All Episodes
Previous Next
March 29, 2025 - Lionel Nation
45:12
Inside the CIA: Whistleblower John Kiriakou Reveals What You Were NEVER Meant to Know
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Disaster can strike when least expected.
Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes.
They can instantly turn your world upside down.
Dirty Man Underground Safes is a safeguard against chaos.
Hidden below, your valuables remain protected no matter what.
Prepare for the unexpected.
Use code DIRTY10 for 10% off and secure peace of mind for you and your family.
Dirty Man Safe.
When disaster hits, security isn't optional.
The storm is coming.
Markets are crashing.
Banks are closing.
When the economy collapses, how will you survive?
You need a plan.
Cash, gold, bitcoin.
Dirty Man Safes keep your assets hidden underground at a secret location ready for any crisis.
Don't wait for disaster to strike.
Get your Dirty Man safe today.
Use promo code Dirty10 for 10% off your order.
When uncertainty strikes, peace of mind is priceless.
Dirty Man underground safes protects what matters most.
Discreetly designed, these safes are where innovation meets reliability, keeping your valuables close yet secure.
Be ready for anything.
Use code DIRTY10 for 10% off today and take the first step towards safeguarding your future.
Dirty Man Safe.
Because protecting your family starts with protecting what you treasure.
I'm joined by John Kiriakou, as you can see his name.
And by the way, he is ubiquitous on all things platform.
You could go on...
I saw the other day a 14-year-old Filipino girl unboxing a curling iron.
He was on that.
He's everywhere.
You own the Internet.
Good for you, my dear friend.
Well, maybe you can help me figure out how to monetize that.
Ah, monetize!
Oh, I see.
That's a different story, yes.
Well, first is ubiquity, then comes the gobs of cash.
But I mean that that's a very, very important thing today, and you have an absolute affinity.
And by the way, before we get into the serious stuff, anybody who's watched you, you know, John, there's a lot of people who, well, are kind of full of it.
I was ex-CIA, and I was always this, and I was this, and when I killed Saddam, you know, so okay.
And they're covered in tats and this.
And you come across like everybody's favorite neighbor, friend, pal, uncle.
That's why I was successful.
Oh, you muted yourself.
There you go.
If I said, guess who the counter-terrorism expert is, they would say, no, not this guy.
Not that guy.
Let me see something.
I went to a nightclub one time where my brother was performing.
And the lead guitarist said, you know, thanks for coming.
Hello, Minneapolis.
We even have a CIA guy in the audience today.
And I heard a guy at the next table say, I know who it is.
It's that dude with the long beard by the door.
The one with all the tats.
It's got to be him.
That's my first question.
What does it take to do what you did?
Oh, that's a good question.
And it's actually kind of a hard question to answer.
So the job of the CIA in its simplest form is to recruit spies to steal secrets.
Exactly.
That's it.
That's what the job is.
It can get far more complicated than that, depending on what your specific mission is.
But basically, if you're in operations, it's to recruit spies to steal secrets.
So how do you do that?
They teach us at the CIA that the way you do that is with a very light touch.
The easiest way to a recruitment is to convince the target that you are his best friend.
And that takes time.
So they use something that they call the asset acquisition cycle.
Spot, assess, develop, recruit.
So let's say you go to a diplomatic cocktail party.
I'm not interested in speaking to the Spanish green officer.
No interest.
I am interested in talking to the Russian, the Cuban, the North Korean, you know, the whatever.
Right.
Whatever enemy.
Country we happen to have at any given time.
And you start by expressing interest in what they do for a living.
You exchange business cards.
A couple days later, you make a phone call.
You invite them to lunch.
Then you invite them to dinner.
Then you invite him and his wife to dinner with you and your wife.
And then you hit it off.
Maybe you spend a holiday together.
Maybe the guy mentions in passing he likes, let's say, deep sea fishing.
Well, your budget is literally unlimited, and so you charter a fishing boat, and you go out deep sea, and you fish for marlins, something he could never afford to do.
I was developing a guy when I was stationed at the United Nations, and he said that the Manhattan skyline at sunset was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
So I got him a sunset helicopter tour of Manhattan, right?
I thought he was going to cry.
That was a few hundred dollars well spent, let me tell you.
So you spend money and you become closer and closer and closer.
