CIA Whistleblower: “The Shadow Government Is Real” - John Kiriakou

1. 0:00 – 0:44

   Why Should We Believe An Ex-CIA Agent?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      A quick note. Lots of people tell us that YouTube unsubscribes them from the channel even though they already pressed it. So just check down there and see if the subscribe button is pressed. You get access to episodes before anybody else if you do. Supports me and the show, helps me to bring you bigger and better guests, uh, and it makes me very happy. So just go and give it a tap for me. I thank you. [clicks tongue] You are an ex-CIA operative.

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou0:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Why should I believe anything that you're gonna tell me?

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou0:25

      Well, you know, that, that's a good question. I get it with some frequency. And all I can say is I have a very long track record, and my track record is one of telling the truth. So I can't force people to believe what I say, but they can certainly choose to believe me or choose to not believe me. I won't lose sleep over it either

2. 0:44 – 3:25

   Will John Ever Receive a Presidential Pardon?

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou0:44

      way.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:45

      You've mentioned that you're looking for a pardon from Trump.

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou0:47

      Mm.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:48

      How's that going? Do you think you're gonna get it?

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou0:50

      [sighs] No. If I'm, if I'm being fully honest, l- let me, let me back up by saying that I have fantastic support from people in the inner circle around Donald Trump, and I'm very grateful for it, household names. But I am told by one of those household names that it's not gonna happen because the CIA hates me. And I responded, this is just three weeks ago. I responded by saying that, "I've never met John Ratcliffe," the CIA director. "I've never exchanged a harsh word with John Ratcliffe."

   6. CWChris Williamson1:32

      Mm.

   7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32

      And this cabinet member said, "It's not about John Ratcliffe as a person. It's institutional. They fear that if you get a pardon, it'll open the door for other would-be whistleblowers who want to go public on issues of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality."

   8. CWChris Williamson1:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:51

      And, um, and they're not willing to entertain that.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:53

       Is there anyone else that is more persona non grata than you, do you think?

   11. JKJohn Kiriakou1:57

       Ed Snowden.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:58

       Okay, so that's the sort of one and two-

   13. JKJohn Kiriakou2:00

       Yeah

   14. CWChris Williamson2:00

       ... of-

   15. JKJohn Kiriakou2:01

       Yeah. You know, when I was still at the CIA, Philip Agee was still being talked about.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:06

       Who-- What's that?

   17. JKJohn Kiriakou2:07

       Philip Agee was a CIA case officer in the nineteen sixties who was, um, serving in South America. I think it was Chile or Peru, one or the other. And he walked in on a torture session that the CIA was doing with the host government intelligence service and decided to resign from the CIA. But more than just resigning from the CIA, he wrote a book called "Inside the Company," in which he documented in an appendix the names of every undercover CIA officer that he ever met, and it was something like twelve hundred names that he came up with. They wanted to execute Philip Agee. Even years and years later when I was at the agency-

   18. CWChris Williamson2:54

       Mm

   19. JKJohn Kiriakou2:54

       ... the old-timers were still talking about, you know, "How do we get Agee?" He ended up fleeing to, uh, Cuba and lived most of his life in Cuba.

   20. CWChris Williamson3:02

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JKJohn Kiriakou3:03

       But, uh, yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson3:04

       He could give-

   23. JKJohn Kiriakou3:05

       Until, until Snowden, Agee was number one.

   24. CWChris Williamson3:07

       He could give Andrew Tate some advice. I think he needs to flee to-

   25. JKJohn Kiriakou3:09

       Seriously, Andrew Tate. At least if you're gonna get caught, don't be got-- don't be caught wearing those silly clothes.

   26. CWChris Williamson3:15

       Well, I, I think he was actually, uh, the reason that he was taken away was for crimes against fashion. Um-

   27. JKJohn Kiriakou3:22

       There you go.

   28. CWChris Williamson3:22

       Yeah.

   29. JKJohn Kiriakou3:22

       That, that actually makes sense to me.

   30. CWChris Williamson3:24

       Correct.

3. 3:25 – 11:32

   Who Really Controls America?

   1. CWChris Williamson3:25

      Yeah. How much is... Speaking-- So President, CIA, how much oversight does the president have over the CIA? How compartmentalized are those two things?

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou3:33

      Well, you know, that's, that's an issue that is debated. It, it shouldn't be, because the president should be the definitive word, and the, the president's not the definitive word because, because there really is such a thing as the deep state. W- And I say this all the time. You don't have to call it the deep state. You can call it the federal bureaucracy.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:58

      Mm.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou3:58

      You can call it the state, whatever you want. But the fact is that it exists, and presidents come and go every four years or every eight years. And the deep state, you're there for twenty-five years, thirty, thirty-five years.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:12

      Mm.

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou4:13

      I used to sit next to a guy who is now one of the, you know, top four or five officers. He's been there for thirty-seven years. So they know that if a, a president orders them to do something they don't wanna do, they just say, "Yes, Mr. President," and then they ignore him.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:29

      It must feel a lot like, uh, being a hotelier and having guests that come and go, uh, m- medium-stay guests-

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou4:37

      Yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson4:37

      ... compared with you-

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou4:38

       Right

   11. CWChris Williamson4:38

       ... who's been there for decades.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou4:39

       You're there forever. Uh-huh. That's exactly right. And there's a bigger problem too, um, and it's the, the lack of congressional oversight. Between... Well, starting in nineteen seventy-five, the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House, they transformed into oversight committees, so it became... The Church Committee became the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Pike Committee became the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. But the thing is, is how, how does a staff of forty, fifty people oversee an organization of twenty, thirty, forty thousand people?

   13. CWChris Williamson5:17

       Mm-hmm. That's how many are in the CIA.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou5:19

       You can't. Well, the number's classified, um, and my information's so old. I, I don't know how many people, but it's gotta be a lot more than it was when I was there. So how do you oversee that huge of a bureaucracy? You can't.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:32

       Mm.

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou5:32

       And you rely on self-reporting, and I'll give you an example. Um, and this was not unusual in any way. I was involved in an operation that at the very end went bad, and when an operation goes bad and a life is lost, you have to report it to Congress, to the congressional oversight committees. I was with the station chief. We were driving back to our office, and he says to me- You're gonna write the cable?" And I said, "Yep, I'm gonna write the cable." And he said, "Yeah. Listen, um, don't send that to Congress." And I said, "Yeah?" And he said, "No, don't, don't send it to Congress." And that was not unusual. Like, "Oh, Congress has enough to worry about. They're working on the budget right now. We don't wanna just throw this wrench into the works by telling them we just lost a source."

   17. CWChris Williamson6:32

       Hmm.

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou6:33

       And I said, "Okay, well, you're the boss." And so I didn't report it to Congress.

   19. CWChris Williamson6:37

       Does that make the CIA a kind of shadow government?

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou6:40

       Oh, yeah. I think that's very much what it is. Yes.

   21. CWChris Williamson6:45

       So who is really controlling what happens behind the scenes in America?

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou6:49

       It's that layer right below the political appointees. So it's that layer right below the director and deputy director of the CIA, the secretary and deputy secretary of state-

   23. CWChris Williamson7:02

       Hmm

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou7:02

       ... secretary and deputy secretary of defense.

   25. CWChris Williamson7:04

       Hmm.

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou7:04

       Mm-hmm. It's, it's those, it's those career government bureaucrats that aren't going anywhere.

   27. CWChris Williamson7:13

       Hmm. I'm gonna make an analogy between the CIA and running nightclubs, and I'm gonna try and see if I can bring this into land. So, uh, I ran events for a very long time in the north of the UK, and I had this very big events company, and one of the things that the managers of the nightclub wanted to see were the owners of the events company standing on the front door next to them. Where you'd stand is typically on the door, make sure that the queue's moving nicely, that the door staff aren't beating anybody up, people are paying the right amount at the till, et cetera, et cetera. Pop your head downstairs, is everything going all right inside? Outside is where the action is. And one of the things that was interesting, you would assume, well, if you're the owner, you have this more salubrious, uh, like, you know, opulent... You, you just sit in the car or go for a coffee or, you know, don't even leave. Like, it's one in the morning and it's cold in the northeast of the UK. Why do you even need to be there? Like, you're functionally not doing anything. All of the action is happening downstairs. All of the managers that work for me and my business partner, they're the ones that actually know everyone that's going in. By this point, I was 24, 25, 26, 27. Most of the people that were in the club were 19.

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou8:14

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson8:14

       But what we found was that in other events companies who decided-- had less of a puritan work ethic than me and my business partner did, when the owners started to leave the front door, the managers for the events company and the manager of the venue would start to develop a tighter relationship. And I think that we usually assume-

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou8:36

       Yeah
4. 11:32 – 15:26

   Inside the CIA’s Levels of Security

   1. CWChris Williamson11:33

      What are the levels of security?

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou11:36

      Classification? So it starts with unclassified. The, the New York Times is unclassified. Everybody can see it. Then there's something called sensitive but unclassified. So it's usually, like, an internal memo or something. You know, uh, the, the, uh, this-- the, the Dunkin' Donuts in the CIA cafeteria is gonna close for two weeks for renovation. It's sensitive 'cause it's inside the CIA, but it's unclassified. Then there's confidential. Most of what the, uh, State Department does is confidential, where If it's exposed, it would be embarrassing to the federal government. Not dangerous, but it would be embarrassing. Then there's secret. Revelation of secret information would cause serious damage to the national security.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:30

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou12:30

      Then there's top secret. Revelation of that information would cause grave damage to the national security. That's the terminology in the, in the espionage law.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:39

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou12:40

      But then there are compartments, dozens and dozens of compartments that are in addition to top secret. For example, when you get hired by the CIA, you don't just get a top secret security clearance. You go in with what's called a TS/SCI/SITK gamma clearance. So-

   7. CWChris Williamson12:58

      What the fuck? [laughs]

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou12:58

      I know. It's crazy. So it's top secret, special intelligence, meaning you're allowed to see, uh, NSA reporting. Uh, and the compartments are talent, keyhole, and then gamma is above talent and keyhole. I remember laughing out loud in the first classified briefing I ever participated in because the guy starts the briefing off by saying, "The word ZARF when standing alone is unclassified." And I laughed out loud like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" ZARF is a compartment that is no longer used at NSA, where they say, "We have top secret information. You can see it, but he can't because it's top secret ZARF." What the heck does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. And then he's telling us, "You can say the word ZARF, but you can't say what ZARF is."

   9. CWChris Williamson13:57

      Right. Fantastic.

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou13:58

       [laughs]

   11. CWChris Williamson13:59

       And then, so that's-- What's the, what's the-

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou14:01

       So dumb

   13. CWChris Williamson14:01

       ... gamma is the highest?

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou14:03

       Um, on sort of a day-to-day basis, gamma's the highest. So if I, if I'm a CIA analyst, let's say, and I'm, I'm getting all source intelligence and, and I'm giving a briefing, and I'm gonna go to some, you know, I'll go to Central Command to give a briefing. The guys who have the highest level security clearances are gonna be up to gamma.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:23

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou14:23

       So I can talk about gamma. Gamma's gonna be sensitive to the point where, let's say it is, uh, you know, we've intercepted the cell phone of some foreign leader. That's, that's gonna be gamma 'cause it's particularly sensitive.

   17. CWChris Williamson14:35

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou14:36

       But then there's a lot above gamma. Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson14:39

       Do you know what they're called?

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou14:40

       Oh, sometimes they'll, they'll come and go in a matter of months, depending on the operation.

   21. CWChris Williamson14:45

       Like ZARF.

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou14:46

       Yeah, like ZARF. ZARF was around, though, for a long time. It was from, like, the '50s. But, um, let's say, um, let's say there's a specific operation. We're gonna, we're gonna try to locate, you know, the Ayatollah of Iran, and so we have, we have access to a certain, you know, electronic-

   23. CWChris Williamson15:09

       Mm-hmm

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou15:09

       ... in. His cell phone or the cell phone of a bodyguard or whatever. That could be, you know, top secret SITK gamma Jelly Jar.

   25. CWChris Williamson15:20

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou15:21

       I'm just making that up.

   27. CWChris Williamson15:22

       Yep. Yep.

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou15:22

       Uh, the, the code names are computer-generated at random.

   29. CWChris Williamson15:25

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou15:25

       So you

5. 15:26 – 16:44

   The CIA’s Most Classified Operations

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou15:26

      never know what they're gonna be.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:26

      Can you, can you think of a hypothetical situation that would be the most high security that you can think of?

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou15:35

      Oh, yeah. Pretty much anything that DARPA does, the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency. DARPA is working on things that you and I see only in science fiction movies. That's why so many people believe that, that the UFOs that we've been seeing all these years are not actually UFOs. They're experimental DARPA aircraft.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:02

      Hmm.

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou16:02

      Or the Chinese version of DARPA-

   6. CWChris Williamson16:04

      Hmm

   7. JKJohn Kiriakou16:04

      ... or something like that. But DARPA's so h- The work that DARPA does is so highly classified, I never met a CIA officer that had access to it.

   8. CWChris Williamson16:13

      Do you think the president even knows about that stuff?

   9. JKJohn Kiriakou16:16

      I think that if he asked, he would be read into the compartment and told.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:21

       Hmm.

   11. JKJohn Kiriakou16:21

       But I think on a daily basis, probably not.

   12. CWChris Williamson16:23

       So does he have... Is it right to say that the president is the person who, if they wanted to, could get access to the most information across the board generally?

   13. JKJohn Kiriakou16:32

       The, the only person.

   14. CWChris Williamson16:34

       Right.

   15. JKJohn Kiriakou16:34

       Yeah. And he's also the only person in government that can just declassify literally anything he wants with a stroke of a pen.

   16. CWChris Williamson16:39

       Including gamma, ZARF.

   17. JKJohn Kiriakou16:41

       All of it.

   18. CWChris Williamson16:42

       Jelly Jar. Right. Okay.

