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#074_ STORY INSPIRE: CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: They Can Track Your Every Move · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: NSA or CIA or the FBI. And to make matters worse,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: we know that the CIA can take control remotely of
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a car's computer system in order to crash the car,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: take it off a bridge, or take control of your
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: smart TV and turn a speaker into a microphone. Even
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: though the TV is off and broadcast back to the CIA.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Can they do that with devices?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I'll tell you how we know. There was
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled. And he downloaded
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of documents classified above top secret. And
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: went to WikiLeaks. And they became the Vault 7 documents.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: So our whole lives are out there, potentially, for someone
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: to use against us. And every country has these capabilities.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Listen up. I spent 15 years in the CIA. I
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: love this country, but one of the most important things
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: in my life is the issue of ethics, which is
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: why I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: because my superiors kept repeating that torture worked. But besides
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true. And I
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: would let them send me to prison again because it
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was the right thing to do. I mean, we know
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that they were experimenting on American citizens and spreading diseases
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: in American cities.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: This is the stuff of movies. It is. And because
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: you've been in this world that the average person really
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: has no idea about, I have to ask you... Who
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: do you think is the real adversary of the West?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: What are you most concerned about in the world at
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: the moment? And what about everything that's going on with
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Trump in Venezuela and Greenland? And then, do you think
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein was a spy? Yes. Who do you think
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: he was working for?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: The Israelis. Why?
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Listen, my team gave me a script that they asked
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: me to read, but I'm just going to ask you
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: in the nicest way I possibly can. Thank you, first
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: and foremost, for choosing to subscribe to this channel. It's
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: been one of the most incredible, crazy years of my life.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: in my life, but this was not one of them.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: you and you've given me so much feedback is something
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I will always be appreciative of. And I almost carry
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: away a sort of burden of responsibility to pay you back.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: And the favour I would like to ask from you
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: today is to subscribe to the channel if you would
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: about 47% of you that listen to this channel frequently
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: of those people, please come and join us, hit the
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: subscribe button. It's the single free thing you can do
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: to make this channel better. And every subscriber sort of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: pays into this show and allows us to do things
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I will not let you down if you hit the
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: subscribe button, I promise you. And if I do, please
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: do unsubscribe, but I promise I won't. Thank you. John Kirioku,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: the world knows your name.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Why does the world know your name?
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I can give you two answers. One, I'm proud to
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: say that I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: program in a nationally televised interview with ABC News. The
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: second reason is I blew the whistle a long time ago.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And just in the past 18 months, I seem to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm sweet spot. And
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, my message is getting out there.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And you went to prison for blowing the whistle. I did.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And I would do it again tomorrow.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I really would.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I was giving an interview to the BBC
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the day after I got out of prison. They were
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the first outlet to ask for an interview. And so
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I gladly gave it to them. And the interviewer said,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: kind of perturbedly, you're not showing any remorse or contrition.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And I said, no, I'm not remorseful. I'm not contrite.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I would do it again. I would let them send
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: me to prison again because it was the right thing
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And you were a spy in the CIA.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was quite an accomplished spy. I spent 15
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: years in the CIA. The first half of my career
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: was in analysis and I got bored, frankly. And so
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I made an unusual at the time change to counterterrorism operations.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And then I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in Pakistan after the 9-11 attacks.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And if I'd never heard about the CIA before, and
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I had never heard about your role in the CIA before,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: and I was a 16-year-old, how would you explain to
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: me what you did there, what your role was, and
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: what the CIA is. Sure.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: The CIA is an intelligence service whose job it is,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: at its most basic level, to recruit spies to steal
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: secrets and to analyze those secrets so that the policymakers
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: can make the best informed policy. After 9-11, we were
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: expecting an attack, to use Osama bin Laden's words, that
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: would dwarf 9-11. And so my job was to infiltrate
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: al-Qaeda by recruiting members of al-Qaeda to tell us when
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and where that next attack was going to come so
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that we could disrupt it. We could kill or capture
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the leadership and destroy the organization.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And give me a range of the things that you
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: did during your time in the CIA, just for a
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: very top line range of the types of things you
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: worked on. Oh, sure. Sure.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: As an analyst, it was actually quite straightforward. We would
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: write for the president, the vice president, the secretaries of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: state and defense, and the national security advisor.
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  Speaker 2: And who were the presidents during that time?
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: When I started, it was George H.W. Bush, the father.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And then it was Bill Clinton, then George W.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Bush.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: There are several different publications. There's the president's daily brief,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: which is the most important. I covered Iraq the entire
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: time that I was in analysis from well before most
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Americans had ever heard of Iraq. I was told actually
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: that it was a training account because nothing ever happened there.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Nothing ever changed. And then Iraq invaded Kuwait. The next
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: day I got to the office early. I was 25
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: years old, 26 years old. And my boss said, don't
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: take your jacket off. We're going to the White House.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I had never been to the White House before, except
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: as a tourist. And so we got in a car,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: went to the White House. We're ushered into the Oval Office.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: It's the president, the vice president, the national security advisor,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the director of the CIA, my boss.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And me.
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  Speaker 1: And then we all sit down. The president tells us,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sit down. We sit down and the president says, well,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: now what do we do? And everybody turns and looks
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: at me. And it took me a second. And I said, yes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I said, Mr. President, as you know, Iraqi troops crossed
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the border at 2 o'clock this morning. The royal family
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: has run away to Saudi Arabia. They've named a new
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: occupation governor, et cetera, et cetera. Do we know who
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: that is? I said, yes, sir. I gave him the name.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And I said, actually, he's the co-founder of the Popular
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The vice president shouts,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. And then the president says, gentlemen, thank you.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you. We'll take it from here. And I remember
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: saying to myself, my friends would never believe in a
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: thousand years what I was doing right now. They wouldn't
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: even believe me if I told them. That's what an
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: analyst does. When I switched to operations, again, the job
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: was very straightforward. It was to recruit spies to steal secrets.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: But then if you're involved in counterterrorism operations, there are
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of extras that you have to be trained in.
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  Speaker 1: So you go through the normal spy training. This is
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: how you ingratiate yourself. It's something called the asset acquisition cycle. Spot, assess, develop, recruit.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I meet you at a cocktail party. You seem like
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: a nice guy. I introduce myself. I ask, so what
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: do you do for a living? Well, if you tell
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: me you manage a shoe store, I'm going to say, well,
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  Speaker 1: it was very nice meeting you. And I'm going to
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: go on to the next guy. But if you tell
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: me you work at the port, you work in the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Ministry of Defense, you work in the Chinese embassy, I'm
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: going to invite you to lunch. I've spotted you. I've
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: assessed you. And my assessment is I'd like to get
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  Speaker 1: to know you. Then I begin to develop you. I'll
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: give you an example. I was in Pakistan. I got
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a tip that Al-Qaeda– a group of mid-level Al-Qaeda fighters
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: was meeting every single day in a coffee shop at
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  Speaker 1: 10 o'clock in the morning. My Arabic was absolutely flawless
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: at the time. And so I had a bushy beard
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: that I grew for operational reasons.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Can I hear some of your Arabic?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's nice to meet you. Or– So I bought
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: an Arabic newspaper and I went to the coffee shop
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and I just sat there. And sure enough, at 10 o'clock,
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  Speaker 1: the four of them came in. One of them looked
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: at me and I looked at him and that was it.
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  Speaker 1: We made eye contact. I did that for a week.
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  Speaker 1: The second week I was there drinking my coffee, sitting
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: with my Arabic newspaper, And the one who had looked
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: at me the week before, he nodded. So I nodded back.
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  Speaker 1: That was it. No communication otherwise. The third week, I'm
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: a regular now. He recognizes me. So he says to me,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I said, may peace be upon you. And I say,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and upon you, peace. One day he came in alone.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: And I said, Tafadal, please have a seat. Sit with me.