And then finally, you're ready to make your pitch.
Now, of course, you have to identify in this person what the CIA calls a vulnerability.
That's not as, A vulnerability can be anything from...
This guy really, really loves his kids.
And he wants his kids to go to the best university they can possibly get them into.
Well, I can get his kids into literally any university in the United States.
Literally anyone.
You want your kid to go to Harvard?
Done.
Give me two hours in your code room.
Give me the plans to that new Russian tank that your government just bought.
I'll get your kid into Harvard.
No problem.
Maybe his wife has cancer and they would rather go to the Mayo Clinic than to some local Yoko hospital in whatever third world country they're in.
I can get your wife into the Mayo Clinic.
I can get the best cancer specialists in the world to examine your wife and to treat her.
Maybe they're broke.
Maybe he's a gambler.
Maybe he's a drunk.
His boss doesn't like him and he keeps getting passed over for promotion.
You just identify some vulnerability and you make up for it.
And it also gives him a way out.
He can say, listen, what I'm doing might be, in fact, espionage or whatever it is.
However, it's my kids.
It's my wife.
It's not like I'm not doing this for me.
Where did I hear this?
Somebody said, it might be you, I don't know, but I'll never forget.
Somebody said, the guy that he wanted to meet.
Some CIA or some operative, Intel operative, who said, I want the guy who is the Xerox or the copy machine.
Oh, that was me.
That was you!
I loved that!
See, that's me.
He said, I want a guy who goes in.
Tell me that story.
That's the best.
That was a great story.
It was from one of my instructors at the farm.
And he said, you know...
By the way, the farm is a rehab.
I'm kidding.
It should be.
Kind of.
The farm is the CIA's training facility in the Virginia countryside.
And so he said, you know, as young officers, you're all fantasizing about going to some country and recruiting the prime minister.
He said, but let me tell you my best recruitment of my entire career.
It was not the prime minister.
It was the copy machine repairman.
Love this.
And he said, now why would anybody care to recruit a copy machine repairman?
Well, it's because the Prime Minister has a copy machine in his office.
And so you recruit the guy who does the copy machine repairs for the Prime Minister's office or the Prime Minister's residence.
Eventually, that copy machine is going to need a cleaning, toner, some sort of repair.
And you give this guy $100,000 in cash or in diamonds or in gold or whatever he wants so that when he goes in there to repair that machine, he installs a little device.
See, this is the thing that I love the most about what you've done.
And please forgive me because I've got 50 different things I want to say at one time and I can't.
We lost a great asset with you.
What the hell did you...
We train you.
You've got this devious mind.
You're a nice person.
I think you're basically a soldier for truth or intel, whatever it is.
And then we get rid of you!
Because you've got a conscience.
But I've got to tell you one quick story.
Because it's about behavior.
A friend of mine told me one time.
He said he was a chef.
And he says, I've worked in restaurants.
He says, do you know where they always do business?
In the kitchen.
He says, I cannot tell you the people I've seen, famous people, politicians, do dope deals in the kitchen.
They think that's something that you don't see them there.
He said, I don't know what it is, and I'll never forget this because my whole life, my whole work is behavior, whether it's politics, whether it's, in fact, you could be a great dating service for young men if they even date anymore.
When you meet a woman, you're basically trying your best to not fool them, but to gain trust, vulnerability.
Life is like that.
Salesmen, priests, people.
Salesmen?
Yes!
May I tell you a story?
Please.
After I left the CIA, actually it was when my first book came out, so this would have been like early 2010, I got hired to be the keynote speaker at an...
Offsite for 140 partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the big four consulting firms.
And I remember, well, somebody to whom I used to be close, saying, what in the world are you going to talk about with 140 accounting and consulting partners?
I said, I'll think of something.
So I told this story when I got there.
I said that when I was serving in Pakistan, I got a tip.
That the middle level of Al-Qaeda's leadership was meeting every day in this run-down coffee shop.
And so I had this bushy beard I grew when I was there to try to fit in.
And I went to this coffee shop with an Arabic-language newspaper tucked under my arm.
So I went to the coffee shop.
I never said a word to anybody.
I didn't even make eye contact.
But I held the newspaper up so they could see that I was reading Arabic, not Urdu or Pashto.
This went on for a week.