6. 16:44 – 17:54

   Do the CIA Classify Embarrassing Information?

   1. CWChris Williamson16:44

      Uh, do you think they, they abuse classification to hide embarrassing things?

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou16:50

      Hundred percent, yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:52

      How much of it needs to be classified, that stuff?

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou16:55

      There's a guy named J. William, J. William... I forget his name. Anyway, there's a guy who was the classification czar-

   5. CWChris Williamson17:05

      [laughs]

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou17:06

      ... under George W. Bush, and now he has become an anti-classification activist.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:12

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou17:13

      His position is that fully three-quarters of classified documents ought not be classified.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:21

      Politically inconvenient, personally revealing-

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou17:24

       Plus, the fact-

   11. CWChris Williamson17:24

       ... embarrassing.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou17:25

       Yeah. The White House and the Pentagon especially leak like sieves, but they're almost always authorized leaks. Like, you'll leak something for a political purpose. You'll leak something to embarrass a foreign leader. You leak, you leak something to try to get a sense of where the public might be on a, on an issue.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:43

       Hmm.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou17:43

       Well, the, uh, I mean, technically, that's all a violation of the Espionage Act. You can't leak information like that. But they do it literally every single day. Every day.

7. 17:54 – 20:37

   Could Big Tech Become More Powerful Than the CIA?

   1. CWChris Williamson17:54

      Federal judge just approved the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou17:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson17:58

      Larry Ellison's Oracle helps to secure TikTok's USA data and their algorithm, and then his son, David, runs Paramount, including CBS News.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou18:06

      Pretty convenient, isn't it?

   5. CWChris Williamson18:07

      Oracle's name-

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou18:09

      Yeah

   7. CWChris Williamson18:09

      ... actually comes from the CIA project that its founders worked on.

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou18:12

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:12

      Do you think that private data-

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou18:15

       Oh

   11. CWChris Williamson18:15

       ... and media companies could potentially become as powerful as an intelligence agency?

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou18:20

       Oh, I think it already is And, and I'll tell you what makes it worse too. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, uh, the CIA sought from Congress a waiver allowing it to invest in tech startups. Unprecedented in American history, right? As a government, you can't act as, as, uh, you know, a private investor, as an angel investor-

   13. CWChris Williamson18:47

       What if you get great returns?

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou18:48

       The CIA did, and they did. The CIA was the very first investor in Palantir.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:54

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou18:54

       And Palantir now is a global security software, uh, concern, to the point where there's credible information indicating that it's, it's infiltrated governments around the world. I was just in Sweden a couple of weeks ago, and there's this huge national debate in Sweden-

   17. CWChris Williamson19:13

       Hmm, hmm

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou19:14

       ... about whether or not to use Palantir to, um, to install and maintain their governmental security databases.

   19. CWChris Williamson19:24

       Hmm.

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou19:24

       And Palantir got the contract. So, I mean, do we trust Palantir not to just feed everything to NSA and CIA? I don't. I worked there for 15 years.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:34

       Hmm.

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou19:35

       I know how it works. Literally everything is going to NSA and CIA.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:40

       A quick aside, if you've wanted an Eight Sleep but could never quite justify the price, things just got very interesting. They've somehow managed to make it significantly better and cheaper at the same time. Introducing the brand-new Pod 6. It's now fifty percent smaller, meaning it fits under most bed frames, and there are nine times more sensors built into it. Despite all of these upgrades, the Pod 6 now starts at just one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars, the lowest starting price Eight Sleep has ever offered. Best of all, for the first time, Eight Sleep has introduced solo sizes, including single side options for queen, king, and California King beds, and they've got a thirty-day sleep trial, so you can buy it and sleep on it for twenty-nine nights. And if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally, so don't be scared by the currency amount. Right now, you can get up to three hundred and fifty dollars off the Pod 6 by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's E-I-G-H-T sleep.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout.

8. 20:37 – 25:54

   Is the CIA Spying on American Citizens?

   1. CWChris Williamson20:37

      Is there a philosophical justification for having an organization like that which gives your home countries and the country of its origins national security competitive advantage?

   2. JKJohn Kiriakou20:51

      That's the bottom line, and I would say of course. For example, when Ed Snowden went public with his revelations in June of twenty thirteen, one of the things that the, that the press really seized on was the fact that NSA was intercepting Angela Merkel's cell phone. Okay, I want NSA to intercept Angela Merkel's cell phone.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:12

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JKJohn Kiriakou21:12

      I wanna know what the German trade positions are. I wanna know what the Germans are saying about the United States, right? I don't want the CIA and NSA to spy on me.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:23

      Hmm.

   6. JKJohn Kiriakou21:24

      It's a part of NSA's charter, its founding charter, that it is forbidden from collecting data on American citizens. Same with the CIA. It is patently illegal for the CIA to collect information on Americans, yet they both do that every single day.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:41

      Do you think that companies like Flock, which there's a lot of controversy around at the moment, are private companies being used to get around surveillant protections that are meant to restrain the government by just getting private organizations-

   8. JKJohn Kiriakou21:55

      Oh, yeah

   9. CWChris Williamson21:55

      ... to do it on their behalf?

   10. JKJohn Kiriakou21:56

       Oh, yeah. And, and 9/11 changed, changed that in a terrible way where, you know, until 9/11, if the FBI, for example, wanted to investigate you, they would have to go to a federal judge and say, "We want to investigate Chris because of these four reasons," and then the judge would sign, you know, a warrant. Now all they have to do, literally all they have to do is write up a letter called a national security letter, take it to your service providers and say, "Give us everything that you have," and you are forbidden by the Patriot Act from even telling anybody that we gave you this letter.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:33

       Hmm.

   12. JKJohn Kiriakou22:34

       What do you do? How do you defend yourself? You can't.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:37

       Hmm.

   14. JKJohn Kiriakou22:37

       You don't even know you're being investigated, and there's no judge to say, "Wait a minute, guys, you're going too far here." There, there is no safety.

   15. CWChris Williamson22:49

       Where do you come in to land on private companies that develop technology that can be beneficial for a country and the inevitable relationship that's gonna come along? Like, I've spent time with Palmer Luckey, what he's trying to do with Anduril. Like, I mean, what's the tagline of that? Fight unfair.

   16. JKJohn Kiriakou23:07

       Yeah. [laughs] Isn't that great?

   17. CWChris Williamson23:09

       I, I want a clever guy, a clever guy that's on my side with a gun-

   18. JKJohn Kiriakou23:12

       Yeah

   19. CWChris Williamson23:12

       ... as opposed to a clever guy that's on their side with a gun. And I understand that the issue is, well, if that gun is, uh, distributed around this country enough, then it can be used to enforce me.

   20. JKJohn Kiriakou23:24

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson23:24

       I am in the closest proximity to the gun. Hopefully, for a long time, I shouldn't be the person that's on the receiving end of it. But, uh, there is a risk. It-- This kind of feels a little bit like, uh, the organizational, uh, geopolitical systemic equivalent of the debate that British people have around Americans having guns full stop.

   22. JKJohn Kiriakou23:43

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson23:43

       That, hey, yeah, it's great that you can defend yourself with it, but also you can be on the receiving end of it.

   24. JKJohn Kiriakou23:48

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson23:48

       Uh, how do you square that circle in a, a country like this where organizations can do it, and if you don't decide to embed them with the government, they just go to the highest bidder, which might not actually be you? Is it not better to have eyes inside of that than it is to let it just be a free-for-all?

   26. JKJohn Kiriakou24:02

       Sure. In a perfect world, yes. And that's why we need such robust oversight in this, in this area. I'm a firm believer in the rule of law. I really am. And so if, uh... Why are you smiling? [laughs]

   27. CWChris Williamson24:16

       Uh, th-this thought that came across... I-I'm sorry. My fa- my face betrays what I think inside of my head. Um- What I thought inside my head is the law-

   28. JKJohn Kiriakou24:25

       I'm with you there anyway

   29. CWChris Williamson24:25

       ... the, the, the law can be fucked with to just make it whatever you want.

   30. JKJohn Kiriakou24:28

       And, and, and that's the point I was gonna make. That's why we need, we need the real force of law. We, we, we can't just change the law just to suit the whims of, of the political winds.
9. 25:54 – 30:53

   Why We Should Be Worried About China

   1. JKJohn Kiriakou25:54

      serious about it.

   2. CWChris Williamson25:55

      Geopolitical climate's pretty chaotic at the moment.

   3. JKJohn Kiriakou25:57

      It is.

   4. CWChris Williamson25:58

      Who are you most worried about, foreign nation state, being an American?

   5. JKJohn Kiriakou26:01

      China. That's an easy one for me. Um, the Chinese... First of all, the Chinese do not have a history of imperialism. They just don't. They don't invade other countries. They never have. I mean, sure, we can make an argument about Tibet, but that's, that's a separate argument. But except for, you know, a brief conflict with North Vietnam back in the day, uh, and two border skirmishes with the Indians, the Chinese just don't attack other countries. They purchase them. They co-opt them. They... There was a, there was a headline on The Onion a couple of weeks ago that was funny because it was so true. It, it said, "China content to sit back and watch US destroy itself."

   6. CWChris Williamson26:52

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JKJohn Kiriakou26:53

      Because that's what we're doing. When we're spending between one and one and a half trillion dollars a year on the defense budget, and the Chinese aren't. We're spending more than the next eight largest countries combined.

   8. CWChris Williamson27:09

      Is it being spent effectively?

   9. JKJohn Kiriakou27:10

      No, it's not.

   10. CWChris Williamson27:11

       What's it mostly being wasted on?

   11. JKJohn Kiriakou27:13

       I think it's being wasted on 144... What it... Or n- no, 210 bases in 144 different countries, number one. Um, I think that it's being wasted on the development of inefficient and inappropriate weapon systems, like the F-35. Nobody wanted the F-35.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:33

       Why?

   13. JKJohn Kiriakou27:34

       Because you can't have a one-size-fits-all aircraft when one size can never fit all. And then we phase out the A-10. Everybody loved the A-10. The A, the A-10 can go so low that you can practically reach up and touch it as it's firing a missile to destroy a tank. The F-35 can't do that.

   14. CWChris Williamson27:54

       Hmm.

   15. JKJohn Kiriakou27:55

       So in the meantime, the Chinese have enough money to buy ports and airports and factories and desalination plants and anything their hearts desire in countries all around the world.

   16. CWChris Williamson28:08

       Because they're not spending as much.

   17. JKJohn Kiriakou28:10

       They're not spending it on, on implements of war.

   18. CWChris Williamson28:12

       Does that not make them more vulnerable, though?

   19. JKJohn Kiriakou28:14

       I don't think so. It buys them friends, it tends to isolate the United States, and it frees up cash.

   20. CWChris Williamson28:22

       They're flexing economic power.

   21. JKJohn Kiriakou28:23

       They are. And then they can use that free cash to promote the development of new technologies that they can use against us.

   22. CWChris Williamson28:32

       What is the end goal of China?

   23. JKJohn Kiriakou28:34

       Oh, I think the end goal of China is exactly what the American goal toward the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. It's, it's containment and isolation, hoping that the US will eventually collapse on itself. You know, this year, uh, we crossed the national debt, uh, border... What's the word I want to use? Of $40 trillion.

   24. CWChris Williamson28:59

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JKJohn Kiriakou29:00

       So now the, the number one expenditure in government is defense, and the number two is interest on the national debt.

   26. CWChris Williamson29:06

       Mm. Mm-hmm. I once... I did an episode with the, uh, the first long-form episode with any Dogepointee, and, uh, it's-

   27. JKJohn Kiriakou29:13

       Wow

   28. CWChris Williamson29:13

       ... a g- guy called Sam Corcos. He used to be at Levels, which is a glucose monitor.

   29. JKJohn Kiriakou29:18

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson29:18

       And he is now the chief information officer at the Treasury.
10. 30:53 – 39:50

    How Foreign Spies Infiltrate the US Government

    1. CWChris Williamson30:53

       How many spies do you think are in the CIA and US government right now?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou30:57

       God, I hope the answer is zero. I mean, we wouldn't have a counterintelligence center if it really were zero. Uh, it's impossible to say. I guess it-

    3. CWChris Williamson31:06

       Is it, is it easier to ask how many departments haven't been infiltrated by foreign intelligence than how many have?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou31:11

       Yeah. But now you're gonna get me on my high horse. Um, I think the, the greatest threat, the greatest immediate threat in terms of infiltrating the government, like today, right now, is Israel.

    5. CWChris Williamson31:27

       Would they be doing that covertly or overtly?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou31:29

       Covertly. They're being co-located in this new National Defense Authorization Act, uh, co-located in the Pentagon and in the CIA. But I mean, as long as 35 years ago, there were... The FBI was able to identify 187 undercover Israeli intelligence operatives infiltrating or having infiltrated American defense contractors around the country. Just three weeks ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency director sent an all-hands email to every officer in DIA saying, "Be particularly aware, the Israelis have really ramped up their intelligence operations against us, and they're trying to infiltrate DIA."

    7. CWChris Williamson32:12

       How-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou32:12

       That was three weeks ago

    9. CWChris Williamson32:13

       ... how does a foreign nation get a spy inside of US circles of power? What's, what are some of the routes in?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou32:20

        It's called the asset acquisition cycle, and it's four parts. Spot, assess, develop, recruit. So I spot you. "Who are you? Oh, you work for DIA. I'm gonna wanna get to know you." I assess you. I assess your access to information that I want. If I determine that you do have access to information I want, then I begin to develop you. In the development, uh, portion of this, I have to identify a vulnerability, and a vulnerability might be an easy one, like you're a gambler and you have a lot of debt, but it might be something more difficult, like you really, really love your wife and maybe she has breast cancer, or you really love your kids, but you don't make enough money for them to go to a top-tier school. I can pay for them to go to a top-tier school.

    11. CWChris Williamson33:09

        Hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou33:10

        And then finally, when you test the person and they're willing to give you information in exchange for something, usually money, then you make it official and you recruit them.

