Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / EP.82 – JOHN KIRIAKOU: CHOOSING TRUTH OVER CAREER—WOULD YOU? | COURAGE | FAITH UNDER FIRE | WHISTLEBLOWER | CATHOLIC VALUES

Transcript

EP.82 – JOHN KIRIAKOU: CHOOSING TRUTH OVER CAREER—WOULD YOU? | COURAGE | FAITH UNDER FIRE | WHISTLEBLOWER | CATHOLIC VALUES · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  They put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the
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  mafia Dons and the drug kingpins.
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  What should I do? And he said, Oh my God.
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  He says, well, we can file a motion, but it'll be two years
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  before we get a court date and you'll be home by then.
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  He said. Buddy, I'm sorry, you're just
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  going to have to tough it out. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
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  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good, or
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  die trying. Here's the show.
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  So you were a former CIA agent who was persecuted by our own
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  government for telling the truth.
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  You knew you were facing forces both powerful and corrupt.
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  Why did you choose to do the right thing?
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  Well, I, I wish I could tell you that it was solely for
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  altruistic purposes. And it wasn't in the beginning
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  it what it became so later because I doubled down.
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  But in the beginning, this torture program was so
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  egregiously wrong. It was so obviously unethical,
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  immoral, illegal, that I thought certainly somebody's going to
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  come out and say something, right?
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  Somebody's going to come out and blow the whistle.
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  And nobody did. And I kept waiting for somebody
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  to do it, and nobody did. And then finally, in December of
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  2007, Brian Ross from ABC News called me and said that he had a
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  source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah.
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  I said that was absolutely untrue.
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  I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah.
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  And in fact, I've never laid a hand on any prisoner, ever.
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  And he said, well, you're welcome to come on the show and
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  defend yourself. And so I decided in the week
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  between that call and actually going on ABC News that I would
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  simply tell the truth. Any whatever he asked of me, I
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  was going to tell the truth. Well, as soon as the, as soon as
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  I, I gave that interview, and as I always say, the weight of the
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  entire U.S. government fell on my head.
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  I, I doubled down. And the deeper I got into it,
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  the more I was convinced I was right and they were wrong, that
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  history was going to judge us and that I was going to stick by
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  my guns. And that's what I did.
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  And now here we are, all these years later.
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  And I was right. I'm glad I did it.
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  Well, you were right. So this is this is what I want
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  to focus on. You had an excellent interview
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  with Tucker Carlson. He the details of the story.
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  I want to get into the the inner life of that decision and
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  working through that decision because I think increasingly
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  we're in a situation where we are going to be asked to make
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  sacrifices to speak the truth and do and do the good.
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  So first thing you had a week up to that ABC interview in which
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  you decided I, I will speak the truth.
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  What was going through your head during that week?
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  I presume you're weighing the pros and cons and the suffering
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  that would result. Yeah, I never, I never wanted to
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  go public. It was something that was forced
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  on me. And I thought, I thought, you
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  know, generations are going to look back on this generations of
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  my own family, children that had not yet been born to me,
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  grandchildren I've, you know, not yet met.
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  And I want them to be able to say to their children and
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  grandchildren that I had done the right thing.
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  And I thought, if they're going to out me like this, if they're
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  going to make this a public spectacle, then I'm going to be
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  on the right side of it. And, you know, at 1st, at first
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  it was, it was difficult in that just the statement that the CIA
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  was torturing prisoners was so controversial and so polarizing
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  that even before I I encountered any legal trouble, friends and
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  even family members began walking away from me.
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  And so you really get to see who your true friends are, who your
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  real supporters are. And then when charges were filed
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  against me, when was it 3 years later?
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  That really puts things into perspective.
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  And so, you know, as as odd as it might sound, it was almost a
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  culling exercise where I was able to dispatch sake people,
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  phonies from my life and focus on the people who really loved
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  and supported me. On top of that, I'm going to be
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  careful with my language here because of the wording of my
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  divorce decree. You know, there are some people
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  committed to the long run. There are some people who take
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  the words for better or for worse, seriously.
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  And there there are others who do not.
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  And so as difficult of an experience as this became, I
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  feel like I'm a better and stronger person because of it.
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  Wow, I was not expecting that. Thank you for sharing that and I
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  appreciate actually hearing that because I was disappointed when
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  I heard that that divorce happened and but I'm happy to
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  hear that at least ringing between the lines.
