This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #661 - John Kiriakou

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00:01:16.160 Today's guest is an author.

00:01:17.920 He's a speaker.

00:01:19.260 He's a former CIA officer who's also known for being a whistleblower in the CIA's use of torture.

00:01:26.260 He has a new book coming out called The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics, and Techniques.

00:01:33.500 Today's guest is Mr. John Kiriakou.

00:01:36.380 Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing

00:01:45.400 Yeah, I applied for a presidential pardon.

00:01:56.080 You applied for a presidential pardon?

00:01:59.060 Yeah.

00:01:59.760 Yeah.

00:02:00.180 In fact, I brought a couple of letters.

00:02:02.740 I hope you don't-

00:02:04.020 As long as you don't meet me, if I sign him, it's not going to help anything.

00:02:06.580 I'm just telling you that.

00:02:07.500 Oh, okay.

00:02:07.980 I was going to ask if you thought it would be helpful.

00:02:11.560 I got-

00:02:12.520 Did you really?

00:02:13.620 Oh, yeah.

00:02:13.940 Oh, okay.

00:02:14.720 I was joking.

00:02:16.120 Oh, no, no, no.

00:02:17.360 I'm talking to Tulsi Gabbard on Friday.

00:02:19.320 Did I tell you that?

00:02:20.160 Oh, nice.

00:02:20.480 Her husband is winning a surgery today, I saw.

00:02:22.400 Yeah, the poor guy.

00:02:22.740 I messaged it with her yesterday.

00:02:24.720 She's great.

00:02:25.840 Yeah, Tulsi Gabbard, she seems, there's just something about her that seems genuine to me.

00:02:31.600 And that's why they tried to destroy her.

00:02:34.260 Is that what you think is going on with her right now? 0.98

00:02:36.040 That's why the Democrats tried to destroy her. 0.99

00:02:37.960 I really do. 0.98

00:02:38.840 But even right now, I mean, she's just taking a leave.

00:02:41.080 I know it's for her husband's health.

00:02:43.040 Yeah.

00:02:43.320 oh yeah

00:02:45.320 headed into surgery

00:02:46.180 this morning

00:02:46.780 oh is that what it says

00:02:47.620 yeah

00:02:48.040 she tweeted

00:02:48.720 or she

00:02:49.220 Instagrammed it

00:02:50.960 yeah

00:02:51.420 yeah do you think 0.89

00:02:52.860 because she's kind of like

00:02:54.060 and she just took a break

00:02:55.060 she took a complete break 0.72

00:02:56.140 from politics

00:02:56.740 yeah

00:02:57.180 you remember when she was running

00:02:59.640 as a Democrat

00:03:00.200 every time she would

00:03:01.720 inch up in the polls

00:03:02.720 the DNC would change the rules

00:03:04.700 for participating

00:03:05.520 in the next debate

00:03:06.360 so they would do it

00:03:07.660 just one or two percentage points

00:03:09.160 out of her reach

00:03:09.940 every single time

00:03:11.000 because they were threatened

00:03:12.320 by her message

00:03:13.480 She just wouldn't get with their program.

00:03:15.480 She's always seemed very like she has her own.

00:03:19.980 Oh, she was definitely independent.

00:03:21.660 Independent, that's what it is. 0.70

00:03:22.820 She's always seemed very independent.

00:03:24.480 Well, they did the same thing with Bernie Sanders.

00:03:26.480 They did exactly the same thing with Bernie Sanders.

00:03:28.840 So I guess my question would be like, you know, and I can't remember if I asked Bernie this or not,

00:03:34.800 but why would you stay in a party that you know at a certain point is not, that's cheating you?

00:03:40.860 Yes.

00:03:41.220 And the Democrats did something after the 1972 election, which I think people don't pay anywhere near enough attention to.

00:03:50.300 Nobody at the DNC wanted George McGovern to be the 1972 nominee.

00:03:54.900 He was the most popular at the time, especially among young people, but he was the weakest nationwide.

00:04:04.340 And he ended up losing 49 states.

00:04:06.940 But it's a party of the people, right?

00:04:10.580 If the people want George McGovern as the nominee, then George McGovern should be the nominee.

00:04:14.220 And they didn't let him become the nominee?

00:04:15.960 No, they let him become the nominee.

00:04:17.400 And then as soon as he lost the race, they instituted this thing called superdelegates.

00:04:22.640 So if you are a member of the House, a member of the Senate, a governor, a lieutenant governor, a state party director, a state committee chairman, you're automatically made a delegate to the convention.

00:04:35.540 Well, there are like 1,500 of them.

00:04:37.300 And so you end up with situations like West Virginia and Wyoming where Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton in both states and Hillary Clinton wins literally every delegate.

00:04:51.240 From those states?

00:04:51.900 Mm-hmm.

00:04:52.540 Wow.

00:04:53.020 Like how's that fair?

00:04:53.760 So wait, explain that to me a little bit better because I'm going to get on this.

00:04:56.260 George McGovern was a major reason Democrats later created superdelegates.

00:05:00.360 After McGovern's 1972 nomination and landslide general election loss,

00:05:04.960 party leaders wanted a way to give more influence to experienced officials

00:05:08.600 and reduce the chance that a highly activist primary electorate

00:05:12.380 would produce another nominee they saw as too extreme.

00:05:16.040 So you're saying the people believed in this guy.

00:05:18.060 Oh, yeah.

00:05:18.520 Even though he lost, the people believed in him.

00:05:20.260 but the party and whoever that is uh didn't want it to be like just like a populist vote they didn't

00:05:28.480 want just the people to have the choice they wanted to go back to the days with the smoke

00:05:33.060 filled back rooms with the party bosses choosing who's going to be the nominee and if they put more

00:05:38.040 on the shoulders of just the super delegates then they could control fewer it was fewer people that

00:05:43.340 out of control. Exactly. Wow. Exactly. I am proud to say in 1983, I was a sophomore in college.

00:05:50.500 I was the speaker's committee chairman. I was the whole committee of the George Washington

00:05:56.780 University College Democrats in the days when I was a Democrat. And I saw a little blurb in

00:06:02.400 the Washington Post saying, hey, remember George McGovern? He's thinking of running for president

00:06:06.280 again. So I wrote him a letter. I said, hey, I read that you're thinking of running for president

00:06:10.860 And again, we have a fantastic theater here at the school.

00:06:13.400 We can do all the legwork, ready-made volunteers.

00:06:17.800 My phone rings a few days later, wakes me up, and it's George McGovern.

00:06:21.800 Yeah.

00:06:22.240 And he says, can I see that theater?

00:06:23.680 I said, of course.

00:06:25.100 So he comes over to school, and we walk over to the theater.

00:06:29.280 Nobody recognized him.

00:06:32.180 And he said, yeah, the theater's perfect.

00:06:34.280 And there's like a cutout for cameras, and it was perfect.

00:06:37.580 So he says, don't tell anybody, but I am going to run for president again.

00:06:41.260 And this is after the 72 loss.

00:06:42.640 Yeah, this is, yeah, 11 years after the 72 loss.

00:06:46.120 Reagan is president.

00:06:47.180 Okay.

00:06:47.680 So we put out a press release, major announcement by Senator George McGovern on such and such a date,

00:06:55.000 George Washington University in the Marvin Theater.

00:06:57.960 And packed the place and it was on the news.

00:07:02.300 Here's what a sweet guy he was.

00:07:03.720 he did the announcement and brought important people with him. Like, uh, Mo Udall. Remember

00:07:10.460 Mo Udall? He ran for president in 76. He was a Congressman from, uh, Arizona and, uh, there he

00:07:16.700 is. And then, um, Cliff Robertson, the Academy Award winning actor and his wife, uh, Dina Merrill.

00:07:25.000 Yeah. They both came. So he brought some, like, A-listers. He brought his own influencers. Yeah.

00:07:30.800 And Frank Mankiewicz, who had been Robert Kennedy Sr.'s press secretary, was Senator McGovern's press secretary.

00:07:38.720 He must have been geeked, huh?

00:07:39.920 Oh, I was, I mean, it was incredible.

00:07:42.800 And then he makes the announcement, he shakes everybody's hand, and he invites me back to his apartment, and his wife made tuna sandwiches.

00:07:49.280 Nice.

00:07:50.020 Just the loveliest people.

00:07:51.860 He ended up, crazy as it sounds, coming in third.

00:07:56.640 Walter Mondale won, Gary Hart came in second, and McGovern came in third.

00:08:01.180 And that was for the Democratic Party?

00:08:02.600 Yeah.

00:08:03.200 Wow.

00:08:03.780 And they kept saying, drop out, George, drop out, George, drop out, George, because he

00:08:07.420 was pulling young people.

00:08:09.240 I remember Jesse Jackson, when he ran, he was very close, right?

00:08:14.460 Wasn't he the populist choice, kind of?

00:08:16.380 Yes, he was the populist choice, 1984 and 1988.

00:08:19.580 He was.

00:08:20.200 Very much so.

00:08:21.080 Because I remember we had, I think we had a sign for him, like, you know, our family was always like, you know, pretty, you know, liberal and hopeful and new ideas, right?

00:08:31.680 That's how mine was.

00:08:32.740 Yeah.

00:08:33.340 But like, but not, but not like ethereal at the same time, not like unrealistic, right?

00:08:39.240 Right.

00:08:39.600 Not unrealistic, but we were hopeful, you know what I'm saying?

00:08:43.160 But yeah, didn't Jesse Jackson, and did they just not service him or what happened with Jesse Jackson?

00:08:48.320 Yeah, they let him kind of self-destruct.

00:08:51.260 See, it says here he won 11 contests.

00:08:53.380 He did very, very well in 88.

00:08:55.880 But he was never a Democratic Party insider.

00:08:59.520 Got it.

00:08:59.960 The insiders were not going to let him have that nomination.

00:09:02.980 That's what they do.

00:09:04.100 And the Republicans don't have such a system.

00:09:06.860 You don't think so?