    13. CWChris Williamson33:22

        So most of the foreign assets that are inside of the US government are not foreign nationals.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou33:29

        No.

    15. CWChris Williamson33:29

        They're probably not people that even started... How many people do you think began their career inside of the CIA, National Defense, US government under the pretense of doing it on-

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou33:41

        Uh

    17. CWChris Williamson33:41

        ... behalf?

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou33:42

        I would-

    19. CWChris Williamson33:42

        And how many have been turned?

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou33:43

        I, I feel pretty comfortable saying it's probably zero.

    21. CWChris Williamson33:47

        Really?

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou33:47

        Probably. Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson33:48

        That they wouldn't have said, "Hey, let's get this person started from fresh. Get them into university."

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou33:53

        No. The, the Soviets had great success doing that in the UK. Um, y- the, the likes of, um, um, oh, for heaven's sake, w- uh, f- Kim Philby, for example, and the Cambridge-

    25. CWChris Williamson34:08

        Get that, have two massive sips of that, and I promise you-

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou34:10

        [laughs]

    27. CWChris Williamson34:10

        ... your brain will start functioning for... It's gonna, gonna... Uh, Kim Philby.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou34:14

        Kim Philby and, uh, and his cohorts at, uh, Cambridge, they were recruited at university and-

    29. CWChris Williamson34:21

        Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou34:22

        ... directed.
11. 39:50 – 43:18

    What Will CIA Whistleblowers Be Leaking in 10 Years?

    1. CWChris Williamson39:51

       I saw a, a comment on one of your reels that said, "Fun fact, without him, US torture would probably still be just a conspiracy theory." Given that you went to prison for revealing CIA secrets, what secrets do you think whistleblowers from inside the CIA might be leaking in 10 years' time?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou40:09

       Oh, man, that's a good question. Nobody's ever asked me that question before. On the fun side, you know, maybe we'll finally get to the bottom of this UFO thing. I think that would be fascinating. On the serious side, I, I really fear the, the infiltration of technology companies in our everyday lives. I, I really believe that our civil liberties are being violated every single day by tech companies, and either the government denies it or we just pretend it's not happening. But I think, I think there are going to be whistleblowers in the future that come out and explain to us, explain to the American people just how deeply infiltrated our lives are.

    3. CWChris Williamson41:01

       Give me some examples of what it might be. Postulate for me.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou41:04

       Okay. I'll postulate going back to the 1970s. My first boss at the, uh, at the CIA, lovely, wonderful guy. He joined the CIA through something called the graduate, uh, the graduate program, so it was for people working... Uh, the graduate fellowship program, people working on master's degrees. You do a semester at the CIA, then you do a semester in school, a semester at the CIA, a semester at school, and then you join the CIA as a staff officer. So his very first assignment at the CIA was in the Counter Intelligence Center of James Angleton.

    5. CWChris Williamson41:39

       Hmm.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou41:41

       He was a kid in his 20s, so he wasn't important enough to actually meet Angleton. So on his very first day, Angleton's secretary took him aside and showed him around the office and said, "Listen, in the unlikely event that you find yourself in the office alone, don't ever look at these files that are on the wall. Those are off limits to you." He said, "Okay." And of course, the moment he's alone in the office-

    7. CWChris Williamson42:10

       It's like the marsh-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou42:10

       ... he runs directly to the files.

    9. CWChris Williamson42:11

       It's the marshmallow test for intelligence officers.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou42:13

        Exactly.

    11. CWChris Williamson42:13

        Yeah.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou42:13

        Exactly. Don't eat that.

    13. CWChris Williamson42:15

        Yeah.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou42:15

        Don't eat that marshmallow.

    15. CWChris Williamson42:16

        Yeah.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou42:17

        He told me that there were thousands of manila folders on the, on the wall, and that every single one of those folders was a file on an American citizen. Well, those files are all electronic now, and as I said, there are no court orders allowing the CIA, NSA, FBI to just wantonly collect information on Americans. Somebody said to me the other day- Um, well, if you have nothing to hide, then what do you care if they're gathering your information?

    17. CWChris Williamson42:52

        Mm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou42:52

        And my response was, "Do you know who first posed that question in a public forum? It was Joseph Goebbels in 1933."

    19. CWChris Williamson43:00

        Yeah.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou43:00

        "Well, if you have nothing to hide, what do you care if the SS is gathering information or if the Gestapo is gathering information?" It's a slippery slope, and once we just concede our civil liberties to the federal government, to any government, then we lose

12. 43:18 – 47:51

    Is Mass Surveillance the Price of Safety?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou43:18

       everything.

    2. CWChris Williamson43:18

       How infiltrated do you think our technology is now?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou43:21

       By?

    4. CWChris Williamson43:22

       Surveillance, any kind of surveillance.

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou43:24

       Oh, I think it's... They're working hand in glove, government and, uh, and private industry. I think it's completely, completely infiltrated.

    6. CWChris Williamson43:31

       TVs, phones.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou43:33

       Everything. We know thanks to the Vault 7, uh, revelations, uh-

    8. CWChris Williamson43:37

       I know what that is

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou43:37

       ... Vault 7. In, in 2017, uh, WikiLeaks published thousands and thousands of documents classified far above top secret that were allegedly leaked by a CIA engineer by the name of Joshua Schulte. Uh, Joshua Schulte made the very, um, ill-advised decision to represent himself in court and is now serving a sentence of 40 years without parole. He'll likely die in prison. But he released, allegedly released these documents indicating, for example, that the CIA can take control of your car remotely. Why? To send you over a bridge or to send you into a tree or into a bridge abutment. Um, he released information indicating that the CIA had successfully hacked into the classified systems of our allies and then left code behind, but the code was written either in Cyrillic or in Farsi.

    10. CWChris Williamson44:43

        [laughs]

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou44:44

        He said that the CIA had developed technology to take over smart TVs, where they could turn a speaker into a microphone. How is that even possible? But the CIA is able to do it so that they can tap a room with the TV still being off.

    12. CWChris Williamson45:03

        Uh-huh.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou45:05

        There are thousands of documents, all freely available now on the WikiLeaks website. Um, these are documents that the CIA director at the time called the crown jewel of everything that the CIA was doing.

    14. CWChris Williamson45:21

        Nearly a third of Gen Z favors the government installing surveillance cameras in homes. Cato Institute 2023 Central Bank Digital Currency National Survey, 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity. Not surprisingly, few Americans, only 14%, support this idea. 75% would oppose government surveillance cameras inside the home, including 68% who strongly oppose, and 10% don't have an opinion either way. This is presumably across the top. And then if we go down, I imagine they're gonna break this out by age. Three in 10 support-

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou45:58

        Good Lord

    16. CWChris Williamson45:59

        ... There it is. Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce those things? And, uh, yeah, that age, 30% under 30, basically. 30% under 30. And the justification for this or the reason for this, I think, is that generation has grown up with the trade that, well, I give my data to Facebook and Apple and these-

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou46:28

        Mm-hmm

    18. CWChris Williamson46:28

        ... companies online, and for it, in return, I get services and stuff. So the means of exchange-

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou46:37

        Mm-hmm

    20. CWChris Williamson46:37

        ... the expected-

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou46:38

        In their minds, there's a quid pro quo

    22. CWChris Williamson46:40

        ... And that's just, that's how I've grown up. Yeah, like that's... And already, I mean, part of it might be a kind of informational nihilism, like confidentiality fatalism, where it's like, "Dude, they've fucking... They've got it all already. Like, why not just put, you know, turn the camera on inside?"

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou46:54

        But then you have to ask yourself, though, what if you've got a secret boyfriend or girlfriend? What if you're calling the doctor to talk about, you know, oh, maybe, uh, maybe you've got herpes or something?

    24. CWChris Williamson47:08

        My chronic flatulence is-

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou47:10

        Yeah, right. Exactly. What if you're, you know, calling an abortion provider? What if you need to get in touch with a psychiatrist?

    26. CWChris Williamson47:19

        Hmm.

    27. JKJohn Kiriakou47:19

        Like, is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing private? Are we not entitled to any privacy in our own lives? That number shocks and sickens me, to tell you the truth.

    28. CWChris Williamson47:33

        Yeah. I mean, I wonder whether it's gonna get better or worse. There is always the... There is the potential of that continuing and that sort of being passed down generation to generation or having some sort of a, a countervailing-

    29. JKJohn Kiriakou47:48

        Mm-hmm

    30. CWChris Williamson47:48

        ... revolution that goes against it.
13. 47:51 – 58:45

    Is Brainwashing Real?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou47:52

       Mm-hmm.

    2. CWChris Williamson47:52

       Is brainwashing real? Like, what's true and fake about that idea?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou47:58

       Operationally, yeah. I mean, the CIA, the KGB, the Chinese, the North Koreans, they worked on brainwashing operations going back to the early 1950s. You know, this whole notion of a Manchurian candidate, for example, this was based on, on fact, on truth. There was a... In the early 1950s, there was a source inside the Soviet Union that the CIA recorded-- uh, sorry, that the CIA recruited, um, and the source reported that the KGB was working on, um, on a brainwash- washing operation, something that would even allow them to control somebody remotely from a long distance. The CIA panicked at the notion. The truth is that there was no such KGB operation. There was a Chinese operation, but there was nothing that the KGB was doing. So- The CIA decided it was behind the eight ball. It had to play catch up, and it then created and implemented what became known as MKUltra. So MKUltra ran from 1952 to 1975. It was a complete and utter failure. It resulted in the deaths of, you know, a number of people. We'll never know what the real number was, where the CIA was dosing its own employees with LSD. It was dosing people in San Francisco with LSD and, and pumping germs into the air to see who got upper respiratory infections. A CIA officer broke into a village bakery in, in a little village in France and put LSD in the, in the bakery's, uh, flour one morning, and everybody in the-- literally everybody in the village, when they ate their bread that morning, went nuts on an LSD trip. And then they're like, "Okay, so what do we do with this information now? We have people jumping off, you know, roofs and jumping off balconies. What do we do with this?"

    4. CWChris Williamson49:53

       You call MKUltra a failure?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou49:54

       Oh, yeah, it was a failure.

    6. CWChris Williamson49:56

       Hmm.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou49:56

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson49:56

       So it didn't-- Not only was it damaging, but it also didn't achieve anything.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou50:00

       Literally nothing.

    10. CWChris Williamson50:01

        I've had... Do you know John Lyle? You familiar with him? He wrote "The Dirty Tricks Department," and he also wrote-

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou50:06

        Ah.

    12. CWChris Williamson50:06

        He's done a lot of, um, research. He's here at, uh, i-in Austin, and he goes into the National Archives, and the most ground-floor research of anybody that I know around this, and he's written two books on it, and he's, he's really, really great. And, uh, yeah, that was kind of his, uh, summary as well. It's like-

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou50:22

        You know, one of the real shames about this whole thing is in 1975, at the Church Committee, Senator Church told the CIA director, "Do not destroy the documents." And he went straight back to headquarters and told people, "Shred everything." 15% of the documents survived.

    14. CWChris Williamson50:42

        So that's what we know.

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou50:43

        That's all we know, 15%.

    16. CWChris Williamson50:45

        Hmm. Okay. That would suggest brainwashing isn't real.

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou50:49

        Right. It could. Uh, I, I believe that they tried, they tried to do it, and it, and it failed.

    18. CWChris Williamson50:56

        Right.

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou50:57

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson50:58

        We've got new technology now-

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou50:59

        Yeah

    22. CWChris Williamson50:59

        ... new substances, more advanced understanding of human behavior.

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou51:02

        Everything's changed.

    24. CWChris Williamson51:04

        Do you think that's unlocked some new capacities?

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou51:07

        Oh, probably. Probably.

    26. CWChris Williamson51:09

        Hmm.

    27. JKJohn Kiriakou51:10

        I'll tell you kind of a funny story I've told once or twice in podcasts. Something that I witnessed at the CIA that I had never seen before and I've never seen since, it was absolutely fascinating to me. In April of, uh, 2000, my next-door neighbor was assassinated in Athens. He was the British defense attaché, Brigadier General Stephen Saunders, and he was shot and killed by an assassin for a group called Revolutionary Organization 17 November. It's, it's kind of a long story, and I'll, I'll skip the, the, the m-most of it. Several months after the assassination, we had what's called a walk-in. A walk-in is somebody who literally walks into an American embassy and says, "I have intelligence information that I want to give to a CIA officer." It just so happened that day that nobody was available.

    28. CWChris Williamson52:01

        Hmm.

    29. JKJohn Kiriakou52:02

        And so an FBI agent in the embassy took the walk-in. She assessed that he was a nut, and she said, "Thank you very much," and sent him on his way, and then she wrote up a little memo and sent it to us. We were fascinated by it.

    30. CWChris Williamson52:16

        Hmm.
14. 58:45 – 1:03:30

    The Chicken Farmer Who Brought Down Hitler

    1. CWChris Williamson58:45

       You know the story of the chicken farmer that brought down Adolf Hitler?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou58:48

       [chuckles] No.

