The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - The Anchormen Show EP 105 - Spy Games w： Pearson Sharp & John Kiriakou

00:00:00.000 now it's time for the anchorman podcast with matt gates and pearson sharp

00:00:11.200 welcome back to another episode of anchorman we are so excited uh that we are going to be able

00:00:18.060 to bring you such a level of expertise and insight in this program i'm joined as always

00:00:22.960 by my co-host at pearson sharp host of the sharp report here on our network and the building is a

00:00:28.340 buzz because we've got john kiriaku with us for uh an hour and we so many of our producers whenever

00:00:35.400 we book john on the matt gates show uh everyone's excited everybody wants to contribute to the

00:00:40.180 discussion because we always learn a great deal john kiriaku was a cia officer in the lead up to

00:00:48.780 9-11 then takes major roles within the cia counterintelligence in 2007 famously becomes part

00:00:56.520 of this major disclosure that torture is being uh administered by the united states government

00:01:02.280 john later pled guilty to a crime revolve involving a disclosure of information uh he uh was sentenced

00:01:11.020 to 30 months he got out after two years and really has been heralded by many as a whistleblower as

00:01:18.140 someone who saw things going on in the government that uh the the country wasn't aware of people

00:01:23.540 weren't aware of and uh you know has been really out there john thanks so much for joining us uh

00:01:28.920 i've had i've really enjoyed having you on the matt gates show uh talking about my pleasure lots of

00:01:34.700 fun well you're a really smart guy you've lived an incredible life uh my co-host and buddy here

00:01:40.460 pearson sharp has been all over some of these things we've seen in the headlines and wants to ask

00:01:45.240 you about them so go right ahead pearson hey john how you doing good to see you good

00:01:48.980 so did you see the news that came out about uh the vaccines and the cia operations recently

00:01:55.960 yeah um so apparently it was called project artichoke and for anyone who's not familiar

00:02:02.000 apparently it ran from 1951 to 1956 and it focused on uh behavior control interrogation techniques

00:02:08.980 uh psychological manipulation but the interesting part that got everybody paying attention was the fact

00:02:14.280 that it was being administered through injections and vaccines that was the big one and um i want to

00:02:21.900 know what your take on that was would do you know anything about it what's your thoughts oh yeah

00:02:26.120 project artichoke was a sub operation of mk ultra which by now most americans know that mk ultra was

00:02:34.800 experimentation essentially on american citizens mostly using lsd there were a bunch of sub operations here

00:02:42.340 project artichoke being one where the cia began by experimenting on its own employees and after that

00:02:50.640 didn't go well they began experimenting on just innocent residents of san francisco what they did as part of

00:02:58.700 project artichoke was to break into um a uh a vaccine developer in switzerland steal the formula for

00:03:11.460 some of the vaccines and then try to manipulate the formula so that they could give somebody a vaccine

00:03:18.980 have it act like a truth serum and then get these people to involuntarily tell the truth with the idea

00:03:26.320 being that you would use it on russians and chinese the way this all got started in the very early 1950s

00:03:32.700 is there was the cia recruited a soviet uh intelligence officer kb a kgb officer who told him

00:03:42.140 that who told the agency rather that the russians were developing this kind of technology that was not

00:03:49.620 true the russians were not developing that technology the chinese were but we didn't know that the chinese

00:03:57.280 were and so the cia panicked and said well we've got to beat the russians to this uh to this technology

00:04:03.720 this science and so they started this experimentation as i said first on their own employees and then on

00:04:09.940 just innocent americans as part of of uh operation artichoke one of the things they did was they

00:04:15.600 recruited a bunch of prostitutes in uh san francisco they rented a safe house where the prostitutes would 1.00

00:04:23.400 bring the johns back they would dose the johns with lsd and then try to get them to reveal their 0.85

00:04:30.520 innermost secrets under the the influence of the lsd i don't mean to smile by the way right by the way

00:04:36.300 there's plenty of people that you wouldn't even have had to trick to right yeah they sign up for that

00:04:40.400 right it's like uh you know prostitutes and lsd there'd be there's some places in san francisco

00:04:45.620 there'd be a long line of volunteers isn't that the truth i'm so excited when we get our

00:04:53.140 meriwether farm shipments in you get a beautiful piece of ribeye look at that marbling now i take

00:04:58.660 it out of the package let it get down to room temperature all i've got on here is a little

00:05:02.760 salt a little pepper and then a little avocado oil and then i've had my pan preheating with a little oil

00:05:08.620 head to meriwetherfarms.com and enter promo code matt g for 15 off your first order

00:05:21.000 so this thing went on for years for years and then when it was finally revealed in the church

00:05:26.900 committee hearings in 1975 um the cia director was ordered not to destroy the documents and he went

00:05:35.140 back from capitol hill and ordered the destruction of all the documents right and so what we what we

00:05:40.440 know now is is from the 15 percent of documents that survived yeah um one of the things that was

00:05:48.280 they said was also the goal was to coerce people into committing criminal acts against their will

00:05:54.880 potentially including assassinations and unrelated to this i just came across an article recently about

00:06:02.440 uh charles whitman are you familiar with him i don't know that name so in uh 1966 charles whitman who

00:06:10.340 was just the most upstanding patriotic guy you could possibly imagine had an iq of 138

00:06:16.140 former marine uh married had a family suddenly decided that he was going to kill his wife in the

00:06:23.920 middle of the night kill his mother as well and then climb the tower at university of texas in austin

00:06:31.400 and with a sniper rifle kill 13 people including pregnant women and a bunch of others and he left

00:06:38.500 a suicide note behind that said i have no idea why i'm doing this i don't want to do it it doesn't feel 0.98

00:06:44.060 like me i can't stop myself i i hope that when i do it and i die that someone will cut open my brain 0.71

00:06:50.620 and you know see what happens like is there something wrong with me because i can't stop 0.72

00:06:54.660 myself from doing this um apparently there was like a tumor or something that had grown and was

