiwan is ultimately up to Chinese President Xi Jinping-

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32:48

        Yeah

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:48

        ... not the USA, adding that he's told Xi he would be very unhappy if China changed the status quo. He claimed he doesn't think Xi will act while he's president.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32:58

        See, and that is actually what the long-term policy is. The long-term policy is, sure, someday, to be determined later, you guys can unify.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:10

        Just don't do it while I'm here.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:11

        Yeah, don't do it today.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:14

        Maybe when Trump goes.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:16

        God forbid.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:18

        So going back to this point, you said they want Taiwan. What else do you think China want?

25. 1:33:22 – 1:34:10

    Does China Want the US to Fall?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:22

       Well, [sighs] sh-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:25

       Do they want to see the US fall?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:26

       Yes, sure.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:28

       And are they actively doing things to encourage that?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:32

       Yes, but not the things that, that you would expect. Instead of running around the world, you know, overthrowing governments, invading countries, which is what we do, they go to countries and say, "Hey, you need a new highway system? We'll pay for it. You need a new airport? No problem. You need a new hospital, el- electrical grid? We have plenty of money from our gigantic trade surplus. We'll pay for it. We just wanna have really good, friendly relations with you." And that's what they do. The Chinese essentially own Africa right now.

26. 1:34:10 – 1:36:15

    Is the US Going Bankrupt?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:10

       What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? What, what does actually keep you up at night?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:34:15

       What frightens me the most is that the US government, over the last... well, really over the last 50 years or 55 years, has so inflated its military budget, that what we spend on the Pentagon is now more than the next eight largest countries combined, right?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:47

       Mm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:34:48

       Donald Trump right now spends a, a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon budget. He's asking for next year to be a trillion and a half. We can't afford it. Our interest on the national debt is now the third largest expenditure in government, between the Pentagon, and Social Security, and then the net- the interest on the debt.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:10

       And why does this bother you?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:35:12

       Because we're going bankrupt, and all the while, the Chinas are- the Chinese are letting us spend ourselves into oblivion. The Chinese don't spend that kind of money. How come I can't have a bullet train that goes 400 miles an hour? How come I can't get to Chicago in three hours by train, you know? How come the airports in my country look like shit, and you go to Chinese airports, and they're pristine, with, like, the most amazing services and the best restaurants? How come Chinese roads don't have potholes, and i- in my town, it's like driving across Bosnia? It's because they decided not to spend their money on weapons. They spend it on infrastructure.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:57

       Do you think that's likely, that the US could go bankrupt effectively?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:02

       Mm, I do. Yeah, I do. We can't keep up this pace. It's not possible. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to raise taxes and cut the budget.

27. 1:36:15 – 1:40:09

    Why Does the US Government Keep Breaking the Law?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:15

       What's the most important thing that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about, John?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:19

       Ooh, that's a good question. One of the most important things in my life, to tell you the truth, uh, is the issue of ethics. I love this country more than anything else in the world, and I want it to do the right thing. We're a country of laws, and we have to obey our laws, which is why I blew the whistle on the torture program.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:41

       Who's not obeying the laws?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:43

       Our government.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:44

       In what way?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:46

       We've gotten to the point, and it started around the year 2000 or 2001, we got to the point where if we wanna do something, we just do it.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:58

       Like what?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:00

       In 1946, we passed something called the Federal Torture Act, which banned torture, okay? Also, in 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American prisoners of war. That was a death penalty offense, to waterboard someone. All right? In 1968, on January the 11th, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. When the, when the picture ran, the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, ordered an immediate investigation. That soldier was arrested-... he was charged with torture, and he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor at Leavenworth. And then in 2002, "Eh, eh, it's legal. We can do it. We can do it 'cause we're the good guys." The law never changed, we changed, and my point was always, either we're gonna be the good guys or we're not. Either we're gonna be what Ronald Reagan called a shining city on a hill, or we're not. It- when I was, when I was stationed in Bahrain, I was the human rights officer, so I had to write the human rights report every year that we sent to Congress. Well, imagine if John goes in to see the minister of interior, and I say, "Your Highness, you cannot pick up a 15-year-old kid for marching in a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration, and then murder him, beat him to death in the, in the police station, and call his parents to come and pick up the body. You can't do that. I have to report that to Congress, and you're gonna lose your, your rights to buy American military hardware." But then, the CIA station chief goes in an hour later and says, "Don't pay any attention to the human rights guy. I'll give you $10 million if you set up a secret prison here. We're gonna send you some prisoners. You torture them, and then you give us a write-up of everything they say during torture." Who's he gonna listen to? Is he gonna listen to me?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:15