00:09:07.800 No, they don't have superdelegates,

00:09:09.260 which means then an insurgent candidate like a Donald Trump can win a nomination.

00:09:14.520 I see.

00:09:14.900 But it's less likely to happen in the Democratic Party?

00:09:16.700 Much less likely to happen.

00:09:17.960 of superdelegates. Wow. I didn't realize that only one party had those Al Franken because hold on

00:09:24.640 before we move forward on Al Franken. So, but didn't Jesse Jackson win a few, like in a row?

00:09:30.120 Like he was, yeah, he was on a roll. He was all, he was building momentum. And they were like,

00:09:33.840 yeah, we're going to put the brakes on this. And when they say we are going to put the brakes on

00:09:38.060 this, who is the wheeze? It just, it's the, it's the state committee chairman who make up the

00:09:43.020 democratic national committee got it but it's just the insiders it's like the the money talking

00:09:48.080 whoever those like it's the smoky back room this congresswoman from florida her name escapes me 0.93

00:09:53.060 three names but anyway she was the head of what was it no she was the head of the dnc

00:09:59.100 in 20 a debbie wasserman schultz thank you very much okay debbie wasserman schultz

00:10:05.320 gave hillary clinton's campaign all the debate questions before the debate remember that but

00:10:12.320 bernie didn't get the questions crazy it's crazy it's fixed yeah i think we all know what happened

00:10:18.280 at this point yeah um the fix was in but the fix was in but it's just it's a it starts to make you

00:10:23.260 feel like okay that the the regular person like what you really want the even the idea of that

00:10:29.840 it used to feel real yes and it doesn't feel real anymore yes and that i think is one of the

00:10:34.500 scariest things happening in america right now you're like agree it used to feel hopeful and now

00:10:40.260 it feels um it's not it's will we survive it feel there's something else it's not a hope

00:10:47.520 i don't even know if it's somewhat of a fear but it's more of an uncertainty but america used to

00:10:52.740 feel like this hopeful thing like we're building this thing that's gonna yeah that means something

00:10:57.340 that we're gonna pass on to our uh children and that um and that could possibly stay in the test

00:11:02.060 of time and when that when something like that you believe in something like that it makes your

00:11:08.440 day-to-day uh interactions and your interaction with your country and uh it makes that all more

00:11:16.660 meaningful to you so you show up for it differently um we're sitting here with john kiriaku kiriaku

00:11:23.380 uh thank you so much for coming in thank you for the invitation i love the show i've seen so many

00:11:28.740 clips of you uh recalling stories from your time in the cia is having a good memory a requirement

00:11:36.920 for the job? Oh yeah. Is it really? Oh my gosh. Is it a requirement? It's actively encouraged.

00:11:45.260 I had a station chief one time who gave me the biggest compliment. You had a what one time?

00:11:49.340 A station chief. Okay. So I was doing a, I was doing an operation in the middle East,

00:11:54.240 but I was doing it from headquarters. The station chief called me. We were friends from our training

00:11:59.780 days and he said, listen, we recruited a double agent out here. He's insisting on meeting with

00:12:05.980 the chief, but it's just too dangerous for me to meet with him. Cause he doesn't know that we know

00:12:11.180 he's working for the bad guys. Got it. Can you come out here every month and meet with him and

00:12:17.080 pretend to be me? And I said, sure. So I did to make a long story short, I would do the meeting

00:12:22.880 and then go straight to the airport and fly back to Washington. There was a midnight flight.

00:12:27.960 And, um, I would write the cable, the reporting cable from headquarters, instead of writing it

00:12:32.940 from the station and then sending it to headquarters.

00:12:35.020 I'd write it from headquarters and send it to the station.

00:12:37.180 And the great compliment he gave me was, he said, your memory is so good.

00:12:42.280 You remember so many details that when I read the cables, I feel like I'm in the room watching

00:12:47.840 it go down.

00:12:48.740 And I said, that is exactly what I'm going for.

00:12:51.920 Yeah.

00:12:52.420 I've always been proud of being able to do that.

00:12:55.080 But it wasn't a requirement when you, I guess, I don't know if you auditioned for the CIA,

00:13:00.880 but how do you?

00:13:01.520 Yeah, you kind of do.

00:13:02.940 Yeah. What's that process like? Like, how do you get extensive? Is it? It's changed from when I

00:13:08.680 joined. When I joined, I was in graduate school at George Washington University and I was taking

00:13:14.280 a class called the psychology of leadership. And the class was about why foreign leaders

00:13:21.820 make the decisions that they make. One of the examples that sticks in my mind is the Yalta

00:13:28.060 conference at the end of world war ii why was it in yalta of all places i'm not familiar with it

00:13:34.880 bringing up the yalta conference uh the world war ii yeah um the yalta conference was a world

00:13:40.420 war ii meeting of the heads of government of the united states uk and the soviet union to discuss

00:13:44.300 the post-war reorganization of germany and europe okay yeah so roosevelt churchill and stalin they

00:13:50.280 all met in yalta they all met in yalta which is really really hard to get to and you can't just

00:13:57.060 you know, get in a plane and fly over the war. The war is still going on. So Roosevelt took a train

00:14:03.300 to Norfolk, Virginia, then took a boat to Malta, which took like a week, right? Back in those days.

00:14:13.280 Which is obviously a PSYOP because it rhymes with Yalta. Right. And then he had to go to Cairo

00:14:19.180 and then Iran and then from Iran to Yalta. He was sick. He died a month later. Wow.

00:14:25.980 So the reason why it was in Yalta is because Stalin had a spy in the White House and the spy told him Roosevelt is sick.

00:14:34.320 And so Stalin wanted him to be as weak as possible when they arrived or when the American side arrived, Roosevelt was exhausted and he wanted to go to sleep.

00:14:46.260 But Stalin insisted that the talks begin immediately.

00:14:50.420 And so just to be able to go to bed, Roosevelt gave up Poland.

00:14:53.780 look i'm throwing poland let's talk tomorrow exactly oh yeah dude look sometimes yeah sometimes

00:15:00.560 bro you show up and you're like yeah you just can't do it yeah or you just say look yes take

00:15:06.260 that that's fine i got you know what i'm saying i gotta brush my teeth and lay down for a few

00:15:11.420 minutes it's crazy the things you will give up when you first get somewhere just to get to your

00:15:16.660 room yeah and unpack amen to urinate oh so i'm in this class and just to be clear so they made

00:15:23.520 didn't go all that way just because they knew it would weaken him. Yeah, there it is. So they

00:15:26.820 created a path that would just like, yeah, that would add to him because they had a spine in the

00:15:30.800 world. Yeah. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12th,

00:15:35.600 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia, just two months after the Yalta Conference. While the grueling

00:15:40.600 7,000 mile trip to the Soviet Union combined with his severe underlying cardiovascular

00:15:45.820 conditions took a significant toll on his already failing health. Wow. You see what a well-placed

00:15:52.520 spy can do for you. That's strategy right there. That is strategy. It's that's the big leagues

00:15:58.280 right there. That's the big leagues. So I'm in this class and the, the professor, Dr. Gerald

00:16:02.840 Post, eminent psychiatrist, uh, tells us to, um, shadow our bosses for a week. Just watch our

00:16:10.680 bosses, spend each day with them and then do a psychological profile on our bosses. And this is

00:16:17.560 when you're at George Washington university, you're a student. Right. Okay. I was in grad

00:16:20.760 school there's jerry and what what a great man he was he died of covid the poor guy so um so he

00:16:28.160 was murdered right right carry on i'm um i'm working at the united food and commercial workers

00:16:34.460 union at the time and uh i worked for this guy he was a mean like angry old school union organizer

00:16:42.640 right i was a little bit afraid of him to tell you the truth big strong mean guy and halfway through

00:16:50.540 the week we got into an argument and i called him a racist which he was yeah and he got so mad he

00:16:56.860 set a stance and he put up his fist like this and i put up my hands thinking dang it i went too far 1.00

00:17:02.060 this time and he goes my penis is bigger than yours and i said what and he goes my penis is 1.00

00:17:08.940 bigger than yours i said you know what you're nuts and i quit and i walked out so i went back 1.00

00:17:14.880 and I banged out my paper. 1.00

00:17:16.940 I said he was a sociopath with psychopathic 0.99

00:17:19.480 and possibly violent tendencies. 0.98

00:17:21.420 And I footnoted the whole thing.

00:17:22.900 It wasn't just John venting on it.

00:17:24.120 But with a possibly decent wiener on it.

00:17:26.280 You're right, apparently.

00:17:27.420 You got to put that in.

00:17:30.340 And so I get the paper back a week later.

00:17:33.560 Dr. Post gave me an A.

00:17:35.000 And then in the margin, he wrote,

00:17:36.120 please see me after class.

00:17:38.100 So I go up to him.

00:17:39.880 I said, Dr. Post, you wanted to see me.

00:17:41.680 He says, come to my office.

00:17:42.880 The classroom was like on the sixth floor and the office was on the fourth.

00:17:46.480 So I went down there.

00:17:47.700 He closed the door and he says, look, I'm not really a professor here.

00:17:52.520 I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here.

00:17:56.400 I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture.

00:17:59.840 I think you would fit in.

00:18:01.680 Would you like to join the CIA?

00:18:03.600 And I said, oh, yes, I would.

00:18:06.660 And so the rest, though, is up to you.

00:18:08.940 It was kind of a long story.

00:18:10.680 I'll skip it.

00:18:11.100 But he made a couple of calls that got me deep into the process.

00:18:15.320 Got it.

00:18:16.020 So Mr. Post was your professor.

00:18:18.260 Yes.

00:18:18.660 And you also had this job where you were under, where the guy was the racist guy.

00:18:24.380 Yeah, that was at a union.

00:18:26.100 Okay.

00:18:26.280 So I was using that union job to put myself through grad school.

00:18:29.320 Got it.

00:18:30.020 And then I just, I quit and I walked out.

00:18:32.260 I said, the guy's dangerous.