    3. CWChris Williamson58:49

       Okay, Mark, can you just search, uh, ChatGPT, um, who was the chicken farmer that brought down Adolf Hitler? So I'm pretty sure it was, uh, uh, Juan Pujol, Sa- a Spanish guy, and he knew that he was going to be able to help the Allies. Uh, so he walked into one of the embassies, and they said, "We don't need you. We can't help you. You're a chicken farmer." This guy... And he had some information, or maybe he knew that he could get some. And he goes back again, and they say no. And he goes back a third time, and they say no. And he goes, "Fuck it," walks into the opposite, walks into the German one or the Italian one perhaps, and spends a couple of years infiltrating them. You're thinking of, uh, Juan Pujol Garcia, better known by his British code name Agent Garbo. His story's remarkable because he essentially talked his way into becoming a spy despite having no es- espionage. Pujol was a, a Spaniard who trained at the Royal Poultry School-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou59:46

       Oh my God

    5. CWChris Williamson59:46

       ... unsuccessfully tried his hand at chicken farm-- He was an unsuccessful chicken farmer. Sorry, I'd, I'd, I'd, uh, fleshed out his credentials too much. [inhales] Lived through the Spanish Civil War, disliked, disliked both fascism and communism, and developed an intense hatred of Hitler and Nazism. He later described his motivation as wanting to wage his own personal war against Hitler using his imagination. The crazy part is how he got the job. He and his wife initially approached the British and offered their services as a spy. The British rejected him. Rather than give up, Pujol decided he would make himself valuable enough that Britain couldn't ignore him. So he called the German Embassy in Madrid and volunteered to spy for the Nazis. He pretended to be an enthusiastic Nazi supporter with connections that would allow him to travel to Britain. The Germans were skeptical, so Pujol forged documentation to make himself appear credible. Eventually, German intelligence recruited him, gave him money, secret codes in invisible ink, and instructed him to establish an espionage network in Britain, except he didn't go to Britain. He moved to Lisbon and began pretending he was operating from London using newspapers, magazines, maps, travel guides, and his imagination. He sent the Germans intelligence reports supposedly gathered by an expanding network of informants. The network eventually contained 27 agents, none of whom existed. He invented personalities, jobs, relationships, and entire backstories for them. If one of his reports turned out to be wrong, he could conveniently blame the imaginary subordinate who had supplied the information. The Germans became convinced that Pujol was running an emo- enormous intelligence operation inside Britain, and that's when British intelligence finally started to notice him. MI5 initially intercepted his reports and thought there was an unidentified German spy operating in Britain. Eventually, they discovered what Pujol was doing and realized this seemingly crazy Spaniard was extraordinarily talented. 1942, he was brought to Britain and became a British double agent, receiving the code name Garbo. He became, uh, central to Operation Fortitude, the Allied deception surrounding D-Day. So he, uh, the network reported where they were going to go. Failed chicken farmer, rejected by British intelligence, volunteers to spy for Hitler, invents an entire fake spy network, becomes one of Germany's most trusted agents, secretly works for Britain, feeds Hitler false information, plays a major role in D-Day.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:01:53

       Oh my God, both sides decorated him.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:56

       Dude.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:01:57

       Oh my God. It's like this guy-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:58

       He was one of the very few people in history who managed to receive military honors from both sides in the same war. [laughs]

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:02:03

        What was, what was the Israeli name, the Israeli guy's name, uh, Levy, that became like the deputy defense minister of Syria? He was a, he was a Mossad, uh, agent. He was a barber, and he kept offering and offering and offering. His Arabic was excellent, and they kept saying, "No, no, no." And finally they were like, "Okay, okay." He, he was so good at throwing these parties-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:02:27

        Hmm

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:02:27

        ... in, in Damascus, where senior government people would come, see their-- senior Ba'ath party officials would come, exiled Nazis would show up. And the way he got caught is he was secretly transmitting his reports back to, uh, Tel Aviv, and there happened to be a KGB, uh, signals van driving through the neighborhood, and they picked up the signal, and they told the Syrians, "There's a spy in this neighborhood."

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:56

        Huh.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:02:56

        And the Syrians got him. Now there are like town squares named after him, and schools are named after him in Israel. It's the same thing.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:03:05

        Enthusiasm counts for an awful lot. It can really compensate for ability.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:09

        See, but part of the problem is you get so many people who want to do this kind of thing, and they're legitimately insane.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:03:15

        [laughs]

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:16

        [laughs] See, it's the, it's that one out of 100 that's gonna be-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:03:20

        Yeah, you need the chicken-- you need the, the Cristiano Ronaldo of, of chicken farmer secret agents.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:25

        Exactly.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:03:26

        Yeah, I, I think stuff like that's so fascinating to me. Uh,

15. 1:03:30 – 1:06:03

    Inside Operation Grim Beeper

    1. CWChris Williamson1:03:30

       what do you make of the beeper pager-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:36

       Oh

    3. CWChris Williamson1:03:36

       ... operation?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:38

       Absolutely brilliant.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:40

       Well, you, you, you must have had a professional interest from the sidelines with regards to that.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:44

       Very much so.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:45

       Give me, give me, give me your assessment of, of that particular operation.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:03:47

       Well, that-- the day that that operation took place, I got a call from a Russian television news network, and they said, "Can you come on and talk about this pager operation?" I said, "Sure." They said, "Can you say that it was a, it was a war crime and a crime against humanity?"

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:03

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:04:03

        And I said, "Well, yeah, sure. Technically, it was a war crime, right? Technically, it was a crime against humanity because, you know, civilians were injured or killed, children were injured or killed, but this was an act of genius." I said, "Can you imagine the moving parts involved?" It, it took, we learned later, it took a decade to come up with this idea. You had to control the entire supply chain over the course of something like five or six countries and then actually get the pagers into the hands of Hezbollah operatives. And they said, "Yeah, but can you just say that it was a war crime and a crime against humanity?" And I said, "No, I g- I gotta explain what a brilliant operation it was. You can disagree with it and, and say it was, this is a terrible thing. All these people were killed. But this was, this was genius." I said, "Intelligence services around the world are gonna study this for years to come. It was incredible." And they were like, "Thanks. We'll, uh, we'll, we'll call you some other time."

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:03

        We'll go with someone else. It's the equivalent of being asked to denounce Kanye West's political views, but being unable to say that he doesn't make bangers.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:05:11

        Yes.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:11

        You know what I mean?

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:05:11

        Exactly.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:12

        So dude, Jesus Walks is st- it still crushes as a tune. If you hear that, you're like, "I'm-- I can't-- I-- my feet are moving a little bit," you know? You can say what you like about the ethics, but the end result, you know, they hit, they hit to blow their enemies up, and they managed to do that.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:05:25

        It was incredible. You know, it's one thing to, to locate, to geolocate a Hezbollah operative and then blow up the entire apartment block.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:35

        Mm-hmm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:05:36

        Right? Anybody can do that. It's an entirely different thing to take 10 years and take over a dozen companies in a half a dozen countries, control the entire global supply chain, and then have people on the ground to actually pass out the pagers to the intended targets, and then it works the way you wanted it to work. Incredible.

16. 1:06:03 – 1:11:41

    The Greatest Intelligence Operations Ever

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:03

       What is the operation that you think is the most impressive or complex that you can talk about? I'm presuming that would probably be up there. Are there any others that come to mind?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:06:12

       That, that's gotta be the most complex. The other one that comes to mind immediately is the hunt for, um, a terrorist named Mir Amal Kansi. Have you ever heard of him? [laughs] One day in 1993, I used to, I used to take the, the back gate into the CIA 'cause it was a little bit more convenient for me based on where my house was.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:32

       Mm-hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:06:33

       And what you used to do back in those days is you just drive up, and the CIA guard is going like this, and you hold your badge up, and then he goes like this, meaning come in, right? And you just drive in. Before 9/11, before, you know, terrorism-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:48

       Yeah

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:06:48

       ... just, yeah, come on in. You just hold your, hold your badge up. This morning, I drive into the CIA, and the guard goes like this, and I hold my badge up, and then he kinda makes this shocked look, and he runs out of his guard booth. And I was like, "What in the world is that about?" And I thought, "Eh, not my problem," and I drove to my parking space. I get to my desk, and my outside line rings, my unclassified phone, which never rang, and it's my mother. And I said, "What's up?" And she said, "Are you okay?" I said, "Of course I am. Why?" She said, "Somebody's at the front of the CIA shooting people." I was like, "What?" So I hang up, turn on CNN to see what the heck is happening right here at the front gate of the building.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:07:37

       Hmm.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:07:39

       And a Pakistani man by the name of Mir Amel Khanzi drove his car right up to the red light where you make the left to go into the main gate of CIA, put the car in park as other cars lined up behind him to make the left, got out with an AK-47 and just went car to car shooting people. He only shot men. He killed two, including a, a colleague of mine, uh, Lansing Bennett. Lansing and I were halfway through a paper together, and he just murdered him right there in broad daylight in cold blood. Shot a communicator, Frank Darling, and then shot five other men going door to door, car to car. Calmly walked back up to his car, made a U-turn, drove straight to Dulles Airport, got on a plane to Pakistan with no luggage, one-way ticket, and nobody ever questioned him. So then the hunt was on. I, I, I smile because the CIA... There was a psychologist in the Counterterrorism Center where I worked, and I worked very closely with her. I liked her a lot. We did some cool stuff together. And she happened to be sitting on my promotion panel one day, and they were deciding, you know, "Should we promote Kiriakou or not promote Kiriakou?" They decided, thank God, to promote me, but she said-- It was because of her that they promoted me. She said, "John Kiriakou will come up with thirty-five ideas for an operation. Thirty of them are crazy, but five of them are really good." Well, as soon as Khanzi killed, you know, Frank and, uh, and Lansing, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center was happy to listen to any crazy idea.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:29

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:09:30

        And so we all had crazy ideas. Things like renting an Ottoman fort on the top of a mountain in Pakistan so that we could intercept all of the telephone calls coming from the village below, or setting up a fake radio station with a six-hundred-foot tower so we could intercept everything in the entire region. To make a long story short, we found Khanzi initially in a, in a fleabag hotel in Quetta, Pakistan. Uh, we were able to recruit an agent who then lured him out. The CIA is not a law enforcement organization. It's an intelligence organization, so we had to tell the FBI, "Listen, we found Khanzi. Here he is." The FBI goes in and grabs him. And the reason I even raise that is because years later, the station chief for whom I was working had been part of the team that, that caught Khanzi, and he was still angry ten years later because Time Magazine came out with a picture on the cover of two FBI agents leading Khanzi away in handcuffs, and the headline on the cover was, "How the FBI Got Its Man." And it's like, they had nothing to do with getting Khanzi.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:10:54

        Hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:10:55

        We got Khanzi. But that was one of the most complicated and sophisticated operations I ever heard of.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:11:04

        Can you talk about how it happened?

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:08

        It was a-- Not really. It's a combination of th-those intercepts in order to sort of narrow the, the field and then human intelligence.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:11:22

        Hmm.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:23

        And most, most people in countries like that are willing to sell their mothers for five hundred dollars. There's an old joke at the CIA, a post 9/11 joke, that you can't buy an Afghan warlord, but you can certainly rent one. [laughs] And that's what we did.

17. 1:11:41 – 1:17:20

    Can America Legally Kidnap Foreign Nationals?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:41

       What is the prevalence or legality of taking someone who has committed an act on your home turf from-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:53

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:53

       ... either a third-party-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:55

       Right

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:55

       ... country that is not their home destination or you-

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:11:58

       Yeah

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:58

       ... or from their home destination? 'Cause-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:01

       That's an easy one.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:02

       Okay.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:04

        In the mid-1980s, during the Reagan presidency, a DEA agent named Kiki Camarena was kidnapped and tortured and executed by a Mexican drug cartel. Congress acted very quickly in response to that, uh, that terrible incident, and Congress passed a law making it legal for the United States to kidnap foreign nationals extrajudicially and bring them back to the United States to face trial.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:35

        But-

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:35

        So e-even though it's a, it's a violation of the law in all of those other countries-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:12:39

        I was gonna say [laughs]

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:41

        ... we don't care.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:42

        I mean, like, it-- legal here, but it's not happening here.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:46

        Right.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:12:46

        It's happening there.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:48

        Yes.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:12:49

        Do you think it's more... Is it more or less illegal to do it in a third-party nation or to do it in the person's home nation?

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:12:57

        See, now, that's, that's the debate. So there's a difference between rendition and extraordinary rendition. Do you know the two?

    21. CWChris Williamson1:13:05

        Uh, n- I mean, when I think rendition, I think of the play.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:13:08

        Oh, no. So a rendition is... Let's say I'm a CIA officer in Pakistan, okay? And you are an Egyptian, and you are a member of Al-Qaeda.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:13:21

        Okay.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:13:22

        I break down the door of your safe house one night at two AM, and I grab you. And I say, "Oh, you're Egyptian? And you're here without a visa?" I send you back to Egypt, and I don't care what they do to you. That's a rendition. An extraordinary rendition [laughs] is nasty. I break down the door of that safe house, and I grab you. And I say, "Oh, you're Egyptian?" And I send you to Syria, Morocco, Algeria, anywhere in the world I want, and nobody's ever gonna have any idea what happened to you.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:14:02

        Hmm.

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:02

        And they're gonna torture you until you take your last breath, and then they're gonna send us a transcript of everything you said up until you took your last breath. That's an extraordinary rendition.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:14:15

        That again is the nation-- That is the enforcement organization of the nation that the person is in. 'Cause I can add an additional level of complexity here. Let's say that the Egyptian is in Pakistan.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:27

        Right.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:14:28

        But the people who have an issue with him aren't the Pakistanis, they're the Americans.

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:14:33

        Oh, yeah. It, it's... Yeah, that's it.
18. 1:17:20 – 1:20:47

    Was 9/11 the Most Complex Intelligence Operation Ever?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:17:20

       It's interesting when I said most complex, uh, impressive intelligence actions of all time that you didn't say 9/11.

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:17:29

       Oh, I thought you meant CIA operations. 9/11 was incredible, and 9/11 really came out of something earlier called the Bojinka plot. Have you ever heard of Bojinka? B-O-J-I-N-K-A. So in 1996 in Manila, a very bad man who we knew only as Mukhtar, M-U-K-H-T-A-R, was plotting something that became known as the Bojinka plot. The idea was to hijack 14 747 jumbo jets from Manila and to fly them into buildings all the way up and down the West Coast of the United States. Crazy as it sounds, Mukhtar went out one day to get lunch, and while he was out at lunch, his cleaning lady went to the apartment to clean it, and she sees all these plans and photographs and drawings laid out on the dining room table, and she said, "This looks like a terrorist plot." And she calls the Manila Police Department. They come. We presume that Mukhtar saw what was happening and ran away. He just absconded. The police came and recognized it as a, a potential terrorist plot. They called the Philippine Intelligence Service, who then called the CIA, and the CIA came in and said, "Oh my God, this, this was a massive terrorist attack being laid out."