And then they would come in every day at the same time, and I would be sitting there with the day's Arabic language paper, just reading.
And finally, the second week, they came in, and one of them nodded to me.
That was all he did.
And I nodded back.
Another week passed.
And finally, they come in and he says to me, Salaamu Alaikum.
May peace be upon you.
And I said, Wa Alaikum As-Salaam.
And may peace be upon you.
Well, one day, this guy came in alone.
And he comes in and he says, Salaamu Alaikum.
And I said, Please, please, come and sit with me.
So he sits down.
And I said, My name is Ahmed.
What is your name?
And his name is Salim.
And I said, so what are you doing, Salim?
Do you live here?
Yes.
He says, I live here.
I'd like to go home to Egypt.
I'd like to, you know, I came here years ago to make a jihad against the Americans and I'm tired.
I've been fighting for five years and it's really time to go home to Egypt.
I have a son.
He said that I've never met.
And I said, oh, tell me about your family.
That's the vulnerability.
Yep.
Tell me about your family.
So he said, I have a daughter.
She's nine years old.
My son now is almost five years old.
And my poor wife, she has to rely on the kindness of family and friends to put food on the table.
And what kind of a man am I?
So we talked, like really talked.
And then I invited him to dinner.
He was very grateful.
We talked a little more.
And then I went in for the kill.
And I said, listen, I haven't really been honest with you.
I'm actually a CIA officer.
Yeah, right!
Yeah, I'm not.
You ever get one of those?
Yeah, and I'm like, ah!
No, and he said, I wondered.
He said, you speak Arabic with a Lebanese accent, but not really.
My three teachers were Lebanese.
But there's some other accent behind it that I can't quite pin down.
I said, well, it's an American accent.
And he said, I thought so.
I said, I hope I'm not scaring you by telling you that I'm a CIA officer.
And he said, what do you want from me?
Wow.
And I said, well, I know who you are.
And I know that you run, you know, the Al-Qaeda, whatever.
And I said, listen, September 11th, it not only killed 3,000 Americans, it killed 114 Muslims.
Is that really what Allah would like?
Is that really what the Prophet Muhammad, what he would have wanted people to do?
Come on.
You know what a sin this is.
It's time to go home.
And he kind of thought about it.
Yeah.
And he agreed.
And he said, I need help.
I said, I will give you anything you want.
And so we agreed on a dollar figure.
He gave me the access that I wanted, and he was able to fly home to Egypt and start a new life.
And then I said to this group of PwC partners, why am I telling you this story?
I'm telling you because what I did and what you do really isn't that different.
Because it's all about the relationship.
If I can convince somebody to commit...
Espionage.
If I can convince somebody to commit treason just because he has a good relationship with me, you can certainly sell that tax audit.
You can certainly sell that consulting contract at the Department of Agriculture.
When I was getting ready to leave Pakistan, I asked him, I was saying goodbye, and I said, I have to ask you, why did you agree to work with me?
I'm just curious.
And he said, because I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan for five years, and you were the first person that ever asked me about my family.
Wow.
And I said, and there it is.
Take a genuine interest in the people that you're trying to work with.
And John, not to add to this, but you didn't lie to him?
No.
You delivered?
See, the thing is, there's no duplicity here.
You didn't lie to him.
You said, I want this.
You didn't get him and then turn him over to his compatriots and the like.
Here's the part I'm going to ask.
Hypothetical.
What if?
Assume arguendo, as we say in law, versus innuendo, which is an Italian suppository, which has nothing to do with this, but assume.
Assume somebody says, John, I want you to meet somebody.
First of all, person number one is a young man who looks like you, was like you, who says, I want to go in and I want to join the...
What do you call it?
The company or the farm?
The agency.
The company is only used in movies.
Yeah, I was going to say because I'm...
Okay.
Yeah.
But they ask you the question, should I do this?
Should I do this?
Would you recommend that I do this?
Is it honorable?
Will they take care of me?
Will I get in trouble?
What would you tell them?
People ask me that almost every single day.
And I tell them, there's no easy answer to this.
You have to be able, if you decide to do it, you have to be able to go into this with your own set of moral values.
They're not going to send you to a class to teach you morals or ethics.
You have to know when to say, no, I'm not doing that.
It's illegal.
It's immoral.
It's unethical.
I'm not doing it.
