John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower: They Can See All Your Messages! I Was Under Surveillance In Pakistan!
Guests: John Kiriakou
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans whether it's NSA or CIA or FBI and to make matters worse We know that the CIA can take control remotely of a car's computer system in order to crash the car Take it off a bridge or take control of your smart TV and turn the speaker into a microphone even though the TV is Off and broadcast back to the CIA can they do that with devices? Absolutely, and I'll tell you how we know there was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled and he downloaded tens of Thousands of documents classified above top secret and instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese He went to WikiLeaks and they became the vault seven documents So our whole lives are out there potentially for someone to use against us in every country has these Capabilities listen it's been 15 years in the CIA. I love this country But one of the most important things in my life is the issue of ethics Which is why I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program because my Superior's kept repeating that torture worked but besides being illegal and moral unethical It just wasn't true and I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do I mean we know that they were experimenting on American citizens and spreading diseases in American cities
This is the stuff of movies. It is and because you've been in this world without the average person really has no idea about I have to ask you who do you think is the real adversary of the West? What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? And what about everything that's going on with Trump and Venezuela and Greenland? And then do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy? Yes. Who do you think he was working for? He is Rayleigh's. Why?
Two things I wanted to say the first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show Week after week means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had And couldn't have imagined getting to this place But secondly it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started And if you enjoy what we do here Please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app Here's a promise I'm going to make to you I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to And we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show Thank you You John karaoke the world knows your name Why Why does the world know your name?
I can give you two answers One I'm proud to say that I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program In a nationally televised interview with ABC News the second reason is I blew the whistle a long time ago and just in the past 18 months I seem to have hit some sort of youtube algorithm sweet spot And all of a sudden My message is getting out there And you went to prison for blowing the whistle I did and I would do it again tomorrow I really would You know I was giving an interview to the BBC the day after I got out of prison They were the first Outlet to ask for an interview And so I gladly gave it to them And the interviewer said Kind of perturbately You're not showing any remorse or contrition and I said no I'm not remorseful I'm not contrite I would do it again I would let them send me to prison again Because it was the right thing to do And you were a spy in the CIA Yeah, I was quite an accomplished spy In the CIA it's been 15 years in the CIA The first half of my career was in analysis And and I got bored frankly And so I made an unusual at the time change to counterterrorism operations And then I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9-11 attacks
And if I'd never heard about the CIA before I had never heard about your role in the CIA before And I was a 16 year old Right, how would you explain to me What you did there what your role was and what the CIA is Sure the CIA is an intelligent service whose job it is At its most basic level To recruit spies to steal secrets And to analyze those secrets so that the policy makers can make the best informed policy After 9-11 We were expecting an attack to use or some have been laden's words That would dwarf 9-11 And so my job was to infiltrate al-Qaeda by recruiting members of al-Qaeda To tell us when and where that next attack was going to come So that we could disrupt it We could Kill or capture the leadership and destroy the organization And give me a range of The things that you did during your time in the CIA Just for a very top line range of the types of things you worked on Oh, sure As an analyst it was actually quite straightforward We would write for the president the vice president the secretaries of state and defense and the national security advisor And who were the presidents during that time When I started it was George H.W. Bush the father And then it was Bill Clinton then George W. Bush
There are several different publications There's the president's daily brief which is the most important I covered Iraq the entire time that I was in analysis From well before most Americans had ever heard of Iraq I was told actually that it was a training account because nothing ever happened there Nothing ever changed And then Iraq invaded Kuwait The next day I got to the office early I was 20 Five years old 26 years old And my boss said don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House I had never been to the White House before except as a tourist And so we got in a car went to the White House. We're ushered into the Oval Office It's the president the vice president the national security Advisor the director of the CIA my boss and me And then we all sit down the president tells us sit down We sit down and the president says well Now what do we do and everybody turns and looks at me and it took me a second And I said yes, I said mr. President as you know Iraqi troops cross the border at two o'clock this morning They the royal family has Has run away to Saudi Arabia. They've named a new Occupation governor etc. etc. Do we know who that is? I said yes sir I gave him the name and I said actually he he's the co-founder of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine
The vice president shouts Jesus Christ And then the president says gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take it from here And I remember saying to myself My friends would never believe in a thousand years what I was doing right now They wouldn't even believe me if I told them That's what an analyst does when I switch to operations Again, the job was very straightforward. It was to recruit spies to steal secrets But then if you're involved in counter-terrorism operations There are a lot of extras that you have to be trained in So you go through the normal spy training. This is how you Increate yourself. It's something called the asset acquisition cycle spot assess develop recruit I meet you at a cocktail party You seem like a nice guy. I introduce myself I ask so what do you do for a living? Well, if you tell me you manage a shoe store I'm going to say well it was very nice meeting you and I'm going to go into the next guy But if you tell me you work at the port You work in the Ministry of Defense you work in the Chinese embassy I'm going to invite you to lunch. I've spotted you. I've assessed you and my assessment is I'd like to get to know you then I begin to develop you. I'll give you an example
I was in Pakistan. I got a tip that That al-Qaeda a group of mid-level al-Qaeda fighters was meeting every single day In a coffee shop at 10 o'clock in the morning My Arabic was absolutely flawless at the time And so I had a bushy beard that I grew for operational reasons. Can I hear some of your Arabic? Yeah Tasharif be Mareftek. It's nice to meet you or Bismillah r-Rahman r-Rahim al-hamdulillah al-Malik yumadin r-Rahman r-Rahim so I bought an Arabic newspaper and I went to the coffee shop and I just sat there and sure enough at 10 o'clock The four of them came in one of them looked at me and I looked at him and that was it. We made eye contact I did that for a week The second week I was there drinking my coffee sitting with my Arabic newspaper And the one who had looked at me the week before he nodded So I nodded back. That was it. No communication otherwise. The third week. I'm a regular now. He recognizes me So he says to me salamu alaikum. I said walaikum salam may peace be upon you and I say and upon you peace One day he came in alone And I said the father please have a seat Sit with me no sense in you sitting alone me sitting alone so he sat down we started talking and I asked him how long he had been in Pakistan. He said oh
I've been here for five years. I was in Afghanistan. I was making jihad against the Americans and I said oh That must have been hell on earth. He said oh He said that the bombing of Torah Borah was hideous. That was the word that he used it was hideous And I said and what about your family? How's your family? He said My wife and son and daughter are in Cairo I've never met my son. He was born just after I left to make jihad. I said I'm so sorry And he said yes, I'm I'm lonely and I want to go home and we continued this relationship and Finally I said to him let me take you to dinner. Let's get out of the coffee shop The truth was I didn't want one of his friends to walk in and see us So we went to a restaurant for dinner and I said listen There's something that I haven't been truthful with you about I'm not Lebanese And I said and actually I'm American Are you okay with that?
And he says I think so I said well actually I'm a CIA officer And he says okay So he didn't run screaming from the room or pull a gun or anything and he said Why do you want me why do you want to talk to me? I said actually you have access to something that I want It was very specific and I told him what it was And he says and what will you do for me? And I said anything your heart desires And he said I want to go home I said I can do that and you wanted information presumably I wanted information very specific information which you call Shah no now go right back to prison so So We got him a passport I bought him a first class ticket And I took him the airport gave him some cash to get himself started again And I said before you go I have to ask you Why did you agree to give me this information?