    3. CWChris Williamson1:19:05

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:19:06

       So we knew that there was this bad man out there named Mukhtar who meant us harm and intended to use, uh, aircraft as missiles. After we captured Abu Zubaydah, one of the two most important things that he told us was the identity of Mukhtar. His debriefer, his interrogator, Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, asked him about Mukhtar, and Abu Zubaydah actually laughed and said, "You don't know who Mukhtar is?" And Ali said, "No." And Abu Zubaydah said, "His name is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." I was at headquarters that day, and the word came in like, "We know who it is. This is the mastermind of 9/11." So everybody was running name traces. We had never heard of him. We didn't have anything. There was literally no file on anybody named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And then the FBI called us and said, "Oh my God, he went to high school in North Carolina." And we were like, "What? He lived here?" And then he stayed and went to, like, North Carolina A&M or A&T or whatever it is, and then self-radicalized and moved overseas and started plotting what became 9/11. It was ingenious, and talk about a lot of moving parts.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:20:31

       Where was he from originally? Where was, what was his birthplace?

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:35

       Where was his birthplace? Was it-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:37

       Kuwait.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:37

       Kuwait. I was gonna say Saudi Arabia. Abu Zubaydah was Saudi Arabia. Yeah, Kuwait. He's a Palestinian born in Kuwait.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:20:44

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:44

        That's my recollection.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:20:45

        But yeah, when I think-

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:46

        Or Pakistani

19. 1:20:47 – 1:22:37

    The Location and Kidnap of Adolf Eichmann

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:47

       born in Kuwait

    2. CWChris Williamson1:20:47

       ... again, if, if I, uh, expand the intelligence operation outside of the CIA, is there anything el- obviously the pager thing was-

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:55

       Incredible

    4. CWChris Williamson1:20:56

       ... anything else come to mind that would make your greatest hits-

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:20:59

       Yeah

    6. CWChris Williamson1:20:59

       ... of all time?

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:00

       Yeah. The, uh, the location and kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:21:05

       I don't know that.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:06

       Yeah. The Nazi war criminal. He escaped from Germany, and in the early 1960s, the Israelis found him working in a car factory in Argentina, and they kidnapped him, took him all the way back to Israel-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:21:23

        Hmm

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:23

        ... put him on trial. It was a, it was a televised trial. They forced him to wear his old Nazi uniform during the trial.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:21:31

        Hmm.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:32

        And he was proud to put it on. He was convicted, and then he was hanged. That was an incredible operation, especially when at the time the Israelis didn't even have diplomatic relations with Argentina. How are you gonna get in a, get a plane in there, kidnap this guy?

    14. CWChris Williamson1:21:51

        Managed to do it with Maduro.

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou1:21:53

        Yeah. Well, that's with the entire force of the US Army behind you.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:21:56

        It's interesting. Uh, there seems to be broadly two categories of these kinds of operations, and I've had, uh, people like DJ Shipley on the show, uh, you know, uh, ex-SEALs, and, um, some are, some are brain and some are brawn.

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou1:22:09

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:22:09

        And, and some are, uh, precise and surgical and, and, and well thought out in advance and sort of occur without much fanfare, and then others are much more kinetic.

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou1:22:19

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:22:20

        And, uh, I think the Maduro one is an example of something that's surgical but incredibly kinetic-

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou1:22:25

        Very kinetic

    22. CWChris Williamson1:22:25

        ... as opposed to y- we lured Maduro to a Formula 1 driver's house that he's a massive fan of and then secretly drugged him with this thing that was in a vape that he smoked, and then went

20. 1:22:37 – 1:27:34

    The Legendary Capture of Carlos the Jackal

    1. CWChris Williamson1:22:37

       ba, ba, ba, ba. And then-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:22:38

       Well, you know the story of Carlos the Jackal. Have you heard of Carlos the Jackal? He is funny to me. I, I teach a graduate school course at the, uh, University of Salamanca in Spain. They have a, an intelligence studies program. I teach a course on the history of terrorism, and literally none of my students have ever heard of Carlos the Jackal.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:59

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:22:59

       The Osama bin Laden of the 1970s and '80s.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:23:02

       Hmm.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:23:03

       His name was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. He was a Venezuelan national, an ardent communist, Marxist Leninist, but he was the Osama bin Laden of the '70s and '80s, to the point where he did one of the ballsiest operations in modern history. OPEC was meeting in Vienna, right? So he and his gang go to Vienna, and they kidnapped every minister of oil from every OPEC country, kidnapped the entire OPEC leadership-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:23:38

       Mm-hmm

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:23:39

       ... and then held them for billions of dollars in ransom, which the Saudis gladly paid, and then they just scattered, Algiers, Benghazi, you know, all over the world, Moscow, Baghdad. Anyway, Carlos was a ghost. We searched the world for Carlos, and we had no idea where he was. We assumed that he was either in Iraq or in Libya or maybe Algeria. We weren't sure.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:24:09

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:24:10

        There was a legendary CIA contractor named Billy Waugh. Billy was a, one of the most highly decorated war heroes in American history, fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, doing the things that years later people don't talk about, and then, uh, he became a CIA contractor. I was, I was blessed to work with Billy Waugh in the Middle East before 9/11. We did some really fun stuff together, but the guy's legendary. Seven Purple Hearts. Seven. His license plate was a personalized Florida plate that said, "Seven hits," and it had the Purple Heart next to it. So Billy was working contract at the agency running surveillance teams, and he happened to be in Khartoum, Sudan-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:25:00

        Hmm

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:25:00

        ... working for Cofer Black, who became the director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and then became Ambassador Cofer Black, the special envoy for counterterrorism. Billy takes a day off, which was very rare, and he and a colleague go to the vegetable market to buy vegetables for the week, and they're there in the, in the vegetable souk, and Billy says to his colleague, "That's Carlos the Jackal." And the guy's like, "Get out of here." He said, "I'm telling you, that's Carlos the Jackal." And he runs back to the station. The way he told the story, Cofer was on an elliptical machine in his office, and Billy says, "Cofer, I just saw Carlos the Jackal in the vegetable souk." And Cofer says, "Get the fuck out of here. Carlos the Jackal." And he said, "I'm telling you, it was Carlos." And he said, "Well, I can't go back to headquarters and say, 'We saw Carlos the Jackal in the vegetable market,' and he walked away." You gotta go take a picture of him. Billy went back to the vegetable market every day for a month, and then he sees him again. So real quickly, he paid these two Sudanese guys a couple of dollars to get into a fistfight. In the Middle East and in North Africa, fights are so rare-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:26:25

        Mm

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:26:25

        ... that as soon as one happens, everybody just forms a circle around them to, to watch. Carlos runs right up to the circle, and he's craning his neck to see if he can watch the fight, and Billy has his camera. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And then they do surveillance on him, and they follow him all the way back to his house. Headquarters confirms, "Oh my God, it's Carlos the Jackal." So they come up with this idea. They break into his house, and they put ground glass in his toothpaste, and then they recruit his dentist. And so when he brushes his teeth, his gums start bleeding. He says, "Oh my God, I must have gum disease. I should go to the dentist." Go to the dentist. The nes- dentist gives him some gas, puts him out, and when he wakes up, he's on a French military transport plane on his way back to Paris to face seven counts of murder, and he is still in prison today.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:27:29

        Wow. Wow.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:31

        It takes patience.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:27:33

        So

21. 1:27:34 – 1:29:37

    Why Working For the CIA Was So Much Fun

    1. CWChris Williamson1:27:35

       John Lyle's first book, The Dirty Tricks Department, one of the psychological assessments that was done of Hitler was that he had a very fragile hold on his masculinity. I don't think that they needed to get a psychiatrist in to-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:46

       Right

    3. CWChris Williamson1:27:46

       ... work that one out. But, um-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:27:47

       The, the one testicle and the whole thing.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:27:49

       Uh, uh, they had this idea that if they could change Hitler's hormonal profile, that he, his, um, hold of his masculinity would be so tenuous-

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:04

       Wow

    7. CWChris Williamson1:28:04

       ... that he would go completely insane and that-

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:07

       Wow

    9. CWChris Williamson1:28:07

       ... the Allies would win the war. So they found the gardener who grew the vegetables that were put into the food at the Eagle's Nest.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:19

        Oh, yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:28:20

        And they found him, recruited him, and gave him, uh, female sex hormones to inject into the vegetables, and the goal was Hitler's gonna ingest these, and his voice will go soprano, and his mustache will fall out, and he'll grow man boobs and, and then we'll... Something, something, something, we'll win the war. I don't know what the something, something, something was. But, um, that, uh, they don't know whether or not that worked, but, uh, that was, yeah, uh, some of the inventive, as you say. It's kind of a shame the whole torture, uh, principles prison thing 'cause the CIA actually sounds like quite a lot of fun.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:28:58

        Oh my God, I have to admit, I, I loved every second of it. I went to 72 countries when I was at the agency. I, I was in the room with kings and presidents and prime ministers and did things that, you know, I, I, I still can't talk about.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:29:19

        Yeah.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:29:19

        It was exciting every single day. I remember, especially when I was working on Greek terrorism, I couldn't wait to get to the office in the morning.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:29:30

        Mm.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:29:30

        I couldn't wait to see what I had missed overnight. It was so exciting. Just loved it.

22. 1:29:37 – 1:36:58

    How Mass Persuasion Works at Scale

    1. CWChris Williamson1:29:37

       What do you think is the most effective mass behavioral engineering campaign in history?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:29:42

       Oh, that's a hard one. The most successful mass behavioral campaign.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:29:49

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:29:50

       You know, frankly, I think it probably has to be passage of the Patriot Act because it convinced all Americans to just voluntarily give up their civil liberties, just like that. And what did we complain about? Having to take our shoes off at the airport.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:30:09

       Hmm.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:30:10

       We didn't complain about the fact that we were, you know, losing our, our civil liberties, that the FBI could go, you know, see what books you take out of the library without a warrant or, or intercept your emails or your text messages or your phone calls without a warrant. They just have to go to the ISP and say, "Give it to us," or even more cynically, just buy it, just buy the metadata-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:30:35

       Hmm

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:30:35

       ... from one of these collection companies.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:30:38

       How does mass persuasion work at scale?

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:30:42

        Mass persuasion at scale was really a function of the, of the early Cold War era. The, the first covert action program that the CIA ever implemented was to essentially steal the 1949 Italian elections away from the communists. The communists were ahead in all the polls. It's not a very sophisticated operation. All they did is they gave $150,000 to the Christian Democratic Party and told them to spend it by renting journalists, and then the CIA would write up pro-conservative articles, and the journalists would place them in these newspapers, and then the communists lost. That was it.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:31:26

        Wow.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:31:26

        But that was the first one.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:31:28

        Uh-huh.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:31:28

        It, it's, it's really all about the media. I'll tell you something funny. When I was with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, years after I left the agency, I went to Yemen, and I used to go to Yemen with some regularity. So this was in 2011, just before we closed the American embassy there, and I had a meeting with the defense attaché. None of the agency people would meet with me, but that was fine. I didn't care. So I met with the State Department people and the defense people. So the defense attaché was so excited to tell me about this cool psyop that he was running, psychological operation. It's a propaganda operation.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:32:05

        Hmm.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:32:05

        I was like, "Okay, I'm all ears." And I was working for John Kerry at the time. I said, "He's gonna be happy to hear whatever successes you've had." So he said, "We're running a pirate radio station." I said, "Okay. So what are you, what are you doing with it?" And he says, "We're playing jazz, and then we intersperse the jazz with call-in shows. So we're getting young Yemeni men to like jazz, which makes them like the United States. And then when they call in to talk about the jazz, the host says pro-American things." I said, "I'm sorry, that's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard of in my life. How much are you spending on that?" "Oh, uh, uh, well, like, 150,000." I'm like, "Yeah, I think they're not gonna like you spending 150,000 on that."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:33:02

        Hmm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:03

        So sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn't. Usually it's money down the drain. But once in a while you get lucky.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:33:12

        Have you seen-- Mark, can you look for, was it Nestle that, m- coffee wasn't selling in a country in the Far East, uh, or some sort of confectionery wasn't selling in a country in the Far East, so they changed the flavor of the children's sweets so that when those children would grow up to become adults-

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:35

        Oh my God

    21. CWChris Williamson1:33:35

        ... they would love the flavor. It would be reminiscent of their childhood.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:39

        Oh my God.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:33:40

        And, uh, yeah, there was-- They were really struggling to sell, I wanna say it was coffee or maybe, like, caramel or something like that. And, um, by, by seeding it to children-

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:51

        Ugh

    25. CWChris Williamson1:33:51

        ... they knew-- they were able to project two decades out into the future when you were in charge of your own groceries-

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:33:59

        Talk about the long view, huh?