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  Speaker 1: No sense in you sitting alone and me sitting alone.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: So he sat down. We started talking. And I asked
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: him how long he had been in Pakistan. He said, oh,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I've been here for five years. I was in Afghanistan.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I was making jihad against the Americans. And I said, oh,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that must have been hell on earth. He said, oh,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: he said that the bombing of Tora Bora was hideous.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: That was the word that he used. It was hideous.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And I said, and what about your family? How's your family?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: He said, my wife and son and daughter are in Cairo.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I've never met my son. He was born just after
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I left to make jihad. I said, I'm so sorry.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And he said, yes, I'm lonely and I want to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: go home. And we continued this relationship. And finally, I
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: said to him, let me take you to dinner. Let's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: get out of the coffee shop. The truth was I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: didn't want one of his friends to walk in and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: see us. So we went to a restaurant for dinner.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: And I said, listen, there's something that I haven't been
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: truthful with you about. I'm not Lebanese. And I said, actually,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I'm American. Are you okay with that? And he says,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I think so. I said, well, actually, I'm a CIA officer.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And he says, okay. So he didn't run screaming from
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the room or pull a gun or anything. And he said,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: why do you want me? Why do you want to
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: talk to me? I said, actually, you have access to
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: something that I want. It was very specific. And I
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: told him what it was. And he says, and what
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: will you do for me? And I said, anything your
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: heart desires. And he said, I want to go home.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I said, I can do that. You wanted information, presumably.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I wanted information. Very specific information.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Which you can't share.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: No. I'll go right back to prison.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: So.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: So we got him a passport. I bought him a
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: first class ticket and I took him to the airport,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: gave him some cash to get himself started again. And
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I said, before you go, I have to ask you,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: why did you agree to give me this information? I mean,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: presumably I'm the enemy. And he said, I've been here
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: five years and you're the first person who ever asked
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: me about my family. So I said, Best of luck.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Never saw him again. That's the job.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I have to ask you, take me on the journey
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: of you being a young man in West Pennsylvania to
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: becoming a spy. What happened? Because I'll be honest, I
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: don't really know what my perception of spies is, but
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: it's not you.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. See, because I kind of work
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: under the radar.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting. There's so many, once you learn about
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: spies as a podcast, like, so if you go back
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: a couple of years and someone had told me about spies,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't have believed them. I wouldn't have believed that
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: these things actually happened. Oh yeah. You know, you hear
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: about people going undercover and going to other countries and
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: getting secrets and, and all of these things. And it's
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: not until you meet the people that said, yes, that's me.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I used to do that. That you'll sort of, you
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: have this paradigm shift in your mind and you go,
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: oh my God, what else might be going on?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Because I lived in this world probably up until the
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: age of, I don't know, 30 years old, where I
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: kind of just assume things are what they are as
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I see them. And then, you know, you start to
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: discover that there's layers of secrecy. Nations are against each other.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: They're doing all of these covert operations. And even like
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: as a podcaster now, I have moments where I go, Like,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: how do I know that you're not here to steal
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: secrets from me? Right. So you know what's funny? When
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: I had Andrew Bustamante on the show, the comment sections
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: are always the same. They're always like, once a CIA spy,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: always a CIA spy.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I hate when people say that. It's so intellectually lazy.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: But I do wonder, and I go, okay, here's a
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: super conspiracy theory. What if the CIA have made spies
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: do really well in the YouTube algorithm so that All
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: of us as long-form podcasters invite them on and then they.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: You know what? I would agree with that. I would
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: have agreed with that a year ago because Andrew Bustamante
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: has really made a handsome living out of selling his experience.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And he's on every podcast.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: But I am the most anti-CIA former CIA person that's
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: But wouldn't that be the perfect CIA agent?
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I mean if I weren't constantly criticizing the CIA as
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: an organization that's just out of control.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Do you think the CIA have a strategy for podcasters
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: and for podcasting?
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I think yes. Now they do. It took them a
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: little while to get current. But just like they over
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: time developed a strategy with Hollywood … Sure. They're developing
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a strategy with podcasters. You know, it was only in
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the last 10 years that the CIA opened a branch
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: within the Office of Public Affairs whose job it is
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: solely to liaise with Hollywood Studios. The FBI has been
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: doing this since the 40s. And the goal is that
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: everything that comes out of Hollywood should be pro-CIA. And,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: you know, we end up with– Zero Dark Thirty and
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: The Recruit and the CIA, Argo. The CIA is always
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the hero in these movies.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: If you were still at the CIA now and your
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: job was to infiltrate and use creators or podcasters as
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: an asset for the CIA's objectives, how might you design
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: that plan if we were just hypothesizing?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: You would have to have a goal. that would be
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: specific enough that you could actually track the progress to it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: So you can't just say, well, I'm going to pay
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: this podcaster X amount of money, and we're going to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: do something with the algorithm to make him vastly popular
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: among men 18 to 30, let's say. There's got to
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: be more to it than that. It has to be
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: a message. You've got to be able to get a specific,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: well-honed message out there. And the message can be anything.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: It could be, you know, love the CIA. We're the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: good guys. It could be support the overthrow of the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Iranian government. It could be, you know, any criticism of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Benjamin Netanyahu is anti-Semitism. It could be anything you want
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: it to be. You just have to make sure that
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it's repeated enough. See, this was the danger with the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: torture program. This is one of the very important reasons
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: that I went public when I did because I My colleagues,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: my superiors at the CIA kept repeating this lie over
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and over and over again that torture worked and that
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: torture got us information that saved American lives. And that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was just simply not true. It was a lie. Besides
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true. And so
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I decided before we go down this road anymore, I'm
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: going to go public.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: So can you take me back then? We got a
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: little bit sidetracked there, but John, how did you come
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: to be a CIA spy?
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: When I was nine years old, I told my parents
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: It came time to apply for college. And I only
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: applied at one university, George Washington University in Washington, because
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: it was two blocks from the White House and And
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: it was one of only three schools in America that
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: offered a Middle Eastern studies program. I was one of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: only four people in that brand new Middle Eastern studies program.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I stayed for a master's degree in legislative affairs with
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: a focus on foreign policy analysis. I was taking a
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: class in that program called The Psychology of Leadership. It
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: was taught by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Post.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And He gave us an assignment one day where we
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: had to shadow our bosses. We had to just follow
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: our bosses for a week.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Your bosses?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I worked at a labor union called the United
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Food and Commercial Workers Union. And so we were just
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: supposed to follow our boss around for a week and
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: then write a psychological profile. I used– dozens of footnotes
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: from psychology texts. And I ended up saying that he
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: was a sociopath with psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies. And
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I had these citations. I passed the paper in. Dr.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Post gives it back to me a week later, gave
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: me an A, and then he wrote, please see me
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: after class. So I went up to him after the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: class and I said, Dr. Post, you wanted to see me?
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: He says, come to my office. So we went down there.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: He closed the door. And he says, listen, I'm not
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: a professor here. And I'm looking for people who would
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a spy?
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And I said, yes. I would. He picked up the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: phone and called a number and he said, Bob, this
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: is Jerry. I've got a good one for you. Do
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: you have some time? And he said, sure. He writes
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: an address on a scrap of paper and he says,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: be at this address in 20 minutes. It was only
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: one subway stop away. So I jumped on the Metro.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I went to Roslyn, Virginia, just across the river. I
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: had to buzz to be let in. And a woman
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: opens the door. She says, are you here for Bob?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And I said, yes. She says, come on in. I'm
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: sitting there for a moment. And then this like six
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: foot six, 350 pound giant barrels out of his office.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And he says, John, Bob, how the hell are you?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I want you to be at the George Washington University
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Medical School Saturday morning at eight o'clock. We've got some
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: tests for you. I said, okay. And then we shook
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: hands and I left. So Saturday morning, I went to
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the GW Medical School Auditorium. There were like, I don't know,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: 200 people there. And they hand us a test. My
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: wife picked me up. She said, how did you do?
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I said, I have no idea.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Does your wife at this point know that you're applying
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: for the CIA?
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Yes. And that was going to be pretty much the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: extent of what she ended up knowing. Because once I
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: got in.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: But you were allowed to tell her?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I was not allowed to tell her.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: No. So you told her anyway? Yeah.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: When I first applied, they said, listen, don't tell anybody
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: because you may go under cover. You may go under
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: deep cover. And we can't have people out there who
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: know that you're a CIA officer.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Presumably the CIA are smart enough to be able to
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: check if you've told her. Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And they ask you on the polygraph, did you tell her? Really?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, I told her. She's my wife.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: What am I going to do? But it got to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: the point where I'd get home from a day where
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I broke into some guy's house and planted a camera
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: on a bug. And I'd get home and she'd say,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: how was your day? I'd say, great. What'd you do?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Not a darn thing. And then my phone would ring
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: at midnight and a guy would say, the rain in
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Spain falls mainly in the plain. And I'd say, mares
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And that means meet me at the yacht club parking
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: lot in three hours. And then I'd leave. She would say,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: where are you going? It's midnight. I got to work.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: So I'd leave. I do my meeting. I'd come home
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: six o'clock in the morning, just in time to shower
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and shave and get dressed to go to work. And
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: she would say, what was her name? And I remember
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: this one terrible time. That's what she said to me.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: What was her name? The truth is I had been
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: sitting in a garbage dumpster waiting for a guy to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: drive by down the alley and throw a bag of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: documents in. And I stunk of garbage. And I said
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: to her, do I seriously smell to you like I've
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: been with a woman? Seriously. So we ended up getting
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a divorce.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: So you do the assessment. Presumably you get in.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He called me like two weeks later, Bob did.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And he said, you blew the doors off those tests.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I said, Oh, great. Okay. So a month later they
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: summoned me to headquarters and I was interviewed by the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: office of near Eastern operations, the office of near Eastern
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: analysis and and the Office of Leadership Analysis, I was
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: offered the analysis job on the Iraq desk.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: And what is the sum total of the training you
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: were given in the variety of different roles that you had? Like,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: how do they train this body?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. And the answer is vastly different
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: depending on where you start your career. So because I
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: started mine in analysis, the immediate training was, was in
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: mastering the CIA's writing style. So the most important product
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that the CIA writes every day is the PDB, the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: president's daily brief. And it tells the president what? What
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you think he needs to know.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: So for example, when the Iraqis began moving to the,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to the Kuwaiti border, we had this big debate. Are
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: they going to, are they going to cross the border?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yes or no. So I said, Listen, why don't I
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: call the American defense attache in Baghdad? And I'll just
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: ask him to drive down there and look and tell
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: us what he sees. He drives down there, drives back.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: He calls me and he says, literally the entire Iraqi
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: military is on its way to the Kuwaiti border. So
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: we wrote a thing for the president saying Iraq is
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: going to invade Kuwait and it's probably going to happen
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: in the next 48 hours.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And when did the president see that particular briefing?