I mean presumably I'm the enemy And he said I've been here five years and you're the first person who ever asked me about my family So I said best of luck never saw him again That's the job I have to ask you Take me on the journey of you being a young man in West Pennsylvania All right To becoming a spy what happened because I'll be honest And I don't really know what my perception of spies is but it's not you That's good yeah that's good see because I kind of work under the radar So that's really interesting is I There's so many um Once you learn about spies as a pod like so if you go back a couple of years and someone had told me about spies I wouldn't believe them. I wouldn't believe that these things actually happened. Oh, yeah You know you hear about people going undercover and going to other countries and getting secrets and and all of these things And it's not until you meet the people that said Yes, that's me. I used to do that that you'll sort of you have this paradigm shift in your mind and you go oh my god What else might be going on right because I lived in this world probably up until the age of I don't know 30 years old Where I kind of just assume things are what they are
But as I see them and then you you start to discover that there's layers of secrecy nations are against each other They're doing all of these covert operations and even like as a podcaster now I have moments where I go Like how do I know that you're not you're not here to steal secrets from me right So we know it's funny when I had Andrew Bustamante on the show The comments sections are always the same. They're always like once a CIA spy always a CIS When people say that it's so intellectually lazy But I just I do wonder and I go okay. Here's a super conspiracy theory. What if The CIA have made spies do really well in the YouTube algorithm So that all of us as long fun podcasters invite them on and then they you know what I would agree with that I would have agreed with that a year ago because Andrew Bustamante has really made a handsome living Out of selling his experience. Yeah, and he's on every podcast. Yeah, but I am The most anti-CIA former CIA person that's out there, but wouldn't that be the perfect CIA agent I Mean if if I weren't constantly criticizing the CIA as a as a an organization that's just out of control Do you think the CIA are have a strategy for podcasters and for podcasting?
I think yes now they do it took them a little while to to get current But just like they Over time developed a strategy with Hollywood Sure, they're developing a strategy with podcasters. You know, it was only in the last 10 years That the CIA opened a branch within the office of public affairs whose job it is solely to liais with Hollywood studios the FBI's been doing this since the since the 40s and the goal is that everything that comes out of Hollywood should be pro CIA and you know we end up with Zero dark 30 and you know the recruit and the CIA Argo the CIA is always the hero in these movies if you were to let the CIA now and your job was to infiltrate and Use creators or podcasters as an asset for the CIA's objectives How might you design that plan if we were just hypothesizing?
you would have to have a goal That would be specific enough that you could actually track the progress to it So you can't just say well, I'm gonna pay this podcaster X amount of money and we're gonna we're gonna We're gonna do something with the algorithm to make him vastly popular among Man, you know 18 to 30 let's say there's got to be more to it than that. It has to be a message You've got to be able to get a specific Well-honed message out there And the message can be anything It could be you know love the CIA where the good guys it could be support the overthrow of the Iranian government It could be you know any criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu as anti-semitism It could be anything you want it to be You just have to make sure that it's repeated enough see this was the danger with the torture program This is one of the very important reasons that I went public when I did because My colleagues my superiors at the CIA kept repeating this lie over and over and over again that torture worked And that torture got us information that saved American lives and that was just simply not true It was a lie besides being illegal immoral unethical It just wasn't true And so I decided Before we go down this road anymore. I'm going to go public
So can you take me back then we've got a little bit side track there, but John how did you come to be a CIA right spy When I was nine years old I told my parents that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up it came time to Apply for college and I only applied at one university George Washington university in Washington Because it was two blocks from the White House And it was one of only three schools in America that offered a Middle Eastern studies program I was one of only four people in that brand new Middle Eastern studies program I stayed for a master's degree in legislative affairs with a focus on foreign policy analysis I was taking a class in that program called the psychology of leadership It was taught by an eminent psychiatrist named dr. Gerald post and He gave us an assignment one One day where we had to shadow our bosses. We had to just follow our bosses for a week Your bosses Yeah, I worked at a labor union called the United Food and Commercial Workers Union And so we were just supposed to follow our boss around for a week and then write a psychological profile I used Dozens of you know footnotes from psychological you know psychology texts and I ended up saying that he was a sociopath
With psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies and you know, I had these citations I passed the paper in Dr. Post gives it back to me a week later gave me an A and then he wrote please see me after class So I went up to him after the class and I said dr. Post you wanted to see me. He says come to my office So we went down there. He closed the door and he says listen I'm not really a professor here I'm a CIA officer under cover as a professor here And I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a spy?
And I said yes I would He picked up the phone and Call the number and he said Bob This is Jerry. I've got a good one for you. Do you have some time? And he said sure he writes an address on a scrap of paper and he says be at this address in 20 minutes It was only one subway stop away So I jumped on the metro. I went to Rosalind, Virginia just across the river I had to buzz to be let in and a woman opens the door. She says are you here for Bob? And I said yes, she says come on in I'm sitting there for a moment and then this like six foot six three hundred and fifty pound giant barrels out of his office and he says John Bob how the hell are you?
I want you to be at the George Washington University Medical School Saturday morning at eight o'clock We've got some tests for you. I said okay And then we shook hands and I left So Saturday morning. I went to the GW Medical School auditorium There were like I don't know 200 people there and they hand us a test My wife picked me up. She said how did you do? I said I have no idea Does your wife at this point know that you're applying for the CIA?
Yes, and that was going to be pretty much the extent of what she ended up knowing because once I got in But you were out to tell her I was not allowed to tell her No, so you told her anyway Yeah When I first applied they said listen don't tell anybody because you may go undercover You may go under deep cover And we can't have people out there who know that you're a CIA officer Presumably the CIS smart enough to be able to check if you've told her Yeah, and they ask you on the polygraph Did you tell her really and I said yeah, I told her she's my wife. What am I gonna do?
You know, but it got to the point where I'd get home from a day where you know I've broken to some guy's house and and planted a camera on a bug and I'd get home and she'd say how's your dad say great Would you do not a darn thing? And then my phone would bring it, you know midnight and a guy would say The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plane And I'd say Maris Edoats and Doze Edoats and little Lambs Edoivy and that means Meet me at the yacht club parking lot in three hours And then I'd leave she's she would say where were you going it's midnight. I got to work So I'd leave I do my meeting I'd come home six o'clock in the morning Just in time to shower and shave and get dressed to go to work and she would say What was her name?