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  You had the desire to be faithful.
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  Oh, boy, did I Yeah. You know, I, my parents were
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  married for, let's see, 42 years when my dad passed away and my
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  parents were deeply in love with each other.
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  I just, I grew up assuming that everybody was like that.
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  You know when when life throws you a curve, you band together
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  and you deal with it? I thought not everybody's like
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  that. Some head for the hills and go
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  into self preservation mode at the expense of of everyone and
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  everything else. So you suffered a lot internally
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  and externally. It's been bad.
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  Yeah, it's been bad on top of the fact that the that the Obama
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  Justice Department seized my federal pension after 20 years
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  of service. So I'm going to have to work
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  until the day I die unless Donald Trump elects to give me a
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  pardon. Yeah.
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  Why hasn't he? I don't know.
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  I don't know. I feel like I'm that close.
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  And I'm in touch with very important people who are in
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  Trump's immediate orbit. So I'm, I'm hoping that this is
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  just a question of timing. I don't know.
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  We'll see. I don't know.
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  OK, all right, man, I, I really hope he has something captured.
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  Yeah, me too. Me too.
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  We'll see. Yeah, just out of respect for
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  the delicacy of your situation, I I won't ask you to comment too
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  much on that. Thank you.
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  I appreciate that. Yeah.
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  OK. So I'm very curious.
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  So you did spend a couple of years in prison.
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  What was that like? Yeah, it was surreal.
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  I spent 23 months in a federal prison, an actual prison.
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  You know, when I was being sentenced, my attorney stood up
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  and said, well, they they didn't say.
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  They asked the judge to send me to a minimum security work camp.
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  And in a minimum security camp, the camps are always attached to
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  a higher security prison because in the event of a riot or a
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  lockdown, it's the people at the camp that do the laundry and do
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  the cooking and do the mopping and the sweeping and stuff like
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  that. So the prosecutors had no
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  objection. And the judge then ordered that
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  I be sent to a minimum security work camp.
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  Now there are no bars on the windows.
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  The doors are unlocked. Most of the the inmates work in
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  town at the local university. You're just on your honor not to
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  run away. That that's thinking that
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  Epstein got. No, he got even better.
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  He got house arrest in his own, in his own home.
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  Yeah. So this is what Ghilane Maxwell
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  has right now. She's got the minimum security,
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  even though she's a convicted child sex predator and they're
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  not permitted in minimum security camps.
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  She's in a minimum security camp.
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  So figure that out. Anyway, I go to the camp.
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  What you do, it's very odd. This is why I use the word
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  surreal. You just drive up to the prison
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  and knock on the door and say you're there to turn yourself
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  in. It's it's weird.
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  So I mean, unless it's a violent crime, in which case they cuff
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  you in the courtroom and then just take you.
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  You're just, you know, they send you a letter and they say On
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  this date at this time, turn yourself in.
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  So I drove up there with a couple of my attorneys, a
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  documentary film crew, my cousin and his son knock on the door.
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  They say you have to go across the street to the prison.
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  They'll process you, and then they'll walk you back over here.
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  I said, OK, fine. So I go across the street to the
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  prison. They put me through security,
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  and then they start taking me around to the back of the actual
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  prison. I said no, no, I'm supposed to
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  be at the camp across the street.
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  And the guard laughed at me. And he said not according to my
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  paperwork, you're not. Oh my gosh.
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  And I told myself, take it easy, there's nothing you can do.
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  If you raise a stink, they're going to put you in solitary.
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  So I didn't say a word. Well, it took me 4 days to get
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  access to a phone. And I called my lead attorney
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  and I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison with the
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  pedophiles and the mafia Dons and the drug kingpins, what
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  should I do? And he said, Oh my God.
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  He says, well, we can file a motion, but it'll be two years
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  before we get a court date and you'll be home by then, he said.
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  Buddy, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to tough it out.
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  Oh my gosh. What?
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  And so I decided, you know what, I'm trained for this.
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  I've lived in far worse places than a low security prison in
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  Loretto, PA. So I just decided to rely on my
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  on my CIA training to keep myself safe and at the top of
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  the social heap. That's what I did.
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  It was hard work, but it worked out.