And you have to be prepared to resign if they insist that you do it.
However, what happens, though, when you do this and you tell the truth and you do the right thing?
And then they turn around and they say, now you've broken the law.
But here's the best part.
You've got the best excuse in the world to say, I took an oath.
Because you can, remember, morality is what you do when nobody's there.
It's kind of what you tell yourself.
Amen.
That is exactly what it is.
Yes, that is exactly what it is.
Because listen, if you decide to stand up to them, and I'll give you the example.
I was opposed to the torture program when I was inside.
And I thought, this is so wrong.
So obviously wrong.
So obviously illegal.
Somebody is going to come out and say something.
And then nobody did.
And so finally, I did.
And they sent me to prison.
They asked for 45 years in prison.
It was a death sentence.
Why?
Under what?
Because you did what?
You violated an oath?
You compromised?
What?
In my view, I upheld my oath.
My oath was to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
But what did they say?
They said that I had exposed classified information.
Well, how in the hell do you...
Listen, every time somebody, whether you're Sammy the Bull, or Lorraine Brockovich, or you're a whistleblower...
Queetam legislation.
Edward Snowden.
You're violating a law either written, accepted, that's what you do.
You can't be a freaking whistleblower and expose bad cops or whatever it is without breaking some law.
That's right.
You're absolutely right.
And in the end, they charged me with three counts of espionage.
Oh, that's that catch-all.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it is.
And they ended up having to drop all three of those charges.
I hadn't committed espionage.
But my lawyers were very clear at the beginning.
You know, I was feeling sorry for myself one day, and one of them said, you know, this case is not about you.
This case is about scaring every other person in government who's thinking of going public.
And they were right.
Now, why are you, did anybody, listen, like you're going to tell me if it happened, but did somebody say, hey, Kiriakou, don't get any ideas of going on some podcast and spilling your guts because, or do they say, you know what, we want you to tell people.
We want you to go out there and tell them what we did to you so that if there's another one out there, we want them to hear it.
So please, say it loud and proud.
That's a great question.
And in fact, when I did it, I went on ABC News.
They're the ones that broadcast it.
But instead of the CIA asking ABC not to air the interview, they told them, go ahead and air the interview, but we deny that there's a torture program.
They didn't try to stop them.
Yeah, see, but they want that.
Yes, they do.
And if the truth be known, you know, recently, John, I did a...
I'm a frustrated psychologist, psychiatrist of small engine repair, you name it.
But as an undergrad, I remember I was a psych major and I loved the Milgram experiment and then the Stanford prison experiment.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there's something about, I always said, how can you torture?
How does a regular person do it?
And what Stanford prison Zimbardo, whatever his name is, said that anybody can do it.
Lindy England was nobody special.
Oh, you are exactly right.
And when you say, if I say, and the Milgram experiment, zapping people, this was at the time of the Eichmann trial, because what Milgram at Yale wanted to know was, how do people just do this?
Just pass it, just doing my job.
And if somebody had a white coat and said, The experiment must continue.
Do it.
This isn't a human being.
This is not Ahmed.
No, no, this is a terrorist who brought down those towers.
He's got plenty.
Get him!
And then you get the group, and then you get into the mob psychology of Le Bon, and then you get into this occlocracy.
You put this all together, and I can turn Lindy England from some, you know, from just some kid from West Virginia.
And I will turn her into Vlad the Impaler so fast to make your head spin.
Oh, you are absolutely right.
So who's the bad guy?
I worked with this kid.
Actually, he worked for me in Pakistan.
Man, I didn't like this kid from the get-go.
He actually washed out of the operational class.
So he was not an operations officer like the rest of us were.
He was what's called a special operations officer, which is an assistant.
They do...
Surveillance.
It's like, hey, buddy, do my accounting paperwork.
I'm too busy.
That kind of thing.
So he came out with a group of guys to help us do raids on the al-Qaeda safe houses the night that we captured Abu Zubaydah.
We captured so many people that night that we had to bring the prisoners into our safe house in shifts, in a paddy wagon, ten at a time, to interrogate them.
So the first group of ten came in, and they all had hoods on their heads.
And I said, why are they hooded?
Now, remember, I'm the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.
I said, why are they hooded?
He said, we don't want them to see our faces.
I said, are you seriously telling me that you have never read the Geneva Convention?