And I remember this one terrible time that's what she said to me. What was her name the truth is I had been sitting in a garbage dump Waiting for a guy to drive by down the alley and throw a bag of documents in And I stunk of garbage and I said to her do I seriously smell to you like I've been with a woman seriously So we ended up getting a divorce So you do the assessment because you're not being you get in Yeah, what he called me like two weeks later Bob did And he said you blew the doors off those tests. I said oh great. Okay. So month later they summon me to headquarters And I was interviewed by the office of Near Eastern operations The office of Near Eastern analysis and the office of leadership analysis I was offered the analysis job on the Iraq desk and what is the Some total of the training you were given in the variety of different roles that you had like how do they train this question That's a good question and the answer is vastly different depending on where you start your career So because I started mine in analysis the immediate Training was in mastering the CIA's writing style So the most important product that the CIA writes every day is the PDB the president's daily brief
And it tells the president what what you think he needs to know okay, so for example When the Iraqis began moving to the to the Kuwaiti border We had this big debate are they gonna are they gonna cross the border? Yes or no So I said Listen, why don't I call The American defense attaché and Baghdad and I'll just ask him to drive down there and look and tell us what he sees He drives down there drives back he calls me and he says literally the entire Iraqi military is on its way to the Kuwaiti border So we wrote a thing for the president saying Iraq is gonna invade Kuwait and it's probably gonna happen in the next 48 hours And when when did the president see that particular briefing at 7 a.m. The next morning Okay, and is there other situations where the president would get it in the middle of the night? Yes Yeah, I'm be told in the middle of the night that yes There there are these levels of immediacy There's routine which is like who cares and then there is um Priority which means yeah, I'll get to it sometime today then there's immediate which means you should probably read it first but then there's flash Which means oh my god something terrible just happened You should probably wake the president
And then there's critic which means they're coming over the embassy walls We're at war wake up the president scramble the jets 9 11 9 11 That's a critic So going back to this question of your training yeah, what is it that the CIA teach you about Human nature and how to use human nature to your advantage that could be transferable to Other disciplines in life like business or Well, this is going to sound Not very nice But it's it's real life. It's every day life especially in in business The CIA actively seeks to hire people who have what they call sociopathic tendencies Not sociopaths Sociopaths have no conscience They'll just blow right through a polygraph exam but they're impossible to Corral they're impossible to to you know keep Underrain And it's because they're not able their brains won't allow them to feel regret or remorse Now in business most CEOs are sociopaths most not all but most Especially in big companies because they claw their way to the top usually on the backs of the people around them They don't feel bad screw in the next guy to get that next promotion The CIA wants people like that Because those are the people Who are going to break into a foreign embassy a normal person would not advocate breaking into a foreign embassy
That's sovereign territory of a foreign country. I would I'd be glad to do it why Because we're the good guys So do you have sociopathic tendencies absolutely and what are your sociopathic tendencies My sociopathic tendency was to operate in legal moral and ethical gray areas Specifically, that's what it was I'm really curious about what we can learn about human nature from someone Whose job was to meet strangers and to get them to basically sometimes to turn against their own country I'm really interested in and I think I think it's informative because so many of us You know when we think about what good leadership is or what good sales Met man or woman ship is Um, it seems like those transferables. I guess for some people it's family. I guess for some people it's something else That that hook that you're talking about that thing that gets them and the word that they use at the CIA for the hook is a vulnerability and it's not really a vulnerability in every case now 95% studies have been done about this internally at the CIA 95% of the people who agree to become spies for us Do it for the money, right? It's it's a simple cash transaction You give me money. I'll give you secrets 95% so you telling me that you think human motivation is
95% driven by money. Yes. Really? Yes the rest was love and family um, ideology revenge and excitement You're gonna get a handful of people who are hooked on James Bond movies and they will do it I mean, you're gonna pay them anyway, but they will do it just for the adrenaline rush It's interesting because when I look at this list of things and I compare it to business It I would say it's slightly different from my experience of hiring people specifically of hiring people I tend to think that You know you could one would ask themselves like why would someone leave a company right now like I don't know open AI and go work at a startup. They're gonna get paid way more at open AI You've got these equity and these grants and but people are on mass doing that and even when I think about the early days of Google people left The big conglomerates that would pay them more and they went and worked for Larry and Serge Um getting paid way less right but to be involved in something Small scrap for exciting And and so I and this is what why think about when I sit you know probably I've had thousands of people in my life now across my businesses and Money is a factor, but it doesn't tend to be the biggest
factor It tends to be in my experience There's a particular Heroes journey in their mind that they want to be seen through they want to complete You know, there's a particular way that they see themselves and they want to fulfill that. Oh, I could get that I work with a with a very very tiny startup right now called IV cyber and it focuses on privacy software Things like you know scrambling your data so it can't be intercepted that that sort of thing and I've participated in a couple of pitches to To angel investors And they all say exactly the same thing that you did and this is why I was confused when I had that money was 95% Because I just think Especially in the work that you know, especially in the work that you do I would assume but look at it this way And I think this would explain the discrepancy Um, you're comparing people who are making a life Versus people who are betraying their country sure And what's interesting as well is in those examples that you've given Money is actually a proxy to be able to take care of my family And to be able to you know fulfill my ideology And maybe to get excitement and revenge do you know what I'm saying?
So even that's a guy that wanted to plane ticket so he could fly home Yeah, he could he could have the money could have got him home if you just given him So the reason why he wanted to go home was because his family was family That was it What's the extent of the things that the CIA can get as a incentive for someone to Turn against the nation to give secrets quite literally anything you can imagine even if it's against the law Well, like they're not going to get like drugs or You know child prostitutes or no Not stuff like that. What if someone said I want you to Um Get me a green card. Oh, yeah, sure. What if they said the information is good enough not a problem What if they said I want you to I've got this Tax bill. I want you to make the tax book go away. Okay. Give me the plans that Russian tank. We'll make it happen What if it's an American would they speak to the IRS here and just get rid of it?
Oh, if it was an American citizen, you mean yeah Uh, no But they why no We normally don't recruit American citizens by law the CIA can't operate domestically although they have offices all over the country those offices are generally to To debrief business leaders see sweet officers who travel to denied areas for example if if you Take a trip to North Korea, let's say I'm going to call you and I'm going to say you don't know me But I'm from the CIA and I understand you just went to North Korea And I was wondering if I could come over to your office for an hour and just ask you about your trip 99.99% are going to say yes because they're patriots So I go to your office. I give you my business card and we just chat about You know your impressions of the place and That kind of thing Just to close off on this point. Are there any skills that the CIA taught you or trained you in that you think are transferable for business that we haven't talked about They trained us also in lying and lie detection That was actually quite important You know you at the CIA you're you're a trained liar And this is why the divorce rate so high it's the highest divorce rate of any Entity in in the US government. It's it's upwards of 80%
Trained to lie. How do they train you to lie? Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. I work for an import export company But did they teach you the art of lie? Oh, yeah, and what is the art? You know, it's it's hard to like it's hard to pin down. You just sort of have to have it You have to have that ability, but the hard part is you have to keep the lies straight I'll give you another example. I've never told this story before I was asked by headquarters. I was overseas in the Middle East and I was asked by headquarters to target one specific officer Of this foreign country target. Yeah Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never met. I'm John. So nice to meet you. Let me take you to lunch He had access to to information that we really needed Uh, so they told me to Accidentally bump into him. So I surveilled him for a week And he was single and on Saturday morning he went to a coffee shop So I'd go into the coffee shop and I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and I said I know you Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said yes, do I know you? I said I am John from the American Embassy Oh, nice to see you. I said hey good to see you too. You live in the area. Yes, I do I said oh so do I I didn't I lived like across town
Oh fancy meeting you here at this coffee shop. I come here all the time. Do you yeah? He says I come here all the time Why don't you have a seat? He says so I sit down At the end of the conversation I go back to the embassy and I read a cable and I said he's gay I'm a hundred percent sure he's gay So then we started this conversation headquarters and I How can we use that to our benefit? Did he have a wife? No He was single which was unusual at his age. How did you know he was gay?