00:18:33.120 and i guess the way i wrote the paper made him think that the analysis was concise it was to

00:18:41.580 the point and i backed it up with the facts so i go through these weird he sent me across the

00:18:47.800 across the river to roslyn virginia arlington virginia it's a little neighborhood right across

00:18:51.880 the potomac from washington hold one second so so he was a he was a cia operative this professor

00:18:57.400 yes now when someone's a cia operative but also a professor are they an actual professor that then

00:19:06.140 gets hired that's a great question like which is first that's a great question it's usually

00:19:12.580 that they're a cia operative first and then they get hired as a professor what he did is illegal

00:19:19.760 today got it so in 1993 congress passed the equal employment opportunity act the eeoc which made

00:19:25.940 this illegal so um now it's very like not sexy you just go to www.cia.gov and click apply right

00:19:37.100 different it's different it's a little easier back then it was you know all white guys from ivy league

00:19:42.000 schools for the most part and uh now it's different it was exciting it was exciting i bet it was i bet 0.82

00:19:47.200 it was one of the most exciting things i i used to park my car out in the north 40 and then take

00:19:52.280 like 20 minutes to walk all the way around the compound so I could walk in the main door across

00:19:58.140 the giant seal and see the wall of honor and the flags. And I felt like I wanted to cry, you know,

00:20:04.460 I was so proud to be there. I felt like you were part of something. I really did. I can imagine

00:20:08.320 that you feel like you're part of something. Like, what did you feel like you were part of?

00:20:10.820 Well, you know, I came from this very liberal household and I remember my mom and dad getting

00:20:16.340 into an argument one time it was the pennsylvania primary of 1976 and my my mom voted my dad voted

00:20:24.780 for frank church who had created the church committee that completely reorganized the cia

00:20:30.120 and stripped it of its his power to its power to you know carry out assassinations and things like

00:20:35.380 that and my mom uh voted for birch by who was a senator from indiana and my dad said birch by

00:20:41.840 why'd you vote for him and she said he's so good looking and my dad's like what church is the guy

00:20:49.900 doing all the work and i remember being fascinated by this argument that they were having so when

00:20:55.620 when dr post approached me i called a friend of mine that i was in class with who was married to

00:21:02.520 a guy at the cia and i said listen i'm not a naif i i know the cia's history it's pretty ugly

00:21:11.000 Do I want to be involved in an organization like this?

00:21:13.520 I want to go into public service.

00:21:15.040 I want to see the world.

00:21:17.080 She said, let's have dinner.

00:21:18.520 So the three of us get together for dinner.

00:21:20.660 And he's like, the bad old days CIAs of the CIA are gone.

00:21:25.300 The bad old days, he said?

00:21:26.380 Yeah, the bad old days of the CIA are gone.

00:21:28.320 He said, 75 with the church committee and the Senate, 0.54

00:21:32.440 the Pike committee and the House changed everything.

00:21:34.360 No more assassinations, no more overthrowing governments, 0.80

00:21:37.100 which was true for a little while.

00:21:39.440 a little while because four years later ronald reagan becomes president the next thing you know

00:21:47.400 we're you know doing iran contra and we're bombing different countries and everything

00:21:52.980 just went back to the way it was but there was like this golden period my friends are going to

00:21:59.200 yell at me for saying that there was this period where the cia was a really awesome place to work

00:22:05.020 Got it. And so when you're walking into that, when you're taking me back to that moment where you're walking in, did you feel like I'm a part of something that's important to America or I'm a part of just an intriguing life and this is exciting?

00:22:18.160 Did you feel like I'm like Clark Kent? And there's no wrong answer. This is all just like curiosity.

00:22:22.640 Oh, sure. The first seven and a half years that I was there, I was an analyst. Actually, in the office that Dr. Post had founded, the political psychology division. And I really felt like I was a part of something big, you know?

00:22:38.520 I was only on the job eight months and it was just as I started to feel like I really knew

00:22:46.040 what I was doing. I was the leadership analyst, the psychological analyst on Iraq. And the reason

00:22:52.860 I was given Iraq was because, not my words, these were the words of my leadership, nothing ever

00:22:58.960 happens there. It's the same cabinet since the 1968 revolution, nothing ever happens. So learn

00:23:06.660 the writing style learn the tradecraft and you can move on to something interesting like romania

00:23:11.020 they told me i said great so i'm my friend just played ball in romania actually it's a great

00:23:16.340 place for me i love it oh yeah it's great i gotta get over there i don't know my buddy patrick

00:23:20.640 mccafford he just finished playing ball over there anyway carry on i love it so um just as i get to

00:23:27.240 the point where i where i really feel like i know what i'm doing iraq invades kuwait august the 2nd 0.88

00:23:32.840 1990 i walk into the office early like before seven and my boss says yeah shit's popping now

00:23:38.200 you gotta show up i couldn't wait to get into the office that day my boss says don't take your 0.71

00:23:41.920 jacket off we're gonna go to the white house i'd never been in the white house before and so um

00:23:47.600 we go to the white house there's this marine standing there he walks us into the into the

00:23:53.560 west wing and we go into the ante room of the oval office and then the secretary takes us in

00:23:58.920 and here's the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, and the CIA director.

00:24:04.900 And so you just kind of stand there. You wait to be told what to do. There are two nice chairs

00:24:09.800 like this. The president's in that one, the vice president's in this one. There's a couch here.

00:24:14.620 My boss and I sat on that. There are two like more uncomfortable chairs over here for the CIA

00:24:19.580 director and the national security advisor. And we sit down and the president goes, well,

00:24:26.940 Now what do we do?

00:24:28.580 And then everybody turns and looks at me.

00:24:30.720 And I'm looking at them.

00:24:32.640 And then it took me a second.

00:24:34.320 And I'm like, oh, well, as you know, Mr. President, Iraqi troops crossed the border at 4 o'clock this morning.

00:24:39.980 And the Kuwaiti royal family, ruling family, fled to Saudi Arabia, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:46.580 But I remember thinking, my friends would never believe in a million years what I was doing right now.

00:24:52.920 They would never believe it.

00:24:53.980 And I was 20, I was 25 years old.

00:24:57.400 And it happened overnight that you were kind of suddenly having an influence.

00:25:00.360 Like you right there, they're like, they're looking to me for information.

00:25:04.000 That actually was kind of a recurring theme in my career.

00:25:06.600 I was just very, very lucky.

00:25:09.560 Got it.

00:25:09.840 A lot of times.

00:25:11.240 So when you're walking into the building, when you take that long way and you pass like the flags and walk over the seal, it's just like I'm a part of something.

00:25:18.700 Yeah.

00:25:19.140 You really feel it.

00:25:20.300 Do you think that's the same CIA that we have today?

00:25:22.520 No.

00:25:23.400 No.

00:25:23.620 9-11 changed everything, and it changed it permanently in a bunch of different ways.

00:25:28.560 Not just – have you ever heard of Executive Order 1-2-3-3-3?

00:25:32.140 I haven't.

00:25:33.260 1-2-3-3-3 was signed by Gerald Ford, and it came in the aftermath of the Church and Pike Committees.

00:25:40.780 And, yeah, the responsibilities and guidelines for the U.S. intelligence community.

00:25:47.520 Okay, Executive Order 1-2-3-3 establishes the goals, responsibilities, and guidelines for the U.S. intelligence community.

00:25:52.960 Got it.

00:25:53.360 Number one, you can't kill people anymore, right? 0.60

00:25:57.920 Well, this was after the church commission, right? 0.74

00:25:59.800 Right, exactly.

00:26:00.600 They said, you got to stop killing people. 1.00

00:26:02.320 And we had these like, you know, we're putting explosives in Fidel Castro's cigar and putting poison on the steering wheel of his car and stupid stuff. 0.99

00:26:12.300 And so 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3 said- 1.00

00:26:14.620 Real Tom and Jerry shit. 1.00

00:26:15.520 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

00:26:16.340 You can't do that stuff anymore.

00:26:18.240 And then it's been amended over the years. 0.98

00:26:20.900 Well, after 9-11, Bush is just like, just kill everybody you want. 0.99

00:26:25.720 Wow.

00:26:26.100 And so we set up these offices, one whole office called the Special Activities Division.

00:26:32.860 And then there's, in the counterterrorism center where I was working, there was one called the Special Activities Group.

00:26:39.540 And their job, very simply, was just to send teams around the world, kill people, come back, get the list for the next week, go out there, kill them, come back, get another list,

00:26:50.300 kill those guys it was like uh nobody's trying to collect intelligence anymore things changed

00:26:57.900 overnight overnight one time i was um i was traveling somewhere you know because i had my 0.99

00:27:05.340 luggage with me and everything and i was i think i was in guam maybe or viet guam or somewhere i

00:27:10.820 don't know and i couldn't get the internet they didn't have it they didn't some people they

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00:28:13.400 You know, my brother used to bring a little bit of raccoon over there.

00:28:17.280 A little bit of that dumpster squirrel.

00:28:19.420 You feel me?

00:28:19.900 He'd bring it over to Thanksgiving over there.

00:28:23.680 And he'd grill a couple of them up.

00:28:25.780 Make you a couple of pieces of footwear or something.

00:28:29.520 A couple of hand mittens out of the body fur.

00:28:33.640 That's a power move.

00:28:34.900 That's what we called it in our family.

00:28:37.380 And when your mom's friend stayed over just one night.

00:28:40.360 You know what I'm talking about.

00:28:41.300 That's a power move, guys.

00:28:43.400 Look, we're talking power moves.

00:28:45.340 I'm talking Morgan & Morgan.

00:28:47.460 That's a power move.

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00:29:11.580 That's the facts.