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: At 7 a.m. the next morning.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Okay. And is there ever situations where the president would
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: get it in the middle of the night? Yes. Yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And be told in the middle of the night that? Yes.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: There are these levels of immediacy. There's routine, which is like,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: who cares? And then there is priority, which means, eh,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I'll get to it sometime today. Then there's immediate, which
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: means you should probably read it first. But then there's
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: flash reading. Which means, oh my God, something terrible just happened.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: You should probably wake the president. And then there's critic,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: which means they're coming over the embassy walls. We're at war.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Wake up the president. Scramble the jets.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: 9-11.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: 9-11. That's a critic.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: So going back to this question of your training. Yeah.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: What is it that the... CIA teach you about human
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: nature and how to use human nature to your advantage
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: that could be transferable to other disciplines in life, like
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: business or.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Well, this is going to sound not very nice, but it's,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: it's real life. It's everyday life, especially in, in business.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: The CIA actively seeks to hire people who have what
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: they call sociopathic tendencies. Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no conscience.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: They'll just blow right through a polygraph exam. But they're
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: impossible to corral. They're impossible to keep under rain. And
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: it's because they're not able. Their brains won't allow them
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to feel regret or remorse. Now, in business, most CEOs
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: are sociopaths. Most, not all, but most, especially in big companies,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: because they claw their way to the top, usually on
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the backs of the people around them. They don't feel
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: bad screwing the next guy to get that next promotion.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: The CIA wants people like that because those are the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: people who are going to break into a foreign embassy.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: A normal person would not advocate breaking into a foreign embassy.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: That's sovereign territory of a foreign country. I would. I'd
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: be glad to do it.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Because we're the good guys. So do you have sociopathic tendencies? Absolutely.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: And what are your sociopathic tendencies?
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: My sociopathic tendency was to operate in legal, moral, and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: ethical gray areas. Specifically, that's what it was.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I'm really curious about what we can learn about human
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: nature from someone whose job was to meet strangers and
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: to get them to basically sometimes to turn against their
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: own country. I'm really interested in, and I think it's
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: informative because so many of us, you know, when we
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: think about what good leadership is or what good sales
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: man or woman ship is, it seems like there's transferables.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I guess for some people it's family. I guess for
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: some people it's something else. That hook that you're talking about,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: that thing that gets them.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And the word that they use at the CIA for
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the hook is a vulnerability. And it's not really a
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: vulnerability in every case. Now, 95% studies have been done
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: about this internally at the CIA. 95% of the people
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: who agree to become spies for us do it for
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the money, right? It's a simple cash transaction. You give
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: me money. I'll give you secrets. 95%.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: So you telling me that you think human motivation is
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: 95% driven by money? Yes.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: The rest was love and family, ideology, revenge, and excitement.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You're going to get a handful of people who are
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: hooked on James Bond movies and they will do it.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to pay them anyway, but they
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: will do it just for the adrenaline rush.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because when I look at this list of
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: things and I compare it to business, I would say
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: it's slightly different from my experience of hiring people, specifically
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: of hiring people. I tend to think that, you know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: one would ask themselves, why would someone leave a company
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: right now like... I don't know, open AI and go
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: work at a startup. They're going to get paid way
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: more at open AI. You've got this equity and these grants.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: But people are en masse doing that. And even when
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I think about the early days of Google, people left
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: the big conglomerates that would pay them more. And they
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: went and worked for Larry and Sergey, getting paid way less.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: But to be involved in something small, scrappy, exciting. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: this is what I think about when I sit, you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: probably I've had thousands of people in my life now
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: across my businesses. And money is a factor, but it
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't tend to be the biggest factor. Yeah. It tends
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: to be, in my experience, there's a particular hero's journey
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: in their mind that they want to be seen through.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: They want to complete. You know, there's a particular way
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: that they see themselves and they want to fulfill that.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, I could get that. I work with a very,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: very tiny startup right now called Ivy Cyber. And it
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: focuses on privacy software, you know, things like, you know,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: scrambling your data so it can't be intercepted that that
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: sort of thing and i've participated in a couple of
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: pitches to uh to angel investors and they all say
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: exactly the same thing that you did.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: And this is why i was confused when i heard
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: that money was 95 because i just think especially in
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: the work that you i don't know especially in the
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: work that you do i would.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Assume but look at it this way and i think
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: this would explain the discrepancy You're comparing people who are
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: making a life versus people who are betraying their country. True.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting as well is in those examples that
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: you've given, money is actually a proxy to be able
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: to take care of my family and to be able to,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: you know, fulfill my ideology. And maybe to get excitement
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: and revenge. Do you know what I'm saying? So even
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: that guy that wanted the plane ticket so he could
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: fly home. Yeah, the money could have got him home
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: if you'd just given him. But the reason why he
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: wanted to go home was because his family.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: His family. That was it.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: What's the extent of the things that the CIA can
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: get as an incentive for someone to turn against their nation,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: to give secrets?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Quite literally anything you can imagine.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Even if it's against the law?
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Well, they're not going to get like drugs or- you know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: child prostitutes or no, not stuff like that.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: What if someone said, I want you to get me
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: a green card?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: What if they said- If the information is good enough,
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: not a problem. What if they said, I want you to,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: I've got this tax bill. I want you to make
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the tax bill go away.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Give me the plans to that Russian tank. We'll make
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: it happen. What if it was an American? Would they
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: speak to the IRS here and just get rid of it?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, if it was an American citizen, you mean?
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No. But why? No.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: We normally don't recruit American citizens. By law, the CIA
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: can't operate domestically, although they have offices all over the country.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Those offices are generally to debrief business leaders, C-suite officers
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: who travel to denied areas. For example, if you take
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: a trip to North Korea, let's say, I'm going to
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: call you and I'm going to say, you don't know me,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: but I'm from the CIA and I understand you just
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: went to North Korea. And I was wondering if I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: could come over to your office for an hour and
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: just ask you about your trip. 99.99% are going to
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: say yes because they're patriots. So I go to your office,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I give you my business card and we just chat about,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: you know, your impressions of the place and that kind
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: of thing.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Just to close off on this point, are there any
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: skills that the CIA taught you or trained you in
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: that you think are transferable for business that we haven't
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: talked about?
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: They trained us also in lying and lie detection. That
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: was actually quite important. You know, at the CIA, you're
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a trained liar. And this is why the divorce rate's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: so high. It's the highest divorce rate of any entity
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in the US government. It's upwards of 80%.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Trained to lie. How do they train you to lie?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. I work for an
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: import-export company.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: But do they teach you the art of lying? Oh, yeah.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And what is the art?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to, like, It's hard to pin down.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: You just sort of have to have it. You have
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to have that ability. But the hard part is you
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: have to keep the lies straight. I'll give you another example.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I've never told this story before. I was asked by headquarters.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I was overseas in the Middle East. And I was
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: asked by headquarters to target one specific officer of this
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: foreign country.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Target. Yeah. Target.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never met. I'm John.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So nice to meet you. Let me take you to lunch.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: He had access to information that we really needed. So
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: they told me to accidentally bump into him. So I
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: surveilled him for a week and he was single. And
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: on Saturday morning, he went to a coffee shop. So
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I go into the coffee shop and I'm looking at
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: him and he's looking at me and I said, I
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: know you. Ministry of Foreign Affairs? He said, yes. Do
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I know you? I said, I am John from the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: American Embassy. Oh, nice to see you. I said, hey,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: good to see you too. Do you live in the area? Yes,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I do. I said, oh, so do I. I didn't.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I lived like across town. Oh, fancy meeting you here
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: at this coffee shop. I come here all the time.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Do you? Yeah, he says. I come here all the time.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Why don't you have a seat, he says. So I
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: sit down. At the end of the conversation, I go
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: back to the embassy and I read a cable and
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I said, he's gay. I'm 100% sure he's gay. So
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: then we started this conversation. Headquarters and I, how can
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: we use that to our benefit?
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Did he have a wife? No.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: He was single? Which was unusual at his age.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: How did you know he was gay?
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, I just– it was a vibe.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: So headquarters says, we want you to pretend that you're gay.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: I said, oh, come on, you guys. No, we really
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: need the information. You got to pretend that you're gay.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: I said, OK.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle Sam. So
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I call him and I said, hey, I have two
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: tickets to this show. And I was hoping maybe you'd
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: be free. Maybe we'll grab some sushi afterwards. He said, yeah,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: I'd love to. So we go to the show. He
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoyed it. And we go for sushi afterwards. And
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: then we go out again. And he says, why don't
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you come over to my place some night and I'll
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: make dinner. I said, great. So I go over to
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: his place. He made a lovely dinner. And then I thought, well,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I have to invite him to my place. So I
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: told my wife, you're going to have to like get out.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: So she left. I made dinner. I removed all the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: pictures of us together and we had just gotten married.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: So we had like our wedding picture up and everything.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: At the dinner, he leaned in to kiss me and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I instinctively backed off. And he said, oh my God,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I thought you're gay. And I said, oh no,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I am gay. I'm not into hairy guys. And he's like, oh, okay.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm sorry. I think you're great, but I'm
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: not feeling it.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: You didn't kiss him? No.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: So we remained friends. And in the end, he gave
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: me the information because we were friends. And then he
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: He opened up. He's like, I can't tell anybody I'm gay.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: They suspect I am. And they passed me over for promotion.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: And my boss asked me, is there something in your
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: personal life that you're not telling me? He knows I'm gay.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I said, listen, your culture's backwards. Don't tell them you're gay.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Just say that you've just never met the right woman.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: And inshallah, the right woman is coming in your life
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: at some point. And I actually Googled him a couple
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of years ago. And he did become an ambassador finally.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: And he's still working in that country now. Does that
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff happen a lot in the CIA where
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: you have to take one for the team? Yes. Have
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: you ever taken one for the team? No. I'm not
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: sure you're telling the truth.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Well, it came close.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: When did it come close?