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  That's fascinating. What did you do to to achieve
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  those goals? I wrote a book while I was in
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  prison called Doing Time Like a Spy, how the CIA taught me to
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  survive and thrive in prison. And I take these 20 lessons that
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  they taught us in CIA training, and I showed how I applied each
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  and every one of these lessons to prison life.
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  I mean, some of them, even in CIA training, we used to say
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  them as a joke, like admit nothing, deny everything, make
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  counter accusations. That was kind of a joke, but it
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  was a real thing in prison lessons.
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  Like let others do your dirty work, never draw attention to
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  yourself, seek and utilize available cover.
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  And it worked. It worked.
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  Do you remember you? You might be a little bit too
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  young, but there was an HBO show that started in 2000 called Oz.
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  And it was a, a show about prison, about this maximum
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  security penitentiary in I think it was Illinois.
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  And they had a, a unit in it called Oz where they brought
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  together 3 mob guys, 3 Nazis, 3 black nationalists, you know,
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  all these different gangs and sort of forced them to get along
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  with each other. And of course they didn't.
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  It was just chaos and murder and mayhem.
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  But there was 1 character in there who was Irish and he was
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  independent. He wasn't in any gang.
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  That was me. I had to play them one off the
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  other and make sure that I never got wrapped up in the fighting
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  and the bickering and the Shanks and the, you know, all that
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  craziness that they were constantly plotting against each
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  other. In the end, I was allied with
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  the Italians. They adopted me, but I was
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  mostly independent and just looked out for myself.
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  What was the scariest situation you were in?
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  There was a serial killer in my unit, a guy that was a long
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  distance truck driver and so his nickname was truck.
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  And he had this bad habit of picking up prostitutes at truck
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  stops and having sex with them and then strangling them because
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  he didn't want to pay. And one of the girls that he
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  strangled was 16, and she actually lived and she was able
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  to identify him. So he ended up with two
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  consecutive 20 year terms. So I met him when he was about
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  35 years into this 40 year sentence.
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  For reasons that were never clear to me, he constantly
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  sought my approval. Constantly.
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  He started off by saying that he had been in the CIA and I was
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  like, dude, you don't even have teeth and you can't see.
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  I didn't know what he was in for.
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  So I was very disrespectful to him, and people would come up to
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  me and say, hey, listen, he's a dangerous SOB.
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  You should back off. The Italians told me that.
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  So I stopped insulting him. And then he would do things
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  like, hey, John, I saved you a seat in the TV room to watch the
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  football game. I said, oh, thanks, Truck.
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  Hey, John, I know you listen to classic rock.
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  There's a new station at 1600 AM.
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  Well, thanks, Truck. Appreciate it.
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  He hated pedophiles more than anything, and it was because he
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  was a pedophile. So while this is taking place,
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  there's an opening in my cell, right?
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  One of the guys got transferred out.
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  And when there's an opening in your cell, all the cell mates
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  get together and you interview people who want to move into
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  your cell. So rule #1 no pedophiles, none.
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  Rule #2 no rats. So if you're not a rat and
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  you're not a pedophile, I want to make sure that you're you're
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  clean, you keep your space clean, you don't smell bad,
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  you're not an asshole. And then, you know, maybe we'll
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  let you into our cell and then we all go to the they were four
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  man cells, but they stuffed six of us in there.
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  So six people in a four man cell.
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  So this guy from Pittsburgh says he wants to move into our cell
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  and we used to call him Cat in the Hat because he had a really
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  oblong head. It was like freakish.
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  And I said, what's your crime? You're not a pedophile, right?
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  And he said, no, I'm not a pedophile.
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  I said, what's your crime? He says murder for hire.
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  And I said, oh, I'm not sure I like that either.
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  What were the circumstances of that?
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  And he said, oh, I hired a hitman.
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  He said I owed the mafia $100,000 in gambling debts.
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  So I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner
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  and I hired a hitman to kill him.
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  And I got caught. I said that's that's not cool.
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  So I went down to the law library and I looked him up and
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  the case was much more complicated than that.
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  Like all of that was true. He hired the hit man and then he
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  got caught within days of the murder because who else?
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  You just took $100,000 life insurance policy out on your
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  partner and boom, like magic, he gets assassinated.
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  So of course they're going to arrest you.
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  He immediately ratted out the hit man and he saved himself.