00:29:12.460 for more information go to for the people.com slash theo or dial pound law that's pound five

00:29:21.380 two nine from your cell phone that's f-o-r the people.com slash t-h-e-o or pound l-a-w pound

00:29:30.080 five two nine this is a paid advertisement do you think there's a lot of like conspiracies about 0.98

00:29:36.440 9-11 right and i'm sure you've had um i take a lot of shit about the conspiracies yeah you do 0.98

00:29:42.120 i do i take a lot of shit because i don't believe in them you don't know so from your experience 0.98

00:29:46.900 because you were there when it happened you were in the cia when it occurred to where we are now 0.99

00:29:51.380 has your point of view changed at all since then yeah my point of view actually has changed

00:29:57.200 so i don't think i deserve a lot of credit of a lot of the sorry the criticism that i get

00:30:01.940 i'm gonna start on july the 6th of 2001 okay so and i'm not familiar with the criticism either

00:30:08.440 Okay, I'm glad. I'll explain it to you then. Because I get all the time, the Jews did it. The Saudis did it. Literally, the space aliens did it. The Israeli government did it. The Bush family did it. It's like, come on, people. Nanothermite paint. There's no such thing as nanothermite paint. That they painted in 1972 to make the buildings blow up. Come on, you guys.

00:30:33.760 That to me sounds very, that sounds ridiculous. 0.99

00:30:36.420 Yeah, it's ridiculous. 0.90

00:30:37.380 But what doesn't sound ridiculous is somebody having long-term strategy, like you were saying 0.84

00:30:41.320 a little while ago, that people play a longer game, right?

00:30:43.220 Yeah, they do.

00:30:43.860 And we're not good at that generally.

00:30:45.400 Oh yeah, I don't think that we are.

00:30:46.480 We're like a country who won everything now, you know, and we're kind of a newer country

00:30:50.140 as well.

00:30:51.040 So it's like, and we got everything fast anyway.

00:30:53.900 And when you get something fast, you don't really have a ton of respect for it in some

00:30:57.640 ways.

00:30:57.980 That's right.

00:30:58.580 That's right.

00:30:59.160 And it's tough for me to say that because we all just live like one life term.

00:31:01.940 But I think some of that could be infectious over like a society over time.

00:31:06.640 I'd never even thought about it before that it's like, yeah, when you get something easy,

00:31:09.860 you kind of used to something coming easy.

00:31:11.660 That's it.

00:31:12.740 And so, but I do believe that other countries could have strategy against us.

00:31:18.640 And also, and I believe that there were.

00:31:20.420 And what it changed for us as a people, like what it changed, like for how we look out

00:31:25.400 of our own eyes, for how we walk out of like, I remember on 9-11, I walked out of a building.

00:31:31.280 I was staying with some friends. I walked outside and, um, there was just some like construction

00:31:36.340 going on and it'd been going on for a while. And they were like redoing these, like, uh, this stone

00:31:40.960 walkway. I was in Charleston, South Carolina, and they had these bulldozers and stuff out there.

00:31:45.240 And like, people had been excited about the construction. Like it was like, um, cause the

00:31:49.420 streets are cobblestone. It's really beautiful. And suddenly that day, everybody was like,

00:31:54.360 are these, like, are they demolishing something? Like suddenly this had a whole different energy

00:31:58.580 of like oh like this is the rubble like there was a connection with like what you just seen on

00:32:03.400 television to suddenly like something that was being done that was positive uh structurally was 0.61

00:32:08.720 now suddenly looked at like there was a lot of fear around it and i know that's a ridiculous

00:32:12.020 small thing but that but that's normal that happened at the time right and it's just it just

00:32:16.840 how much of a small thing in your head like okay i just seen this and now everything is scary that's

00:32:22.240 what i'm trying to say right everything is scary that's exactly right the whole country was

00:32:26.520 traumatized it was our pearl harbor the pearl harbor of our generation and it changed and it

00:32:31.740 changed how you would operate it changed um it changed just like every it it adjusted so many

00:32:36.920 things go on though so july 6th 2001 um i'm hosting a group of intelligence officers from a middle

00:32:46.100 eastern country this is something we did literally every single day usually multiple times a day and

00:32:51.940 what we do is we set up a day of briefings. They get a photo op with the director, you know,

00:32:56.840 he's shaking hands. We exchange gifts and we take them out to a fancy dinner at night.

00:33:01.080 So these guys, they were all mid-level, like majors and Lieutenant Colonel. So it's a lot

00:33:05.800 of bullshit. A lot of it, a lot. Yes. So I set up a day of briefings and I, I went to see this kid, 1.00

00:33:11.860 young guy, twenties, uh, that was covering Al Qaeda. And I said, can you come and just talk

00:33:16.900 to these guys about Al Qaeda for an hour? He said, yes. So it came time for his briefing,

00:33:21.220 But instead of him coming, the director of counterterrorism comes, Kofor Black, later Ambassador Kofor Black.

00:33:30.400 And he comes –

00:33:30.800 From which country?

00:33:33.000 Oh, from the US.

00:33:34.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:34.520 He was our director.

00:33:35.720 So he showed up. 0.75

00:33:36.740 Kofor shows up with the director of operations from the Osama bin Laden unit. 0.63

00:33:41.220 And I jumped up. 0.89

00:33:43.000 I was like, oh, gentlemen.

00:33:44.940 I said, this is Kofor Black.

00:33:46.820 Heck, he's the director of counterterrorism for the entire American intelligence community.

00:33:52.400 And you were working in counterterrorism at the time.

00:33:53.960 Got it.

00:33:55.260 And so he came in and sat down and he was very, very serious.

00:34:00.680 He said, something terrible is going to happen.

00:34:04.360 We don't know exactly when or exactly where, but we know it's going to be an attack on

00:34:09.480 a scale that we've never seen before.

00:34:11.260 He said, we're picking up chatter from the Al Qaeda training camps where camp commanders

00:34:16.620 are on the phone with their students

00:34:17.940 and they're crying and telling them,

00:34:20.240 I'll see you in paradise.

00:34:21.660 We're hearing code words for a massive attack.

00:34:24.700 The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities of honey

00:34:28.120 where there's gonna be a huge wedding

00:34:30.200 or a huge football game.

00:34:32.720 And he said, we know that they're planning

00:34:34.460 an enormous attack.

00:34:36.180 We just don't know when or where.

00:34:38.500 And he said, I'm begging you,

00:34:40.460 if you have any sources inside Al Qaeda, please help us.

00:34:44.320 They just sat there and looked at him.

00:34:45.820 nothing. So at the end of the day, I was not working on Al Qaeda at the time. I later,

00:34:51.060 weeks later, became the chief of counterintelligence in the Osama bin Laden unit.

00:34:56.800 And so I went to his office at the end of the day before I took those guys to dinner. And I said,

00:35:02.220 Kofar, I got to tell you, you shocked me with that briefing today. Was that just for them?

00:35:07.000 Or were you serious? He said, oh, I was deadly serious. Something terrible is going to happen.

00:35:12.420 And then on September 11th, there it was.

00:35:14.560 He and I were supposed to go to the White House that morning.

00:35:16.820 We had a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, who was the national security advisor at the time, 0.98

00:35:20.000 on an issue that's so stupid now, I'm almost embarrassed to tell you what it is. 0.97

00:35:24.180 It was about a book that was being printed by the government printing office, 0.97

00:35:27.840 this minor governmental agency called Greece, Turkey, Cyprus.

00:35:34.500 And it was called Foreign Affairs of the United States, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, 1949 to 1967.

00:35:40.400 Literally nobody's going to read this book.

00:35:41.820 I was going to tell you that.

00:35:42.760 Nobody's going to read it.

00:35:43.480 Literally nobody.

00:35:44.540 Yeah.

00:35:45.820 And it's like a thousand pages long.

00:35:48.720 That's money laundering.

00:35:49.800 And it had the names of three CIA sources who were still alive.

00:35:54.260 And we've got this obscure law in the United States that if the government outs a CIA source, we have to offer the source citizenship.

00:36:02.520 These guys are like 198 and 97 years old.

00:36:06.280 They're not going to – they don't care.

00:36:07.480 Right.

00:36:08.120 Nobody's going to read the book anyway.

00:36:09.420 so um we were going to go down there and ask her just pull those pages out of the out of the book

00:36:15.960 you know nobody's going to miss it nobody's going to read it anyhow just pull the pages out

00:36:19.760 or redact the names or whatever but i went up to tell him that the car was ready and the secretary's

00:36:25.900 got a little tv on her desk and the world trade center's on fire i said what happened world trade

00:36:29.500 center she said a plane flew into it and i go because i'm a genius i said you know that happened

00:36:35.940 once before in 1930, a bomber flew into the Empire State Building. But it was like pouring

00:36:42.480 rain and fog. I said, it's so crystal clear today. How can you not see that you're flying

00:36:46.880 into the World Trade Center? And just as I spoke the words, the second plane hit. And then she

00:36:52.520 turned and she said, did you see that or did I imagine it? And it's like, oh, everything's going

00:36:58.860 to go to shit now. And at this point, you're already working in counterterrorism, yeah? 0.99

00:37:02.680 Well, I was already in counterterrorism, but I was working on a group.

00:37:05.540 See, again, I'm embarrassed to even say I was working in a group that was targeting European communist terrorists like Carlos the Jackal, who nobody remembers now. 0.64

00:37:14.620 He was the Osama bin Laden of the 70s.

00:37:16.900 Nobody remembers who in the world he was. 0.76

00:37:18.140 Really?

00:37:18.540 Yeah, Carlos the Jackal.

00:37:19.900 Bring him up.

00:37:20.560 There he is.

00:37:21.280 Whoa, he looks suave, huh?

00:37:22.860 He was Venezuelan, Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez. 0.97

00:37:26.020 Listen to the balls this guy had. 0.97

00:37:29.680 OPEC had an oil minister's meeting, right? 0.96

00:37:32.680 And for those who don't know what OPEC is, it's the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

00:37:39.240 So it's basically like your oil kind of commission.

00:37:43.820 It's the monopoly, yeah.

00:37:44.500 Right?

00:37:44.980 Yeah.

00:37:45.360 Yeah, monopoly.

00:37:46.600 What do you call it?

00:37:47.680 The cartel. 0.72

00:37:49.400 It's an oil cartel.

00:37:50.380 Very fair.