00:06:59.540 pushing on his amygdala but this guy seems like the exact kind of case that you would see from a

00:07:05.840 project like artichoke or mk ultra i'm just curious what your thoughts were well you have to ask

00:07:11.080 yourself too you know there were references to los angeles county community college in the mk ultra

00:07:17.780 documents there was some kind of experimentation going on at the la community college and it just

00:07:23.680 so happened to be exactly the same time that sirhan sirhan was taking classes there and so there's been

00:07:29.020 speculation over the years that sirhan may have either volunteered to be a part of these um these

00:07:35.140 experiments for money or was you know tricked or somehow duped into taking part of the experiments

00:07:40.900 because he too later said and he's been relatively consistent about this that he doesn't know why he

00:07:47.300 killed bobby kennedy he doesn't have any memory of killing bobby kennedy and that was one of the goals

00:07:53.280 was they'd have no memory of doing any things exactly and you know that gave rise to the whole

00:07:57.640 manchurian candidate uh fear in the 1950s if this technology was being developed um what was its

00:08:05.380 end point and yeah is it is it is it a working assumption that these types of programs and

00:08:10.140 activities are ongoing today or or did we reach some reckoning we'll see on on these tactics that's

00:08:15.760 what i want to know because well that's why i asked john that's that's our fear is that we've seen

00:08:20.160 them using vaccines for this project artichoke and after 2020 i think a lot of us were concerned what's

00:08:26.740 going in these vaccines why are why is everybody demanding that we take these vaccines what is

00:08:31.640 going on here and so yeah with mk ultra and this we know the government does this we know they lie to

00:08:36.740 us that we know they inject us with things that we don't willingly consent to so what are your thoughts

00:08:41.600 on that yeah and isn't it ironic that the government just tells us take our word for it right we're the

00:08:47.980 yeah of course yeah we're the experts well you know i don't mean to sound cynical but i i almost can't

00:08:54.020 help myself after the odyssey that my life has been over the last 25 years but um you know we've

00:09:00.940 got the house permanent select committee on intelligence and the senate select committee

00:09:05.100 on intelligence these are supposed to be the the two oversight committees and they're really not

00:09:10.060 oversight committees so much as they are cheerleaders for the cia so we've been told that mk ultra and all

00:09:16.720 of its associated sub operations ended by 1975 how do we know that we don't know it we're just supposed

00:09:24.880 to take their word for it and trust these cheerleaders senators and congressmen uh with for with telling 0.99

00:09:33.560 the truth that these programs don't exist any any longer but you know what though even if they do exist

00:09:39.760 they would be so tightly controlled so compartmentalized that only the gang of four the gang of eight would

00:09:46.780 uh would have access to the information anyway and it would be so highly classified that they wouldn't

00:09:50.880 be able to say anything do you think so do you think i don't know trump knows no i don't so uh i can

00:09:58.480 confirm your concerns about how people get on those committees uh the the uh usual way a committee is

00:10:07.240 populated is by a steering committee we have of course in congress we have a committee on committees

00:10:12.800 uh and it democratizes power it dilutes power so you know ostensibly if you talk to a lot of members

00:10:20.140 you could get on the armed services committee you could get on the agriculture committee but the

00:10:24.440 intelligence committee is unique it is direct appointment by the speaker of the house the speaker

00:10:30.940 of the house hires and fires every member of the intelligence committee and what that turns into

00:10:37.780 is the intelligence community selecting their own overseers i remember what a what a coup it was to get

00:10:48.520 congressman scott perry on the intelligence committee and we kind of had to leverage speaker

00:10:53.480 johnson on that one a little bit we had to tell speaker johnson that if he wanted an outcome a certain

00:10:58.000 way on the floor with the votes we needed to see scott perry on uh on the intelligence committee that

00:11:03.180 would give us confidence and when we did because he wasn't he was picked by us not by the ic the attacks

00:11:11.640 on him the op-eds written about this guy who's a general and and and they couldn't they couldn't

00:11:18.340 take it because he wasn't part of the club they want to know i frankly think they want to know they

00:11:23.440 want to hold compromising information over the people that are on those committees but they

00:11:27.240 certainly want to know that they're on the team and are not going to ask ask too many questions

00:11:31.960 and john you know did you have other questions about artichoke uh no go ahead yeah so i before before

00:11:38.000 before congressman before you ask your question may i add one little thing just to sort of prove

00:11:42.900 to prove your point a couple of weeks after i got out of prison i was invited to dinner at the

00:11:48.560 at the greek ambassadors residence so i went and there was a democratic senator there from the senate

00:11:56.260 intelligence committee and he walked up to me and he said hey welcome home we were so worried about

00:12:00.800 you i said thanks senator but i gotta tell you i was disappointed i thought i thought you would stand

00:12:07.200 up for me and he got angry and he said look it took everything i had just to not lose my security

00:12:14.120 clearance and i said oh you're afraid of them and then he just walked away from me

00:12:20.980 so what you're saying is exactly true yeah it's i i saw it and it the the unique opportunity though is

00:12:30.340 one person can put people on and take people off and so if you if you play the game right and utilize

00:12:37.060 leverage right there are opportunities to get eyes on some of this i mean john that you said he was

00:12:43.060 afraid the people in power the highest people in power are afraid of these people yes how should the

00:12:47.900 rest of us feel i know right right some system we've given ourselves and and we all thought that

00:12:55.160 was going to change in 1975 and it changed for a minute and then by 1982 you know the cia was the old

00:13:02.700 cia again doing the same cia things it was doing in the 50s but but it it does suffer from some of the

00:13:09.060 like normal bureaucracy stuff that is common to all of the agencies in washington i had a cia uh person

00:13:16.200 still still still with the agency who said matt everybody thinks it's all jack bauer but it's way

00:13:21.500 more the office uh comments to like comments to that john i mean how this it's this mystical force

00:13:30.160 that people um you know opine about but but you were inside the belly of the beast is it is it more