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: So I was overseas. I was a brand new operations officer.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And there was a woman in this foreign intelligence service
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: who was the ugliest woman I've ever seen in my life.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Like you want to avert your eyes. Like she came
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: off the side of Notre Dame. She was a, you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a stone gargoyle with a giant mole right here with
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: a giant hair coming out of it, that kind of ugly. So,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: so I took her to lunch and she was very nice.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And then I thought I did something kind of gutsy
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: by CIA standards because it was early on in our relationship.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: I invited her To go to lunch on a Saturday. Now,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: as a rule, the people in this country were not
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: allowed to socialize with us privately. It had to be
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: like their whole office, you know, or several of them together.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: So I asked her just to meet me privately for
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: lunch on Saturday. Don't tell anybody.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: So she was someone from the Middle East.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Yes. And she agreed. And I was like, oh my God,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: she said yes. And I ran back to the office.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I was like, she said yes to a lunch on
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Saturday alone. And my boss says, okay, here's what I
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: want you to do. I want you to fuck her.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: And I said, what? I said, have you ever seen her?
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: And he said, I know, but we're the good guys.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and you're going to have to take one for the team.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: And I go, oh my God. I said, I go, okay,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I'll do it. And he says, no, you're not going
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: to fuck her. We don't do that. I said, I
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: don't know. I just started this. I've never been on
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: operations guy before. How am I supposed to know? He said,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: come on. He said, just develop her like a normal person.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: You don't have to fuck her. I said, oh my God,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: you almost gave me a heart attack.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: But they might not be mad if you did.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So long as I reported it and I got the
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: recruitment out of it.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: It wasn't illegal to sleep with assets.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with assets. It has
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: happened to a couple of people I know. And they
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: end up being pulled back to the United States. You
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: have to sit in the penalty box if you do that.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: You're not supposed to do that. But yeah, it happens sometimes.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: So sextortion isn't a real thing.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: It can be. When I first got hired, one of
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: the old timers told me the story about an ayatollah
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that they were trying to recruit. And they set this
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: ayatollah up with a prostitute. And he had sex with
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: this prostitute in a room where they had cameras everywhere.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: And so they bumped him afterwards. They bumped into him
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, we have all these pictures. And they
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: laid out the pictures of him butt naked with this prostitute.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, give me that one, an 8x10.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Give me two 5x7s of that one. How about some
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: wallet size for this? He's like, get out of here.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And he said, you know, after that, We just stop
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: doing that. It doesn't work. When you recruit somebody, you
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: really do need the relationship to be based on mutual trust.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Not coercional pressure or threats.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Threatening somebody, it's not going to result in a productive relationship.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: The Russians do it. The Israelis do it. But most
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: intelligence services around the world don't.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Because you've been in this world, what is it that
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: you know about the nature of the reality that we
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: all live in? That the average person really has no
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: idea about. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Because,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: you know, going back to what I said earlier, three
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: years ago, before I started doing all this podcast stuff
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: and started interviewing people that had been involved in spy
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: work and CIA and all this, I was kind of
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: like naive to the way that the world works. I thought,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I thought if I have a password on my device,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: my device is secure. And I thought that, you know, right.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: All these kinds of just simple things. But what is
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: it that you know about the nature of reality that
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: most people don't?
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess it's a couple of things. John Kennedy
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: called the CIA the best and the brightest. And we're not.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: We're just average people. And we're not as smart as
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: we think we are. We're not as worldly as we
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: think we are. We've pretty much missed every major global
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: development since 1947 from the you know, the rise of
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the Berlin wall to the fall of the Berlin wall,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: to the fall of the Soviet union, to the Suez
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: crisis and the Iran hostage crisis and nine 11 and
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: everything else. We missed it. We're really good at day
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: to day, you know, updates for the president. We're really
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: good at recruiting minor hangers on around terrorist groups, but
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: the big picture items were just not good at it.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Number one, number two, Until 9-11, it was against the law,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: like in stone, to spy on Americans. And now billions
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's NSA
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: or CIA or FBI or intelligence community contractors. Nothing is secret. Nothing.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: And to make matters worse, let's say maybe you did
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: do something. law enforcement might be interested in. They don't
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: need a warrant anymore. They don't need to go to
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: a judge and say, well, we have reason to believe,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: you know, blah, blah, blah. All they have to do
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: is just buy your metadata because it's for sale. Just
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: go to the, go to the carrier, just buy it.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: They don't need a judge's order to do that. It's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: all out there. We've made all, we've made ourselves vulnerable.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: All of our lives are out there, whether it's on
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Facebook or X or Insta or whatever. If they really
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: want to get you, they're going to get you, which
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: reminds me of a book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: He's a professor of law at Harvard, and it's called
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Three Felonies a Day. And he argues in this book
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that we are so over-criminalized, so over-regulated in this country
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that the average American on the average day going about
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: his or her normal business commits three felonies every day.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: You may not mean to, but you do every day.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: So if they decide they want you, they don't like
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: your politics, they can get your metadata. They can go
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: through that metadata, find crimes that they can charge you
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: with and ruin your life. And there's nothing you can
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: do to protect yourself. To some extent, they did that
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, they did. They did that to me.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Because you spoke out about a torture program. That was
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: happening in the CIA.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: charge him with espionage. And Holder wrote back. Eric Holder
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: was the attorney general. Holder wrote back and said, my
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: people don't think he committed espionage. And John Brennan wrote
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: back to Holder and said, charge him anyway and make
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: him defend himself. So they arrested me and charged me
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. Espionage can
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: be a death penalty case. Charge me with espionage. They
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with $ 2
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: million in legal fees. And then they dropped the espionage charges.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: And they said, we can re-add the espionage charges or
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you can take a plea to this lesser charge. What
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: are you going to do? Roll the dice knowing that
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: the government wins 98.2% of its cases according to ProPublica?
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Or do you just take the deal and make it
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: go away? And that's what I did.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: And you got roughly two years in jail.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I ended up doing 23 months.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: And for anyone that doesn't know, this was because at
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: some point in your career, you spoke out about torture
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: programs that were happening in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And at secret prisons that the CIA had set
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: up around the world.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Right. And going back up to the top of my
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: question here, I'm really trying to speak to Jane, Dave,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: who's listening to this right now. Sure. They have a
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: normal life.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: They're not really aware that spies exist in the extent
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: of the work they do. They kind of assume that
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: everything they see and people they interact with are normal
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: and they think their devices and everything else is secure.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: What message do you have for them? A word of
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: warning or caution about the reality?
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. Eliot Spitzer, the former governor
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of New York, When he was Attorney General of New York,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: he said, don't nod when you can motion. Don't speak
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: when you can nod. And don't ever put anything in
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a text message. At the CIA on our very first day,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: they told us not to ever say or do anything
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: that we would be ashamed to see on the front
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: page of the Washington Post. I took that seriously. The
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: truth of the matter is because of technology the way
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: it is today, our whole lives are out there potentially
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: for someone to see, for someone to use against us.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So be careful what you say, be careful what you write,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: even in jest, because it can be taken out of
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: context to target you.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: And what about digital security? You talked about the fact
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: that it's possible for these forces and not just the US,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: but other countries to be able to hack and crack
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: your devices and see anything on your devices. I think
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: we will go around assuming that our devices are secure.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: They're not secure at all.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: At all. It's not just, you know, NSA, CIA, FBI
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: that you have to worry about. It's the British, the French,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. I mean, everybody has
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: these capabilities. Everybody. So you've got to be very, very careful.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Capabilities to do what?
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: To intercept communications.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: I've heard you say that they can hack car systems
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: so they could theoretically hack into my car.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, we know that from WikiLeaks. There was something in
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: 2017 called the Vault 7 revelations. There was a CIA
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: software engineer who was disgruntled. And instead of going to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: the Russians or the Chinese, he went to WikiLeaks and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: he downloaded thousands, tens of thousands of pages of documents
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: classified above top secret. And they became what WikiLeaks called
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the Vault 7 documents. So they included things like the CIA,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: for example, will hack into, let's say, the Iranian government.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Ministry of Interior computer system. But they'll leave little electronic
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: clues all written in Cyrillic.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Cyrillic is what?
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Cyrillic is the alphabet, the Russian alphabet. Oh, okay. Yep.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Or they can take control of your smart TV remotely
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and they can make the speaker turn into a microphone.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: So even though the TV is off, it can still–
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: hear everything that's being said in the room and broadcast
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: back to the CIA.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Can they do that with devices?
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, they could do that. When I first got hired,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: they were able to do that.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: So you could be doing that right now with my iPad?
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. Absolutely, yes. That's old technology. And then the
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: thing about the car, this was revelatory. They can take control, again, remotely,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: of a car's computer system in order to, well... I mean,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: in order to kill you. Crash the car. Crash the car,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: take it off a bridge, take it into a tree.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Sure. Do you know something I've noticed? Most commercial teams
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: aren't tested by their targets. They're tested by the weight
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: of the admin that comes with every client. All the follow-ups,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: all the meetings, all the notes, the timelines that never
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: ever stop. These were a constant source of friction in
• 50:29
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• 52:08
  Speaker 2: talk about sleeper agents before. What is a sleeper agent?