00:37:50.920 So he and his gang of terrorists raided the OPEC oil ministers meeting in Vienna, Austria, and kidnapped every single minister of oil. 0.69

00:38:02.680 they killed three people says there yeah he and he demanded a plane flew everybody to libya took

00:38:10.200 his billion dollars ransom that they gave him and then let everybody go wow so he was just trying 0.66

00:38:16.320 to get a bag really oh yeah and he was good at it and then he was so good at it he set up terrorist

00:38:22.320 training camps in libya and lebanon and he trained the ira the iris republican army he trained

00:38:28.200 greece's revolutionary organization 17 november the red brigades the action direct why did he feel

00:38:35.660 so convicted to to do this sort of behavior he was a true believing communist and he just wanted

00:38:43.100 to bring down the west uh-huh interesting yeah but take me back so it's like you guys hear that

00:38:49.540 something's gonna happen something terrible is gonna happen what do you do at that point well

00:38:52.900 see that's the key what do you do we we didn't know what to do so we're going to the you know

00:38:57.680 Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Saudis, this one and that one. And they're like, we don't know

00:39:03.080 what's going on. Well, as it turned out, that wasn't true. Almost all the hijackers, was it

00:39:10.480 17, 16 or 17 of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, right? And we know that the Saudi ambassador

00:39:16.420 to the United States at the time, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, his wife transferred $50,000

00:39:23.780 from her personal bank account to the hijackers.

00:39:27.360 What are we supposed to make of that?

00:39:29.060 Yeah, sometimes you got to get your girl to Vimmo

00:39:30.660 if you got it, you know what I'm saying?

00:39:31.860 Seriously, you know, the only time I ever saw George Tenet,

00:39:35.180 it was the CIA director at the time, 1.00

00:39:36.460 the only time I ever saw George completely lose his shit 1.00

00:39:39.900 was in a meeting with Prince Bandar. 0.99

00:39:43.300 He said, if we don't start getting help

00:39:46.740 from the Saudi government on this case, 0.97

00:39:50.720 We're going to start killing people, a lot of people, 0.99

00:39:54.160 and some of them are going to be named Al Saud. 0.97

00:39:58.000 I go out to Pakistan as the chief of counterterrorism operations there

00:40:02.680 in January of 02.

00:40:04.740 So it's still fresh.

00:40:06.100 We're bombing Tora Bora. 1.00

00:40:07.840 All these Al Qaeda people are trying to get out of Afghanistan, 1.00

00:40:10.440 cross into Pakistan, and my job was then to catch them 1.00

00:40:13.360 when they came into Pakistan. 0.98

00:40:14.260 But we're bombing what? 1.00

00:40:15.180 We're bombing which country? 0.99

00:40:17.020 Afghanistan. 1.00

00:40:17.600 We're bombing Afghanistan, right?

00:40:18.620 But there was, why were we looking for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? 0.60

00:40:21.700 That's where they were living. 1.00

00:40:22.640 All of them. 1.00

00:40:23.240 They launched 9-11 from Afghanistan. 1.00

00:40:25.180 Got it. 0.98

00:40:25.800 At least theoretically, the ideas came when they were in Afghanistan.

00:40:31.480 Because from the American population, it always felt like we never went after Saudi Arabia. 0.58

00:40:35.500 That's what it felt like.

00:40:36.380 Yeah.

00:40:37.060 And we should have.

00:40:38.560 But didn't you know that?

00:40:40.480 We did not.

00:40:42.320 We suspected, but we didn't have, there was no smoking gun.

00:40:46.560 So that's what I'm getting to.

00:40:47.880 We catch Abu Zubaydah, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Hussein, Abu Zubaydah, who we believed at

00:40:53.460 the time- 0.99

00:40:53.920 Oh, shit, I thought you were having a stroke for a second. 0.99

00:40:55.340 No, no, that's his name. 1.00

00:40:56.480 No, I'm just joking.

00:40:57.160 That was a joke.

00:40:57.860 The profession, I know.

00:40:58.920 The profession of faith, la ilaha, la ilaha, Muhammad Rasulallah, everybody thinks of him.

00:41:02.820 I've been around people that are stroking out, and if you don't tap in with them, they'll

00:41:06.200 just keep going.

00:41:07.100 Oh, jeez.

00:41:08.020 You know? 0.98

00:41:08.580 And they never buy a vowel, and then they just fucking tap out, you know? 0.99

00:41:12.740 Oh, that's terrible. 0.97

00:41:13.700 So you guys were doing this guy?

00:41:15.060 So we're looking for him.

00:41:16.340 Oh, bro.

00:41:17.280 And we catch him. 1.00

00:41:18.260 This dude is a fucking mumble rapper, I think. 1.00

00:41:20.640 Go on. 1.00

00:41:21.380 He, we were on him for six weeks we chased him.

00:41:24.980 Some days we'd bust down the door and there's like a warm meal and a half lit cigarette still on the table.

00:41:29.760 We're like, dang it, with 15 minutes we could have gotten him.

00:41:32.640 Some days we were a day or two behind.

00:41:34.680 So he knew we were after him.

00:41:36.280 He knew we were chased him all over the frigging country. 0.75

00:41:39.640 And we catch him.

00:41:42.480 In late March 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

00:41:46.600 So we also confiscated his diary.

00:41:51.660 This, this led to a huge fight between the FBI and the CIA, huge.

00:41:55.940 And the CIA was right and the FBI was wrong.

00:41:58.520 But, um, the, the fight was, well, we had, we captured his diary.

00:42:05.380 So I'm sitting there.

00:42:06.680 Dude, that sounds so suspect that he has a diary.

00:42:09.620 It was more than a diary though.

00:42:11.640 But even though, you know what I'm saying?

00:42:12.940 Like as a regular person.

00:42:14.080 Oh, no, it didn't have terrorism stuff in it.

00:42:16.100 Right. 0.99

00:42:16.520 But even then, first of all, who the fuck has a- 0.99

00:42:19.060 See, but look- 0.99

00:42:19.960 He does have an eyepatch.

00:42:21.220 A sketcher, yeah.

00:42:22.340 Oh, he drew a lot as well.

00:42:23.700 It's all drawings.

00:42:25.040 All of it.

00:42:25.340 Oh, okay.

00:42:25.880 Yeah, all of it's drawings.

00:42:27.360 And most of them are classified top secret.

00:42:29.480 The CIA wouldn't allow them to be released.

00:42:32.100 Got it.

00:42:32.780 Because they were mostly about the torture that was done to him.

00:42:35.740 Understood.

00:42:36.380 So anyway, we catch the diary and I call headquarters and I said, listen, we got his diary and 0.98

00:42:42.340 there's some fascinating shit in here. Like what? And I said, well, for one, they're the cell phone 0.97

00:42:48.280 numbers of three Saudi princes. Like what's up with that? So they were like, put it in writing.

00:42:54.000 So I write this cable back and I was like, we found these three princes here. There are cell

00:42:58.260 phone numbers. George calls in the Saudi ambassador. The president calls the king.

00:43:02.580 What kind of country you running over there? So we said, we want those three princes. We want them

00:43:08.120 like right now. Next thing you know, one goes into the hospital for bariatric surgery because

00:43:14.300 they're all fat and he dies on the operating table. The other one is driving from Riyadh to

00:43:22.120 Jeddah on the Riyadh to Jeddah highway. He's in a one car accident and is killed in the accident.

00:43:28.660 The third one goes camping in the desert, which is a very popular pastime and dies of thirst.

00:43:34.760 yeah so we couldn't interrogate any of them who do you think was you think that uh saudi arabia

00:43:42.680 did that 100 right do you think we ever got uh to the bottom of 9-11 do you think no you don't

00:43:49.940 no and i'm going to say something that's very unpopular um i think that the israelis while

00:43:56.500 not involved in 9-11 absolutely positively had advanced warning of 9-11 they had sources inside

00:44:02.720 of Al Qaeda. And they purposely did not tell us the details because they knew what was going to

00:44:09.040 happen. They knew that we would attack Afghanistan and we would attack Iraq and we would kill 2 0.94

00:44:16.080 million Muslims. And I mean, these dancing Israelis, they've never answered for this. 1.00

00:44:21.420 I'm still mad about the dancing Israelis. I've heard about the dancing Israelis. Bring it up.

00:44:26.720 So you're saying that you believe that they knew. I think they knew in advance and didn't warn us.

00:44:31.560 But they didn't warn us because we would then, we would-

00:44:33.760 We would do their dirty work for them.

00:44:35.180 We would take out issues with their surrounding guys.

00:44:38.700 You know, there are videos making the rounds now of Benjamin Netanyahu over the years,

00:44:42.620 over the last 20 plus years, testifying before Congress and saying,

00:44:47.680 you know, if we just took out Saddam Hussein, we would be peace in the Middle East.

00:44:53.020 If we just took out Muammar Gaddafi, there would be, I guarantee you, he says, 0.59

00:44:57.680 there would be peace in the Middle East.

00:44:59.200 And we do it all. 0.65

00:44:59.740 We take out Iran and we're going to have peace in the Middle East. 0.99

00:45:02.560 It's starting to get a little bit more like. 1.00

00:45:04.860 I think so.

00:45:05.380 A little sus.

00:45:06.060 Yeah. 1.00

00:45:06.800 So the Iraqis have electrical towers like we have everywhere, but ours have four legs 1.00

00:45:12.240 and the Iraqis have three legs. 1.00

00:45:14.660 So just a few days before we attacked Iraq, at that time, I'm the executive assistant

00:45:19.960 to the deputy director for operations at the CIA.

00:45:23.400 So it's a serious, the most serious job I ever had in my life.

00:45:26.480 So you have access to a lot.

00:45:27.640 Literally everything.

00:45:28.760 Wow. 0.65

00:45:29.300 And the Israelis come to us and they said, 0.89

00:45:30.980 listen, you guys are going to attack Iraq in a couple of days. 1.00

00:45:32.880 We want in. 1.00

00:45:33.980 We said, absolutely not. 1.00

00:45:36.360 We put this coalition together with all these Arab countries. 1.00

00:45:39.440 As soon as you guys jump in, all the Arabs are going to drop out. 1.00

00:45:42.540 Just let us do it. 1.00

00:45:44.380 Next thing you know,

00:45:46.060 every one of these electrical towers just begins to topple over,

00:45:49.220 like 150 miles worth in the Western desert.