00:13:36.100 jack bauer or more the office oh it's decidedly more the office we used to have this ongoing joke 0.93

00:13:42.320 that when you went into a meeting don't touch the table because you don't know who was having sex on

00:13:47.460 it last night i thought that was going to be a fingerprints reference that's true in congress

00:13:53.100 now too well yeah in the committee hearing rooms yeah exactly yikes man no total lack of creativity

00:14:00.060 john john f kennedy once called the cia the best and the brightest and oh how i wish that were true

00:14:07.040 um yes there are some really brilliant people in there and for the most part these are these are

00:14:13.220 whatever it is now 30 40 000 people who who want nothing more than to serve the american people but

00:14:19.720 without appropriate oversight you know it's human nature just to push and push and push the envelope

00:14:26.320 until somebody or something pushes back and as a result you have a cia that you know in a cycle

00:14:34.860 of every 20 or 30 years it goes out of control you've heard me talk about all family pharmacy

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00:15:29.460 next door there was a there was a great comic and maybe we can find it um i saw of when the cia was

00:15:35.400 created it showed the president holding a little puppy on a leash and it said like 10 years later

00:15:39.720 flash forward and it was this like giant pit bull that was attacking the president and like if you

00:15:45.880 know history i was thinking back to rome when the praetorian guard basically took over rome and they

00:15:50.640 were picking and choosing the emperors and running things behind the show and i'm wondering is that

00:15:54.540 what's happening now is the cia and and these secret organizations actually in charge of everything

00:15:59.320 you know i hate to say yes but but my answer has got to be yes and i'll give you one one example too

00:16:06.100 um i i was stationed overseas and i had to do a very sensitive counterterrorism approach it was to a

00:16:13.520 woman and she was a known bomber shooter this was a bad bad woman well she had been approached once 1.00

00:16:23.220 before 20 years earlier by a guy who later went on to be a senior station chief you know senior

00:16:31.060 intelligence service so he was a friend of mine and i sent him a cable and i said listen i'm going to do

00:16:36.420 this high threat approach but you've spoken to her once before she'll remember you can you fly out here

00:16:42.240 and do the approach with me so she doesn't feel threatened so he flew out and we were doing a foot

00:16:48.480 surveillance detection route it was a very heavily populated city so we're doing our surveillance

00:16:52.940 detection route by by foot and his cell phone rings and it was the president of the country

00:17:00.120 that he was serving in as the station chief and i heard him say yes madam president yes madam president

00:17:06.320 and this is going on for a minute or two and he says well my choice is and then he names a name

00:17:12.740 and uh i could hear madam president say thank you so much for taking care of this and she hung up

00:17:19.500 and i said what was all that about and he said that was the president of you know the country i said

00:17:24.920 what'd she want he said uh she wanted me to choose the next intelligence service director so i chose my

00:17:30.500 guy and i said we do that oh yeah we do we definitely still do that yeah i mean oh as a congressman i

00:17:38.880 weighed in on on who i thought should be in intelligence services in foreign government we

00:17:43.340 want him to be on team america we want him to be frank we had we had victoria newland picking the

00:17:47.540 next prime minister in ukraine i mean exactly right yes this is this is how this is how politics works in

00:17:54.220 a globalized age don't don't hand ring about that but john you moved up in this system you went from

00:18:00.760 a cia officer to someone who had major responsibilities you know i i think people know know you as a

00:18:08.500 whistleblower but before that moment you really did play the game right and accumulate power and so

00:18:14.960 talk to us about uh maybe an experience or or an anecdote that showcases how within that system

00:18:21.660 you thrived oh i did i'll tell you the truth i was a true believer for many many years

00:18:28.020 and uh i was smart i was good briefer i was willing to take the worst assignments i was willing to go to

00:18:34.600 the worst countries i've been to 72 countries over the years and i was very happy to do it um yeah i'll

00:18:40.880 give you an example uh i um i got a call once from a friend who was a cia station chief in the middle east

00:18:46.980 and he said that uh that one of his officers had had recruited a double agent and this was a double

00:18:53.280 agent for a major enemy of the united states it not not hard to guess who and so uh the guy insisted

00:19:02.040 on meeting with the station chief he said could you come out here and uh and pretend to be me

00:19:07.620 and handle this double agent i said of course so i started flying out to the middle east every couple

00:19:13.180 of weeks meeting with this guy giving him assignments and then all the while as soon as

00:19:18.320 we leave the meeting he's on the phone with his other handlers reporting uh what uh what they

00:19:24.380 wanted him to report it got to the point where i was i was home at headquarters and i got a call from

00:19:30.980 a sister agency on the other side of the of the city and um they said are you handling this double

00:19:38.460 agent in the middle east and i said yeah and the woman said you should know that they just ordered

00:19:43.480 him to kill you in the next meeting i said oh please this guy's afraid of his shadow he's not going to 0.80

00:19:48.220 kill me my boss comes running out of his office you got to abort the operation he's going to kill you 0.99

00:19:53.000 i said please hear me out at least to make a long story short i flew back out i was able to tackle him 0.99

00:20:00.520 as he entered the the hotel room our liaison partners burst in from the from the next door room

00:20:07.420 all while this guy is shouting allahu akbar allahu akbar and i'm i'm disarming him and i'm sitting on 0.97

00:20:15.020 his chest and i said to him did you really think i was so stupid that i didn't know that you were a 0.89

00:20:20.900 double agent all this time did you really think i was such an amateur that i didn't know that you 0.99

00:20:26.680 came here to kill me today i said i'm offended well that was 24 years 25 years ago he's still in prison

00:20:34.860 and uh we dismantled dismantled a terrorist group in that country because of that arrest

00:20:43.180 incredible but i i was perfectly happy to volunteer and go anywhere in the world to do operations like

00:20:50.200 that and so i moved up quickly to the point where i became the the uh executive assistant

00:20:55.280 to the cia's deputy director for operations it was in that position that i finally had access to

00:21:01.500 literally everything that the cia was doing around the world and some of it was just wrong wrong wrong