    27. CWChris Williamson1:34:00

        ... you would, you would be able to come up with that. What have you got, Mark? Oh, it's Japan. Japan. Here's-- There it is.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:34:09

        Oh my goodness.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:34:11

        Here's how Nestle convinced people in Japan to drink coffee. In the 1970s, Nestle were hustling to sell coffee in Japan, and this, uh, was a fascinating time for Japanese cuisine. Japan had recently established its first McDonald's franchise. Style of Japanese food that plays off popular Western dis- West dishes had been developing for decades. This was the moment for Western companies looking to market their products in the East Asian country. But Nestle wasn't finding much success according to Better Marketing. Unlike coffee-centric countries like Italy or Costa Rica, Japan has a rich history with tea, not coffee. So Nestle enlisted the help of Clotaire Rapaille, a psychoanalyst. "Nestle, what can I do for Nestle?" Rapaille responded. According to PBS, he'd spent years working with children who had autism, a far cry from corporate marketing. Nevertheless, he headed to Japan, where his expertise in psychology and memory allowed him to crack an important code. When consumers have a childhood memory of something like chicken noodle soup or mom's hot cup of coffee, that long-embedded memory creates a bond between the consumer and the product. He deduced when he interviewed and tested consumers in Japan, he found many didn't have fond childhood memories of coffee. Tea simply was and is a much larger part of the culture, and he aimed to change it. Nestle engaged in a years-long campaign. It started with sweet coffee-flavored products for kids. We started, for example, with a dessert for children with a taste of coffee. We created an imprint of the taste of coffee. However, it's unclear whether Nestle whipped out the coffee-flavored Kit Kat bars immediately. They most likely started with other coffee-flavored candies, judging from his PBS interview. While Japan's Kit Kat market is off the charts intricate and popular, the Japanese flavors didn't really emerge until the 2000s, according to The New York Times. It's more likely that espresso and café au lait Kit Kats popped up around that time. Still, while they may have not been Kit Kats, Nestle's coffee-flavored desserts made a difference. According to Better Marketing, those early coffee-flavored treats likely created an imprint on children, and by the time those young consumers were older and interested in a real drink, Nestle coffee was ready for them. By 2014, the coffee market was hitting record highs in Japan, according to The Japan Times. And by the time coffee-flavored Kit Kats were intro- introduced, consumers were well-acquainted with the drink and flavor. We can thank Clotaire Rapaille, who knew early on that food and memory go hand in hand.

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:18

        Incredible.
23. 1:36:58 – 1:38:19

    Does Working For the CIA Make You Paranoid?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou1:36:58

       States.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:36:59

       How paranoid does making, working for the CIA make you?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:02

       Oh, you have to be paranoid. Uh, y- I've been out of the CIA for 22 years. I've been out longer than I was in.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:37:09

       Hmm.

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:10

       And I still am constantly scanning my side view and rear view mirrors looking for surveillance. I still couch my, my language in emails and in text messages.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:37:22

       Hmm.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:23

       I use encrypted apps. For what that's worth, they all have backdoors in them anyway, but I figure, you know, why make it easy?

    8. CWChris Williamson1:37:29

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:30

       So yeah, it, it's sort of, uh, it, it, it's sort of instilled in you. You, you never lose it.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:37:37

        I've noticed that you haven't taken a drink of anything today. Is that part of that?

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou1:37:40

        [chuckles] Yeah, actually. It's funny. It's funny that you've even noticed. One of the very first things that they taught us, very first, like on the first day of operational training, is to always pee before you go into a meeting so that you don't have to get up and excuse yourself and disrupt the meeting. Um, and also it's distracting if I'm opening cans and I'm drinking a sip over here, and maybe I'm making a little ring on the table over there, and... No. This way I can look you directly in the eye.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:38:14

        Lock in.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou1:38:15

        We can carry on our business-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:38:16

        Hmm

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou1:38:16

        ... and then I can drink something later.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:38:18

        Hmm.

24. 1:38:19 – 1:46:50

    How to Spot a Liar

    1. CWChris Williamson1:38:20

       What have you-- I, I've had a lot of people on that are communications experts that are talking about the effectiveness of understanding someone, detecting-

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:38:29

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson1:38:29

       ... lying, manipulation, stuff like that. What's realistic and true about working out whether someone's lying to you?

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:38:37

       You know, I, I wrote a book called The CIA Insider's Guide to Lying and Lie Detection. It's funny too. I, I'm, I'm not the expert. That wasn't the focus of my career, but it's something that I knew as much as any other, you know, normal CIA officer. It's almost... It's l- it's little things. It's the frequency of blinking, for example. Uh, when people lie, they tend to blink less frequently. Um-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:39:06

       Mm

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:06

       ... when, when, when you ask somebody a question and they look up as they're thinking about it, they're likely going to give you the truth. If they look down, that could be an indication of, uh, of lying.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:39:20

       Mm.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:20

       It's a lot of different things. One of the things that they showed us that was so fascinating to me at the time, you remember Whitey Bulger-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:39:28

       Mm-hmm

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:28

        ... the, the Boston mob leader.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:39:30

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:39:30

        Whitey Bulger had two brothers. Uh, one was the president of the University of Massachusetts. Um, before that, he had been the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, and his other brother was a, a state judge. So these are, like, serious people. Well, one of the things the CIA showed us in training was a video of the brother who was the president of the university, at t- at the time, he was the president of the Senate, uh, being grilled before Congress about whether or not he had any contact with his brother. His brother was on the run, right, on the lam.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:40:10

        Hmm.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:10

        And he kept saying, "No," just staring. "No, I've had no contact with my brother. I haven't seen my brother in years. He's embarrassed our family. We're ashamed of him."

    15. CWChris Williamson1:40:21

        Hmm.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:21

        "I don't know where he is." But not blinking at all.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:40:24

        Hmm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:24

        And so they would show us this video of his testimony as an example of what to look for in a liar.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:40:30

        Hmm.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:40:31

        I mentioned to you, um, walk-ins earlier. When I was, when I was overseas operationally, not a single day went by that I didn't have a walk-in, not a single day. And the curse for me was that I spoke both Greek and Arabic, right? And so, uh, there was one time where I had flown in from Yemen, and, and I was exhausted, and I land at, like, ten o'clock in the morning at Dulles Airport, and I thought, "Uh, I'm gonna go into the office. I'm not gonna tell anybody that I'm there. I'm just gonna do my accounting paperwork, and then I'm gonna go home and go to sleep." So I, I go in, and my boss sees me, and he says, "Hey, I didn't know you were back." And I said, "I'm actually not back. I just came in just to do my paperwork, and then I'm gonna go home and go to sleep." And he goes, "Okay. Um, can you go to Sudan?" And I said, "Sudan?" I said, "I was just there one hour from Sudan." I said, "What do you want me to do in Sudan?" And he said, "Well, they, they have a walk-in, and they don't have any Arabic speakers right now." I said, "When? When do you want me to go to Sudan?" And he says, "Like, three o'clock." And I was like, "Are you, are you kidding me?" I said, "All right. Let me just at least go do some laundry." And I went home. I did the laundry, repacked, went back to the airport, and flew to Sudan. Anyway-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:41:56

        Mm. Mm

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:41:57

        ... um, not a day went by that I didn't have a walk-in.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:42:02

        Hmm.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:42:02

        And that's the best possible on-the-job training for determining who's lying and who's telling the truth. Now, like I said earlier, 95%... There, there have been actual studies done internally. 95% of walk-ins-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:42:21

        Bullshit

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:42:21

        ... are crazy people.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:42:22

        Yep.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:42:23

        I had a guy, guy came in in a, in a Greek naval officer's uniform. So I was like, "Oh, okay. Serious guy." He says, "I know, I know who's the, the head of revolutionary organization 17 November." I was like, "Great. We've been working on that since 1975. Lay it out." "Well, is there a reward?" I said, "Yeah, there's a $10 million reward, and if your information is correct and we're able to, to grab him, I'll give it to you any way you want it. Cash, gold, diamonds, I don't care."

    29. CWChris Williamson1:42:55

        Hmm.

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:42:56

        He says, "It's actually a triumvirate of people." I said, "Really? And who is this triumvirate of people?" "Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Cousteau, and Frank Sinatra." I said, "Okay, and how did you determine this?" And he said that an angel told him in a vision. I was like, "Okay. Thanks for coming in." But that was happening every single day.
25. 1:46:50 – 1:54:17

    How Interrogators Get People to Tell the Truth

    1. CWChris Williamson1:46:50

       So what is, w- w- what are some of the best ways to get the truth out of someone? You're, uh, speaking to them. You want to try and determine whether or not they know something about something. Uh, w- what are some of the best tactics for doing that?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:47:07

       It's not very sexy, but it's very simply to treat a person with respect and kindness and show great patience.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:47:16

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou1:47:17

       Uh, I'll give you an example. You know, the CIA's torture program was just to turn people's lives into hell, a living hell. The FBI modus operandi is completely different. You know, the CIA and the FBI hated each other for decades and decades, hated each other.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:47:38

       Hmm.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou1:47:38

       That's why we had 9/11, because they couldn't even share information with one another. But the FBI is really, really good at interrogation, and they have been since the 1940s. The FBI method, and, and they train their officers very well in this method, is to simply engage people in a friendly conversation. You, you treat them with respect, even if they're the enemy, you know, the enemy or a terrorist. Um, you offer them a cigarette or an apple or, if they're really, uh, cooperative, a, a piece of paper and a pen to write to their parents or whatever. Sometimes it takes weeks or months, but eventually they're gonna open up to you if you are able to establish that relationship. The very first person that I caught in Pakistan was a Jordanian national who had escaped into Pakistan from Tora Bora when we started bombing it. And, um, I cabled headquarters beforehand and I said, "I, I'm not, I'm not trained in interrogation. I'm not an interrogator." We didn't have interrogators at the CIA. That was the FBI's job. "We're in charge now. Just interrogate him however you want." And I was like, "Okay. All right. Well, I'm gonna wing it." We have the guy chained to an eye bolt in the table, so he's got handcuffs on and the cuffs are chained to the table. And I said to him, "What's your name?" I knew what his name was. I knew the answers to most of the questions 'cause we had confiscated his paperwork and his passport and all that stuff, and it was a legitimate Jordanian passport. So he answered my questions. I laid out a map of the Afghan-Pakistan border, and I told him to show me exactly how he got from Tora Bora to... I think we caught him in, like, Rawalpindi or something like that. I don't remember anymore. I knew, I knew how he got there. I mean, those mountains are so forbidding and so steep, there's pretty much only one way to get in. We called it the rat line, and so he showed me the rat line. I knew he was telling the truth.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:50:05

       Hmm.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou1:50:06

       And, um, and I said, "What in the world were you doing in Afghanistan? You're a, you're a Jordanian national. You don't speak any of Afghanistan's languages. You don't have a visa, a valid visa to be in Afghanistan. What in the world were you doing there?" And he said, "I went to Afghanistan in 1996 to open an orphanage." He said, "I'm a very pious, practicing Muslim, and there were so many children, um, who were orphaned from the Soviet invasion and occupation. I wanted to do something to help the children." So as he's saying all this, I have colleagues that are running it out-- running outside, cabling back to, you know, wherever, the American Embassy in Amman or CIA headquarters, or calling the Jordanian embassy in Islamabad to ask, you know, "Is this stuff true? Can we identify the orphanage? Is it true that he left Jordan on this date and arrived in Afghanistan on that date?" Everything this guy told me was true. So finally I said to him, "I have one last question for you." I said, "I know that what you've told me is true, and I want to thank you for being honest with me. But why were you honest with me? Why did you tell me the truth?" And he said to me, like I'm nuts, he's like, "I'm your prisoner. It doesn't help me in any way to lie to you." And I thought, "Well, that's, that's a legit answer."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:51:43

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou1:51:43

        And then he says, "Now may I ask you a question?" And I said, "Sure." And he says, "I would like to invite you into the embrace of Islam, and I will be your godfather." I said, "Thank you for that. I'm a Christian, um, but I appreciate the gesture. I really do." I said, "I've studied Islam. I have a degree in Middle Eastern studies. I speak Arabic. I appreciate the gesture." And I said, "And I wish you the very best." But he was telling the truth about that, that orphanage.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:52:20

        Hmm.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou1:52:20

        He was telling the truth about being caught up and he's like, "Oh, crap. Now the Americans are bombing. Now what am I gonna do? I gotta run. It's all these Al-Qaeda guys. They're gonna think I'm Al-Qaeda," which we did. But we ended up, rather than sending him to Guantanamo, we just sent him back to Jordan.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:52:37

        I had, uh, well, I really should not r- forget this guy's name. Um, not the Manchurian. What is the country in the middle of the Middle East that begin, that begins with Man-- Um, Goddammit. It was the dude that had Osama Bin Laden's cousin's number on his phone. He was detained in Guantanamo. They made a nighttime movie about him.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:03

        Oh, The Mauritanian.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:53:03

        The Mauritanian.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:04

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:53:04

        Thank you. For fuck's sake.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:04

        That's, that's, uh, Mohamedou Ould Slahi. He's a good friend of mine.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:53:07

        Yes. Yeah, he's been on the show.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:08

        You know?

    21. CWChris Williamson1:53:08

        Friend of the show even.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:09

        He's, he's great.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:53:10

        He's g- It was a long time ago now, actually.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:11

        I called him, uh, last time I talked to him, he lectured to my class at Salamanca, and I said, I said, "Mohamedou, you are the Martin Luther King of our time."

    25. CWChris Williamson1:53:19

        Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Yeah, I mean, w- wild story. Did he ever tell you about how much he needed the bathroom on the flight over?

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:25

        Ugh. We put diapers on them, but no, he didn't, he never told me.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:53:28

        He said that he couldn't go. I don't know why, but he had the fullest bladder-- He said the, the most pain of the entire, everything, the mock executions, you know, the, the, the sustained water-- Like, the most pain was the fact I don't think he'd been able to go to the bathroom for a, a very long time, and he was strapped in some plane and then taken out there.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:47

        Yeah. It was a C-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:53:48

        Maybe the angle that he was-

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou1:53:49

        A C-12
26. 1:54:17 – 1:59:43

    Should Torture Ever Be Legal?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:17

       Yeah.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:54:18

       Does torture work-

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:19

       No

    4. CWChris Williamson1:54:19

       ... for getting the truth out of people?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:20

       It does not. It, it, 100% proven fact it does not work.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:54:25

       Why doesn't it work?

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:26

       Because the person being tortured will tell you anything he thinks you want to know just to get you to stop torturing them. John McCain, for example, when he was tortured, in the beginning of his torture, they kept asking him who were the members of his unit, and he gave them the names of the starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:54:50

       [laughs]

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:51

       And they didn't know.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:54:52

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou1:54:52

        They just... They said, "Good, good. You get an extra ration today, extra food for cooperating." He didn't cooperate.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:55:00

        Hmm.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou1:55:01

        But they will tell you anything. And the thing is, is then you have to take all this garbage that they gave you, give it to your analysts, who have to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's gonna take six years-- Oh, sorry. It's gonna take six months for them to go through all this nonsense, and by then, you know, the bomb that you're trying to, uh, to, uh, disrupt has already gone off.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:55:22

        Would torture be worth it if it led to the discovery of someone like Osama Bin Laden?