You cannot put hoods on them.
It's a war crime.
I said, take the hoods off.
And he says, wait a minute.
He says to his guys, wait a minute.
Don't take the hoods off.
We're not at war.
Oh, I said, we're taking the hoods off, and I'm reporting you to headquarters.
And he says, I'm reporting you to headquarters.
I said, fine.
We reported each other to headquarters.
I got in trouble.
I got in trouble.
They didn't give two shits about the Geneva Convention.
But you're not at war.
I love that one.
I love the way we use it.
Listen, it's the lawyer in me.
It's very interesting.
It's like years ago when...
When Vladimir Putin said, hey, how come you said you weren't going to move east?
He goes, no, no, no.
We made a deal with the Soviet Union.
There is no more Soviet Union anymore.
I go, what?
So anyway, so then Putin says, well, listen, since there's no more Soviet Union, can I join NATO?
They said, oh, no, no, no.
You can't do that.
Here's my question.
This is the part that is.
I find what you do fascinating because every I think everybody's dream is to say, do something wrong.
Do something bad.
But you won't get caught unless you tell the truth.
But we'll let you steal, rob, kill everything that you do.
And I love this situational ethics.
How Paul Tibbetts, hero, the Enola Gay, incinerated children, vaporized.
And he is a nicest man.
Wouldn't hurt a fly, I'm sure.
And I'm thinking, how do we...
I'm not going to go into various theaters of war around the world.
I love the idea of what is a psychopath.
A psychopath is somebody who doesn't appreciate consequences.
But we are institutionalizing them.
We are creating sociopaths by saying, we're going to absolve you of that guilt component.
You're not going to feel it.
We'll do that.
You just...
If you're not going to do it, somebody else will.
Okay.
And I'm young, and I'm a cool guy.
I don't know who's playing whom.
Is the CIA playing you, the agent, or you playing the target?
It fascinates me.
Yeah, I have to agree with you.
I've said this many times on podcasts, but I think it bears repeating here.
A CIA psychiatrist once told me that the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies.
Not sociopaths, because, of course, They're impossible to control.
They have no conscience.
They just blow right through a polygraph exam.
But people with sociopathic tendencies will break the law, will operate in legal and moral gray areas because we're the good guys.
The problem is, just like in any Fortune 500 company, the sociopath is going to slip through the cracks.
And because that person is willing to make his career by stepping on the backs of the people around him...
The sociopath makes it to the top of the ladder.
So it's hard.
See, I think sometimes in a weird way, a sociopath is kind of like a bad label.
A couple questions more, and then I thank you so much for being with me.
I know you're very, very busy.
Not me, mind you, but you are.
Recently, they were saying, the JFK files.
They're going to release the files.
I said, schmuck!
They didn't write down anything on the files.
I can tell you if there's anything in the box.
There's no box.
Pam Bondi.
Remember a naked gun when Leslie Neal says this?
Hey, look at this.
The lab results from the whatever.
He went to the chair.
He was...
They don't have...
Pam Bondi's not in her office.
He goes, hey, a man look at Carcano.
Look at this bullet...
Kennedy's brain!
I didn't know...
What are you...
What are you...
It's not there.
Another thing, too, is I think there is no CIA.
I imagine somebody who comes to you and says, who do you work for?
I don't know.
Who pays you?
I don't know.
I'm not on the...
I don't pull into Langley with my fob.
They don't know who I am.
There is no CIA, NSA.
Remember the NSA?
Everybody was talking about that.
Now we don't even talk about it.
There was no such thing as the NSA.
No such thing as the NSA.
So what I'm saying is, when you see this JFK files...
UFO files, CIA.
Don't you think to yourself, oh, would you people, do you not learn?
What's your reaction?
And who killed them?
I have to agree.
They're not going to document that they killed them.
I honestly have come to believe that there were elements of the CIA from the Alan Dulles days that hated JFK so much because he had refused to provide air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion that they got it.
Pick your reason.
Bobby Kennedy.
Carlos Marcello went to Bobby Kennedy.
Here's how I think it happened.
Yes, he did.
Yes, he did.
Here's the way it happened.
Very quickly.
You and I are...
I don't know who we are.
I'm Clay Bannister.
Whoever!
I'm Alan Dulles.