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  So instead of life without parole, we're the federal death
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  penalty, he got 20 years. And then it just so happened
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  that the hitman had a heart attack while awaiting trial and
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  died. So the feds had to respect the
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  deal that they made with Cat in the Hat.
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  So I told Cat in the Hat, you're a rat, I have documentary proof
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  you're a rat, and you're not moving into my cell.
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  OK, Couple days later, I get called to the lieutenant's
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  office. Normally you never, ever want to
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  get called to the lieutenant's office because you're probably
• 16:27
  going to solitary. But I got called because NPR
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  wanted to interview me and I had to sign a release.
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  So I go down there, I sign the release.
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  I go back up to the TV room and I'm sitting next to truck and
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  Cat in the Hat is sitting three feet away from me.
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  And he didn't see that I was sitting by him.
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  And he turned to the guy next to him and he says, did you hear
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  Kiriakou got called down to the lieutenant's office.
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  He goes, that guy's a fucking rat.
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  He went down there to rat us out.
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  I didn't react at all. And Truck said, did you just
• 17:02
  hear that guy? He said, you're a fucking rat.
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  And I said an hour ago, I heard him say that you were a
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  pedophile, which was totally untrue.
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  But remember the rule. Let others do your dirty work.
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  Don't attract attention to yourself without saying a word.
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  Truck got up, walked the three feet over there and beat him to
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  within an inch of his life. Cat in the Hat spent six weeks
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  in the hospital. Truck got five more years added
• 17:33
  to his term and was upgraded to a medium security prison.
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  And then when Cat in the Hat got back, people had told him what
• 17:40
  happened. He came to me to apologize.
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  And I said, listen, I'm going to say one final thing to you.
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  If I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again, you're
• 17:52
  dead. Do you understand?
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  And he said, yes, I understand that could have gone bad for me
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  in a couple of different ways. But I was able to manipulate
• 18:03
  this guy to 0 out my problems and nobody was ever able to
• 18:08
  point the finger at me. That's what the CIA taught me to
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  do. Well, that's really dark.
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  It's an ugly place. I didn't mean to make you
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  speechless. I don't want to go to prison,
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  that's for sure. No, it's not good.
• 18:23
  There's no such thing as club fed.
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  I hate when I hear that term. Prison is prison.
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  There's no such thing as club fed.
• 18:31
  Yeah. You're not going to play golf or
• 18:33
  tennis or do gardening. You're in fucking prison where
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  they humiliate you, they emasculate you, and they make
• 18:41
  you count the days until you can get out, and even then you're
• 18:46
  not really free. So yeah, it's not, it's not
• 18:48
  good. What do you mean?
• 18:50
  Even then, you're not really free.
• 18:51
  Well, then you've got three years, five years, 10 years of
• 18:55
  of probation. Pedophiles have a lifetime of
• 18:58
  probation. You're not free to travel.
• 19:01
  You're not free to really do anything without asking a court,
• 19:05
  you know, multiple times to allow you to go out there and
• 19:10
  make a living. It's awful.
• 19:12
  You know, I'm trying to make a living when I get out and I get
• 19:16
  invited, for example, to give a speech in Berlin and I'm going
• 19:19
  to make 5 grand or 10 grand or whatever it was.
• 19:22
  And the judge is like, Nope, no travel.
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  Like, why you, you're telling me that I have to go to Safeway and
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  get a job as a, as a, you know, a, a shelf stalker for $8 an
• 19:34
  hour, but I can make 10 grand giving one speech in Berlin.
• 19:37
  And you say no, just because I'm a bad guy and I need to be
• 19:41
  punished. Either you want me to make a
• 19:42
  living or you don't want me to make a living.
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  And by the way, I have five children.
• 19:47
  And then they're like, OK, OK. But then you have to turn your
• 19:49
  passport in as soon as you get back.
• 19:51
  Like, OK, why? And that was a constant fight.
• 19:55
  Constant. But you did your time.
• 19:58
  Oh, yeah, They don't care. They don't care.
• 20:00
  I'll tell you another story. I just told this cell yesterday
• 20:03
  on on my own podcast when I got out of prison.
• 20:07
  Listen, I take, I take civil liberties very, very seriously.
• 20:11
  So when I got out of prison, I immediately applied to have my
• 20:14
  voting rights reinstated. So it's not a sexy process.