00:21:08.180 well i understand and i know there's only so much you can you can sort of talk about that stuff

00:21:13.420 but let's cat let's talk about the category of wrong you know right yeah right because because

00:21:18.500 some people would say oh yeah maybe wrong is you know uh deceiving someone lying to someone to get

00:21:24.760 them to do what you want them to do maybe wrong is threatening someone um threatening their family um you

00:21:30.700 know maybe wrong is like the stuff we've seen uh in the epstein files where where real people are

00:21:37.560 enduring incredible harm and the people who are administering that harm believe it is in service

00:21:43.880 of some broader virtuous goal like hell put put the harm in buckets for us yes i was unwilling to break

00:21:51.860 u.s law listen when you're a cia officer your job is to break the law it's to break the laws of other

00:21:58.620 countries i was thrilled to get on a plane go overseas and commit espionage that's what i was paid to do and

00:22:05.660 it was fun and it was rewarding but i drew the line where it came to breaking u.s law and i said to my

00:22:12.720 my superiors at the time in in the middle of 2002 we have something called the federal torture act of

00:22:19.780 1946 which specifically prohibits us from doing exactly the things that you're telling me we're going

00:22:26.840 to start doing plus not only were we signatories to the united nations convention against torture we wrote

00:22:33.780 the united nations convention against torture and it was uh uh clear that was a law for everybody else

00:22:41.240 yeah right and but torture at the time was romanticized in enhanced interrogation yeah oh

00:22:50.000 no but it was uh you 24 was the aforementioned 24 was one of these iconic television shows and you

00:22:56.960 always rooted for uh jack bauer to to to administer pain on the bad guy until they gave the critical

00:23:04.620 information and in in hollywood torture worked in hollywood it worked in hollywood is that was was

00:23:12.060 that not your experience in the cia that was a big problem for us actually through through the

00:23:18.340 aughts uh because torture had been romanticized americans did come to believe that torture worked you

00:23:25.880 know i'll tell you a little side story after i led after i left the cia i uh i was uh made an adjunct

00:23:33.120 professor of intelligence studies at the helm school of government at liberty university and so

00:23:38.800 i worked i worked alongside a senior professor had been there 30 years but who had also been a cia

00:23:45.840 officer early in his career he showed me the final exam that he gave his students one day and it was

00:23:51.680 such a powerful exam it has stuck in my mind all these years it was just a handful of questions

00:23:58.120 so he the first question he put on the board um you have captured a bona fide terrorist you know

00:24:07.480 that a bomb is going to go off in a major american city you have two hours to get the information and

00:24:14.980 defuse the bomb do you torture this man yes no explain yourself that was 15 minutes 15 minutes

00:24:23.600 later the guy is a true believer he didn't give you anything but you have his wife in custody do you

00:24:30.660 beat his wife in front of him just to get him to give you the the information remember american lives

00:24:35.940 are on the line yes no explain yourself the third question is the wife's a true believer too but you

00:24:42.580 have their children in custody do you beat the children or threaten to beat the children yes no

00:24:48.380 explain yourself where do you draw the fourth question yeah the fourth question was you've died and

00:24:55.760 you're at the gates of heaven and peter uh refers you to god himself and he says now you explain

00:25:04.880 yourself what do you tell him do we do that stuff do we beat people's children in front of them

00:25:12.460 we we've certainly threatened to do worse than just beat the children yes we yeah we i was unaware of

00:25:20.860 any children being beaten but yes it was common to threaten to beat the children and the children are

00:25:25.480 always separated from the parents so the parents don't know if the kids are being beaten or not

00:25:29.140 but yeah we would make that threat quite frequently

00:25:32.260 there's a big gulf between threatening and doing though yeah yeah um uh when you say uh u.s laws

00:25:41.660 you know that was your that was your north star um so are do you believe today the cia is breaking

00:25:48.880 u.s laws uh abroad and what what are the laws that you're most worried about being violated today

00:25:56.620 in all honesty the the u.s laws that i'm the most worried about are are laws surrounding uh the

00:26:03.400 weaponization of intelligence i really truly believe that the cia was weaponized uh during the

00:26:10.300 obama administration especially to go after the uh the cia's enemies or the dnc's enemies listen it

00:26:18.660 it it wasn't i i blew the whistle on the on the george w bush torture program and the bush justice

00:26:25.220 department investigated me for a year from december of 07 to december of 08 and decided in the end that

00:26:31.940 i had not committed a crime and they dropped the case it was the obama administration specifically

00:26:37.880 john brennan who personally asked eric holder to reopen the case against me secretly it was the

00:26:45.040 obama administration that prosecuted me and not just me eight national security whistleblowers which

00:26:51.400 is almost three times the number of all previous presidents combined so you know while the cia's 0.76

00:26:59.200 mandate is to break laws overseas i think that they're breaking laws in the united states yeah one

00:27:06.100 of the concerns i always had was when we developed these exquisite tools of deception mind control uh

00:27:13.840 sigint gathering and processing when we develop them abroad it's human beings who'd have those skills 1.00

00:27:20.220 and those human beings end up coming and living back in the united states and a whole lot of them

00:27:24.800 end up working for contractors where those tools that were intended to be used against america's enemies

00:27:29.540 abroad are visited in these internal struggles we have we have here uh what is the scale of that do you

00:27:37.140 think john i think the scale is huge the scale is huge because look at the the scandals that have

00:27:43.360 already come to light in places like greece or the united arab emirates where where israeli uh software

00:27:51.400 a pegasus software specifically has been used first through a an american contractor and then through

00:27:59.720 the israelis directly uh where it's being used against americans there was a scandal what two years ago

00:28:05.340 where it was like the american soccer team or something was being intercepted in greece it it literally

00:28:12.220 brought down the greek government so yeah we need to be and so people understand pegasus because i got

00:28:18.580 i got pretty concerned about this on the judiciary committee it is a tool that that will give uh the