00:45:52.400 Because somebody put explosives on just one of the three legs.

00:45:56.660 And I remember my boss saying, 1.00

00:45:58.360 these damn israelis they just can't leave well enough alone they just don't ever do as they're 0.99

00:46:06.020 told um let me look at this the dancing israelis and we're talking about the israeli government 0.99

00:46:11.320 we're not talking about yeah israeli people i'm i'm far less worried about the dancing israelis

00:46:16.800 than than i am about the israelis who were arrested on 9-11 okay it was but just so i just

00:46:21.600 so i can say the claim because i don't know i've never even spoken about this the dancing israelis

00:46:24.960 is a 9-11 related conspiracy trope based on the arrest of five israeli men in new jersey on

00:46:30.180 september 11 2001 um and this is uh according to perplexity and it was some guys i think they were

00:46:37.020 on a building top and they were kind of dancing like around high-fiving each other yeah a bread

00:46:41.380 truck or something as the uh as you can see the towers in the distance um yeah a new jersey woman

00:46:47.560 reported five men near a van overlooking manhattan who appeared to be celebrating and taking photos

00:46:51.680 as the Twin Towers burned.

00:46:53.520 Police later stopped a suspicious van

00:46:55.280 and detained five Israeli citizens.

00:46:57.860 They had items like box cutters

00:46:59.620 and multiple passports,

00:47:01.140 which conspiracy theorists later fixated on,

00:47:03.540 but box cutters are normal tools

00:47:04.940 for a moving delivery job.

00:47:07.720 They were happy because they knew exactly

00:47:09.720 what was going to happen,

00:47:10.760 that we would have to enter the war, 0.94

00:47:12.560 we would attack Afghanistan, 0.96

00:47:14.260 we would probably then, you know, 0.99

00:47:17.360 take a permanent position in the region,

00:47:20.360 which is exactly what happened.

00:47:21.440 And that's why they were dancing.

00:47:22.560 They were happy. 1.00

00:47:23.220 9-11 was a good thing for Israel. 1.00

00:47:25.500 It got us militarily engaged over the long term.

00:47:29.060 But you don't think that they were involved

00:47:30.400 in the setting up of it?

00:47:31.460 I don't, no, no, no.

00:47:33.100 And there's never been any evidence

00:47:35.120 to suggest that they were involved in any way.

00:47:37.020 Yeah, I have no idea.

00:47:38.240 No, but there was another thing too.

00:47:40.760 And this is a bigger issue. 0.62

00:47:43.420 It's that the Israelis spy on the United States. 0.84

00:47:48.160 They've always spied on the United States. 0.69

00:47:49.960 Do we spy on them also?

00:47:51.140 No, and that's written in stone at the CIA. 0.61

00:47:54.540 We do not spy on Israel, but they openly spy on us.

00:47:58.420 They're all over the country stealing defense secrets.

00:48:00.880 Do we spy on other countries?

00:48:02.160 Yeah, we spy on almost every...

00:48:03.960 Why can't we spy on them?

00:48:06.300 It's a political decision that's been made.

00:48:09.180 Yeah, a political decision in the White House, on Capitol Hill. 0.89

00:48:14.980 Sometimes it just feels like our country is just kind of owned by Israel

00:48:18.020 and they just don't say that.

00:48:19.360 Do you think that that's true or do you think that's fictional?

00:48:22.080 Well, I don't think it's so clear cut.

00:48:23.640 I think the truth is that the Israelis have inordinate political influence in the United States, especially in our elections. 0.83

00:48:31.300 Yeah.

00:48:32.160 Well, they just had that election with Thomas Massey that—

00:48:34.480 Exactly.

00:48:35.100 That's the best example.

00:48:36.520 That got overtaken.

00:48:37.420 What happened with that election?

00:48:38.600 Let's bring it up.

00:48:39.080 I mean, I know that Thomas lost a lot, but it was the largest—

00:48:42.260 Yeah, $35 million was spent.

00:48:44.300 The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Representative Thomas Massey on Tuesday, which they did, in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records.

00:48:59.640 Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC, stood up by President Donald Trump's political operation that has spent nearly $7 million on the race.

00:49:09.680 overall ad spending is top 32 million making it the most expensive house primary on record

00:49:15.280 per tracking firm ad impact wow for a job that pays 180 000 a year so what are the long-term

00:49:23.040 benefits of them getting this position or was it just about getting massey out it was getting

00:49:27.220 massey the thing about apac is if you are not 100 pro-israel they will primary you they'll they'll

00:49:35.580 primary you with somebody who is 100% pro-Israel. And sometimes, you know, the perfect is the enemy

00:49:42.100 of the good where, um, where you've got, for example, there was a, an incumbent Democrat in

00:49:47.860 New Jersey who voted pro-Israel 90% of the time. They ran a primary opponent against him. Um,

00:49:56.160 and, uh, who was a hundred percent pro-Israel and he lost, but so did she. And the one that won 0.67

00:50:03.540 was the one that's pro-Palestinian.

00:50:05.640 Ah, I see. 0.90

00:50:06.620 So sometimes by taking out, by aiming for one,

00:50:09.300 you might let another through.

00:50:10.580 You end up hurting your own cause.

00:50:11.960 Got it.

00:50:12.360 Yeah.

00:50:12.680 Yeah, well, I think, I mean,

00:50:13.600 I can understand people's angst with this sort of thing.

00:50:16.820 I mean, the biggest thing is just like,

00:50:18.740 if Israel is involved in a genocide, right? 0.81

00:50:20.800 They're genociding people. 0.87

00:50:22.380 It's almost like, why would you let Nazi Germany

00:50:25.060 invest in your people who are going to be running 0.51

00:50:30.100 congressmen or senators in your country?

00:50:33.540 it's crazy i don't see how there's not a law like why isn't there a law if there's some if a

00:50:39.080 country's doing like a like a holocaust or like a genocide that they're not allowed to invest in um

00:50:45.920 that they're not allowed to have a lobby in in in our elections see was there ever a law about that 0.70

00:50:51.560 no and and they would lose their shit over the use of the word genocide you used it i use it 0.98

00:50:59.020 it's a genocide. We've been using it on here for years. It meets all the international legal 0.99

00:51:03.760 requirements of a genocide. Yeah. Well, I think the UN has voted that it is. Yeah. Um, I don't

00:51:09.500 know if the vote passed because I think there was maybe some groups that were, that wouldn't agree

00:51:13.620 to it. Um, well, it didn't pass the security council, but it passed by 90 something percent

00:51:20.120 in the general assembly. Yeah. But I just, I don't understand why that seems fair. And also I'm

00:51:25.340 amazed that i don't understand why people that made like movies and wrote books about the holocaust

00:51:30.360 why they don't speak up and say hey yeah this is the same thing that i wrote about you know i'm

00:51:36.140 saying you can show picture to picture that makes it exactly killing is wrong it's wrong no matter

00:51:40.740 who's doing the killing or who's being killed it's just wrong but i don't see why some of those 0.98

00:51:45.200 people don't speak up you know well there there is an increasingly large number of jewish americans

00:51:51.160 who are speaking out.

00:51:52.900 There's a big group called Jewish Voices for Peace.

00:51:56.020 The Orthodox Jewish community in New York

00:51:59.160 has been very vocal.

00:52:00.780 Just this week, there was-

00:52:03.580 There was a protest going on, wasn't there?

00:52:04.700 The annual Israel Day parade.

00:52:07.320 And a lot of the Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn

00:52:10.740 showed up with Palestinian and Iranian flags 0.68

00:52:13.720 and it caused violence. 0.99

00:52:15.700 Yeah.

00:52:16.180 Yeah, I guess I just don't understand

00:52:19.080 why what are like what is america afraid of like like what have you seen like in the cia because

00:52:25.480 it does you hear a lot that like oh yeah that that the israeli influence like has taken over

00:52:31.880 our cia and our fbi do you think that that's true or not well i can't speak to the fbi and my my cia

00:52:38.440 information is dated i left the cia more than 20 years ago but when i was there we kept the israelis

00:52:44.440 at arm's length, like seriously so. The very first intelligence, liaison intelligence briefing

00:52:52.320 I ever gave was to the Israelis. I had been only on the job six weeks and my boss said, listen,

00:52:57.640 you're going to give a liaison briefing. It's going to be a whole big group of people. So you're

00:53:01.440 going to be the last one to talk because you're the most junior, but you need to know some of

00:53:06.360 the ground rules. He said, we do not meet with the Israelis in the building. We used to, but every

00:53:13.500 time they'd come, they'd bring us gifts. And the gifts are always packed with listening devices

00:53:18.060 and batteries. Is that true? Yes. A hundred percent true. Would you guys find him? How do

00:53:22.060 you even know that that's true? Because you have to x-ray everything that comes into the building.