I I just it was a vibe so Headquarter says We want you to pretend that you're gay. I said oh come on you guys No, we really need the information. You got to pretend that you're gay I said okay. I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle Sam So I call him and I said hey, I have two tickets to this show and I was hoping maybe you'd be Maybe we'll grab some sushi afterwards He said yeah, I'd love to So we go to the show he thoroughly enjoyed it and we go for sushi afterwards And then we go out again and he says why don't you go over to my place some night and I'll make dinner I said great So I go over to his place. He made a lovely dinner And then I thought well, I have to invite him to my place. So I told my wife you're gonna have to like get out So she left I made dinner I removed all the pictures of us together and we had just gotten married So we had like our wedding picture up and everything At the dinner He leaned into kiss me and I instinctively backed off and he said oh my god. I'm sorry I thought you're gay and I said oh no, I am gay I'm John. I'm I'm not into hairy guys And he's like oh Okay, I said I'm sorry. I think you're great But I'm I'm not feeling it you didn't kiss him. No So we remained friends and in the end he gave me the information
Because we were friends and then he he opened up. He's like I can't tell anybody. I'm gay They suspect I am and they pass me over for promotion and my boss asked me is there something in your personal life that you're not telling me He knows I'm gay. I said listen your culture's backwards Don't tell them you're gay Just say that you've just never met the right woman and in sha love the right woman is coming You know in your life at some point and I actually googled him a couple of years ago and he did become an ambassador finally and he's still working in that country now Does that kind of still happen a lot in the CIA where you have to take one for the team? Yes They have you ever taken one for the team? No Yeah, I'm not sure you're telling the truth. Well, I it came close when did it come close so I was overseas I was a brand new operations officer and there was A woman in this foreign intelligence service who was The ugliest woman I've ever seen in my life Like you want to avert your eyes like she came off the side of Notre Dame She was a you know a stone gargoyle with a giant mole right here with a giant hair coming out of it that kind of ugly so So I took her to lunch and she was very nice and then I thought I did something kind of gutsy by see
CIA standards because it was early on in our relationship. I invited her To go to lunch on a Saturday now as a rule the people in this country were not allowed to socialize with us privately it had to be like their whole office You know or several of them together. So I asked her just to meet me privately for lunch on Saturday. Don't tell anybody. So she was someone from the Middle East. Yes And she agreed and I was like oh my god She said yes, and I ran back to the office. I was like she said yes to a lunch on Saturday alone And my boss is okay Here's what I want you to do I want you to fuck her And I said what I said have you ever seen her And he said I know But we're the good guys and you're gonna have to take one for the team And I go oh my god. I said I go Okay, I'll do it. And he says no, you're not gonna fuck her. We don't do that I said I don't know. I just started this. I've never been on the operations guy before how am I supposed to know He said come on. He said just develop her like a normal person. You don't have to fuck her I said oh my god. You almost gave me a heart attack But they they might not be mad if you did So long as I reported it and I got the recruitment out of it. It wasn't illegal to
You know sleep with assets Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with assets. It has happened to a couple people I know And um, they end up being pulled back to the United States. You have to sit in the penalty box if you do that You're not supposed to do that. But yeah, it happens so sex distortion isn't a real thing It can be we don't When I first got hired one of the old timers told me the story of about an ayatola that they were trying to recruit And they set this ayatola up with a prostitute and it was he had sex with this prostitute in a room where they had Cameras everywhere and so they bumped him afterwards. They bumped into him and said hey We have all these pictures and they laid out the pictures of him, you know, but naked with this prostitute And he said yeah Give me that one an eight by ten give me two five by sevens of that one. How about some wallet size for this He's like get out of here And he said, you know after that We just stopped doing that it doesn't work when you recruit somebody you really do need the relationship to be based on mutual trust Not coercion or pressure or threat somebody. It's it's not going to result in a productive relationship The Russians do it the Israelis do it
But most intelligent services around the world don't because you've been in this world What is it that you know about the nature of the reality that we all live in That the average person really has no idea about Do you know what I mean? Yeah, because you know going back to what I said earlier Three years ago before I started doing all this podcast stuff and started interviewing people that had been involved in spy work and CIA and all this I was kind of like naive to the way that the world sure I thought I thought if I have a password on my device my device is secure and I thought that you know right all these kind of just simple things But what is it that you know about the nature of reality that most people don't?
Well, I guess it's a couple of things You know John Kennedy called the CIA the best and the brightest And we're not we're just average people And we're not as smart as we think we are we're not as worldly as we think we are We've pretty much missed every major global developments since 1947 from the you know The rise of the Berlin wall to the fall of the Berlin wall to the fall of the Soviet Union to the Suez crisis and the Iran hostage crisis and 9-11 and everything else we missed it We're really good at day-to-day you know updates for the president We're really good at recruiting minor hangers on around terrorist groups, but the the big picture items We're just not good at it number one number two Until 9-11 it was against the law like in stone to spy on Americans And now Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans whether it's NSA or CIA or FBI or intelligence community contractors Nothing is secret nothing and to make matters worse Let's say maybe you did do something that law enforcement might be interested in they don't need a warrant anymore They don't need to go to a judge and say we have reason to believe you don't blah blah blah all they have to do is just buy your metadata because it's for sale
Just go to go to the carrier just buy it They don't need a judge's order to do that It's all out there. We've made all we've made ourselves vulnerable all of our lives are out there Whether it's on Facebook or X or Insta or whatever If they really want to get you they're going to get you which reminds me of a book Written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate He's a professor of law at Harvard and it's called three felonies a day And he argues in this book that we are so over criminalized so over Regulated in this country that the average American on the average day going about his or her normal business commits three felonies every day You may not mean to but you do every day So if they decide they want you They don't like your politics They can get your metadata They can go through that metadata Find crimes that they can charge you with and ruin your life and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself To some extent they did that to you Yeah, they did they did that to me because you spoke out about a torture program That was happening in the CIA yeah John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said Charge him with espionage and Holder wrote back air colder was the attorney general Holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage
And John Brennan wrote back to Holder and said charge him any way and make him defend himself So they arrested me and charged me with five felonies including three counts of espionage espionage can be a death penalty case Charge me with espionage They waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with two million dollars in legal fees And then they dropped the espionage charges And they said we can read add the espionage charges Or you can take a plea to this lesser charge What are you going to do Roll the dice knowing that the government wins 98.2% of its cases according to pro-publica Or do you just take the deal and make it go away and that's what I did and you got roughly two years Yeah, I ended up doing 23 months And for anyone that doesn't know this was because At some point in your career you spoke out about torture programs that were happening In Guantanamo Bay and and elsewhere Yeah, and at secret prisons that the CIA had set up around the world right And going back up to the top of my question here I'm really trying to speak to Jane Dave who's listening to this right now sure they have a normal life yep They're not really where that spies exist in the extent of the work they do
They kind of assume that everything they see and people they interact with are normal And they think their devices and everything else is secure What message do you have for them a word of warning or caution about the reality Yeah, that's a good question Elliott Spitzer the former Governor of New York when he was attorney general of New York he said Don't nod when you can motion Don't speak when you can nod And don't ever put anything in a text message At the CIA on our very first day they told us not to ever say or do anything That we would be ashamed to see on the front page of the Washington Post I took that seriously The truth of the matter is because of technology the way it is today Our whole lives are out there potentially For someone to see for someone to use against us So be careful what you say be careful what you write even ingest Because it can be taken out of context to target you And what about digital security you talked about the fact that It's possible for these these forces and not just the US but other countries to be able to Hack and crack your devices and see anything on your devices I think we will go around assuming that our devices are secure. They're not secure at all