00:28:25.700 holder of the pegasus technology full access to your phone and you don't have to take any action so you

00:28:31.920 don't have to click a link you don't have to mash a button that they can use your phone and they can

00:28:37.900 exploit all the information on it they can exploit the camera the microphone at any time they want

00:28:42.620 and so so uh this was technology that was developed in israel the major commercial user is the cartels

00:28:50.620 the uh they are the major commercial commercial user okay that's not like government and then we found

00:28:57.860 that the fbi had paid five million dollars for this to to pegasus and so we we bring christopher

00:29:05.040 ray in and and some of these guys and say why why is the fbi doing this and their answer was we paid

00:29:10.320 five million dollars just to test what its capabilities were um in the event that we had

00:29:16.800 to defend against it in the event that we had to defend against it which i thought was totally bogus

00:29:20.920 but we won't use it at the time um do you think that this is going to be pegasus do you think pegasus

00:29:26.060 will be used to topple other governments and do you think that there's a there's a political node to it

00:29:32.160 or is it just like a mercenary eyes to technology i think it's i think it's more sophisticated and more

00:29:40.400 broadly spread uh than than what we know right now and one of the one of the terrible things

00:29:48.220 is that first of all it's so good and like you said congressman you're exactly right you don't have

00:29:54.480 to take any action to activate it on your phone you don't have to click a link you don't have to

00:29:58.540 respond to a text message or anything like that it just works just like that and you have no idea

00:30:04.720 we wouldn't have known that similar uh similar software programs were being used by nsa against

00:30:12.260 american citizens it's illegal for nsa to spy on americans it's a part of nsa's charter it's founding

00:30:18.960 charter that it can't spy on americans and thanks to ed snowden we know that you know easily 50 of what

00:30:25.540 nsa does is to spy on americans well now when pegasus or systems akin to pegasus are available

00:30:33.300 commercially i mean how how do you protect yourself somebody asked me the other day if there were any

00:30:40.380 um chat apps that were truly secure and i i i wanted to give a an intelligent answer so i called

00:30:48.100 my friend tom drake the nsa whistleblower and i asked him and he said no the easy answer is no

00:30:54.200 nothing secure even signal even if it's not true that the u.s intelligence community has a backdoor

00:31:01.160 into signal signal is only encrypted when you hit the send button that's when it encrypts they can

00:31:08.440 intercept your message as you're typing it before you hit send right and so it doesn't matter if they

00:31:15.700 can't break the encryption so that i kind of speaking of pegasus and what you just said about

00:31:20.200 signal um because i use signal and i picked it up after i did a documentary in 2018 about the nsa and

00:31:26.300 obama's spying and surveillance and stuff and that terrified me so i got signal because edward snowden

00:31:30.820 recommended it but is there any such thing as privacy anymore is there any private communications

00:31:37.420 or any privacy in your life that you would reasonably expect president trump signed the order to end the

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00:32:46.740 sure to check them out today okay that answers that yeah sorry i i hate to say it but there's no such

00:32:55.440 thing no i i'm i'm just not i'll tell you i'll tell you what wiki leaks an offshoot of wiki leaks was

00:33:01.720 working 10 years ago on on a new chat app that was not just encrypted but where the where the chat would

00:33:11.860 disappear like after i think it was 30 seconds of of disuse right so you finish your chat you've

00:33:19.640 exchanged your messages and then poof 30 seconds later would just disappear but they couldn't get

00:33:24.220 past this notion that it can be intercepted before it's encrypted nobody can figure out how to get around

00:33:30.660 that one of the things that um what was frequently debated in in the back rooms and in congress was

00:33:37.680 this blend of investment into signals intelligence exploitation versus human intelligence exploitation

00:33:44.540 and uh you know you'd get the the the wizards of of tech to say look all this human stuff is all like

00:33:52.480 the stuff of the cold war 80s everything we're going to need we're going to be able to exploit with signals

00:33:57.480 intelligence what do you think is the right blend and is there any is there any experience you've had

00:34:02.040 that might be a cautionary tale to those who would deplete some of the human capabilities in service of

00:34:08.660 of these uh ambitions that's a great question that's a that's a not just an important question but i think

00:34:14.840 it's the most important question for any incoming new cia director uh sigint is not going to save the day

00:34:22.820 yes sigint is great you can grab every every phone call every text message every email out of the air

00:34:30.460 and put it in your giant cray computers in the utah desert and have it sit there for 500 years until

00:34:36.300 you need it that's great but sigint isn't going to be inside the room when saddam hussein makes a

00:34:43.480 decision to invade kuwait or when you know the chinese decide to go to war with india over their border

00:34:50.600 or vladimir putin makes the decision to invade ukraine you have to get that information from

00:34:56.440 a human source and every new incoming cia director says it's time to get back to basics we're going to

00:35:02.700 rely on human intelligence our job is to recruit spies to steal secrets everybody says that and then

00:35:09.600 you know they they get distracted by these you know shiny objects called signals intelligence

00:35:16.460 and uh and they walk away from human intelligence and and what do you think is the cost of that

00:35:22.460 ultimately oh ultimately we don't know that the berlin wall is coming down that israel is on the verge

00:35:31.740 of attacking uh iran and they've made the decision to do so that saddam is going to invade kuwait any of

00:35:38.920 these these momentous global events were missed by the cia for the most part i mean analytically

00:35:46.300 yeah we made the the judgment that saddam was going to invade kuwait yes we made the analytic

00:35:51.520 judgment that that putin was going to uh invade ukraine but you got to have somebody in the room

00:35:57.880 who can report back to you so you know exactly what the the thought process is and that helps the

00:36:04.120 president to create his own policy to counter whatever the decision was it's always surprised me

00:36:10.420 how how many foreign officials the cia really did control um either through i mean and sometimes

00:36:17.660 like payment sometimes um just uh foreign officials admiration for the united states and they would love

00:36:24.740 to know who the station chief was they would love to be you know having meetings with the embassy and