• 20:18
  You just go to the website of the Secretary of State of your
• 20:22
  state. So I live in Virginia and I
• 20:24
  filled out the form and it said it takes about two weeks to get
• 20:27
  your voting rights reinstated. Well, three weeks later, I
• 20:30
  hadn't heard anything, so I called the Secretary of State's
• 20:33
  toll free number and this guy answers, yeah, may I help you?
• 20:36
  I said, yeah, I applied to have my voting rights restored.
• 20:38
  It's been 3 weeks. I haven't heard anything.
• 20:40
  Oh, what's your case number? So I gave him my case number and
• 20:43
  he goes, oh, oh, like he recognizes me, right?
• 20:48
  He said, listen, it's in process, no problems.
• 20:52
  It's going to take about another week.
• 20:53
  And I said, oh, OK, thank you. I'm up the phone.
• 20:56
  A week later, 7:00 in the morning, my doorbell rings and
• 21:01
  I'm up getting the kids ready for school.
• 21:03
  So I go to the door and it's a Courier and he's got this big 11
• 21:07
  by 14 cardboard envelope and he hands it to me.
• 21:11
  It's from the Secretary of State's office.
• 21:13
  I pull out this paper and it's a big pardon decree where the
• 21:18
  governor of Virginia has pardoned me.
• 21:20
  I hadn't applied for a pardon, but apparently he followed my
• 21:24
  case and thought I got screwed. So wow, just took it upon
• 21:28
  himself to pardon me, which was the loveliest gesture.
• 21:32
  I wish Terry McAuliffe would run, run for president.
• 21:34
  I would vote for him just for that kindness.
• 21:38
  So I get this big certificate with the gold seal and the
• 21:42
  governor's signature. So he reinstates my voting
• 21:46
  rights and reinstates my state gun rights.
• 21:48
  Now I don't have my federal gun rights back.
• 21:51
  So it it was just a, a nice gesture.
• 21:54
  So I go down to the courthouse, and it was a Friday, and it's
• 21:59
  the last day to register to vote.
• 22:00
  So I go to fill out the form and says, have you ever been
• 22:03
  convicted of a felony? And I said yes.
• 22:05
  Have you had your voting rights reinstated?
• 22:07
  Yes. And this woman calls me around
• 22:09
  to the side very discreetly. And she says, I noticed you
• 22:12
  checked the two boxes. And I said yeah.
• 22:15
  And she said, the man who handles cases like yours, he's
• 22:20
  on vacation today. And I said, oh, no.
• 22:22
  I said, today's the last day to register, and I want to vote on
• 22:25
  Tuesday. And she said, don't worry about
• 22:28
  it, We'll take care of it. And so on Monday, the day before
• 22:32
  the election, my doorbell rings again.
• 22:35
  And it's the guy from the courthouse came to my house with
• 22:39
  a voter registration card and said, congratulations.
• 22:43
  I said, you see now this is exactly how the system should
• 22:46
  be. This not the way the feds run
• 22:49
  it. This was incredible.
• 22:51
  I'm so grateful to those people. I mean, these are kind of like
• 22:55
  nameless bureaucrats. And former Governor Terry
• 22:59
  McAuliffe, I'm forever grateful for them and what they did.
• 23:04
  So I'm curious about what it's like psychologically to correct
• 23:08
  me if I'm wrong, but plead guilty for a crime you did not
• 23:11
  commit. Well, that's, that's a good
• 23:14
  question, actually. And then in the hearing where I
• 23:17
  had to change my plea from not guilty to guilty, you, you stand
• 23:21
  up in front of the judge and she says, are you here to change
• 23:24
  your plea? And you say yes, are you
• 23:27
  pleading guilty? Yes.
• 23:28
  Are you in fact guilty of the crime with which you were
• 23:31
  charged? And I said no.
• 23:33
  And she says to my attorney, counselor, you may want to have
• 23:36
  a word with your client. And he says loud enough for the
• 23:40
  stenographer to hear, he said, you have to say you're guilty.
• 23:43
  And I said, but I'm not guilty. I just want the deal.
• 23:46
  And he said, I know, but you have to say you're guilty.
• 23:49
  So I said to the judge, sure, I'm guilty.
• 23:53
  I did it. She said, you don't sound too
• 23:55
  convincing. I said, well, I, I did it.
• 23:58
  I'm guilty. And so I'm pleading guilty.
• 24:00
  I mean, what are you going to do?