At all it's not just you know NSA CIA FBI you have to worry about It's the British the French the Germans the Canadians the Australians the New Zealanders The Russians the Chinese the Israelis the Iranians I mean everybody has these capabilities everybody So you've got to be very very careful capabilities to do what to intercept communications I've heard you say that they can hack Car systems They could so they could theoretically hack into my car. Yes. We know that from WikiLeaks there was something in 2017 called the vault seven revelations. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled and instead of Going to the Russians or the Chinese He went to WikiLeaks and he downloaded thousands tens of thousands of pages of documents classified above top secret and They became what WikiLeaks called the vault seven documents. So they included things like the CIA for example Will hack into let's say the Iranian Ministry of Interior computer system But they'll leave little electronic clues all written in Cyrillic Cyrillic as well. The Cyrillic is the is the alphabet the Russian alphabet. Yep or They can Take control of your smart TV remotely And they can make the speaker turn into a microphone
So even though the TV is off It can still Hear everything that's being said in the room and broadcast back to the CIA Can they do that with genius devices? Oh, they could do that when I first got hired. They were able to do that So you could be doing that right now with me. Oh, totally. I absolutely yes That's old technology and then the thing about the car This was revelatory They can take control again remotely of a car's computer system in order to Well, I mean in order to to kill you crash the car crash the car Take it off a bridge take it into a tree. Sure Do you know something I've noticed most commercial teams aren't tested by their targets They're tested by the weight of the admin that comes with every client All the follow-ups all the meetings all the notes the timelines that never ever stop These were a constant source of friction in my commercial team Until I introduced our sponsor pipe drive If you're not familiar pipe drivers are simple but powerful sales CRM that gives you visibility on any deals through a sales pipeline It also automates a lot of the tedious repetitive and time consuming tasks that come with the sales process I've used it across my investments for almost a decade now even when I was at social chain
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Enter to win a hundred thousand dollars for your dream or you have to do is share what it is learn more at dare to dream dot stan dot store I've heard you talk about sleeper agents before yes, what is that what is a sleeper agent? Yeah, the Russians are very good with sleeper agents We Americans don't have no no no other country that we know of uses sleeper agents a sleeper agent is someone Who is taken virtually from birth? and trained To be of another nationality for example, let's say you're born in Russia And from the age of you know to they take you from your family with your families acquiescence and they take you to An American style town that they've built out in the hinterland in Russia and they teach you to speak English with an American accent You watch American TV shows you watch American movies you eat American food you get an American style education So I have no idea that you're not American You speak English just like I do you know all the same You know social references that I make you follow the Philadelphia Eagles You know or or the you know the San Francisco 49ers or whatever And then they send you to the United States on a on a fake With a fake ID what they'll do is they'll go through
I was born in 1964 So they'll go through death records from 1964 and they'll look for For deaths where the person was only a day or two old And they'll take that name and the birth date and they'll get a social security card with the birth date And then they'll use the social security card to get you a passport an American passport So you come here on your American passport Everything's legit Now your name is you know Bob Smith which was really that baby's name that died And you get a job Let's say as a travel agent And you may work as a travel agent for 20 years And never hear from them But then they'll activate you And they'll say we want you to go take care of this target over here Kill him yeah Or we want you to get a job at the defense department and give us everything that you that you can steal Whatever there's a woman in my neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper About a year ago. She was an elementary school teacher And they grabbed her and they ended up trading her back to the Russians for two Americans So they're they're out there. I interviewed a sleeper a former sleeper on my own podcast a couple of weeks ago He was from the East German intelligence service and he was raised as an American and
sent to New York He got a job. I forget doing what like restaurant supply Company or something like that and He got married and he had a daughter And he told me as soon as I looked at her face the day she was born I realized this life wasn't for me anymore so they Send him an activation what they do is listen to your radio message And he didn't respond to it And he told me he was on the subway one day. He's just standing there holding the strap And this guy came up to him and the guy grabs the strap next to him and whispers in his ear if you don't report back I have to kill you And so he ran straight to the FBI field office in New York and he said I'm an East German sleeper And I want to turn myself in And he became a prolific source for the FBI so he was Taken as a young person. Yes. What was his story? Yeah, taken as a young person sent to Russia To become American they set him up with this phony identity And then after he had gone through all the training he came over here young. He was like 20 or 22 and And did this for 25 years And then he said as soon as his daughter was born he was like wow This is what life is for not being a sleeper Do you think the average person listening to this conversation right now is
Interacting in their life at this exact moment in time with someone who is involved in espionage spying the CIA or some international equivalent probably not because They're mostly focused if foreign intelligence officers are going to be spread out all over America if if if a listener of this podcast is working in a defense Company a defense contractor anywhere in America then my answer is yes Yes, you're probably encountering espionage of some sort or somebody committing espionage Whether it's Russian Chinese or Israeli. They're the three biggest ones that go after us In Washington I mean foreign spies there there could be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I remember my first wife um She was teaching ballet at a small private school and one of the uh the students there They were all like four or five and six years old one of the students there father was a Belgian diplomat And so we would sit and talk and oh aren't the kids talented and oh this is so much fun They look so cute in their little tutus And then I went to work one day and as I was walking in he was walking in and I said oh come on Peter And he's like, you know, I thought you were a spy and I said I actually didn't think you were a spy
He was just going for a liaison meeting We had a good chuckle about it and I said listen Don't tell anybody right Right, right, right, sorry So I'm trying to figure how many how many spies do you think there are in the United States if you think about Foreign spies foreign spies domestic spies people that are basically undercover Including Americans you mean including Americans The number of CIA employees is classified the number of CIA employees Undercover is actually even more highly classified. I can give you a guesstimate But also you know russia china. Yeah 50 to 60,000 altogether 50 of 60,000 in the United States So by a couple of degrees of separation If you know 100 people. Yeah, you're probably going to know one sure Said there's probably about 50,000 in the United States So I've just done some quick math on my notepad here Which means that in order to know one You'd need to meet 6,600 people okay because the US population is roughly three hundred and 30 million people that's right And I and then I did some other mass and did some research and I asked Um the question I was trying to figure out is how many people does the average person meet a year and it's roughly About Three to 10,000 people. Mm-hmm. So
So the chances are good every year statistically According to my napkin math you're meeting one of these undercover spies one a year There it is That number I gave you is I'm lumping like All CIA people and all foreign intelligence officers in the United States Interesting, but again if you work For an American defense company northrop grumman Lockheed Martin bowing any of them Your chances of encountering a foreign intelligence officer are Even money can't you as a spy with the United States Ask the United States to give you loads of money like can't you say oh you really want me to go do that? Can I have a million dollars?
Because you're giving you're potentially giving away a lot of money to other oh my god giving away Like unlimited amounts of money because your budget when you're a spy how much was it? After 9-11 it was unlimited. What does that mean? It means you can basically give away as much money as you need to if I approach somebody and he says I can give you This terrorist I want 10 million. I'm like done. What was the most you ever gave in 10 million you gave someone 10 million for I was a beta Who's Abu Zabada we believed that I was a beta was the number three in al-Qaeda He wasn't the number three, but he was a very bad guy I led the raids that captured up was a beta in Pakistan Faisalabad Pakistan in March of 2002 and The State Department had a 10 million dollar reward. We ended up giving the 10 million to the Pakistani intelligence service It wasn't a person a person. It was just really great analysis that led us to him, but There were others in the so-called war on terror Who Got more than 10 million and got it like within 24 hours Individuals individuals how much one got 25 million just a person uh-huh, and the thing is yeah, there's a lot of danger there if you're a if you're a you know a shepherd or a t-boy