00:36:29.020 and talking about stuff how would you describe to our audience um the scale scope and meaning of

00:36:35.980 the united states government basically having foreign officials doing our bidding by hook or by crook

00:36:42.580 i was at a cocktail party once a diplomatic cocktail party and uh and i met a guy who i immediately

00:36:53.560 recognized as a former prime minister and i thought oh my god he's a former prime minister now he's a

00:37:01.140 member of not just a member he's a founder of a of a less populous less popular party he's probably not

00:37:08.720 going to be prime minister again but maybe he will be who knows so i rush back to the embassy i fill out a

00:37:14.940 a template for this cable and i say hey i met this i met the former prime minister give me a name trace

00:37:22.820 on him looking for any vulnerabilities i'm going to invite him to dinner i'm going to try to get him

00:37:28.140 and then they send me a cable back the next day and they said cease and desist he's been ours since

00:37:35.300 the 70s and and is that is that largely maintained through through financial distributions that like

00:37:43.540 what what what is the what is the waterfall of of uh choices that you make when you're when you're

00:37:49.960 turning someone like that blackmail let me let me address blackmail because that's important people

00:37:54.700 raise this with me literally every single day the cia doesn't blackmail um we used to but they they

00:38:00.980 haven't done that since the 70s uh because it's not effective in order to really squeeze great

00:38:07.360 information out of a source the source has to love you the source has to think that you're his best

00:38:12.900 friend that sure you know you're doing it you guys are doing this because you're paying him but

00:38:17.540 but really it's because you're in a bromance and he loves hanging out with you and he's going to give

00:38:23.400 you the plans to the the new generation russian tank just because he loves you um studies have

00:38:30.940 been done about this internally at the cia 95 of these relationships are based on cash exchanges

00:38:37.520 simple as that we have money you need the money i'm happy to give you whatever money you want so long

00:38:44.640 as you give me the information i want and we shake hands you sign this ridiculous little contract that i

00:38:49.600 made up in ms word and uh and everybody's happy the other five percent is interesting the other five

00:38:58.160 percent is ideology sometimes they just love love love the united states sometimes it's excitement

00:39:04.940 because they've seen all the james bond movies and the jack reacher movies and all these others and

00:39:09.380 they just want to experience the excitement of the clandestinity of these operations sometimes it's

00:39:17.580 revenge they got passed over for promotion they're angry at their bosses and they just want to screw 0.72

00:39:22.920 the boss and so by god they're gonna they're gonna reach out to the cia and they're gonna volunteer

00:39:27.620 but 95 of it is money it's a cash transaction and if you you know let's say you have access to the

00:39:36.920 local communist party that might be good for two three thousand dollars a month but if you're gonna give

00:39:43.800 me osama bin laden i'm gonna give you 25 million 50 million dollars and i'll give it to you in cash

00:39:50.720 in gold in diamonds in bitcoin i'll give it to you any way you want to receive it if you want it in land

00:39:57.000 i'll give it to you in land and just because i'm a nice guy and i like your face i'm willing to resettle

00:40:03.740 you in any country in the world where you would like to live how do we get access to those uh to those

00:40:10.500 different asset classes to redistribute in exchange for information yeah that's also a great question

00:40:16.280 and you know early on in my career uh the instructors told all of us that the best agents that you will

00:40:24.960 ever recruit are going to be people you had never heard of who are just going to walk into the american

00:40:31.160 embassy and say i want to speak to a cia officer like for example i can't name an iranian nuclear

00:40:39.340 scientist and i follow the issue i can't name a single one of them but if one of them walks into

00:40:44.980 the american embassy in vienna austria because he happens to be in town to attend some seminar

00:40:49.840 i'm going to grab him and that recruitment is going to make my career i'm going to send him back with

00:40:55.960 some sort of listening device that he can use to issue burst transmissions and send me classified

00:41:02.420 reports on the iranian nuclear program wow but does that happen the other way john because you did you

00:41:08.540 did counterintelligence work too uh talk to talk to the uh frequency scope and concern about other

00:41:16.200 countries using these exact tools you've described bribes um ideology whatever to to get our our our

00:41:23.680 countrymen to to do their bidding good well there was that story that just came out about i think it

00:41:27.300 was the air force pilot who was giving our information over well no he was training the

00:41:31.360 chinese yeah training training on uh yeah he was training the chinese my guess is he wasn't a

00:41:37.800 volunteer probably right now i don't think it was a volunteer i can't get my glasses straight 0.98

00:41:41.960 no i don't think it was a volunteer uh but you're right you know other countries aren't stupid

00:41:47.780 these are not secret techniques that we're using we're just trying to exploit human nature

00:41:52.660 and so certainly there are there are other intelligence services that are actively trying

00:41:59.900 to recruit americans it's going to be a little rate to recruit cia well hold on yeah rate the ones

00:42:06.600 that are the best at getting our people to flip is it mi6 israel yeah well hold on in order okay go

00:42:14.320 ahead okay in order in order i would say the israelis number one are they're our greatest ally why would

00:42:20.920 why would why would they be trying to flip right you know the thing about the israelis

00:42:27.240 um and and i'm not talking just about jonathan pollard that's that's ancient history my very

00:42:32.680 first day at cia my very first day the first thing we did is we stood up we put our hands in the air

00:42:37.800 and we swore to uphold the constitution and to protect it against all enemies domestic and foreign

00:42:42.420 and then we got a briefing by the director of security for the whole cia now granted this is

00:42:49.440 36 years ago but but it it is you know still current and he said our greatest challenge as

00:42:59.700 individual officers was going to be counterintelligence because they're going to be

00:43:02.820 temptations out there and our friends and our enemies are going to try to exploit our own

00:43:09.860 vulnerabilities do you drink maybe to excess a little bit do you like to gamble you know whatever

00:43:16.260 the problem is tell us now so we can help you work your way through it but he said that day that the

00:43:23.620 israelis have two declared intelligence officers at the israeli embassy in washington one from mossad