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Russians are very good. sleeper agents. We Americans
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: don't have that. No other country that we know of
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: uses sleeper agents. A sleeper agent is someone who is
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: taken virtually from birth and trained to be of another nationality.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: For example, let's say you're born in Russia and from
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the age of two, they take you from your family
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: with your family's acquiescence. And they take you to an
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: American-style town that they've built out in the hinterland in Russia.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: And they teach you to speak English with an American accent.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: You watch American TV shows. You watch American movies. You
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: eat American food. You get an American-style education. So I
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: have no idea that you're not American. You speak English
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: just like I do. You know all the same– you know,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: social references that I make, you follow the Philadelphia Eagles,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: you know, or, or the, you know, San Francisco 49ers
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And then they send you to the United
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: States on a, on a fake with a fake ID.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: What they'll do is they'll go through, I was born
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: in 1964. So they'll go through death records from 1964
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and they'll look for, for deaths where the person was
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: only a day or two old. And they'll take that
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: name and the birth date and they'll get a social
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: security card with the birth date. And then they'll use
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the social security card to get you a passport, an
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: American passport. So you come here on your American passport.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Everything's legit. Now your name is, you know, Bob Smith,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: which was really that baby's name that died. And you
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: get a job, let's say, as a travel agent. And
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: you may work as a travel agent for decades. 20
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: years and never hear from them, but then they'll activate
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: you and they'll say, we want you to go take
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: care of this target over here. Kill him. Yeah. Or
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: we want you to get a job at the defense
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: department and give us everything that you can steal. Whatever.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: There's a woman in my neighborhood who was outed as
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: a sleeper about a year ago. She was an elementary
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: school teacher and they grabbed her. And they ended up
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: trading her back to the Russians for two Americans. So
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: they're out there. I interviewed a sleeper, a former sleeper
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: on my own podcast a couple of weeks ago. He
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: was from the East German Intelligence Service and he was
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: raised as an American and sent to New York. He
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: got a job. I forget doing what, like restaurant supply
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: company or something like that. And He got married and
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: he had a daughter. And he told me, as soon
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: as I looked at her face the day she was born,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: I realized this life wasn't for me anymore. So they
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: sent him an activation. What they do is listen to
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: your radio message. And he didn't respond to it. And
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: he told me he was on the subway one day.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: He's just standing there holding the strap. And this guy
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: came up to him and the guy grabs the strap
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: next to him. And whispers in his ear, if you
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: don't report back, I have to kill you. And so
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: he ran straight to the FBI field office in New York.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: And he said, I'm an East German sleeper and I
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: want to turn myself in. And he became a prolific
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: source for the FBI.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: So he was taken as a young person.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: What was his story? Yeah.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Taken as a young person, sent to Russia to become American.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: They set him up with this phony identity. And then
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: after he had gone through all the training, he came
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: over here young. He was like 20 or 22 and
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: did this for 25 years. And then he said as
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: soon as his daughter was born, he was like, wow,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: this is what life is for, not being a sleeper.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: Do you think the average person listening to this conversation
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: right now is– interacting in their life at this exact
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: moment in time with someone who is involved in espionage, spying,
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: the CIA, or some international equivalent?
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Probably not. Because they're mostly focused... Foreign intelligence officers are
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: going to be spread out all over America. If a
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: listener of this podcast is working... in a defense company,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: a defense contractor, anywhere in America, then my answer is yes. Yes,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you're probably encountering espionage of some sort or somebody committing espionage,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: whether it's Russian, Chinese, or Israeli, they're the three biggest
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: ones that go after us. In Washington, I mean, foreign spies,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: there could be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: remember my first wife, she was teaching ballet at a
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: small private school. And one of the students there, they
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: were all like four, five, and six years old. One
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: of the students there, her father was a Belgian diplomat.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: And so we would sit and talk and, oh, aren't
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: the kids talented? And, oh, this is so much fun.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: They look so cute in their little tutus. And then
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: I went to work one day and as I was
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: walking in, he was walking in. And I said, oh,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: come on, Peter. And he's like, you know, I thought
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: you were a spy. And I said, I actually didn't
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: think you were a spy. And he was just going
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: for a liaison meeting. And we had a good chuckle
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: about it. And I said, listen, don't tell anybody, right? Right, right, right. Sorry.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: So I'm trying to figure out how many spies– Do
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: you think there are in the United States? If you
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: think about … Foreign spies. Foreign spies, domestic spies, people
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: that are basically undercover.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Including Americans, you mean?
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Including Americans.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: The number of CIA employees is classified. The number of
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: CIA employees undercover is actually even more highly classified. I
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: can give you a guesstimate.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: But also, you know, Russia, China. Yeah.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: 50,000 to 60,000 altogether? 50,000 to 60,000 in the United States.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So by a couple of degrees of separation, if
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: you know 100 people... Yeah, you're probably going to know one. Sure.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: So there's probably about 50,000 in the United States. So
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: I've just done some quick math on my notepad here,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: which means that in order to know one, you'd need
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: to meet 6,600 people.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Because the US population is roughly 330 million people. That's right.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: And then I did some other maths and did some
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: research and I asked- The question I was trying to
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: figure out is how many people does the average person
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: meet a year? And it's roughly about 3,000 to 10,000 people.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: So the chances are good?
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Every year. Statistically, according to my napkin math, you're meeting
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: one of these undercover spies. One a year.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: There it is. Now, that number I gave you is
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I'm lumping like all CIA people and all foreign intelligence
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: officers in the United States.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: But again, if you work for an American defense company,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, any of them, your chances
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: of encountering a foreign intelligence officer are even money.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Can't you as a spy with the United States– ask
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: the United States to give you loads of money? Like,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: can't you say, oh, you really want me to go
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: do that? Can I have a million dollars? Because you're giving,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: you're potentially giving away a lot of money to other people.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, giving away like unlimited amounts of money.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Because your budget when you were a spy, how much
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: was it?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: After 9-11, it was unlimited.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: What does that mean? It means you can basically give
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: away as much money as you need to.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: If I approach somebody and he says, I can give
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you this terrorist, I want 10 million. I'm like, done.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: What was the most you ever gave in 10 million?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: You gave someone 10 million for what?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Abu Zubaydah.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: Who's Abu Zubaydah?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: We believed that Abu Zubaydah was the number three in
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Al Qaeda. He wasn't the number three, but he was
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: a very bad guy. I led the raids that captured
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan, Faisalabad, Pakistan in March of 2002. And, um,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: The State Department had a $ 10 million reward. We ended
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: up giving the $ 10 million to the Pakistani Intelligence Service.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: It wasn't– A person. A person. It was just really
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: great analysis that led us to him. But there were
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: others in the so-called war on terror who got more
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: than $ 10 million and got it like within 24 hours. individuals, individuals,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: how much one got 25 million, just a person. And
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: the thing is, you know, there's a lot of danger there.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: If you're a, if you're a, you know, a shepherd
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: or a T boy and you make $ 40 a month
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have $ 25 million, something,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: something's up.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: And what was the 25 million for?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: It was for a, very high ranking foreign terrorist who
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: was brought to justice. I can't say because it was
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: never publicly disclosed. But what we would have to do
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: in a situation like that is we would have to
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: tell the source, you can't live here anymore. Pick a
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: country and that's going to be home from now on.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: And then we go to that country and say, hey,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: can you do us a solid? We've got this guy who,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: you know, he really came through and he's not going
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to be a burden on your economy.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Because he's got $ 25 million. Which country did he pick?
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can't tell you that. He wanted to stay
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: in the region. He wasn't willing to move to the
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: United States, for example. Because we're happy to take him.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: You're welcome to come to the United States. He's like,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: absolutely not.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: He went to Dubai. Dubai.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: I would.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with the tax code.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: I think I'm, yeah, you can tell my bias from
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: the questions that I ask about the things that fascinate
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: me about espionage and spies. It's just, it's their understanding
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: of human nature and what motivates us and the psychology
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: of humans that you can learn from spies and The
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: nature of human beings, I guess. Right. And also, I
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: guess the other thing that really fascinates me is just,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: I've had so many mind-blowing moments where I've learned just
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: how fragile the reality that I believe is. Like I
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: thought things were secure and I thought they were as
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: they are, but it just doesn't appear to be that way.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: There appears to be lots of secrets. And, you know,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists get a hard time, but actually the more
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: I've done this as a job, the more I go, hmm,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists are right more than I am.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: See, and that's an important point. I hate conspiracy theories
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: that run amok. But, you know, a former CIA director
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: is the one who came up with the term conspiracy theory.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: And it was a way for the CIA to discredit
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: people by making them sound like crazy people when, in fact,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: there was such a thing called MKUltra. There was such
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: a thing called Operation Death. Grasshopper or M.K. Chickwitt. The
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: CIA did crazy, crazy stuff from roughly 1952 to 1975.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: For example, they experimented with a virus that they released
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco and They waited for an unusually foggy,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: like heavily foggy day. They released it into the atmosphere
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: just to see if it would make people sick. And
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: 11 people went to the emergency room with this rare
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: upper respiratory infection. And then they were like, you know,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: high fives. Yeah, it works. And then they started experimenting
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: with LSD. LSD was a big thing at the CIA
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: in the early days. We were convinced– see, and this
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: is– This is where counterintelligence is important. The Chinese told
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: us in like 1951 that the Russians were using LSD
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: to try to engineer it to be used as a
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: mind control drug. That wasn't true. That was disinformation. The
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: truth was the Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese did.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: So they tried to throw us off the scent by
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: blaming the Russians. We panicked. And by 1952, we started
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: this program called MK Ultra, which began by using LSD experimentally.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: What the CIA did was they started by dosing their
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: own employees without telling them. Several committed suicide. One jumped
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: out of a hotel window.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: With the hope that.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll just see what happens. See what they say.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: See how it feels. You know, see if we can
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: control them. See if we can plant memories that didn't
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: actually happen. And then they decided, no, it's not a
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: good idea to dose our own people. Let's just dose
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: strangers out in public. So they went to San Francisco.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: They rented a safe house and they hired prostitutes to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: go out on the street and Pick up Johns, bring
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: them back to the safe house.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Johns.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Johns, people who hire prostitutes, men who hire prostitutes. Dose
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the Johns with LSD and just see what happens. But,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, these are like serious crimes you're committing against people.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: Just reading about it here, it says under Operation Midnight Climax.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Interesting name. Operation Midnight Climax.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: The CIA paid sex workers to lure men to safe
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: houses where agents drugged them and then watched them through
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: one-way mirrors and recorded their behavior. Exactly. They tried to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: erase their personality.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Nice, huh?