And you make 40 dollars a month and all of a sudden you have 25 million dollars Something something's up and what was the 25 million for It was for a very high-ranking Foreign terrorist who was brought to justice. I can't I can't say because it was never publicly disclosed But what we would have to do in a situation like that is We would have to tell the the source you can't live here anymore pick a country And that's going to be home from now on and then we go to that country and say hey, can you do us a solid We've got this guy who you know he really came through and He's not going to be a burden on your economy because he's got 25 million dollars Which country did he pick? Oh, I can't I can't tell you that He wanted he wanted to stay in the region He wasn't willing to move to the United States for example Because we're happy to take him You're welcome to come to the United States. He's like absolutely not you went to Dubai I would yeah with the tax Interesting I think I think I'm yeah, and you can tell my bias from the questions that I ask about the things that fascinate me about Espionage and spies is just it's the Understood their understanding of human nature and what motivates us and the psychology of humans that you can learn from
Spies and the nature of human beings I guess right and also I get to the thing that really fascinates me is just I've had somebody mind mind-blowing moments where I've learned just how fragile the reality that I believe is Like I thought things were secure and I thought they were as they are but right She doesn't appear to be that way the bill is to be lots of secrets and you know conspiracy theorists get a hard time But actually the more I've done this as a job the more I go conspiracy theorists are Right more than I expect to see and that's an important point. I I hate conspiracy theories that run amok but you know the the the A former CIA director is the one who came up with the term conspiracy theory And it was it was a way for the CIA to discredit people By making them sound like crazy people when in fact there was such a thing called mk ultra There was such a thing called you know operation Grasshopper or or mk chick wit or you know the CIA did crazy crazy stuff From roughly 1952 to 1975 For example, they um experimented with a virus that they That they released in san francisco They waited for it an unusually foggy like heavily foggy day They released it into the atmosphere just to see if it would make people sick and 11 people went to the emergency room with this rare upper respiratory infection
And then they were like you know high fives. Yeah, it works And then they they started experimenting with LSD LSD was a big thing at the CIA in the early days We were convinced see and this this is This is where counterintelligence is important The Chinese Told us In like 1951 that the Russians were using LSD To try to engineer it to be used as a mind control drug That wasn't true that was disinformation the truth was the Russians had no LSD program the Chinese did So they tried to throw us off the off the scent by blaming the Russians We panicked and by 1952 we started this program called mk ultra which began By using LSD experimentally But the CIA did it was they they started by dosing their own employees without telling them Um several committed suicide one jumped out of a hotel window with the hope that yeah, we'll see what happens They say see how it feels You know see if we can control them see if we can plant memories that didn't actually happen And then they decided now it's not a good idea to dose our own people Let's just dose strangers out in public. So they went to San Francisco they rented a safe house and They hired prostitutes to go out on the street pick up johns Bring them back to the safe house johns johns people who hire prostitutes men who hire prostitutes
Dose the johns with LSD and just see what happens But I mean these are like serious Crimes you're committing against people just reading about it here it says under operation midnight climax Interesting name operation midnight climax right the CIA paid sex workers to learn men to save houses where agents drug to them and then watch them through one way Mirage and recorded their behavior exactly. They tried to erase their personality Nice huh The goal was often to break and rebuild the human mind In 1973 the CIA director ordered mass destruction of the MK ultra files What we know comes from accidentally surviving documents meaning this is a sanitized version That day He testified before the church committee The church committee specifically told him do not destroy any documents He went back that afternoon to the CIA and said destroy everything Why Because it it was damning they were experimenting on American citizens They were they were experimenting by spreading diseases in American cities and so He was held in contempt of congress. He was finds like 150 dollars and About 15% of the documents were overlooked and survived We'll never know exactly what happened under MK ultra As we sit here now, there's people in the streets of
Iran That are protesting the leadership there and the CIA are the CIA are often associated with Some of the coupes going back to the 1950s. Yes, and other countries toppling elected leaders to protect US interests. Yes Do you think the CIA are involved in Iran at the moment probably? I think the Israelis are heavily involved in Iran at the moment I'll tell you why for a couple of reasons more than a couple number one in the so-called 12-day war that we saw last year The Israelis were absolutely masterful In the way they went after the Iranian leadership what they did was they focused on recruiting Afghan refugees Iran was home to more than two million Afghan refugees and as Essentially illegal aliens. They could not avail themselves of medical care The welfare system. They're starving You're right. They only eat if they can beg for enough to buy food And so the Israelis went to these people very discreetly and said hey, you know, we'll give you a $200 a month If you tell us where the generals live in which apartments do the generals live where do the nuclear scientists live The Israelis killed the top 12 generals Across the entire Iranian military and killed almost every Iranian nuclear scientist
Because what they were able to do was to recruit these Afghans To not just tell them where they were living where the generals and the scientists were living But What their cell phone numbers were and so the Israelis were able To geolocate the cell phones And then that's where you fire the missile They killed all of them and then after the Iranians finally realized It's the cell phones They ordered that no senior military officials and no scientists could carry cell phones But it never dawned on them To tell the bodyguards not to carry cell phones And so the Israelis started rocketing the bodyguards and just killed everybody else Have you ever killed anybody?
No, thank god my children asked me that And I told them very proudly that I have never taken any action that resulted in the death of another human being There's one kind of half exception And I think about this all the time In 1993 I guess it was I Was sitting in the morning meeting I told you earlier that Every unit meets every day at nine o'clock and you just talk about what happened in the country that you cover Overnight Was in the morning meeting and the secretary came in and she said John General Powell is on the phone for you call him Powell I said general Powell how does he know who I am And she said I don't know but he asked for you by name My boss is like well go answer the phone So I went to my desk and I said good morning general Powell. This is John Karyaku And he says John If the Rockies were going to kill the president who would actually be in charge of that operation And I said well if you're talking about the attempt to kill President Bush George HW Bush He had been visiting Kuwait I said Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi intelligence services boss rastation But boss rastation is headed by Um Sabar Abdullah Zidori the director of the Iraqi intelligence service. He says where does he sit?
I said Baghdad where exactly in Baghdad I said if you hold on a second. I'll look up the address So I looked it up. I gave him the address. He says thank you and he hangs up the phone I go back in the meeting They were like what do you want? I said he wanted to know about Sabar Dori And the attempt to kill President Bush like okay Eight hours later we fired 47 cruise missiles into the Iraqi intelligence service headquarters But by then it was the middle of the night in Baghdad and we killed the janitor So the next day I said in my boss I killed that janitor And he said I knew you were going to say that you didn't kill the janitor You had no idea what pal was going to do with him with the information I said I know but I still feel guilty about it Other than that thank god, I never had to do it I'm not sure how I would sleep at night Do the US still assassinate people by the CIA? Absolutely yes When Barack Obama was president John Brennan In the first term was the deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism And he started something called the Tuesday morning kill list meeting So it would be Brennan it would be the national security council attorney somebody from the CIA General counsel's office and
A representative of the director of the counterterrorism center and every Tuesday morning They would meet at the White House come up with a list of people to kill that week The teams would fan out around the world Kill their targets and then go back and meet next Tuesday morning And are these world leaders or are they normal? No, these are these are ground level terrorists Okay, so it could be Someone that appears to be a normal civilian, but it's doing something that they don't like the lie is Pretty clear on this it it's supposed to be somebody who poses a clear and present danger to the United States To an American citizen or to an American installation Which can be quite a vague See that's the thing it sounds like it's clear. It's actually not at all clear and When they get back from these missions, we just have to take their word for it Which um spy force around the world. Did you think was the most Impressive oh the Israelis really yeah the Israelis have no rules They'll kill anybody What was it three years ago?