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou1:55:28

        See, that-- It comes back to that issue that we talked about at the very beginning of our conversation. Maybe.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:55:35

        Hmm.

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou1:55:35

        But is that the country we wanna be? Listen, if you wanna be a country that tortures, best of luck, but you have to change the law because torture's illegal. I don't care what John Yoo and Jay Bybee and Dick Cheney say, it's illegal. We have the Federal Torture Act of 1946, which specifically forbids exactly those techniques the CIA used.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:55:59

        Hmm.

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou1:55:59

        We have the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which not only are we signatories to, we wrote it. We wrote it. And then like magic, in 2002, huh, it's all legal 'cause we're the good guys.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:56:14

        Hmm.

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou1:56:15

        So we say it is. I'll tell you another thing. In 1945, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American POWs. That was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody. In January of 1968, The Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. The Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that day ordered an investigation. The soldier was arrested. He was convicted on a charge of torture and sentenced to twenty years at Fort Leavenworth. The law never changed.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:56:50

        Hmm.

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou1:56:51

        We changed. So if you wanna torture, if that's the country you wanna be, okay, you can have that position, but you have to change the law. And again, we're either gonna be that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan talked about-

    24. CWChris Williamson1:57:05

        Hmm

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou1:57:05

        ... or we're not. We're either gonna be the country that, that writes the human rights reports for Congress every year for every country in the world with which we have diplomatic relations, or we're not. But we can't pretend to be one while really being the other.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:57:20

        Is there a level of either threat or aggression and unfairness in interrogation from other countries? Is there a level of intensity that that could get to that would cause you to think, "Okay, we actually need to take the gloves off with regards to some of the, uh, rules that we're adhering to if everybody else is not"?

    27. JKJohn Kiriakou1:57:48

        I think it was appropriate to take the gloves off after 9/11, but I, I think that there's a disconnect here over what taking the gloves off meant. There's a longstanding American policy enshrined in, um, in an executive order that says that the CIA may kill a foreign national if he presents a clear and present danger, that's the terminology, to the United States, to an American citizen, or to an American installation. So if you are Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, you pose a clear and present danger, and so we need to kill you to protect Americans. But if we have the wherewithal to capture you, you have the same constitutional rights that I have.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:58:41

        Hmm.

    29. JKJohn Kiriakou1:58:42

        Right? And so if you are the bad guy that we say you are, then you have to face your accusers in a court of law and be judged by a jury of your peers. Just because I don't like your politics doesn't mean that I can do mock executions on you and waterboard you and put you in a coffin for two weeks with a box of cockroaches or, or put a drill against your head or keep you naked and chained to, you know, an eye bolt in the ceiling or throw ice water on you every hour until you die of hypothermia. The law doesn't say you can do those things.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:59:25

        Hmm.
27. 1:59:43 – 2:07:31

    The Most Shocking Interrogation Tactics Used By the CIA

    1. CWChris Williamson1:59:43

       What are some of the physical and psychological techniques that get used, have been used during interrogations that normal people would find most shocking?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou1:59:53

       I think there are three that had been approved by the Justice Department that would be shocking to people. There were myriad that were not approved that the CIA did anyway, right? And we can have a whole separate conversation about that. But the three worst ones, uh, waterboarding gets all of the, the press, right? Waterboarding is you're, you're on a board, you're strapped to the board, your feet are slightly elevated, so your head is, is lower, right? You're at an angle. They put some kinda material in your mouth, cloth, burlap, something like that, a, a pillowcase, whatever, and then they pour water on your face. It gives you a sense that you're drowning. In fact, enough water gets, gets through the material that you do drown. Abu Zubaydah actually drowned. His heart stopped. He had to be revived in order for him to be tortured again. Okay, that's not... You can't do that. That's not legal. Um, but waterboarding's kinda the famous one. There were two that I always believed were worse than waterboarding. One was called, um, the cold cell. Uh, you're stripped naked. You're chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling, so you can't sit or kneel or lay or get in any comfortable position. And every hour, your, your cell is chilled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really cold, and then every hour, a CIA officer comes in and throws a bucket of ice water on you. We murdered people with that technique, murdered them, and the Justice Department never allowed anybody to murder a prisoner.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:01:36

       Hmm.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou2:01:36

       That was never approved. The third one, um, was sleep deprivation. I feel very strongly about this one. When someone leaked that the CIA was carrying out sleep deprivation against prisoners, uh, the Secretary of Defense at the time, Don Rumsfeld, mocked the revelation in the press, and he said, "Sleep deprivation." He said, "I don't even have a chair in my office. I have a standup desk, and I'm well-known for working 24 hours at a time." But we're not talking about 24 hours in your Pentagon office with your secretary bringing your meals in.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:02:14

       Hmm.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou2:02:18

       The American Psychological Association has published studies showing that people begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep, right? They begin to die at day nine. Their organs begin to shut down. The CIA was authorized to keep prisoners awake for 12 days. You can't live- For 12 days with no sleep. And industrial strength lights on you and music playing just on a loop at a volume of 11, like, you know, Bee Gees 24/7 with, you know, ear-splitting volume. You can't survive that. You lose your mind, and then your organs stop working. I remember when I was-- After Pakistan, I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations, and in that position, you get to see literally everything that the CIA is doing around the world.

    7. CWChris Williamson2:03:21

       Hmm.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou2:03:22

       And we got a cable one day from the secret prison, and it said, "Hey, we were interrogating Ahmed Schmahmad over here, and unfortunately, he didn't survive the interrogation." And I was like, "Uh-huh, and now what are you gonna do?" And so the Counterterrorism Center sends a cable out saying, "Well, dig a ditch behind the building and put him in the ditch. What are we gonna do?"

    9. CWChris Williamson2:03:58

       Hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou2:03:59

        Like, the Justice Department never authorized that. What are you-- Are you gonna rat yourself out to the Justice Department now? You just murdered this prisoner in cold blood, and then you put him in a ditch that you dug behind the building? What are you gonna do? You gonna send a, a memo to John Yoo and Jay Bybee saying, "Oh, by the way, listen, uh, you know, it didn't work out like we, we thought it was going to on paper"? But that's the country we became after 9/11.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:04:28

        What about the unauthorized ones?

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou2:04:31

        Oh, well, those were just... Um, mo-most of them were laid out in the, uh, in the Senate torture report. Abu Zubaydah, for example, had this irrational fear of, of bugs. And so they put a diaper on him. They put him in a coffin. They dumped a box of cockroaches in on him, and then they closed the coffin. You know, and you got a fan in there to give him oxygen. You could hear him screaming, screaming. They did it just to make him insane. Another one was called walling. Walling was kind of a big deal, and it was controversial at headquarters because the idea was... The idea was you start at the least offensive technique. The least offensive technique was called the attention grab or the attention grasp, where I grab you by the shirt and I say, "Answer my questions, you." That's not torture. The next one was the belly slap, okay? Makes that cracking sound. It's a little bit humiliating, makes a hand print.

    13. CWChris Williamson2:05:31

        Hmm. Hmm.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou2:05:32

        That's not torture either. The next one was the attention slap, which was a slap across the face, not a hard one that's gonna break your jaw, a slap. It was meant to humiliate. Then there was forced nudity, right? And it-- they graduated up to what was supposed to be the harshest penalty of them all, waterboarding, and I told you there were those others that were worse than waterboarding. But then you had the, the bugs in the coffin. You had stress positions. You had walling. Walling was I grab you by the shirt, and I slam you into the wall behind you. Now, what they were supposed to do is to roll up a bath towel and put it around your neck, and the wall had to be made of plywood, so it had a little bit of give to it. So I slam you against the wall, but the towel prevents you from getting whiplash, okay? Except they didn't use a towel, and the wall was made of concrete block, and the next thing you know, they all have traumatic brain injuries, and now they can't participate in their own defenses because they're, like, drooling and, you know... What is that? Nobody said you could give them brain damage and smash their skulls into the wall.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:06:49

        Hmm.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou2:06:51

        Just a couple of weeks ago, um, the judge of the military tribunal at Guantanamo threw out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession and two other co-defendants, threw out their confessions because they were, they were gathered as a result of CIA torture. Okay? Now what do you do? Now you can't try them.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:07:15

        Hmm.

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou2:07:15

        They're never gonna get out because they have no rights at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court's already decided that, but there will never be closure for the 9/11 families. These guys will never be executed because the CIA tortured

28. 2:07:31 – 2:08:50

    What Really Happens at Guantanamo Bay?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:07:31

       them.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:07:32

       What do you think's going on in Guantanamo now?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou2:07:35

       Pretty much nothing. Um, it-- They're down to, you know, a small fraction of the number of people. I think altogether it's like... It was 34 for a while. It's, it's lower than that now. It's like 17.

    4. CWChris Williamson2:07:48

       What was, what was it at its max?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou2:07:51

       Seven seventy, and almost every single one of them was innocent. The place was full. Get this. Let's say you and I live in the same village in Afghanistan, and you borrow money from me. You don't wanna pay it back. So you go to the Americans, and you say, "Hey, that guy, Al-Qaeda." And so the CIA grabs me in the middle of the night. I disappear to Guantanamo. Nobody ever sees me again, and you don't have to pay the loan back. Seven hundred and seventy people, and almost every single one of them was innocent.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:08:26

       You got any idea who's still there now?

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou2:08:28

       Yeah, kind of the worst of the worst. Um, KSM, Abu Zubaydah, Ammar al-Baluchi, um, uh, KSM's nephew-- uh, not nephew, son-in-law, um, Ramzi Bina Shibh. Uh, who else? Uh, it's been so many years now, their names are-

    8. CWChris Williamson2:08:48

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou2:08:48

       ... starting to escape me.

29. 2:08:50 – 2:15:34

    Was Uday Hussein One of the Most Evil Men Ever?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:08:50

       But-

    2. CWChris Williamson2:08:50

       Did we ever get Uday Hussein?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou2:08:52

       Oh yeah, we killed him. We killed Qusay in the same gunfight

    4. CWChris Williamson2:08:55

       He's one of the... I agree with you. I think that there are rules, and it's pretty important to abide by them.

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:02

       But he, he was-

    6. CWChris Williamson2:09:03

       There are some extenuating circumstances and-

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:05

       He, he was one

    8. CWChris Williamson2:09:05

       ... if I could f-

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:06

       Yeah

    10. CWChris Williamson2:09:06

        ... find a person from history, I think Uday Hussein would probably be top of my list.

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:10

        You know, the first seven years of my career, I worked exclusively on Iraq, and I used to dream about Uday. Uh, m- one of my colleagues, a psychologist that I worked with in the Counterterrorism Center, later told me, "Oh, that's a classic sign of PTSD." I had a dream, it was a recurring dream, that I had gotten a job as a chef in Saddam's palace, and I was standing there in the kitchen saying, "I can't believe I made it through the process. I'm a chef. I'm going to poison them."

    12. CWChris Williamson2:09:43

        Hmm.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:43

        "I'll kill all of them." And then I turned around and Uday is there, and he says, "Do you really think we're that stupid?"

    14. CWChris Williamson2:09:51

        Hmm.

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:52

        And then I would wake up.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:09:53

        Hmm.

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou2:09:54

        I had that dream a dozen times.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:09:57

        He was this sort of pinnacle, peak evildoer-

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:02

        He was a true-

    20. CWChris Williamson2:10:03

        ... on your, in your mind

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:04

        ... psychopath.

    22. CWChris Williamson2:10:05

        Yeah.

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:05

        He would drive around in his limousine, point out an attractive woman on the street, have his bodyguard snatch her. He would rape her and then throw her off the balcony of the hotel. Who does that?

    24. CWChris Williamson2:10:22

        I'd heard that he turned up at weddings.

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:24

        Mm-hmm, to rape the bride-

    26. CWChris Williamson2:10:26

        Yeah

    27. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:26

        ... so he could have her first.

    28. CWChris Williamson2:10:28

        Yeah.

    29. JKJohn Kiriakou2:10:28

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson2:10:28

        Yeah. Uh, I had a guy on the show who, I can't even remember technically what his job was, some form of fixer, and Uday Hussein went to Vegas.
30. 2:15:34 – 2:20:16

    Dominance vs Prestige: What Makes a Better Leader?

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:15:34

       of you.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:15:34

       So one of my favorite areas of research, sort of, I guess you would call this sociological, like e-evolutionary sociology in one form, which is looking at the two forms of leaders that we had ancestrally. So one is, uh, prestige through dominance, and another is prestige through competence. Or one would be, uh, like leadership through prestige, and another would be leadership through power and, and fear. And what's interesting is that if you look at the most effective leaders in times of war, societies actually prefer, they lean more authoritarian.

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:08

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson2:16:08

       They actually want more of a tyrant.

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:10

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:16:10

       More decisive, going to either run close to the rules or maybe color outside of the lines a little bit.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:15

       Right.

    8. CWChris Williamson2:16:15

       And you want that. Uh, people seem to think that the more dominant side is going to be better during war, and I think it actually might be.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:22

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CWChris Williamson2:16:22

        The problem is that when you go from wartime to peacetime, you still have a very dominant leader.

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:27

        Right.

    12. CWChris Williamson2:16:27

        And the way that they get protected was that you need a ring of sycophants around them, and they end up being the enforcers.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:33

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson2:16:33

        And that's kind of a, a, an interesting, um, like finding, that you can't have a tyrannical leader at the top. This is why, uh, in chimp pods, number one might be an asshole, number two, three, and four can band together, and then number one's gone.

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou2:16:47

        Uh-huh.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:16:48

        But if you could do more coordination, Hitler style, right? You know, this ring of sycophants that are around him. You then start to distribute the power a little bit more. You've got some protection. You can have more people working to get them onsi- "I didn't really mean to kill your brother."