And I say, you know, John, too bad we have this problem.
Let's face it.
We didn't have this problem.
And you say...
And nobody's writing that down.
No, I'm leaving.
Because I didn't stop you.
And then all of a sudden, I pick up the phone and I talk to my guy.
I remember post-World War II, OSS, Carlos Marcello, Vito Genovese, gave us Sicily, ran more ops than anybody else.
For years, Johnny Roselli.
I'll bet you anything.
Remember this guy, Lucien Sarti.
If he says, listen, I know this guy from Marseille.
They're real good.
Well, bring him in from Mexico.
They don't speak English.
Go ahead and stop him.
Who are you?
I don't know who you are.
I mean, who is this?
I don't even know who I'm going to hit.
I have a frangible bullet.
I like him.
I wait.
Ten days later, I hang him around.
I leave if he's caught.
We're not going to get some marine op.
Somebody says, hey, isn't that Uncle Dave there at the grassy knoll?
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then you sit back and you let everybody start talking about it.
And meanwhile, everybody's got, you've got one who says it's Mack Wallace, LBJ, Posner says no, somebody said it was the driver, it was Jackie Kennedy.
So, isn't that the easy part?
Wasn't it probably something like this?
And next thing you know, plans got made.
I think you've hit it on the head.
And I'll tell you what, I'm genuinely dying to see what the RFK and the MLK files look like, especially MLK.
I think the FBI killed him.
And RFK, they recovered one more bullet than Sirhan Sirhan's gun held.
Thane Eugene Caesar or something else.
Caesar, that's right.
They found powder deposition.
At the back of his head.
And Sirhan Sirhan is across the room.
That's right.
And I saw a video that showed Caesar pulling a gun out of his waistband.
You hear bang, bang, bang, bang.
And he put it back in.
And a couple of reporters from, I think it was the National Geographic Channel, caught up with him before he died and said, did you kill Robert Kennedy?
And he said, no, I was going to.
But that ARAB fella got him first.
Well, somebody had to fire the extra shots.
If ever there was a case, when somebody could come to me, John Kiriakou, and say, MKUltra, or MLKUltra, but if ever there was, it would be Mark David Chapman with Lennon?
Because Hoover hated him.
And also, when Sirhan Sirhan said, I did what?
You killed him.
Why?
What do you mean, why?
Because of the Jordanian.
I didn't have any beef with Bobby Kennedy?
Now, this is...
Same thing with Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby, they were going to use the epidemic season.
Yes, yes.
Nobody's ever explained that.
And then, oh, he got cancer and died three years later.
Fastest cancer anybody's ever seen.
And the individual who was part of MKUltra and also who worked with Gottlieb and others, his specialty was, I can turn a normal person into a babbling psycho.
Just let me talk to him.
Jack Ruby went from Jack Ruby saying, I think I can talk to you, to...
So anyway, we're just throwing this out.
Bottom line, John Kiriakou, first of all, thank you.
You are immensely...
I don't want to say entertaining, because what you've been through...
I always have to ask this question.
Was it worth it?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was totally worth it.
I'll tell you why specifically it was worth it.
Six weeks before I left prison, I called my wife.
I was able to talk to my wife every other day for 15 minutes.
So I called her and I said, how was your day?
And she said, it was great.
And I said, really?
Great?
Why was it so great?
And she said, because the Senate torture report was released today, and it proved that everything you said was the truth.
And she said that John McCain had gotten up on the floor of the Senate and said that the country owed me a debt of gratitude.
Yes.
Because if I had never said anything, they wouldn't have had any idea what the government was doing in their name.
And now torture is banned.
And I'm proud that I played even a small role in I'm not a religious person at all, but I have this fantasy that God one day says to you.
You know, John, the stuff that I gave you that you thought you wanted, that's the stuff that killed you.
The stuff that you never, the stuff that you thought, well, that didn't turn out, that's how I helped you.
It's the opposite of what you think.
You know, the thing which is so interesting, and again, I promise you I'll let you go.
Please, I promise.
Supposedly, there was a story of the fellow who interrogated Saddam Hussein.
And by the way, we never saw any pictures of his execution, actually.
Isn't that funny?
I never saw pictures of him.
We saw kind of like that grainy...
Yeah, that's it.
That iPhone video.
Yeah.