00:43:29.060 and one from shin bet shin bet being the domestic uh intelligence service akin to the fbi

00:43:34.020 and he said the fbi has been able to identify 187 undeclared israeli intelligence officers spread

00:43:44.980 all across the united states actively trying to recruit employees of our defense contractors and i'll

00:43:51.700 give you an example why we developed the f-35 and the israelis were the first ones they said we want the

00:43:57.380 f-35 we said sure we'll give you the f-35 we're gonna slightly degrade the avionics just slightly

00:44:05.780 just so that god forbid if one gets shot down the russians or the chinese can't take it and reverse 0.99

00:44:10.420 engineer it we're gonna call it the f-35i for israel they said no no we want the f-35 we want the same

00:44:16.020 one you have we said no we'll give you the f-35i in the meantime the emiratis came to us and they said

00:44:21.700 we want this f-35 we said great we're gonna slightly degrade the avionics we'll call it the f-35e for

00:44:27.940 emirates and we'll sell you that they said great we'll take it the israelis have been out there

00:44:32.740 trying to steal the f-35 avionics ever since we said the word f-35 because they really believe that

00:44:41.460 at the end of the day they stand alone against the rest of the world and if we're not going to give them

00:44:47.220 literally everything that they say they want then by god they're going to recruit spies and

00:44:52.100 they're going to steal it from us and this is worse than what china does the chinese are very very laser 1.00

00:45:00.180 focused no pun intended on technology the thing is is the chinese don't really have a a true 1.00

00:45:08.020 understanding and appreciation of american culture so the chinese will walk up to you and say i will give

00:45:13.540 you money you give me technology and you know there's no like there's no you know at least

00:45:19.300 buy me drink first yeah right yeah there's none of that the russians have a long view they're they're

00:45:24.740 quite good at it too um are they the second best yeah the russians i i would put the russians at second

00:45:31.460 best and cubans are third best the cubans really i would think you can cubans are good cubans are very

00:45:38.340 very very good in fact um the the cia has never recruited a cuban who didn't turn out to be a

00:45:44.420 double agent that says something yeah wow believers well well the cubans don't operationalize the

00:45:52.420 intelligence they're just a marketplace that's right they have commoditized it appears and i promised

00:45:57.140 that you would get some questions about current events i could talk for hours about the intelligence

00:46:01.060 definitely john but but but please go ahead heading heading into this interview i was doing some research

00:46:06.020 and um i was reading about some former cia operations uh you obviously know about operation

00:46:11.220 ajax uh in 1953 in iran where we overthrew the government um well then we have also operation

00:46:17.940 pb success in 1954 in guatemala where we overthrew the government operation in congro uh where we

00:46:23.860 overthrew patrice lumumba uh 1965 uh operation in chile where we overthrew the president uh salvador

00:46:30.500 alende um and now we're seeing a lot of things happening in iran um that well in operation ajax we

00:46:40.580 had um the cia funded anti-government protests we had paid journalists to publish propaganda we had cia

00:46:49.540 backed street mobs rioting in the streets and all this is just seeming very familiar and i'm just

00:46:54.660 wondering from your perspective if you think that what we're seeing right now is another cia operation

00:46:59.140 yeah i think it is i think it's more um a joint mosad cia operation and the only reason i say that is

00:47:07.620 because the mosad has bragged about it in the israeli press yeah that they were working with the mek the

00:47:13.940 mujahideen hulk formerly a terrorist group and uh they were able to lightly arm the mek uh they were able

00:47:24.180 to get mek operatives in iran to set fire to mosques and then to burn 38 fire trucks so there

00:47:31.940 was no way to put out the the fires at the mosques so the israelis were they couldn't help themselves but 0.66

00:47:37.940 to brag about it in um in the israeli media what two three weeks ago i think that look history has

00:47:48.660 proven that it is it's easier it's cheaper and it's safer for americans if you let controlled

00:47:57.220 mobs do your dirty work rather than putting your own operatives on the ground and you know carrying 0.99

00:48:02.580 out close-in assassinations and things like that the risk is just too high for something like that

00:48:08.660 and so to answer your question yeah there's a long history as you as you correctly noted there's a long

00:48:14.580 history of the cia doing things like this i've got to tell you the guatemala operation is one of my

00:48:20.500 favorite to talk about because it is so outrageous there's a long history there's a long history that

00:48:26.820 went into that operation in guatemala that started actually before there was anything called a cia it

00:48:31.940 started in the late 19th century there was an american railroad tycoon who bought a narrow strip of land

00:48:38.900 from from guatemala city to the coast with the idea being that he could transport goods from the coast

00:48:45.700 to the guatemala city and make money being the the sole way of transporting these goods so they hired you

00:48:53.140 know local indigenous people to lay the track and he went down there to uh just to take a look at his

00:49:00.260 investment watch them lay the track and every day at lunchtime the workers would take a break and they

00:49:05.860 would pick these fruits off of the trees and they would eat the fruits and so the tycoon said what

00:49:11.060 are these fruits that that the workers are eating and he was told they're called bananas he had never

00:49:17.220 seen a banana before he'd never heard of a banana so he tried one and it was delicious and sweet and he

00:49:22.820 said we should take the bananas and send them to america and he did and got even richer than he always

00:49:30.020 was he also changed the name of the company to the united fruit company well this went for the next

00:49:36.500 three quarters of a century and finally in 1954 uh the guatemalan government said you know we're sending

00:49:45.060 all these bananas to the united states we're not making any money on these bananas at all the united

00:49:50.340 fruit company owns the the train it owns the tracks it owns the land on the two sides of the tracks where

00:49:56.100 all the bananas are growing we're not making anything on this we should nationalize the bananas

00:50:02.020 well three of the members of the board of directors of the united of the united fruit company were john

00:50:07.860 foster dulles the secretary of state alan dulles his brother the cia director and president eisenhower's

00:50:15.300 secretary's brother and so we overthrew the guatemalan government we installed a military