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: The goal was often to break and rebuild the human mind.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: In 1973, the CIA director ordered mass destruction of the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: MKUltra files... what we know comes from accidentally surviving documents,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: meaning this is a sanitized version.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: That day, he testified before the church committee. The church
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: committee specifically told him, do not destroy any documents. He
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: went back that afternoon to the CIA and said, destroy everything.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Because it was damning. They were experimenting on American citizens.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: They were experimenting by spreading diseases in American cities. And
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: so he was held in contempt of Congress. He was
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: fined like $ 150. And about 15% of the documents were
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: overlooked and survived. We'll never know exactly what happened under MKUltra.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: As we sit here now, there's people on the streets
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: of Iran that are protesting the leadership there. And the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: CIA are often associated with that. with some of the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: coups going back to the 1950s and other countries toppling
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: elected leaders to protect US interests. Do you think the
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: CIA are involved in Iran at the moment? Probably.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I think the Israelis are heavily involved in Iran at
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: the moment. I'll tell you why, for a In the
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: so-called 12-day war that we saw last year, the Israelis
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: were absolutely masterful in the way they went after the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Iranian leadership. What they did was they focused on recruiting
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: Afghan refugees. Iran was home to more than 2 million
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Afghan refugees. And as essentially illegal aliens, they could not
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: avail themselves of medical care, the welfare system. They're starving.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: They only eat if they can beg for enough to
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: buy food. And so the Israelis went to these people
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: very discreetly and said, hey, we'll give you $ 200 a month.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: If you tell us where the generals live, in which
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: apartments do the generals live? Where do the nuclear scientists live?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: The Israelis killed the top 12 generals across the entire
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Iranian military and killed almost every Iranian nuclear scientist because
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: what they were able to do was to recruit these
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Afghans to not just tell them where they were living,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: where the generals and the scientists were living, but what
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: their cell phone numbers were. And so the Israelis were
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: able to geolocate the cell phones. And then that's where
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: you fire the missile. They killed all of them. And
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: then after the Iranians finally realized it's the cell phones,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: they ordered that no senior military officials and no scientists
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: could carry cell phones. But it never dawned on them
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: to tell the bodyguards not to carry cell phones. And
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: so the Israelis started rocketing the bodyguards and just killed
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: everybody else.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Have you ever killed anybody?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: No, thank God. My children asked me that. And I
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: told them very proudly that I have never taken any
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: action that resulted in the death of another human being.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: There's one kind of half exception. And I think about
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: this all the time. In 1993, I guess it was,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: I was sitting in the morning meeting. I told you
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: earlier that every unit meets every day at nine o'clock
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: and you just talk about what happened in the country
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: that you cover. overnight. I was in the morning meeting
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: and the secretary came in and she said, John, General
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Powell is on the phone for you. Call him Powell.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: I said, General Powell, how does he know who I am?
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: And she said, I don't know, but he asked for
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: you by name. My boss is like, well, go answer
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: the phone. So I went to my desk and I said,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: good morning, General Powell. This is John Kiriakou. And he says, John,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: if the Iraqis were going to kill the president, who
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: would actually be in charge of that operation? And I said, well,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: if you're talking about the attempt to kill President Bush,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: George H.W. Bush, he had been visiting Kuwait. I said,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi intelligence services Basra station.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: But Basra station is headed by Saber Abdelaziz Adouri, the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: director of the Iraqi intelligence service. He says, where does
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: he sit? I said, Baghdad. Where exactly in Baghdad? I said,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: if you hold on a second, I'll look up the address.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: So I looked it up. I gave him the address.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: He says, thank you. And he hangs up the phone.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: I go back in the meeting. They were like, what
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: did he want? I said, he wanted to know about
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: Sabra Dori and the attempt to kill President Bush.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: Like, okay.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Eight hours later, we fired 47 cruise missiles into Iraqi
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: intelligence service headquarters. But by then it was the middle
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: of the night in Baghdad and we killed the janitor.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: So the next day, I said to my boss, I
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: killed that janitor. And he said, I knew you were
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: going to say that. You didn't kill the janitor. You
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: had no idea what Powell was going to do with
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: the information. I said, I know, but I still feel
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: guilty about it. Other than that, thank God, I never
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: had to do it. I'm not sure how I would
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: sleep at night. Do the US still assassinate people by
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: the CIA? Absolutely, yes. When Barack Obama was president, John
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Brennan in the first term was the deputy national security
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: advisor for counterterrorism. And he started something called the Tuesday
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: morning kill list meeting. So it would be Brennan. It
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: would be the national security council attorney, somebody from the
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: CIA general counsel's office and a representative of the director
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: of the counterterrorism center. And every Tuesday morning, they would
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: meet at the white house, come up with a list
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: of people to kill that week. The teams would fan
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: out around the world, kill their targets, and then go
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: back and meet next Tuesday morning.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: And are these world leaders or are they normal people?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: No, these are ground-level terrorists.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: Okay. So it could be someone that appears to be
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: a normal civilian but is doing something that they don't like.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: The law is– Pretty clear on this. It's supposed to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: be somebody who poses a clear and present danger to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the United States, to an American citizen, or to an
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: American installation.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: Which can be quite a vague brief.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: See, that's the thing. It sounds like it's clear. It's
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: actually not at all clear. And when they get back
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: from these missions, we just have to take their word
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: for it.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: Which spy force around the world did you think was
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: the most impressive?
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, the Israelis.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Really? Yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: The Israelis have no rules. They'll kill anybody. What was it?
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Three years ago? This pager operation?
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was so fascinating.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Good Lord. It was a work of genius.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: It is genius.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: It is. It was totally illegal.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Totally illegal. But it was genius. The moving parts. I
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: didn't believe it was real. I had to like, I
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: was like, there's no way that this is real. This
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: is the stuff of movies.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: For anyone that doesn't know, what was the story?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Ah, yeah. Okay. So the Israelis knew that Hezbollah, the
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: terrorist group Hezbollah from Lebanon, was communicating using pagers. They
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: didn't want to use cell phones because they didn't want
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: the Israelis to intercept their phone calls. And they thought, oh, pagers,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: those are safe. So the Israelis bought a company in
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: like Hungary, I think it was, that made pagers. And
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: they got Hezbollah to order the pagers from this company.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: They were able to insert explosives in the pagers and
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: the pagers went to like Taiwan and from Taiwan to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Thailand and then from Thailand to, I forget where, Syria,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I guess, and then from Syria to Lebanon. And so
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: what the Israelis did was they were able to activate
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: the explosives in all the pagers simultaneously.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: Killing people?
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: They killed everybody of any import. In Hezbollah, they essentially
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: decapitated Hezbollah. And then the ones they didn't kill in
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: that operation, they bombed the apartment buildings where they lived. See,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: this is the thing too about the Israelis. If they
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: want to kill you, they won't, they won't like just
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: do a close in hit. They'll blow up the entire
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: city block where you live. They'll kill a thousand people
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: just to get you. And they don't care. And then
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: they say, what are you going to do about it?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: You're going to go to the International Court of Justice.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: Do they really do this?
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: Did you ever interact with them?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: And how did you find them to be?