• 24:01
  I, I say all the time there, there's this old joke that, you
• 24:04
  know, half of the people in prison are, are innocent.
• 24:07
  Well, guess what? I met a lot of people in prison
• 24:11
  who are innocent a lot. But do you roll the dice if
• 24:15
  you're being with? For example, for me, I was
• 24:17
  offered two years. I was looking at 45 years.
• 24:20
  Do you roll the dice knowing that the government wins 98.2%
• 24:24
  of its cases? Wow.
• 24:27
  You can't, and so are you guilty.
• 24:30
  Guilty. Sure, why not?
• 24:32
  I'm guilty. Wow, Yeah, it's.
• 24:35
  Bad. It's bad, yes.
• 24:40
  Well, this is adding evidence to the hypothesis that we live in a
• 24:44
  dystopia. Oh, let me let me add one other
• 24:47
  thing, just to give you an example.
• 24:49
  There was a guy in my housing unit, Pat Winter.
• 24:53
  Never in my 2 years did I ever see somebody who was more out of
• 24:57
  place in prison than Pat Winter. This guy had 9 children.
• 25:03
  Wow. He was a devout Catholic, never
• 25:07
  missed church, even in the prison Chapel every single
• 25:11
  Sunday. And I said to him one day, Pat,
• 25:13
  what are you in here for anyway? And he said arson.
• 25:17
  I said arson. I said you really don't seem
• 25:20
  like a guy who would go out in the middle of the night and set
• 25:24
  set something on fire. He said, well I, I didn't.
• 25:27
  I said, well, what happened? And he said that he married this
• 25:32
  rich guy's daughter and they had nine kids and Pat never went to
• 25:38
  college. He was like a mechanic or a Body
• 25:42
  Shop guy barely making ends meet.
• 25:45
  But his father-in-law is supplementing his income, right?
• 25:50
  Helping him pay for all this. His father-in-law never liked
• 25:53
  him because he was less than what the father-in-law wanted
• 25:57
  for his daughter. Right.
• 25:59
  So the father-in-law comes to Pat one day and says, listen, I
• 26:03
  want you to set fire to this building that I own.
• 26:06
  I want to collect the insurance money on it.
• 26:08
  And Pat says, well, that's illegal.
• 26:09
  He said, I know, but I'm going to give you X amount of money
• 26:12
  and you're going to be able to use it as a down payment on a
• 26:14
  house and your kids need to go to school and whatever.
• 26:18
  So Pat just went and set the building on fire and got caught.
• 26:22
  Yeah. And I said, and let me guess,
• 26:24
  you didn't rat out your father-in-law.
• 26:26
  He said, of course not. He said I never opened my mouth,
• 26:29
  I just took it and I got five years.
• 26:32
  I said five years in prison, 9 kids at home and your
• 26:35
  father-in-law let you rot in prison for doing his dirty work.
• 26:40
  But that's typical. I mean that there is nothing
• 26:43
  unusual about that story. That was typical.
• 26:46
  So amidst all this darkness and I kind of feel like I'm getting
• 26:50
  secondary drama just from listening to this.
• 26:52
  I know, right? So.
• 26:53
  I can't imagine what what you experienced.
• 26:56
  Where did your values come from after all this?
• 26:59
  He said. You you don't regret it.
• 27:01
  Where did your values come from for this?
• 27:03
  Oh, my parents and my grandparents.
• 27:05
  My parents and my father's parents, Yeah, we were a very
• 27:09
  strong nuclear family. I come from a family of
• 27:12
  immigrants. All four of my grandparents came
• 27:15
  from the island of Rhodes. And we're so incredibly grateful
• 27:20
  to the United States for giving them, you know, an opportunity
• 27:23
  to thrive. When my grandparents left
• 27:26
  Greece, there were no jobs. There wasn't enough housing,
• 27:30
  There wasn't enough food to feed everybody.
• 27:32
  And so the government was actively encouraging young
• 27:35
  people to just leave, go to the US, Canada, the UK, Australia,
• 27:39
  just just leave. And so they left in 1931 on my
• 27:44
  dad's side, 1934 on my mom's side, my grandparents.
• 27:48
  My dad's father especially, was such a deep believer in the
• 27:53
  American dream, the American experiment that he instilled in
• 27:58
  us this notion that we have to give back, right?