This uh This page your operation. Oh, it's so fascinating good lord. It was it was a work of genius. It is genius It is it was totally illegal Totally illegal, but it was genius the the moving parts. I believe it was real I had to like Reese. I was like there's no way that this is real. This is the stuff of movies It is for anyone that doesn't know what was the story. Oh, yeah. Okay, so The Israelis New that has blah the terrorist group has blah from Lebanon Was communicating using pages they didn't want to use cell phones because they didn't want the Israelis to intercept their phone calls And they thought oh pages those are safe So these rallies bought a company in like hungry, I think it was that made pages And they got his bala to order the pages from this company They Were able to insert explosives in the pages and the pages went to like Taiwan and from Taiwan to Thailand and then from Thailand to I forget where Syria I guess and then from Syria to Lebanon And so What the Israelis did was they were able to activate the explosives in all the pages simultaneously Killing people they killed Everybody of any import in his bala they essentially Decapitated his bala and then the ones they didn't kill in that operation
They bombed the apartment buildings where they lived see this is the thing too about the Israelis if they want to kill you they won't They won't like just do a close-in hit they'll blow up the entire city block where you live They'll kill a thousand people Just to get you and they don't care and then then then they say what are you gonna do about it? You're gonna go to the international court of justice Do they really do this? Yeah Uh-huh Did you ever interact with them? Yes, and how did you find them to be miserable My very first briefing that I ever gave as a junior analyst was to these rallies My boss said okay, he says you're gonna give your first classified liaison briefing So it's gonna be the Israelis and there are a couple things you should know I said okay He said we don't allow these rallies into the building Ever I said why not he said because they spy on us Not only do they spy on us. They would always bring gifts like oh, we brought this wonderful gift for you And there you every every time somebody tries to bring something in you have to x-ray it And it's got like listening devices and it's packed with two years worth of batteries We're like you guys you have to stop doing this
§02Transcript — part 2
Every time you come here, you try to bug our conference rooms. You got it's bad form You have to stop doing it and then like oh, okay, okay. We knew you would find it. We're just kidding Come on So we have to meet them Miles away from headquarters in a place that we rent so He said Nothing over the secret level no top secret information just up to secret. I'm like okay So I go with like a dozen analysts and because I'm the junior most analyst I've only been on the job at this point. I'm gonna say six weeks or so I went last So the first analyst says I'm the chief analyst and this is my briefing and then the next guy says I'm the political analyst I'm the econ analyst and I'm the military analyst and I'm the oil analyst and You know the tech analyst and it comes to me so I said Because I was overt at the time. I was not in a cover. I said My name is John Kuryaku and I'm going to brief you on Saddam Hussein's psychological state of mind Well, there were two Israelis there one was from Mossad and one was from Shinbet Shinbet is the FBI of Israel and Mossad is the CIA of Israel So the Shinbet guy has his glasses down like this and he goes like this. He says spell your name So I spell it K.I.R. I spell it and he goes
Jewish I said don't you dare I am not recruitable don't you dare even try it I Was furious we went out of the briefing. I was gonna explode everybody started laughing at me They're like they do that to every one of us Every one of us they try and recruit you yeah To turn against the United States. Yeah On my very first date the CIA we got a briefing from the CIA's director of security And he said That all of us have to have in the very front of our minds The concept of counterintelligence for example. He said there's a stake house right down the road on route 123 It's the nearest restaurant to the CIA. He goes don't ever eat there Why because the KGB thinks we all eat there So all the customers are KGB officers waiting for CIA people to walk in and start talking about work Don't ever eat there. I've never eaten there to this day Because they're potentially a Russian spies so he said our Israeli friends Have two officers in their embassy one from Mossad one from shinbet The FBI has identified 187 Undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spread all across the United States Mostly at defense contractors trying to steal our secrets Now we give the Israelis 95% of our defense secrets you want the f 35 done. Here's the f 35
You want this advanced missile here you go. It's on us So they steal the remaining 5% Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy? I believe very strongly. He was a spy. Yes And who do you think he was working for the Israelis? I'm confident. It was the Israelis. Why? Jeffrey Epstein Is kind of the stereotypical example that they give you in training for what's called an access agent. This is a different kind of recruit So for example if you're a foreign intelligence service and you want information like close-in information from a former president From the CEO of the biggest company in the world from a member of the British royal family You're not going to recruit these guys. You're not going to recruit Bill Clinton or Bill Gates or Prince Andrew So you do the next best thing You recruit somebody who has regular access to them and that person that you recruit is going to need to make these people feel comfortable and And so you give him plenty of money So he has this house on an island or he has the whole island and Maybe you bring in young girls you get them in compromising positions Just in case you need to use what's called compromise compromising Pictures We know we know now that Jeffrey Epstein's house on the island
Had video cameras hidden video cameras in literally every room including the bathrooms Why Why would he care what was going on unless it was to use that information against people As I said only the Israelis and the Russians use Extortion as a motivator So would they have made Jeffrey Epstein rich Yeah, in order to give him that access Yes, how could they have done that Oh, that's easy. I mean you do I mean governments are the only ones really that can money that can launder money unfettered And you can also do it through real estate through fine art and through horses Those are the three easiest ways to launder money Today Fine art real estate and resources But presumably He would have spoken out at some point now. He would have said something or no But it would explain why he got a sweetheart deal in 2006. I mean this is a guy that's been convicted of child sex crimes And he gets six months of house arrest with an ankle bracelet We have mandatory minimums in this country. That's a five-year mandatory minimum first offense He definitely had some interesting power didn't he?
and Alex Acosta Who was the prosecuting attorney at the time and then later became secretary of labor under trump trump one Alex Acosta said that He was ordered By the attorney general to give Epstein the sweetheart deal Well, who's the only person that can order the attorney general to do something? It's the president so Was it because Epstein was was working on clinton Most of the people down there were democrats. I mean what what was the reason Maybe he was working for the u.s government It's possible that he could have been doubled against the Israelis or others sure Sure, that's possible if you had to bet What would you say if you had to bet everything you have On either him being a spy or not a spy Yeah, what would you bet on he was a spy? I feel very confident in that assessment I debated Alan Dershowitz about this on the Pierce Morgan show one time It was it was Scott Horton and me who said That he was in israeli spy and it was Alan Dershowitz And general Danny Ayallon the former head of Mossad Ayallon was kind of Into it in terms of having a fun time. He was just having a fun time with the conversation He wasn't gonna admit to anything Dershowitz was Epstein's attorney So I said that that I believed Epstein was in israeli spy and Dershowitz interrupts me like attorney
And he says that is outrageous if he had been a spy He would have told me because I was his attorney and I could have gone to the White House And I could have gotten him a better sentence and I said wait a minute You could have gone to the White House to say go easy on Jeffrey Epstein because he's in israeli spy collecting information from American politicians if I were the president I would have hung him from a tree And then Pierce Morgan said general Ayallon was he a spy and he goes Oh Who knows It's a come on man. Who do you think is the real adversary of the west because we often talk about it being russian iro i think it's china why What is it that we don't realize about china in their agenda? Oh wow so much the Chinese are so Good at what they do and the chinese are so patient you know in the united states We we don't have long-term timelines for for anything when we want something we want it now Is that in part because we have this four-year elections? Yes, I believe that it is the Chinese will plan for something 25 years down the road because they'll still be in power then Yeah, and so You know they're really good at stealing technology There are more Chinese PhD students in the hard hard sciences here in the united states
Then you can shake a stick at they're everywhere they're at every major university and they're really really smart And then oftentimes they'll say oh you know i've had such a great experience here I'd like to stay in the united states. Yeah, I bet you would I bet you would So you can spy for china. Do you think that's happening? Every single day you think that Chinese students are in america spying on behalf of china. Yes Yes, how could you be so sure? I'm 1000% sure how could you be so sure because we frequently arrest them and then trade them for americans who are in chinese prisons Hmm yeah, and that masquerading is students Mm-hmm PhD candidates always in the hard sciences always So china of the long-term adversary and what is it china china want what is it they're doing And what is the outcome i think they want a couple of things i think that On a more immediate basis they want reunification with tywan it's gonna happen someday even the tywanese will tell you Yes, we're a part of china, but we're kind of not a part of china. We're not really independent, but we are kind of independent Even american policy is that tywan is a part of china and eventually someday they'll be reunited
Do you think with Everything that's going on at the moment with trump and venezuela in greenland. This is gonna create cover for oh I was hoping you would ask me a question like that I think that's very that's a very important issue that That the media really aren't talking about so Let's put it in the context of what happened last week in venezuela because They're all moving parts of the same of the same policy so We we sent a delta force squad in to venezuela a week ago and we snatched president maduro and he faces International narcotics trafficking charges in new york. Okay, some people are for that some people are against it Whether you're for it or against it. It's happened. There's nothing we can do about it now but That operation may have inadvertently Given the green light to something that both the russians and the chinese have long sought the united states really is the only True superpower in the world here the chinese have a lot more people they have lots of nuclear missiles But they have one aircraft carrier. We have 12 soon to be 14 We have way more long-distance bombers. We have way more fighters The russians are bogged down in a war and in Ukraine. They're winning the war, but they're bogged down nonetheless. So
Did this did this re-institution of the Monroe doctrine saying that you know from 1814 that That the western hemisphere is the is the Territory of the united states. It's up to us to protect it from Foreign powers. Well in 1814 that meant the british navy We don't really need to Monroe doctrine and it's not up to us Whether the argentines want to have good relations with china for example We invoked the Monroe doctrine in this operation to snatch Maduro So does that mean then that if we have a sphere of influence that is the western hemisphere that the chinese have a sphere of influence That includes Taiwan that the russians have a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine Because that's kind of what it seems It looks like we've given the green light to both of those countries and that we're conceding the fact that it's a unipolar world right now In favor of a multi-polar world now personally, I think a multi-polar world is safer Multi-polar world is where there's not just one superpower. There are three or more So In terms of policy This simple act of just sending a team in to grab Maduro has turned international diplomacy on its head What do we do if the chinese invade Taiwan? Do we really want to send American soldiers to you know to fight and die for Taiwan?