We need to verify this because there's object permanents that people will imagine.
Same thing with Bin Laden, but I digress.
But anyway, the story was, never forget this, the interrogator for Bin Laden says that when he stood up...
When he walked in, he stood up and he showed respect.
He said, stand up.
This is the leader of whatever it is.
And he had some cookies, plum or something, cookies that his wife was Iraqi or something.
He says, would you care for them?
And he remembered when he was a kid and he showed him respect.
And what he did was, he said the same thing with hostage negotiation.
They don't understand your position, do they?
They don't understand.
They think you're a bad guy, but you're not.
Because remember what Saddam said, if you get rid of me, you're going to need seven of me.
So you show empathy, it's psych.
It's always trying to understand to be impact anywhere.
And that's why the FBI is so good at interrogations.
They've been doing it since the Nuremberg trials.
Are they good guys?
Are they good guys?
Mostly they're assholes.
Some of them are good guys.
I worked with a whole team of really great FBI agents in Pakistan.
Really awesome guys.
But here in D.C., forget it.
But they are very, very good at interrogations because they've been trained.
To build rapport, to establish a relationship.
You know, you have a CIA guy.
He said to me one time, the CIA guy, he said, I'm going to cut off his balls and shove them down his throat.
I said, no, you're not.
You're going to make him a cup of tea, and you're going to ask him about his children.
Like, what's wrong with you?
You're going to cut off his balls and shove them down his throat.
So yeah, the FBI's good at it.
So the bottom line is, are they good guys?
Is the FBI good, CIA good?
Because we do need the CIA.
John, there are people out there who do want to hurt us.
Oh, sure.
And they don't give a damn.
And I'm here in Manhattan, and every time I drive through the Lincoln or the Holland Tunnel, I think, you know, I wouldn't take it alone.
I hope to God somebody out there is doing this.
I'm also very afraid, and I promise you I'll leave you with this.
I'm very afraid of how sometimes, and I don't want to get into political discussions, but when you, you see, we live here.
See, John, we live here.
And we have this body of water and this body of water.
And we're pretty much, we all speak the same language.
We don't have tribes.
We don't have, we weren't put together, cobbled together.
So when you go in and you've got people who can't even pronounce the name Houthis, they don't even know anybody.
And you've got people who feel a conviction about something with a ferocity that we cannot possibly understand.
And you start mixing and matching and doing things.
I'm thinking, oh, dear God, you are you're basically going up to two billion people.
And you're going like this.
Yes.
And you're saying everything you heard about the West is correct.
Yes.
And I'm thinking, what do you do?
Because it doesn't take a lot to.
It's true.
I'm always amazed, or during the course of my career, I was always amazed at how Such important, high-level people knew so little about history.
Isn't that the...
Oh, God, the name of the...
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there's that.
The dichotomy of...
Well, I'll never forget this one time.
I had an old trial lawyer turn to me one time.
He said, well, shit falls in the biggest heap.
And I said, what the hell does that mean?
But I've always used it to go, okay, that makes sense.
John Kiriakou, I'm going to put all your bona fides.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
Where can we see you?
What projects?
Thank you.
Let the world know what you are doing.
I have a TV show on an online platform called Unified Television.
It's U-N-I-F-Y-D dot TV.
The show is called CIA Declassified.
We talk about major world events and then explain them using declassified original CIA documents.
I've got two podcasts on YouTube.
One is called Deprogrammed.
The other is Deep Focus with John Kiriakou.
I've got a substack, John Kiriakou.
Everything I do, I put on the substack.
And I am starting in a couple of weeks, not starting, but restarting a 100-speech-around-the-world trip.
This is going to be in Scotland and Northern England between May 3rd and May 17th.
That's at tigerslanestudios.com.
I'm going to get all of that from our mutual friend, your handler.
You know who she is, your handler.
Yes, she's quite good.
I always go to a safe house.
I have to drop something underneath to give you a message.
It's very interesting.
But it is always a pleasure.
And I'll tell you.
Pleasure's mine.
Thank you.
The thing that I love about you, and that I promise you, you never try to impress me with you.
You always try to tell me the fact.
And we become impressed by virtue of what you say.
I'm not going to mention any names, but there are so many people who are so, oh, what's the word?
Full of shit on all of these shows.
Everybody's a rough and tumble and covered in tats.