00:50:23.140 dictatorship that brutalized the population for the next 20 plus years and that country still

00:50:30.500 hasn't gotten over that coup it's still one of the most dangerous places in the world i went to

00:50:35.460 guatemala a couple of years ago to volunteer for a couple of weeks at an orphanage and thank god that

00:50:40.660 the orphanage had a 20 foot high concrete wall all the way around it because i could barely get to sleep

00:50:46.420 at night for all the gunfire outside it's still a terrible place and it's a terrible place because we

00:50:52.340 made it that way yeah yeah we don't have a great record of overthrowing these governments having

00:50:57.300 positive we really don't you know we're good at overthrowing i thought there would be more like

00:51:01.620 united fruit standard fruit resentment over our venezuela operation i spent a lot of time in latin

00:51:06.100 america i covered latin america extensively i i i thought that that would sort of tickle those um

00:51:13.380 frustrations of yesteryear and i'm surprised it didn't almost everyone i know in latin america was

00:51:19.220 thrilled that maduro was removed and i i did ask you know the question is this is this a precedent

00:51:25.300 that that we're going to be excited about when democrats are in power like are they is is like

00:51:30.020 a future president aoc gonna order delta force to go and like yank javier malay out of argentina

00:51:37.860 if she doesn't doesn't like you know the fact that he fired uh teachers who were trying to teach

00:51:43.620 pronouns i i don't know you're absolutely right i i have burned my hour with uh with john did you

00:51:50.580 have any any any final questions yeah one one final question we talked about privacy before there's the

00:51:57.300 popular myth that the cia knows all and sees all and is in your phone and your email and watching

00:52:01.780 through your tv uh knows everything that you're doing but we constantly see cases where there's domestic

00:52:08.500 terrorism or someone goes out and kills somebody and has been texting with people and posting on

00:52:12.500 forums and leaving a trail that you'd think would be caught so how really omnipotent is the cia are

00:52:20.420 these agencies and how much of that is just popular mythos and and i guess how much of it is allowed to

00:52:28.340 happen now that's the 64 000 question right there um they're not omnipotent their computer systems are near

00:52:36.500 omnipotent but you don't have a human being that's going over all this this data you know it's yes

00:52:43.220 it's all being collected it's all being just pulled out of the ether and stored in these computers but

00:52:49.140 human beings don't actually look at it until after the fact look at the san bernardino attack from

00:52:55.380 whatever it was 2017 or 2016 the the terrorists in that case in san bernardino california were

00:53:04.420 communicating through the chat function of a game app well i'll tell you who pioneered that was was

00:53:11.940 the mossad that's how they would communicate in their anti-hezbollah operations um but the fbi it

00:53:18.500 never occurred to the fbi that they should be working with nsa to to collect you know in-game chat apps i

00:53:27.700 mean who would even think of such a thing so yeah the information's out there it's just not necessarily

00:53:33.140 being seen by a human being for the cia i mean the cia will tell you right off the bat um that they

00:53:39.620 recruit spies to steal secrets and they only do that overseas okay i want to believe that i'm not

00:53:45.060 sure that i do but i would be more worried domestically far more worried about nsa and fbi and one other

00:53:52.020 thing about fbi that i think we should be worried about for for you know 250 years practically well not

00:53:59.540 250 since the fbi was founded in the early 1920s if they wanted information personal information on

00:54:06.020 an american or from an american they had to get a warrant right you have to go before a judge you

00:54:10.180 have to have probable cause you have to do it with a warrant they don't anymore we have for a while

00:54:15.540 right right yeah right after 9 11 they fisa number one number two right after 9 11 they started using

00:54:21.620 these things called national security letters which were just like threatening letters to the

00:54:25.860 to the isp providers saying we're the fbi and you're not and we want this information and you

00:54:32.660 have 48 hours to to cough it up okay that's not a warrant if hearing all these crazy stories about

00:54:39.060 spycraft is making you think that there might be turbulence ahead buy gold i'm betting my family's

00:54:44.500 financial future on asset classes that have stood the test of time lear capital has all the information

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00:55:31.780 number three the the social media platforms sell our metadata to anybody who wants to pay

00:55:40.500 and so why would the fbi go before a judge and have to make a probable cause argument when they can just

00:55:47.060 go to meta and just buy it we we we tried to pass laws to say that the uh that the fbi could not

00:55:56.020 buy like use data brokers to get information that would otherwise require a warrant yes and i mean

00:56:01.860 you might you might as well have been cheerleading the fall of the twin towers making that suggestion

00:56:07.620 people were saying oh we're gonna have the next 911 the blood's gonna be on your hands we uh i pursued that

00:56:13.380 along with some of the some of the folks like daryl isa and and we totally lost that legislative

00:56:18.820 effort but the national security letters guess who's receiving those letters at the big tech

00:56:22.900 companies former fbi leadership right right if you fought if you follow the revolving door between fbi cia

00:56:32.420 and big tech that's where they go to cash out and so it's a it's a cia fbi person writing a letter to

00:56:39.140 someone who months before was a cia a fbi person and you're just the deliverable you you the american

00:56:45.860 public what a cheery note to end on uh john kiriaku we always appreciate your uh your insights your

00:56:52.020 perspective your expertise uh it's added so much to our network and our program to introduce you to

00:56:57.220 our viewers and uh and we wish you well and hopefully thank you so much thank you pleasure i look

00:57:02.420 forward to it we'll get you next uh what what a discussion so long story short we are the bad guys

00:57:10.500 we're just going to change the name of this podcast to pearson sharp is not satisfied

00:57:14.660 like i said yesterday are you satisfied never thanks for joining me but we'll be back next

00:57:18.740 week to be unsatisfied together want to see more great videos like this click on the link below to

00:57:24.180 subscribe to oan live and watch dan ball's real america and the matt gates show on dish channel 212

00:57:30.260 tune in subscribe and watch today

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - March 09, 2026

The Anchormen Show EP 105 - Spy Games w： Pearson Sharp & John Kiriakou

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