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou2:17:01

        Right.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:17:01

        "Don't worry," you know, ba, ba, ba, ba. Uh, you just... You do, like, assholery at scale, basically. Um, but then on the other side, the prestige thing is, is good, but it's got weaknesses because although people might love you, like, your compassion becomes a, a vector of fragility-

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou2:17:18

        Mm

    20. CWChris Williamson2:17:19

        ... in some ways. So yeah, again, you know, looking at who is it that you want to lead, what's the situation in which it would be most optimal to have it, what are you thinking about? Like, let's say that the outcome that you want occurs. You almost get a Pyrrhic victory-

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou2:17:31

        Mm-hmm

    22. CWChris Williamson2:17:32

        ... which is, like, one more victory will cause us to be ruined because if you do win, what are you locked into? What's the, the civilization, the, the, the sociocultural situation that gets carried forward in this newly peaceful time?

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou2:17:44

        No, I think, I think you're exactly right. Yeah. I think you're right. And it's funny too that this is one of those things that's been studied for decades, for generations, and yet it seems to be a lesson that leaders either don't know, don't understand, or don't implement.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:18:03

        I think we all have a degree of historical narcissism or solipsism or something-

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou2:18:10

        Mm-hmm

    26. CWChris Williamson2:18:10

        ... that I'm aware that this might be some of the most well re-watched wisdom of the ages, but not for me.

    27. JKJohn Kiriakou2:18:20

        Right.

    28. CWChris Williamson2:18:20

        There's something special about my time, and there's always-

    29. JKJohn Kiriakou2:18:23

        Right, right

    30. CWChris Williamson2:18:23

        ... justification as well.
31. 2:20:16 – 2:28:31

    Is This America’s First Botched Lethal Injection Execution?

    1. CWChris Williamson2:20:16

       Did you see that Krista Pike lady? Have you been tracking this story?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:20

       Uh-

    3. CWChris Williamson2:20:21

       She's the lady who got the death-

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:22

       Remind me

    5. CWChris Williamson2:20:22

       ... the lady who got the death penalty.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:23

       Oh my God, in Tennessee?

    7. CWChris Williamson2:20:25

       And they failed to kill her twice.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:26

       Uh, so as I was walking in here, they said that she is on life support and unresponsive.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:20:33

       Krista Pike-

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:33

        Oh, there it is

    11. CWChris Williamson2:20:34

        ... Krista Pike is on a ventilator and unconscious after surviving lethal injection. This was an hour ago. Krista Pike-

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou2:20:41

        Twice they tried to kill her

    13. CWChris Williamson2:20:42

        ... Krista Pike survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her via lethal injection on Wednesday, but her medical and legal future remain remarkably unclear. She's intubated on a ventilator and remains un- unconscious in a Nashville area hospital, her attorney said in a court filing on Friday, receiving life-saving care. Life-saving care After being injected with two ostensibly fatal doses of pent-

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou2:21:05

        Mm-hmm. Pentobarbital

    15. CWChris Williamson2:21:06

        ... pentobarbital.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou2:21:07

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:21:08

        Her attorney said on Friday she's being treated for the serious effects, yeah, I bet-

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou2:21:12

        Yeah, serious effects

    19. CWChris Williamson2:21:13

        ... of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms. I guess that might be from just the IVs-

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou2:21:21

        Mm-hmm

    21. CWChris Williamson2:21:21

        ... going in. Uh, her legal team filed an emergency motion Friday asking a court in Nashville to require Tennessee Department of Correction to protect and preserve all evidence. That makes sense. They've also asked for an expedited hearing on the motion. The state Department of Correction declined to comment on the pending litigation. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou2:21:48

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:21:49

        Now her legal case will be at a standstill. Bill Lee, governor, Republican, announced he would call off the state's last remaining execution this year while a third-party review takes place to determine exactly what happened in Pike's case, according to the Associated Press. The governor has appropriately called for an investigation. We need to know what happened. The administration has not informed Slemmer's family of what might be next for Pike. They're devastated and exhausted. Oh, so this is the-

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou2:22:15

        The, the family of the victim

    25. CWChris Williamson2:22:16

        ... family of the victim. Bracewell, who helped Slemmer's parents navigate the process, said the family is mad at the state for not being helpful or forcome- forthcoming as to what is next. Like, look, you're the parents of this person, I imagine it's absolutely horrible.

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou2:22:28

        Sure.

    27. CWChris Williamson2:22:29

        But, like, what do you mean mad for not being helpful or forthcoming as to what is next? Like, we just failed a thing that's literally supposed to be final twice.

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou2:22:36

        Twice.

    29. CWChris Williamson2:22:36

        Like, it's slightly unprecedented.

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou2:22:38

        The, her last words were, "Is it supposed to hurt this much?"
32. 2:28:31 – 2:31:09

    Why John is Obsessed With Angry Birds

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:28:31

       too.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:28:32

       Uh, while we're looking for that, what's your relationship with Angry Birds?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou2:28:35

       Oh, man. I love my Birds so much. I can't even tell you. No, seriously, I, I wake up an hour earlier than I need to every day, seven days a week, just to play Angry Birds and not lose a productive hour of the day. It's the very first thing I do. As soon as my alarm goes off, I put my glasses on, pick up my phone, and start playing Angry Birds. I love it.

    4. CWChris Williamson2:29:04

       Why?

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou2:29:05

       It's just so mindless, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. You know, [sighs] I have no hobbies. Well, until very recently, I, I had no hobbies. All I do is work.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:29:20

       Mm.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou2:29:20

       And I love it. It's great. It's fun. It's now, thank God, beginning to be, you know, kinda lucrative. But, um, but I don't really do anything but work.

    8. CWChris Williamson2:29:30

       Mm.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou2:29:31

       And so Angry Birds was, like, my only vice. I did buy a, a telescope with a built-in camera, so I, I've taken some awesome deep space pictures.

    10. CWChris Williamson2:29:42

        Oh, that's cool.

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou2:29:43

        And that's fun.

    12. CWChris Williamson2:29:43

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou2:29:44

        Tuesday and Wednesday in DC, I'm gonna be back in DC, completely cloudless nights. I'm gonna be out all night taking pictures. But, uh... And I'll show you some. Um, but Angry Birds, it just, it gives me such satisfaction. I just-

    14. CWChris Williamson2:29:58

        Didn't you, you had an insanely long streak. Like-

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:02

        N- nine consecutive years I didn't miss a single day, and then I got screwed. When I upgraded my phone, um, this is the first picture I took. And then if you leaf through, I took one on the harvest moon a month later. And, uh, yeah, that's the harvest moon. That was a pretty good one. And I haven't done any editing to that at all. That's just the picture. No editing. And that's the Whirlpool Galaxy. [laughs]

    16. CWChris Williamson2:30:35

        And you did this in DC?

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:36

        Mm-hmm. With all that ground light. Imagine what it would look like if I actually had a dark place to go.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:30:43

        Wow.

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:44

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson2:30:44

        That is impressive.

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:45

        It's fun. But, I mean, you can only do this when there are no clouds in the sky.

    22. CWChris Williamson2:30:49

        Mm-hmm.

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:49

        Sometimes I'll drive up to, up to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:30:54

        Mm.

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou2:30:54

        Uh, it's about an hour and 15 minutes north of me, just 'cause it, they've got dark sky there. And, uh, there's a guy that lets me, [laughs] that lets me just kinda park in his parking lot. He shuts the security light off, and I'll sit there for two or three hours and just take pictures.

33. 2:31:09 – 2:32:54

    Is John a Model Now?

    1. CWChris Williamson2:31:09

       Saying that you've got no hobbies, what happened at New York Fashion Week?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:12

       [laughs] So I get a call from this awesome designer, um, Elena Velez. She's like a neo-goth. Everything's black. Most of-

    3. CWChris Williamson2:31:29

       I do... When I look at you, I do think neo-goth, actually.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:31

       You're right.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:31:32

       Yeah.

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:32

       See? 'Cause-

    7. CWChris Williamson2:31:34

       Mm

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:34

       ... I'm, I'm with it.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:31:35

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:36

        Right? So she asked me if I would have any interest in walking the catwalk at New York Fashion Week. And I said, "Oh, hell yes." 'Cause look, I'm 62 years old.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:31:47

        Here you are.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:48

        [laughs] With the dog tags of my victims.

    13. CWChris Williamson2:31:54

        Oh, that's nice. I like that.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:54

        I was the only person that, that got two different, uh-

    15. CWChris Williamson2:31:58

        You had two looks?

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou2:31:59

        Two looks. I had 90 seconds to change.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:32:02

        Oh, yeah. I did... I spent for a very, very long time in my 20s doing, uh, fashion shows, and I know how horrendous that backstage-

    18. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:11

        I was surprised at how much work was involved.

    19. CWChris Williamson2:32:13

        Looks like it.

    20. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:14

        We, we started at 11:00 that morning, and the thing wasn't over until 9:30 at night.

    21. CWChris Williamson2:32:19

        Yeah, justice for mo- we talk about the perils of being at Guantanamo Bay. No one's talking about how painful it is for the models at New York Fashion Week.

    22. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:26

        And they're all naked most of the day.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:32:28

        Justice for New York fashion models, that's what I say.

    24. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:30

        And they don't get paid. Another thing, too, um, the next day, I had six emails waiting for me from friends of mine saying, "Buddy, there's this AI video of you going around."

    25. CWChris Williamson2:32:40

        [laughs]

    26. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:42

        And I was like, "Nope. Nope, it's not AI."

    27. CWChris Williamson2:32:45

        It is a good get out of jail free card now for anyone who gets rumbled to just say-

    28. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:50

        Yeah

    29. CWChris Williamson2:32:50

        ... "Hey, like, AI's getting really, really crazy."

    30. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:53

        That's right.
34. 2:32:54 – 2:35:41

    What Everyone Gets Wrong About Intelligence Agencies

    1. JKJohn Kiriakou2:32:54

       That's right.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:32:54

       What... You know, thinking about your career and, and sort of what you're doing now, what is the most interesting thing about your work and that world that you've learned after spending so much time in it that, that people from outside don't really appreciate or don't understand?

    3. JKJohn Kiriakou2:33:11

       Oh. You know, I think it is that Most of the people involved in the intelligence community are very, very bright, very, um, patriotic people who want n- to do nothing more than to serve the American people. And they're not right-wing ideologues. I'll give you an example. The 1992 election was-- It was the morning of the election, so we all voted in the morning. I was in a branch of, um, eight people, nine people, including the branch chief. And at the end of our nine o'clock morning meeting, he said, "Listen, I, I know we're not supposed to do this, but I'm just really curious as to who, who voted for whom."

    4. CWChris Williamson2:33:59

       Hmm.

    5. JKJohn Kiriakou2:34:00

       It turned out it was three for Clinton, three for Bush, and two for Perot. And I remember thinking, "Wow, I'm not the only Democrat in this office." But back then, you had no idea who the person sitting next to you voted for because it was irrelevant. In 1996, there was a woman in my branch that got in trouble. She was reprimanded by HR and had a letter put in her file that made her ineligible for promotion for a year because she had a Bob Dole bumper sticker in her cubicle.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:34:35

       Hmm.

    7. JKJohn Kiriakou2:34:35

       And now it's just, like, all gone nuts. But, um, but I think what most people don't understand, e- especially, especially on the political left, they just say, "CIA, evil," you know? And that's just not the case. There are bad people at the CIA. There are evil people at the CIA.

    8. CWChris Williamson2:34:52

       Hmm.

    9. JKJohn Kiriakou2:34:52

       Psychopaths in some cases, sociopaths, murderers. But most of them are, are good, decent, smart, hardworking people.

    10. CWChris Williamson2:35:01

        If you were to rank the intelligence agencies around the world, who do you think per person is most effective-

    11. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:10

        Oh

    12. CWChris Williamson2:35:10

        ... most advanced?

    13. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:11

        Easy. That, that's the Israelis. They're the best in the world. They're assholes, don't get me wrong. But they're the best in the world.

    14. CWChris Williamson2:35:19

        Why?

    15. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:21

        I think because they've convinced themselves that they have to be or they're done.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:35:26

        It's permanent existential threat.

    17. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:28

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:35:28

        Right. You know Parkinson's law?

    19. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:30

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson2:35:30

        Work expands to fill the time given for it.

    21. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:32

        It's exactly right.

    22. CWChris Williamson2:35:32

        It's like, uh, intensity expands to give... to, uh, fill the existential threat against it.

    23. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:38

        There it is.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:35:39

        Yeah.

    25. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:39

        That's Israel. Yeah.

35. 2:35:41 – 2:36:20

    Where to Find John

    1. CWChris Williamson2:35:41

       John Kiriakou, ladies and gentlemen. I, uh, I, I'm endlessly fascinated by what you're doing. Where should people go?

    2. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:46

       Thank you.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:35:46

       You got a book. You got all sorts of other stuff going on.

    4. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:48

       Oh, thanks. I've got a bunch of books. They're all on, uh, on Amazon. I have a, a new one that came out a, a couple of weeks ago. I have one that's coming out in 10 days, I guess.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:35:58

       How to Live Off the Grid. I have it. We didn't even get-

    6. JKJohn Kiriakou2:35:59

       Yeah

    7. CWChris Williamson2:35:59

       ... We need to do that next time.

    8. JKJohn Kiriakou2:36:00

       Yeah, we didn't do that one.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:36:01

       Yeah.

    10. JKJohn Kiriakou2:36:01

        Um, and I've got, um, John Kiriakou's Dead Drop on Apple, Apple Podcasts and Spotify and, uh, John Kiriakou's Briefing Room on YouTube.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:36:12

        Heck yeah. I appreciate you, man.

    12. JKJohn Kiriakou2:36:13

        Thank you.

    13. CWChris Williamson2:36:14

        Until next time.

    14. JKJohn Kiriakou2:36:14

        Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:36:16

        You bet.

    16. JKJohn Kiriakou2:36:16

        Good to see you.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:36:16

        All right. Until next time. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude. So that was great

Episode duration: 2:36:21