• 28:03
  We have to pay the country back for what it did for us.
• 28:06
  And so I only considered public service.
• 28:10
  It never even crossed my mind to go into the private sector.
• 28:15
  And then at the same time, they sort of instilled in us this
• 28:19
  notion that life is complicated. But even with life's
• 28:23
  complications, deep down we all know the difference between
• 28:27
  right and wrong. All of us do right.
• 28:30
  It may be a difficult decision to take to do the right thing,
• 28:34
  but we know what's right. And so without being, you know,
• 28:38
  Mr. Goody 2 shoes, I always tried to do the right thing.
• 28:42
  Well, when it came to the torture program, I felt so
• 28:45
  strongly about it, like it was so clearly wrong.
• 28:49
  I thought, you know, if you look back through history, where and
• 28:55
  especially if you look back just at the CIA, where the CIA took
• 28:59
  actions or implemented operations that were clearly
• 29:04
  wrong, that always ends up being revealed to the public.
• 29:08
  The truth always comes out. Always.
• 29:10
  Sometimes it takes years, decades, but the truth always
• 29:14
  comes out. And I thought, I've got to be on
• 29:17
  the right side of this because I was involved, right?
• 29:21
  I was one of those people there at the creation of the torture
• 29:24
  program. And, you know, I thought, well,
• 29:26
  historians are going to look at this someday and they're going
• 29:29
  to say, this Kiriakou guy, why didn't he ever say anything?
• 29:34
  Why didn't he ever try to stop it?
• 29:36
  And I thought, now they're wrong and I'm right and I'm going for
• 29:40
  it. And so that's what I did.
• 29:42
  But it was really because of the strength that my parents and
• 29:45
  grandparents gave me that allowed me to do it.
• 29:48
  How much of an impact does? I presume you're orthodox?
• 29:51
  How much should impact does that out?
• 29:53
  Yes, very, very much, very much. I take my faith seriously.
• 29:59
  I even keep a picture of a 20th century St.
• 30:02
  St. Nekdadios of Agena a keep in my
• 30:05
  wallet so that he's close to me. Nice.
• 30:08
  I've sort of adopted him as my, as my patron St. for a couple of
• 30:12
  reasons. When I was first assigned to to
• 30:15
  Athens as the counterterrorism officer, I was doing a joint
• 30:18
  operation with the Greek National Intelligence Service,
• 30:22
  and we went out to the island of Agena many hours before we
• 30:26
  really needed to. But we were afraid, oh, there's
• 30:28
  going to be, you know, choppy waves and we're not going to be
• 30:31
  able to get on the boat. And we had to do this operation.
• 30:34
  So we go out like 6 hours early. And of course, the sea was like
• 30:38
  oil. So we just, you know, skimmed
• 30:41
  right across the, the water to the island.
• 30:44
  And one of the Greek, the senior Greek officers said to me, have
• 30:46
  you ever been to the home of Saint Nectarios?
• 30:49
  And I said, no, I would love to see the home of Saint Nectarios.
• 30:53
  So we went to the monastery and the home, and there's a little
• 30:56
  Chapel. His body is there and his
• 30:59
  Bishop's crown and all his possessions, his family photos,
• 31:03
  his clothes. So we went and the senior Greek
• 31:07
  officer told the mother Superior it's not a monastery, it's a
• 31:11
  convent. He told the Mother Superior
• 31:13
  we're from the Greek intelligence service and we have
• 31:16
  an American Greek Orthodox, and he would like to see the Saints
• 31:20
  home. They let me sit on his bed.
• 31:23
  They let me sit at his desk. It was just so cool.
• 31:27
  And one of the reasons why I was so attracted to his story was he
• 31:31
  had been a young priest and he became a young Bishop in Cairo
• 31:37
  or in Alexandria rather within the the Patriarchate of
• 31:40
  Alexandria. But because he was so young and
• 31:43
  moving up so quickly, jealous priests started a rumor that he
• 31:48
  was having sex with female parishioners was totally untrue.
• 31:53
  And he was stripped of his bishopric and he was expelled
• 31:56
  from Egypt and sent back to Greece.
• 31:59
  He was penniless. Back then, priests didn't work
• 32:02
  for the government. There were no pensions.