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Miserable. My very first briefing that I ever gave as
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: a junior analyst was to the Israelis. My boss said, okay,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: he says, you're going to give your first classified liaison briefing.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: So it's going to be the Israelis. And there are
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of things you should know. I said, okay.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: He said, we don't allow the Israelis into the building.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: Ever.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: I said, why not? He said, because they spy on us.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Not only do they spy on us, they would always
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: bring gifts. Like, oh, we brought this wonderful gift for you.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: And every time somebody tries to bring something in, you
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: have to x-ray it. And it's got like listening devices
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: and it's packed with two years worth of batteries. We're like,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: you guys, you have to stop doing this. Every time
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you come here, you try to bug our conference rooms.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: It's bad form. You have to stop doing it. And
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: then they're like, oh, okay, okay. We knew you would
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: find it. We're just kidding.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: Come on.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: So we have to meet them miles away from headquarters
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: in a place that we rent. So he said, nothing
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: over the secret level, no top secret information, just up
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: to secret. I'm like, okay. So I go with like
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: a dozen analysts and And because I'm the junior most analyst,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: I've only been on the job at this point, I'm
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: going to say six weeks or so, I went last.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: So the first analyst says, I'm the chief analyst and
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: this is my briefing. And then the next guy says,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: I'm the political analyst and I'm the econ analyst and
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I'm the military analyst and I'm the oil analyst and
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: the tech analyst. And it comes to me. So I
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: said– Because I was overt at the time. I was
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: not undercover. I said, my name is John Kiriakou and
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to brief you on Saddam Hussein's psychological state
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: of mind. Well, there were two Israelis there. One was
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: from Mossad and one was from Shin Bet. Shin Bet
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: is the FBI of Israel and Mossad is the CIA
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: of Israel. So the Shin Bet guy, he has his
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: glasses down like this and he goes like this. He says,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: spell your name. So I spell it. K-I-R. I spell it.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: And he goes, you are Jewish? I said, don't you dare.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I am not recruitable. Don't you dare even try it.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: I was furious. We went out of the briefing. I
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: was going to explode. Everybody started laughing at me. They're like,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: they do that to every one of us.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: Every one of us. They try and recruit you.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To turn against the United States? Yeah.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: On my very first day at the CIA, we got
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: a briefing from the CIA's director of security. And he
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: said that all of us have to have in the
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: very front of our minds the concept of counterintelligence. For example,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: he said, there's a steakhouse right down the road on
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Route 123. It's the nearest restaurant to the CIA. He goes,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: don't ever eat there.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Because the KGB thinks we all eat there. So all
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the customers are KGB officers waiting for CIA people to
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: walk in and start talking about work. Don't ever eat there.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: I've never eaten there to this day.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: Because they're potentially all Russian spies.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: So he said, our Israeli friends. have two officers in
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: their embassy, one from Mossad, one from Shin Bet. The
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: FBI has identified 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spread all
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: across the United States, mostly at defense contractors trying to
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: steal our secrets. Now we give the Israelis 95% of
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: our defense secrets. You want the F-35? Done. Here's the F-35.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: You want this advanced missile? Here you go. It's on us.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: So they steal the remaining 5%.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: I believe very strongly he was a spy. Yes.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: And who do you think he was working for?
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: The Israelis. I'm confident it was the Israelis. Why? Jeffrey
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: Epstein is kind of the stereotypical example that they give
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: you in training for what's called an access agent. This
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: is a different kind of recruit. So, for example, if
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: you're a foreign intelligence service and you want information, like
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: close-in information from a former president, from the CEO of
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: the biggest company in the world, from a member of
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: the British Royal family, you're not going to recruit these guys.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: You're not going to recruit Bill Clinton or Bill Gates
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: or Prince Andrew. So you do the next best thing.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: You recruit somebody who has regular access to them. And
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: that person that you recruit is going to need to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: make these people feel comfortable and appreciated. And so you
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: give them plenty of money. So he has this house
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: on an Island where he has the whole Island and
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe you bring in young girls, you get them in
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: compromising positions just in case you need to use what's
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: called compromat, compromising pictures. We know now that Jeffrey Epstein's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: house on the island had hidden video cameras in literally
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: every room, including the bathrooms.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: Why would he care what was going on unless it
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: was to use that information against people? As I said,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: only the Israelis and the Russians use extortion as a motivator.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: So would they have made Jeffrey Epstein rich in order
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: to give him that access?
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. How could they have done that?
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's easy. I mean, you do– I mean, governments
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: are the only ones really that can money that can
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: launder money unfettered. And you can also do it through
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: real estate, through fine art and through horses. Those are
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: the three easiest ways to launder money today. Fine art,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: real estate and racehorses.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: But presumably he would have spoken out at some point. No,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: he would have said something or no.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: But it would explain why he got a sweetheart deal
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: in 2006. I mean, this is a guy that's been
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: convicted of child sex crimes. And he gets six months
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: of house arrest with an ankle bracelet. We have mandatory
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: minimums in this country. That's a five-year mandatory minimum first offense.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: He definitely had some interesting power, didn't he?
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: And Alex Acosta- Who was the prosecuting attorney at the
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: time and then later became secretary of labor under Trump,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Trump won. Alex Acosta said that he was ordered by
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: the attorney general to give Epstein the sweetheart deal. Well,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: who's the only person that can order the attorney general
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: to do something? It's the president. So was it because
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: Epstein was working on Clinton? Most of the people down
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: there were Democrats. I mean, what was the reason?
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: Maybe he was working for the US government.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: It's possible that he could have been doubled against the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Israelis or others.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Sure, that's possible.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: If you had to bet, what would you say? If
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: you had to bet everything you have on either him
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: being a spy or not a spy, what would you
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: bet on? He was a spy.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: I feel very confident in that assessment. I debated Alan
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: Dershowitz about this on the Pierce Morgan show one time.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: It was Scott Horton and me who said that he
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: was an Israeli spy. And it was Alan Dershowitz and
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: General Danny Ayalon, the former head of Mossad. Ayalon was
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: kind of into it in terms of having a fun time.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: He was just having a fun time with the conversation.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: He wasn't going to admit to anything. Dershowitz was Epstein's attorney.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: So I said that, that I believed Epstein was an
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: Israeli spy and Dershowitz interrupts me like attorneys do. And
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: he says, that is outrageous. If he had been a spy,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: he would have told me because I was his attorney
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: and I could have gone to the white house and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: I could have gotten him a better sentence. And I said,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. You could have gone to the White
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: House to say, go easy on Jeffrey Epstein because he's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: an Israeli spy collecting information from American politicians. If I
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: were the president, I would have hung him from a tree.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: And then Piers Morgan said, General Allen, was he a spy?
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: And he goes, who knows?
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: Who knows? It's like, come on, man. Who do you
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: think is the real– adversary of the West? Because we
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: often talk about it being Russia or.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's China.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: Why? What is it that we don't realize about China
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: and their agenda? Oh, wow.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: So much. The Chinese are so good at what they do.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: And the Chinese are so patient. You know, in the
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: United States, we don't have long-term timelines for anything. When
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: we want something, we want it now.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: Is that in part because we have this four-year election cycle? Yes.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: I believe that it is. The Chinese will plan for
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: something 25 years down the road.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Because they will still be in power then. Yeah.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: And so they're really good at stealing technology. There are
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: more Chinese PhD students in the hard sciences here in
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the United States than you can shake a stick at.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: They're everywhere. They're at every major university and they're really,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: really smart.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: And then oftentimes they'll say, oh, you know, I've had
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: such a great experience here. I'd like to stay in
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, I bet you would. I bet
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: you would. So you can spy for China.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Do you think that's happening?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Every single day.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: You think that Chinese students are in America spying on
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: behalf of China? Yes. Yes. How could you be so sure?
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: I'm 1000% sure.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: How could you be so sure?
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Because we frequently arrest them. And then trade them for
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Americans who are in Chinese prisons.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they're masquerading as students. PhD candidates, always in
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: the hard sciences, always. So China are the long-term adversary.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: And what is it that China want? What is it
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: they're doing? And what is the outcome?
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: I think they want a couple of things. I think
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: that on a more immediate basis, they want reunification with Taiwan.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: It's going to happen someday. Even the Taiwanese will tell you, yes,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: we're a part of China, but we're kind of not
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: a part of China. We're not really independent, but we
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: are kind of independent. Even American policy is that Taiwan
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: is a part of China and eventually someday they'll be reunited.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: Do you think with everything that's going on at the
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: moment with Trump in Venezuela and Greenland, this is going
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: to create cover for?
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, I was hoping you would ask me a question
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: like that. I think that's very, that's a very important issue.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: that the media really aren't talking about. So let's put
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: it in the context of what happened last week in Venezuela,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: because they're all moving parts of the same policy. So
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: We sent a Delta Force squad into Venezuela a week
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: ago and we snatched President Maduro and he faces international
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: narcotics trafficking charges in New York. Okay. Some people are
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: for that. Some people are against it. Whether you're for
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: it or against it, it's happened. There's nothing we can
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: do about it now. But that operation may have inadvertently
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: given the green light to something that both the Russians
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: and the Chinese have long sought. The United States really
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: is the only true superpower in the world. The Chinese
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: have a lot more people. They have lots of nuclear missiles,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: but they have one aircraft carrier. We have 12, soon
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: to be 14. We have way more long-distance bombers. We
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: have way more fighters. The Russians are bogged down in
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: a war in Ukraine. They're winning the war, but they're
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: bogged down nonetheless. So did this reinstitution of the Monroe
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: Doctrine saying that, you know, from 1814, that the Western
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: Hemisphere is the territory of the United States. It's up
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: to us to protect it from foreign powers. Well, in 1814,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: that meant the British Navy. We don't really need a
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: Monroe Doctrine. And it's not up to us whether the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: Argentines want to have good relations with China, for example.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: We invoked the Monroe Doctrine in this operation to snatch Maduro.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: So does that mean then that if we have a
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: sphere of influence that is the Western Hemisphere, that the
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: Chinese have a sphere of influence that includes Taiwan, that
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: the Russians have a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine?