00:53:25.360 You can just wantonly walk in off the street with, you know, boxes of gifts and say, here,

00:53:29.520 this is for you. And what'd they do to sew a couple of Palestinian ears from the rubble? 0.66

00:53:33.420 And they're like, Oh, we're just joking. Oh, it was like joking stuff. Yeah. It's not joking. 0.99

00:53:39.320 Right. So that happened during your time. Was that with other countries too? So I'm sure there's

00:53:43.000 other countries that like oh there are other countries we don't even have liaison with got

00:53:46.700 it but with the israelis we had to we had to rent a place and we would meet with them in the place

00:53:50.940 um on my very first day at the cia you meet in the auditorium called the bubble and the head of

00:53:58.180 hr comes out and the director comes and says welcome to the cia and then the head of security

00:54:02.800 it's just a parade of important people come to welcome you so the head of security said

00:54:07.040 He said a couple of things. One was funny. He said, the gravest threat facing America today

00:54:13.640 is the threat of Soviet communism. And I said to the guy next to me, does this guy not read the

00:54:19.040 papers? There is no Soviet Union anymore. Anyway, he went on to say that the Israelis have two

00:54:26.540 declared intelligence officers in the United States, one Mossad and one Shin Bet. So CIA and

00:54:32.900 FBI equivalents. They're at the Israeli embassy in Washington, but the FBI has identified 187

00:54:40.320 additional undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spread out all over America,

00:54:45.880 stealing secrets from defense contractors. So the, the lesson was don't ever talk about work

00:54:54.200 outside the building. Don't ever eat at the restaurants in McLean, Virginia, because they're

00:54:58.240 all Russian KGB. And back then it was the KGB and Israeli Mossad agents eating there to hear

00:55:05.820 what the CIA people are saying. Wow. Yeah. It sounds exciting though. At least it was kind of

00:55:10.800 exciting. I bet it was, it was like a real whodunit. I loved it. I really did. I loved it

00:55:15.420 until I didn't love it. You know, after nine 11, everybody went nuts and just wanted to kill

00:55:19.920 everyone. I was getting ready to go to Pakistan. And so I stopped by the office on my way to the 0.80

00:55:24.700 airport just to say goodbye. Because Kofor said on 9-11, he stood up on his desk. Kofor Black,

00:55:29.520 you said? Kofor Black, yeah. He stood up on his desk and he said, today we're at war. 0.54

00:55:34.240 All of us are going to have to do our part. Not all of us are going to be able to come home.

00:55:38.740 So he said, if you want to walk now, walk and nobody will think less of you. Nobody budged.

00:55:44.720 So I stopped by the office because I want to say goodbye. I don't know. Am I going to get

00:55:48.860 shot? Am I going to get blown up? Am I going to get killed? I don't know. So I just want to say 0.88

00:55:52.740 goodbye. Say goodbye to Kofor? No, to Kofor, to my boss, excuse me, and to the people I was 1.00

00:55:59.260 working with. Well, why would you have gotten shot? I was the chief of counterterrorism operations.

00:56:03.100 That's the job I'm going out to. I'm busting down doors three nights a week. And, um, and I worked

00:56:09.800 for this guy, lovely, lovely guy, nice suits, just a really like, like very professorial. And he gives

00:56:17.660 me a hug and he leans in and he says, kill them all. And I said, really? Have we gotten there 1.00

00:56:23.400 already? And he says, kill them all. And then I went to the airport. I was like, am I the only 1.00

00:56:29.720 guy who thinks we should do this by the book? Apparently I was. That's crazy, man. It was

00:56:37.720 ugly. You should see some of the pictures I have on my phone. Let's make your hair stand up.

00:56:42.000 I don't know. There's already a lot of stuff I'm not allowed to look at. I have blockers on my

00:56:47.420 phone so uh yeah i'm just gonna donate my eyes to charity i think soon um this a safer ontario

00:56:56.320 means more police and prosecutors making sure my car doesn't get stolen it means building new jails

00:57:01.900 to keep criminals behind bars and it means there's no need to worry when i play at the park

00:57:07.180 we're making every corner of ontario safer to make all of ontario safer that's how we protect

00:57:13.440 Ontario. For all of us. Learn how at Ontario.ca slash Safer Ontario. Paid for by the Government

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00:59:45.440 So when you get involved, like, how bad did it get after 9-11 where the rules of, like, interrogating and that sort of thing changed?

00:59:56.320 Ah, that's a good question.

00:59:57.580 you know the the dirty little secret was literally not one single CIA officer was

01:00:05.260 trained in interrogation techniques so I as soon as we started catching these guys I mean I'd only

01:00:11.160 been there but a week we started catching them and my boss is like interrogate them I'm like I'm

01:00:15.860 I don't know how to interrogate people I can interview them and what do you even wear sneakers

01:00:20.460 and what do you even put on to do something like that yeah I wore sneakers most days polo shirt

01:00:25.700 jeans bro you can't interrogate somebody in a polo shirt that's all i brought with me that and

01:00:31.500 sweatshirts because it was cold when i arrived you got to put on a chicago bears jersey or something

01:00:35.800 oh my god it was so weird see in one of the early raids we had also confiscated the al-qaeda

01:00:42.740 training manual well i i do you still have one of those or not you know no no i turned everything in

01:00:47.860 but you know what it might be online it might be out there now i want one so i was uh i spoke

01:00:54.640 and read Arabic. And so we're going through the training manual and I'm translating it to the

01:01:01.040 guys in my branch as I'm reading it. Well, everything that was in the manual, these

01:01:06.300 prisoners would do as we would catch them. So I say, what's your name? The guy goes,

01:01:10.900 oh, like he's having a ruptured appendix. Oh, what's your name? And he like pretends to faint

01:01:16.680 and falls off the chair. And then he just kind of opens one eye to look at you. I'm like,

01:01:20.160 Get the fuck up and get back in the chair 0.99

01:01:22.280 What's your name 1.00

01:01:22.900 And then like do you hit him 0.60

01:01:26.320 Do you not hit him

01:01:27.760 Do you grab him by the shirt and shake

01:01:29.580 I mean I don't know what the rules were

01:01:31.260 There were no rules

01:01:32.660 So what kind of environment

01:01:34.300 What did you end up having to do

01:01:36.720 What do you do in those sort of situations

01:01:38.360 Are you responsible to garner information

01:01:41.080 Do you even feel like the people you're catching

01:01:43.760 Have real information 0.97

01:01:44.880 The shit sounds kind of vague 0.98

01:01:46.200 Everybody has something 0.99

01:01:49.320 It's called the mosaic concept where everybody's got a little tile in his brain. And if you collect

01:01:55.180 enough tiles, you can put the whole picture together. So, I mean, some of it sounds comical

01:02:00.300 now. Um, I would say to the Pakistani Lieutenant Colonel that I was working with on a daily basis,

01:02:07.560 I'd say, you want to be the good cop today? I'll be the bad cop. Or you want to be the bad cop 1.00

01:02:12.300 again? I'll be the good cop. And then we decide in advance. Then I go in, you know, we start

01:02:16.020 talking to these guys. The first guy we captured, he was Jordanian and they bring him in. He's

01:02:21.120 shackled at the ankles, shackled at the waist. And then they undo the waist shackle and they,

01:02:26.560 they chain him to an eye bolt in the, in the table. So you have to know the answers to all

01:02:33.160 the questions that you're asking. Right? So I'm like, what's your name? He tells me his name.

01:02:37.980 Uh, how, where did you come from? I came from Tora Bora. And what happened in Tora Bora?

01:02:43.900 the Americans began bombing us. And then where did you go? He said, I tried to escape. So I went

01:02:49.220 into a cave and then the Americans bombed the cave and the guy like had blood squirted out of his

01:02:54.060 ears and he had brain damage and finally made it across the border. I lay out a map. Tell me exactly

01:03:01.340 how you got across the border. We knew what the rat lines were. And he told the truth. This is the 0.99

01:03:05.980 way we came through this past. Everything he told me was true. And so I said to him, he said, what's

01:03:13.640 going to happen to me? And I said, honestly, I don't know. You're probably going to spend some

01:03:17.900 time in jail here. And then we're going to send you to Jordan. And I don't know what the Jordanians 0.99

01:03:21.720 are going to do to you because he was Jordanian. Yeah. So I said to him, but let me ask you something.

01:03:29.220 I know that what you told me was true. Why did you tell me the truth? And he goes,

01:03:33.900 I'm your prisoner. What good would it do me to lie to you? He said, I know how these things work.

01:03:40.620 I know that you knew the answers to these questions.

01:03:42.980 It doesn't help me in any way to lie to you.

01:03:46.120 And then I said, okay, thank you.

01:03:47.980 And then he says, let me ask you something now.

01:03:50.380 He said, I assume you're Christian.

01:03:52.440 And I said, yes.

01:03:53.920 And he says, I would like to invite you into the embrace of Islam and I'll be your godfather.

01:04:00.200 I said, well, thank you very much.

01:04:02.140 And what is that?

01:04:02.600 It's almost like the Boy Scouts or something.

01:04:04.060 I mean, he's like, there's a scout leader kind of like, like he'll like be like your sponsor.

01:04:08.160 Yeah.

01:04:08.420 Like my sponsor.

01:04:09.380 He's going to convert me to Islam and I'm going to say-

01:04:11.620 Which is Muslim, yeah?

01:04:12.480 Yeah, yeah. 0.64

01:04:13.000 Okay.

01:04:13.840 And I said, yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

01:04:18.080 And I wish you the best.

01:04:19.500 And I remember saying to a colleague of mine, my God, if everyone goes like that, it's going to be incredible.

01:04:24.340 The next raid we did, we bust down the door, two o'clock in the morning, and it's two kids.

01:04:31.500 They're 19 years old from Tunisia.

01:04:33.780 And they both just burst into tears.

01:04:36.700 And so we cuff them.

01:04:37.920 and one kid is just heaving, sobbing, and the other one is begging me to let him call his mother.

01:04:44.280 And I'm like, no, I'm sorry. You can't call your mother. What'd they do? They were Arabs without

01:04:51.040 passports or visas in an Al-Qaeda safe house, and that was good enough for me. Got it. So we got to 1.00

01:04:57.740 the point where we had literally filled the Rawalpindi jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. It's

01:05:04.580 gigantic city that's kind of

01:05:07.140 attached to Islamabad. Islamabad's the

01:05:09.040 capital, but it's very, very small.

01:05:11.220 Rawalpindi is where the military

01:05:13.060 is located, and it's like

01:05:14.800 5, 6, 7 million people there.

01:05:17.860 So,

01:05:19.300 Rawalpindi Jail, there it is.

01:05:21.520 That's it. My God, I haven't

01:05:23.160 been to Rawalpindi Jail

01:05:25.160 in 24 years. I'll tell you what,

01:05:27.160 I don't remember it looking that good either.

01:05:29.120 I've never been.

01:05:31.560 Thank your lucky stars.