• 32:04
  You know, whatever donations you got in the tray on Sunday,
• 32:06
  that's what you lived on. So he even went hungry and over
• 32:12
  the next 50 years built this convent and a church and you
• 32:17
  know, etcetera, etcetera. All those 50 years, he prayed
• 32:23
  for God to forgive the people who had lied about him.
• 32:27
  He never accused them. He never felt sorry for himself.
• 32:31
  It was all about forgiveness. And I thought, Nah, over 50
• 32:35
  years, all he did was want to forgive these people.
• 32:40
  They ruined his life. He would have been the patriarch
• 32:43
  and he forgave them. And I thought, if he can forgive
• 32:47
  them, then I certainly can forgive the people who wronged
• 32:50
  me. And then at the same time,
• 32:52
  people are sending me biographies.
• 32:54
  I never read so much in my life as I read in prison.
• 32:57
  There's nothing else to do. So, you know, I'm reading a
• 33:00
  biography of Nelson Mandela, a biography of Martin Luther King.
• 33:04
  Martin Luther King is the last personal assistant used to write
• 33:08
  me letters. We corresponded back and forth.
• 33:10
  He's passed away now. He sent me not just a biography
• 33:13
  of King, but he sent me a biography of King that he had
• 33:15
  written. And so I thought, wow, these
• 33:17
  people suffered so much more than I did.
• 33:22
  I can certainly just consider what happened to me.
• 33:25
  Water under the bridge. So that's what I did.
• 33:29
  OK, well I got to ask. Maybe ending it on a lighter
• 33:32
  note, what was it like being on Tucker?
• 33:36
  Oh, you know, he's the sweetest guy.
• 33:39
  He's really a genuinely sweet, kind and down to earth guy.
• 33:45
  When he was at Fox, I was on his show maybe a dozen times and one
• 33:50
  of the things that I really liked about his show was that it
• 33:53
  was a longer form. I go on the Jesse Water show a
• 33:57
  lot now and I'm on for literally 15 seconds.
• 34:00
  Literally like that's the longest I've been on 15 seconds.
• 34:04
  With Tucker, I'd go on 15 minutes, 20 minutes and we sit
• 34:08
  there and talk and then we go to commercial.
• 34:10
  We talked during the commercial and we became friends.
• 34:13
  And so he gave me his cell number.
• 34:16
  I gave him my cell number. We would call and chat or text.
• 34:19
  And he's just a totally down to earth sweet guy.
• 34:26
  He mentioned one time, he said you and I probably disagree on
• 34:29
  95% of the issues. And I said we may.
• 34:33
  We may, but I think we probably don't.
• 34:36
  I think we're probably closer on issues than you realize.
• 34:41
  Not because I'm farther to the right than I acknowledge.
• 34:44
  I said you're farther to the left than you acknowledge.
• 34:48
  And so we remain friends all this time.
• 34:51
  And he's actively helped me try to get a pardon over the course
• 34:55
  of three administrations now, Trump, Biden, Trump.
• 35:00
  And, and he called me and said, Hey, why don't you come up?
• 35:03
  He, he, he's moved, he sold his house in Washington.
• 35:05
  He moved to Maine. And he said, why don't you come
• 35:08
  up to Maine? We'll spend a couple days and
• 35:10
  we'll do like a, a really long form interview.
• 35:14
  And so I did. And he was absolutely wonderful,
• 35:17
  just a wonderful guy. I'm proud to call him a friend.
• 35:20
  And you know, in Washington, there's a famous saying from
• 35:24
  Harry Truman, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog,
• 35:28
  right? But, but Tucker's different.
• 35:31
  He's a genuine guy. Amazing, hope I have the
• 35:34
  privilege of meeting him one day.
• 35:36
  You'll like him a lot. Well, this was this was amazing.
• 35:40
  John, thank you for your witness to the truth.
• 35:43
  Thank you. Thank you for for having me.
• 35:46
  I'm very happy to have been able to tell these stories.
• 35:49
  Thanks for that. I'm praying for your pardon.
• 35:52
  Thank you. Me too.
• 35:54
  Fingers crossed. There's got to be somebody out
• 35:57
  there that could whisper into Donald Trump's ear.
• 36:00
  There's got to be. We'll see.
• 36:02
  Yeah. All right, Matt.
• 36:05
  Yeah, Thank you. Take care of yourself.
• 36:07
  Welcome, take care. Thanks for listening.
• 36:10
  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 36:12
  See you next time.