       Did that happen?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:16

        Yes. He's not gonna listen to me. If all of a sudden torture is legal, just 'cause we say it is, and then Congress is like, "Oh, we don't know anything because it's a secret program, so we can't talk about it."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:33

        Do we still torture people?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:34

        No. I am very proud to say that when the McCain-Feinstein anti-torture amendment was passed into law in December of 2014, John McCain got up on the floor of the Senate and said it was because of me, because of my revelations. He said, "If I had not told the American people that the CIA was torturing prisoners in their name, we would never have known." That's why I say it was worth it.

28. 1:40:09 – 1:40:48

    Should You Be Pardoned by Trump?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:09

       Do you think you should be pardoned by, by President Trump?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:12

       I do.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:13

       Have you written him?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:16

       I've... [sighs] I've, I have to be careful with my language here. I applied. My name is in the system. I have very, very high-level supporters who have approached him personally, and I'm hopeful that it happens.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:45

       John, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not

29. 1:40:48 – 1:45:55

    What Did You Stop Doing That Improved Your Life?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:48

       knowing who they're gonna be leaving it for. And the question left for you is: What's something you stopped doing that improved your life more than anything you started?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:59

       Feeling sorry for myself. [inhales] I, I'll be honest with you, I have struggled with depression my entire life, and after my second divorce, I went through this period where I was just... I couldn't pull myself out of bed in the morning because I felt so sorry for myself.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:41:24

       Because of the divorce, or because of your life, or because-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:41:27

       The whole thing. I, I believed I was just a loser. I was in my 50s, unemployable, convicted felon, barely able to make ends meet, worried about where my rent was coming from one month to the next, and then I thought, "Fuck you! What's wrong with you? You don't have to answer to anybody." And I, I told myself, "No more feeling sorry for myself." I was gonna go make a career on my own. And so I knew I would never work for government again. I knew I would never work in corporate America again. After I left the CIA, I was the head of the competitive intelligence practice at Deloitte & Touche, spying on Ernst & Young, and PWC, and IBM, and it was great fun. I'll never work in, in the corporate world again. So I decided I'm gonna do what I'm good at. And I'm a, I'm a terrific writer, and I'm told that I'm a gifted storyteller, so I'm gonna write books. I have two syndicated newspaper columns that run in 212 small town papers around the country. I'm on TV all the time. I have three podcasts, Deprogram, every day on, on both YouTube and Rumble. Thanks for letting me plug them, by the way.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:48

       Go ahead.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:42:49

       Uh, Deep Focus on YouTube and on Apple Podcast, John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, which is just story after story after story. And now I make a perfectly great living. I, I'm in a long-term relationship with a woman I'm crazy about, and life is good.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:05

       And it all started with that decision to stop feeling sorry for yourself?

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:43:07

       Yes. If people around me keep saying, "You've done nothing wrong, you're a hero for what you did," and deep down I would do it again, then why am I feeling sorry for myself? I'm right, they're wrong, they're criminals, so I'm just gonna go on with my life, and that snapped me out of it. So don't feel sorry for yourself. Do something about it. Act.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:38

       John, you are someone that is very good at storytelling. You are.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:43:41

        Thank you.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:41

        You've written many books. I'm gonna link all the books below.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:43:44

        Oh, thank you.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:44

        There's so many incredible books. I've got some of them here with me on the floor. Um, I c- could go through all them, but we'd need another f- couple of days. [chuckles] Um, John, thank you.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:43:53

        ... Thank you.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:53

        Thank you so much for your incredible storytelling, your wisdom, but also just giving us a window into a world that most of us know nothing about, because there's so many lessons that I think are pertinent to all of our lives riddled amongst there. And I think, you know, I hope you do get pardoned.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:44:08

        Thank you. I hope so. I've got my fingers crossed.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:11

        And when you do, hopefully we can come back again and have another conversation.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:44:14

        I look forward to that.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:15

        It's been such a pleasure.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:44:16

        Pleasure's mine. Thanks for the invitation. [upbeat music]

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:21

        This is something that I've made for you. I've realized that The Diary Of A CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish, and one of the things I've learnt is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable, because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps, and we call this in our team the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done, so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have, is we've made these 1% Diaries, and we released these last year, and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at thediary.com, where you can get twenty percent off our Black Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:45:55