And I'm thinking to myself, you know, I'm not buying this.
Give me the person who's just...
May I close with just one little story?
I knew that would pull you in.
You did.
You pulled me in.
And I'm going to prove you right here.
When Tucker Carlson was on Fox News, I used to go on a show all the time.
Anytime the agency was in the news, I'd go on and just take a swipe.
And that's why he's no longer on the air, because of you.
Yeah, it's probably true.
So I go up there one night to go on the show, and I'm in the green room, and there's another guy in the green room.
And he says to me, you going on Tucker?
And I said, yeah, you?
And he said, yeah.
He says, what are you talking about?
I said, I was in the CIA.
I'm going to talk about the CIA.
Oh, he says, me too.
I said, oh, this is the first question any CIA person asks another CIA person.
What directorate were you in?
And he says, ops.
Well, a CIA person wouldn't really say ops.
You'd say DO, the Directorate of Operations.
But that's okay.
I'll let that one go.
So I asked him the normal, obvious follow-up question.
What division were you in?
If somebody asks me, I say, I was in CTC, the Counterterrorist Center.
So I said to him, what division were you in?
And he said, I did Black Ops, Wetworks.
And I was like, oh, wrong answer, buddy.
Wrong answer.
So I go on the show first.
We talk for a few minutes, and then we go to commercial.
And you said to Tucker, I said, I think that guy's a fake.
And he said, what do you mean a fake?
And I said, Tucker, he doesn't know the lingo.
He's using lingo from movies about the CIA.
CIA people don't talk that way.
He said, oh shit.
He said, do me a favor and call the producer and tell her.
So I did.
They stopped inviting the guy on.
About six months later, I see an article in the Washington Post saying that he's been arrested and charged with mortgage fraud because he went to a bank and said, yeah, I need a million dollar mortgage.
I can't give you any pay slips because, you know, wet work, deep, deep cover black ops.
Wet work, yeah.
And they're like, oh, and they just gave him a million dollars.
And then he couldn't pay the mortgage because he made the whole thing up.
And he ended up going to prison for six years.
The stories that are...
There's a fellow whom I love.
His name is Don Shipley.
And he does...
He was a Navy SEAL.
He has a YouTube channel, Buds.
And he took it upon himself.
He has a list of all of the Navy SEALs from 1943 up until now.
I've heard about that.
He is the greatest.
So it always works like this.
Mr. Shipley?
Yeah.
My name is...
I hired this guy.
He says he's a Navy...
You know, this ain't working out.
He says, okay.
Well, put him on the phone with us.
And it works like this.
He says, hey, shipmate.
Hey, he goes, you were a Navy SEAL, yeah?
He says, what Bud's class?
And then we go in this, what Bud's class were you?
What's your dragger?
No, that Bud's class was 1938.
And my question is, do you know how demented you have to be?
Just wanting to be a con man.
Something will do it for free.
The delusions.
You talk about a psycho.
I mean, this is...
And to be caught and don't have tattoos and tritons.
Oh, yeah.
They'll put in their wills that they want their purple heart to be next to the coffin when they never served in the military, let alone got a purple heart.
Final...
I'm sorry.
I keep lying.
I swear to God.
Imagine how many young men in a bar Guy just graduated from school.
He says, I don't have a story.
There's a nice young lady there.
I want to...
What do I say?
Imagine if you could say, hi, what do you do?
Well, I'm retired.
From what?
That's a long story.
What?
You're not going to believe it.
No, tell me.
I was with the CIA.
I mean, you've got the greatest...
And how many people say, Roy!
Roy!
Yeah, sure.
No, no, seriously.
Roy!
Let me say something, Kiriakou.
Don't stop that bullshit on me.
I swear to God!
Somebody must have said to you a couple of times, you've got to do better than that, my friend.
And then, somebody says, you've got a phone handy?
Just look.
Google.
Yeah, Google.
Google.com Exactly.
John Kiriakou, let us promise people to do this again.
I've got 3,000 additional anything I can ever do for you, let me know.
Whatever that is.
Thank you, sir.
Black Ops, any kind of explosive device, you just let me know.
You got it.
My job is so secret, even I don't know what it is.
Anyway, John Carriano, thank you.
Thank you, my friend.
All the best.
▲
Export Selection