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Because that's kind of what it seems. It looks like
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: we've given the green light to both of those countries
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: and that we're conceding the fact that it's a unipolar
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: world right now. In favor of a multipolar world. Now, personally,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: I think a multipolar world is safer.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: What's a multipolar world?
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Multipolar world is where there's not just one superpower. There
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: are three or more. So in terms of policy, this
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: simple act of just sending a team in to grab
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Maduro has turned international diplomacy on its head. What do
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: we do if the Chinese invade Taiwan? Do we really
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: want to send American soldiers to fight and die for Taiwan?
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: What do you think would happen if China tomorrow said,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: you know what, we're going to take Taiwan?
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: You know what, honest to God, I think nothing would happen.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: I think we would rush to protect Australia, Japan, South Korea,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: the Philippines, Thailand. We'd rush to protect them.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Because they're major non-NATO allies. They're good friends, close friends.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: But in terms of going to Taiwan to fight Chinese soldiers,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine it.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: Trump told the New York Times that whether China moves
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: on Taiwan is ultimately up to Chinese President Xi Jinping,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: not the USA, adding that he's told Xi he would
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: be very unhappy if China changed the status quo. He
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: claimed he doesn't think Xi will act while he's president.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: See, and that is actually what the long-term policy is.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: The long-term policy is, sure, someday, to be determined later,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: you guys can unify.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: Just don't do it while I'm here.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't do it today.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe when Trump goes.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: God forbid.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: So going back to this point, you said they want Taiwan.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: What else do you think China want? Well. Do they
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: want to see the US fall? Yes, sure. And are
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: they actively doing things to encourage that?
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, but not the things that you would expect. Instead
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: of running around the world, you know, overthrowing governments, invading countries,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: which is what we do, they go to countries and say, hey,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: you need a new highway system? We'll pay for it.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: You need a new airport? No problem. You need a
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: new hospital, electrical grid? We have plenty of money from
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: our gigantic trade surplus. We'll pay for it. We just
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: want to have really good, friendly relations with you. And
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: that's what they do. The Chinese essentially own Africa right now.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: What are you most concerned about in the world at
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: the moment? What does actually keep you up at night?
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: What frightens me the most is that the US government
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: over the last, well, really over the last 50 years
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: or 55 years has so inflated its military budget that
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: what we spend on the Pentagon is now more than
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: the next eight largest countries combined. Right? Donald Trump right
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: now spends a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon budget.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: He's asking for next year to be a trillion and
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: a half. We can't afford it. Our interest on the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: national debt is now the third largest expenditure in government
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: between the Pentagon and Social Security and then the interest
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: on the debt. And why does this bother you? Because
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: we're going bankrupt. And all the while, the Chinese are
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: letting us spend ourselves into oblivion. The Chinese don't spend
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: that kind of money. How come I can't have a
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: bullet train that goes 400 miles an hour? How come
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: I can't get to Chicago in three hours by train?
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: You know? How come the airports in my country look
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: like shit and you go to Chinese airports and they're
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: pristine with like the most amazing services and the best restaurants?
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: How come Chinese roads don't have potholes? And in my town,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: it's like driving across Bosnia. It's because they decided not
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: to spend their money on weapons. They spend it on infrastructure.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Do you think that's likely that the U.S. could go
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: bankrupt effectively?
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, I do. We can't keep up this pace.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: It's not possible. We're going to have to raise taxes
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: and cut the budget.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: What's the most important thing that we didn't talk about
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: that we should have talked about, John?
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good question. One of the most important
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: things in my life, to tell you the truth, is
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: the issue of ethics. I love this country more than
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: anything else in the world. And I want it to
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. We're a country of laws and
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: we have to obey our laws, which is why I
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: blew the whistle on the torture program.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: Who's not obeying the laws?
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Our government.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: In what way?
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: We've gotten to the point and it started around the
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: year 2000 or 2001. We got to the point where
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: If we want to do something, we just do.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: It.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: Like what? In 1946, we passed something called the Federal
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: Torture Act, which banned torture. Okay. Also in 1946, we
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American prisoners of war. That
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: was a death penalty offense to waterboard someone. All right.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: In 1968, on January the 11th, 1968, the Washington Post
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: a North Vietnamese prisoner. When the picture ran, the Secretary
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: of Defense, Robert McNamara, ordered an immediate investigation. That soldier
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: was arrested, he was charged with torture, and he was
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: sentenced to 20 years of hard labor at Leavenworth. And
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: then in 2002, it's legal. We can do it. We
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: can do it because we're the good guys. The law
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: never changed. We changed. And my point was always either
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: we're going to be the good guys or we're not.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: Either we're going to be what Ronald Reagan called a
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: shining city on a hill or we're not. When I
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: was stationed in Bahrain, I was the human rights officer.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: So I had to write the human rights report every
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: year that we sent to Congress. Well, imagine if John
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: goes in to see the minister of interior and I say,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: your highness, you cannot pick up a 15 year old
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: kid for marching in a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration and then
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: murder him, beat him to death in the in the
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: police station and call his parents to come and pick
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: up the body. You can't do that. I have to
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: report that to Congress and you're going to lose your
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: rights to buy American military hardware. But then the CIA
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: station chief goes in an hour later and says, don't
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: pay any attention to the human rights guy. I'll give
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: you $ 10 million. If you set up a secret prison here,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: we're going to send you some prisoners. You torture them.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: And then you give us a write-up Of everything they
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: say during torture. Who's he going to listen to? Is
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: he going to listen to me?
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: Did that happen? Yes.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: He's not going to listen to me. If all of
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: a sudden torture is legal, just because we say it is,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: and then Congress is like, oh, we don't know anything
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: because it's a secret program, so we can't talk about it.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: Do we still torture people?
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: No. I am very proud to say that When the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: McCain-Feinstein anti-torture amendment was passed into law in December of 2014,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: John McCain got up on the floor of the Senate
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: and said it was because of me, because of my revelations.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: He said, if I had not told the American people
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: that the CIA was torturing prisoners in their name, we
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: would never have known. That's why I say it was
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: worth it.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: Do you think you should be pardoned by President Trump?
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: Have you written to him?
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: I've... I've... I have to be careful with my language here.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: I applied. My name is in the system. I have very,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: very high-level supporters who have approached him personally and I'm
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: hopeful that it happens.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: John, we have a closing tradition where the last guest
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: going to be leaving it for. And the question left
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: for you is, what's something you stopped doing that improved
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: your life more than anything you started?
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Feeling sorry for myself. I'll be honest with you. I
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: have struggled with depression my entire life. And after my
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: second divorce, I went through this period where I was
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: just– I couldn't pull myself out of bed in the
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: morning because I felt so sorry for myself.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: Because of the divorce or because of your life or because.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: The whole thing. I believed I was just a loser.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: I was in my 50s, unemployable, convicted felon. barely able
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: to make ends meet, worried about where my rent was
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: coming from one month to the next. And then I thought,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: fuck you. What's wrong with you? You don't have to
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: answer to anybody. And I told myself no more feeling
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: sorry for myself. I was going to go make a
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: career on my own. And so I knew I would
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: never work for government again. I knew I would never
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: work in corporate America again. After I left the CIA,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I was the head of the competitive intelligence practice at
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: Deloitte and Touche, spying on Ernst & Young and PwC
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: and IBM. And it was great fun. I'll never work
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: in the corporate world again. So I decided I'm going
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: to do what I'm good at. And I'm a terrific writer.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: And I'm told that I'm a gifted storyteller. So I'm
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: going to write books. I have two syndicated newspaper columns
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: that run in 212 small town papers around the country.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: I'm on TV all the time. I have three podcasts
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: deprogram every day on both YouTube and Rumble. Thanks for
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: letting me plug them, by the way.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: Deep Focus on YouTube and on Apple Podcasts, John Kiriakou's
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: Dead Drop, which is just story after story after story.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: And now I make a perfectly great living. I'm in
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: a long-term relationship with the woman I'm crazy about. And
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: life is good.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: And it all started with that decision to stop feeling
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: sorry for yourself. Yes.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: If people around me keep saying, you've done nothing wrong.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: You're a hero for what you did. And deep down,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I would do it again. Then why am I feeling
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: sorry for myself? I'm right. They're wrong. They're criminals. So
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to go on with my life. And
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: that snapped me out of it. So don't feel sorry
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: for yourself. Do something about it.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: Act. John, you are someone that is very good at storytelling.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: You are. You've written many books. I'm going to link
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: all the books below.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: So many incredible books. I've got some of them here
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: with me on the floor. I could go through all
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: of them, but we need another couple of days.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: John, thank you. Thank you.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your incredible storytelling, your wisdom,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: but also just giving us a window into a world
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: that most of us know nothing about because there's so
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: many lessons that I think are pertinent to all of
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: our lives riddled amongst there. And I think, you know,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: I hope you do get pardoned.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I hope so. I've got my fingers crossed.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: And when you do, hopefully we can come back again
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: and have another conversation.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: I look forward to that.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: It's been such a pleasure.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: Pleasure's mine. Thanks for the invitation.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: This is something that I've made for you. I realize
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: that the Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: it's in business or health. We all have big goals
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: that we want to accomplish. And one of the things
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: we call this in our team, the 1%. And actually
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: So what we've done so that you at home can
• 1:44:56
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  Speaker 2: you want the link, the link is in the description below.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: Thank you.