What do you think would happen if China tomorrow said you know what we're going to take Taiwan? You know what honest to god. I think nothing would happen I Think we would rush to protect Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand. We'd rush to protect them Why because they're they're major non-NATO allies. They're good friends close friends But in terms of going to Taiwan to fight Chinese soldiers I can't imagine it Trump told the New York Times that whether China moves on Taiwan is ultimately up to Chinese president Not the USA adding that he's told G he would be very unhappy If China changed the status quo He claimed he doesn't think G will act while he's president See and that is actually what the long-term policy is the long-term policy is sure someday To be determined later you guys can unify just don't do it while I'm here. Yeah, don't do it today Maybe when Trump goes God forbid So going back to this point you said they want Taiwan. What else do you think China want well Did they want to see the US for yes?
Sure and are they actively doing things to encourage that yes, but not the things that That you would expect Instead of running around the world you know overthrowing governments invading countries which is what we do They go to countries and say hey, you need a new highway system. We'll pay for it You need a new airport. No problem You need a new hospital electrical grid. We have plenty of money from our gigantic trades surplus. We'll pay for it We just want to have really good friendly relations with you And that's what they do the Chinese essentially own Africa right now What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? What what does actually keep you up at night? What Frightens me the most is that the US government over the last Well really over the last 50 years or 55 years Has so inflated its military budget That What we spend on the Pentagon is now more than the next eight largest countries combined Right Donald Trump right now spends a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon budget He's asking for next year to be a trillion and a half We can't afford it Our interest on the national debt is now the third largest expenditure in government between the Pentagon and Social Security and then the net the interest on the debt and why does this bother you because we're going bankrupt
And all the while the China's the Chinese are letting us spend ourselves into oblivion the Chinese don't spend that kind of money How come I can't have a bullet train that goes 400 miles an hour how come I can't get to Chicago in three hours by train You know how come the airports in my country look like shit and you go to the Chinese airports and they're pristine with like the most amazing services and the best restaurants How come Chinese roads don't have potholes and in my town. It's like driving across Bosnia It's because they decided not to spend their money on weapons They spend it on infrastructure Do you think that's likely that the US could go bankrupt effectively? I do Yeah, I do we can't keep up this pace. It's not possible We're going to have to we're going to have to raise taxes and cut the budget What's the most important thing that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about John Oh, that's a good question One of the most important things in my life to tell you the truth is the issue of ethics I love this country more than anything else in the world And I want it to do the right thing We're a country of laws and we have to obey our laws which is why I blew the whistle on the torture program
He's not obeying the laws our government in what way We've gotten to the point and it started around the year 2000 or 2001 we got to the point where If we want to do something we just do it like what In 1946 we passed something called the federal torture act which banned torture Okay, also in 1946 we executed Japanese soldiers who water-borted American prisoners of war that was a death penalty offense to water board someone All right In 1968 on January the 11th 1968 the Washington Post ran a front page Photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner when the when the picture ran The Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an immediate investigation that soldier was arrested He was charged with torture and he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor at Levin worth And then in 2002 Oh, it's legal we can do it we can do it because we're the good guys The law never changed We changed and my point was always Either we're going to be the good guys or we're not either we're going to be what Ronald Reagan called a shining city on a hill Or we're not When I was when I was stationed in Bahrain I was the human rights officer So I had to write the human rights report every year that we sent to Congress
well imagine if John goes in To see the minister of interior and I say Your highness You cannot pick up a 15-year-old kid For marching in a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration and then murder him Beat him to death in the in the flee station and call his parents to come and pick up the body You can't do that. I have to report that to Congress and you're going to lose your your rights to buy American military hardware But then the CIA station chief goes in and hour later and says Don't pay any attention to the human rights guy I'll give you $10 million if you set up a secret prison here We're going to send you some prisoners you torture them and then you give us a write-up Of everything they say during torture. Who's he going to listen to? So you're going to listen to me? Did that happen? Yes He's not gonna listen to me If all of a sudden tortures legal just because we say it is And then Congress is like oh, we don't know anything because it's a secret program. So we can't talk about it Do we still torture people? No I am very proud to say that When the McCain finestein anti-torture amendment was passed into law In December of 2014 John McCain got up in the floor of the Senate and said it was because of me
Because of my revelations. He said if I had not told the American people That the CIA was torturing prisoners in their name We would never have known That's why I say it was worth it Do you think you should be pardoned by President Trump? I do Have you written him? I Have to be careful with my language here I Applied my name is in the system. I have very Very very high level supporters who have approached him personally And I'm hopeful that it happens John we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for And the question left for you is what's something you stopped doing that improved your life more than anything you started Feeling sorry for myself I'll be honest with you. I have struggled with depression my entire life And after my second divorce I went through this period where I was just I couldn't pull myself out of bed in the morning Because I felt so sorry for myself Because of the divorce or because of your life or because the whole thing I Believed I was just a loser. I was in my fifties Unemployable convicted felon Barely able to make ends meet worried about where my rent was coming from one month to the next
And then I thought Fuck you. What's wrong with you You don't have to answer to anybody And I I told myself no more feeling sorry for myself I was going to go make a career on my own And so I knew I would never work for government again I knew I would never work in corporate America again after I left the CIA I was the head of the competitive intelligence practice at Deloitte and Tush spying on Ernst & Young in PWC and IBM and it was great fun I'll never work in in the corporate world again. So I decided I'm going to do what I'm good at And I'm a terrific writer And I'm told that I'm a gifted storyteller So I'm going to write books. I have two syndicated newspaper columns that run in 212 small town papers around the country. I'm on TV all the time. I have three podcasts Deep program every day on on both YouTube and rumble Thanks for letting me plug them by the way Deep focus on YouTube and on Apple podcast John Karyaku's Dead Drop Which is just story after story after story And now I make a perfectly great living. I'm in a long-term relationship with the woman. I'm crazy about And life is good And it all started with that decision to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Yes If people around me keep saying
You've done nothing wrong. You're a hero for what you did And deep down I would do it again Then why am I feeling sorry for myself? I'm right They're wrong. They're criminals So I'm just going to go on with my life and that snapped me out of it So don't feel sorry for yourself Do something about it Act John you are someone that is very good at storytelling You are you read many books. I'm going to link all the books below. Oh, thank you. So many incredible books What's some of them here with me on the floor?
I could go through all of them but we've had another couple of days John, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your incredible storytelling You're wisdom but also just giving us a window into a world that most of us know nothing about Because there's so many lessons that I think pertains to all of our lives riddled amongst there and I think you know I hope you do get pardoned. Thank you. I hope so. I've got my fingers crossed And when you do hopefully we can come back again and have another conversation. I look forward to that It's been such a pleasure. Pleasure is mine. Thanks for the invitation This is something that I've made for you I realized that the diaries here audience are strivers whether it's in business or health We all have big goals that we want to accomplish and one of the things I've learned is that when you aim the big big big goal It can feel incredibly Psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps And we call this an R team the 1% and actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here
So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we've released these last year and they all sold out So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back But also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diaries So now we have a better range for you So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation Then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again And you can get yours now at the diary.com where you can get 20% off our black Friday bundle And if you want the link the link is in the description below You