01:05:32.980 Really? Yeah, it's not good.

01:05:34.580 So, so the, the packs called me and they said, look, we've, we've literally filled the jail.

01:05:40.040 You got to do something with these guys. I said, okay. So I call headquarters. I said,

01:05:44.180 the packs are telling me that the jail is full. What do you want to do with them?

01:05:46.880 They said, put them on a C-12 and send them to Guantanamo. I said, Guantanamo, Cuba.

01:05:53.360 Why would we send them to Cuba? And they said, we came up with this idea.

01:05:58.120 We're going to send everybody to Cuba, and then we're going to divide them up after we figure out what federal district court to charge them with.

01:06:07.540 Because 9-11 was an open criminal investigation at the time, and the crimes were committed in the eastern district of Massachusetts, hijacking, the western district of Pennsylvania, hijacking, the eastern district of Virginia, the Pentagon, and the southern district of New York. 0.96

01:06:24.360 I said, that's a great idea. 0.79

01:06:26.040 So we just started loading these guys on an endless, you know, parade of C-12 transport planes and sent them to Guantanamo.

01:06:33.380 And then somebody in Dick Cheney's office, probably David Addington, although he's never admitted it, somebody said, you know what?

01:06:43.480 These guys don't have any rights in Cuba.

01:06:46.700 Why don't we just leave them there like forever? 0.93

01:06:49.920 And here we are 24 years later.

01:06:53.080 Some of them are still there?

01:06:53.920 And they're still there.

01:06:54.980 Most of them, you think?

01:06:55.760 34 of them at the height we had like 770 i think was when it was at its most full i went there one

01:07:04.040 time as a to perform as a comedian yeah went down there and was performing for some of the troops

01:07:08.960 here and stuff you got to see some of the uh just the way you would fly in it see it in the distance

01:07:13.000 oh yeah well when you the way you'd fly in at night uh they would fly in like this kind of

01:07:16.960 crazy pattern and yeah they do and it was lit up it almost looked like a big wedding ring in the

01:07:22.580 distance because they had like just these bright, bright lights, um, on the fences surrounding the,

01:07:29.580 uh, the base. And so you come in like at this crazy kind of pattern and, uh, and you kind of

01:07:35.700 had to go around. We went right. Cause you can't cross Cuban airspace. You have to go around and

01:07:40.820 come up from the South. We went from somewhere in Florida and went around. Yeah. It was pretty

01:07:44.780 intense. I mean, it was definitely, it was interesting. Uh, and then we got to go right

01:07:48.380 up by the by the detainee centers and i think we even saw some guys playing volleyball and stuff

01:07:54.020 but um were there tortures where people lost their lives were you that you were involved in

01:07:59.200 not that i was involved in thank god there were you know but like at what point do you call like

01:08:04.640 one office getting out of hand like have you been in one that was getting out of hand

01:08:07.800 no because when we were catching guys we had not yet implemented the torture program

01:08:13.320 so the torture program was was conceived and approved in october of 2001 okay i got to pakistan

01:08:20.360 in january of 2002 and we're like what do we do with these guys well we the fbi's there with us

01:08:27.160 there you can't you can't like hit them or you can't do anything to them if they don't talk then

01:08:32.240 okay we just send them to guantanamo and because you you ended up coming out and talking speaking

01:08:36.980 out about yeah uh torch that was happening right but how would they let you do that if you weren't

01:08:41.920 aware of it firsthand though. Well, because remember I became the executive assistant to

01:08:45.980 the deputy director. Oh, so you would see the reports coming back. You'd see all the cables

01:08:49.120 coming back in. Yeah, exactly. Huh. Was some of it pretty intense, do you feel like? Oh, it was

01:08:54.620 bad. You know, I, most, most of the news outlets that I talked to, they make the biggest deal out

01:09:00.180 of waterboarding. There's waterboarding right there. Um, I think that there were, there were

01:09:05.880 techniques that were worse than waterboarding sleep deprivation yeah is one um and in terms

01:09:12.740 of causing death uh the cold cell you see sensory deprivation that was also a terrible one what is

01:09:19.360 that like sensory deprivation they put you in in like an isolation tank and you're surrounded by

01:09:25.660 water and you literally go crazy from the silence so you're in like a like one of those uh like

01:09:32.460 kind of one of those places you can go pay to do and it's like quiet in there but instead of being

01:09:36.480 in there for an hour or two hours you're in there for three weeks is there are they playing music or

01:09:42.040 no it's it's complete silence and darkness complete and total like you're dead well yeah

01:09:48.400 i think aaron rogers does that i think that's nuts but there were a couple that were worse than

01:09:53.720 than uh waterboarding the cold cell we strip the prisoner naked you chain him to an eye bolt in

01:10:01.620 the ceiling. So he can't lay or sit or get comfortable in any way. Can you keep your

01:10:05.300 underpants on it? No, no, no, no. Because the idea is to humiliate them. Remember in their

01:10:10.680 religion, nakedness is shameful. Yeah. Right. And nakedness in front of a woman. And we would

01:10:17.620 have women interrogators stripped them naked just to humiliate them. Yeah. You see this rectal 1.00

01:10:23.260 feeding, um, rectal feeding. Yeah. What we did is we forced tubes up their asses and then with a

01:10:29.420 pumped hummus up there just to insult their culture. 1.00

01:10:33.820 No way.

01:10:35.280 Who was coming up with these ideas?

01:10:36.840 I'm sure there were two contract psychologists at the CIA,

01:10:40.560 James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

01:10:43.360 Is that true?

01:10:44.280 They came up with these plans?

01:10:45.880 Yeah.

01:10:46.140 And we paid them $108 million of the taxpayers' money for it.

01:10:49.100 Wow.

01:10:50.000 But when you look at, were these people criminals?

01:10:53.300 See, this is what's in it.

01:10:54.220 Well, that's the thing.

01:10:55.240 That's the thing, Theo.

01:10:56.260 They've never been charged with a crime.

01:10:58.220 Right.

01:10:58.560 so charge them if these guys are as bad as we say they are charge them with a crime if they're as 0.99

01:11:04.300 bad as we say they are find them guilty sentence them to death and execute them we won't even 0.95

01:11:09.880 charge people in our country who are committing a crime a crime no so i think that it's like 0.69

01:11:14.780 that's like a problem that's been across the board is like what is the crime charge somebody

01:11:21.080 with a crime yeah it's not happening in our own country but you can't this is so wild to hear

01:11:25.740 about because it's like you know it's really it's interesting like just as a person right you're

01:11:29.920 like okay did these guys do something really bad to kill people in our country right did were they

01:11:36.080 doing really harmful stuff are they like and they were right yeah but but they confessed through

01:11:41.580 torture so none of it's admissible none of it right okay so but then it's like yeah it's like

01:11:47.960 how do you solve something like that you know with more crime well there was a there was a deal that

01:11:54.100 was made during the Biden administration. So it was like the top three or four, Khalid Sheikh

01:12:03.640 Mohammed, Amar al-Baluch, Ramzi bin Hashib, and somebody else. They agreed to plead guilty to

01:12:12.380 terrorism. And what they got in exchange was life without parole and a promise not to send them to

01:12:21.980 supermax in colorado because they they said they couldn't deal with the cold they wanted to stay in

01:12:26.580 cuba because it's warm so life without parole and biden's uh secretary of defense um vacated the

01:12:34.900 deal and he says you can't make a deal like that i have to make that deal because i'm the secretary

01:12:40.200 of defense and it went through the courts and then the biden administration there it is right there

01:12:46.040 The Biden administration, Department of Defense, and who were these four guys?

01:12:51.580 They were the men accused of plotting—

01:12:52.860 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Wali Ben-Naitaj, Mustafa Hassawi.

01:12:56.060 They were accused of plotting the September 11th terrorist attacks, right?

01:12:59.340 The Biden administration, Department of Defense, reached plea agreements with three prominent al-Qaeda figures, whom you just mentioned, accused of plotting the September 11th terrorist attacks.

01:13:08.720 However, following intense political and public backlash, the administration moved to block the agreement, and the courts later threw it out.

01:13:14.340 So what happened to the guys?

01:13:15.560 They're just still being held?

01:13:16.580 They're just still there.

01:13:17.100 You see right there, the terms, they agreed to plead guilty to murdering 2,976 people

01:13:24.140 in exchange for life without parole.

01:13:27.440 Okay.

01:13:28.020 So the deal was thrown out.

01:13:29.960 So now what do they have?

01:13:31.800 They have life without parole.

01:13:33.600 That's the deal.

01:13:34.700 Right.

01:13:35.420 Same thing.

01:13:36.120 It's the same thing.

01:13:37.940 They're never going to be released.

01:13:39.360 But why didn't we, what was the reason why?

01:13:41.500 Oh, because the reaction from people?

01:13:44.040 It was really reaction from the Biden administration, from the Biden Defense Department.

01:13:49.080 There was 9-11 families too. 0.53

01:13:50.880 I guess the 9-11 families just want to chop everybody's head off. 0.84

01:13:54.280 And I understand. 0.86

01:13:55.300 I get it.

01:13:55.780 I really do.

01:13:56.560 It makes sense.

01:13:57.160 I get it.

01:13:57.740 But that's never going to happen.

01:14:00.000 It's never going to happen.

01:14:01.620 We're a country of laws.

01:14:03.400 We can't just pretend that we're a country of laws, except when the laws aren't convenient for us.

01:14:08.060 But if you kill enough people, it seems like you would face the death penalty.

01:14:10.640 yes but this you have the you have to blame the cia for that if the cia hadn't tortured these guys

01:14:16.700 they would all be oh i see it was inadmissible it's all inadmissible got it they confessed

01:14:21.960 everything understood it was all under torture and so you can't do anything oh now there's no

01:14:27.660 evidence against none what i can't even imagine what it's like to be some of those families and

01:14:32.780 likes and just the drawn out of all of that and just 24 years 25 years in in september

01:14:38.700 um let's get a little bit more current did you oh did you see that they just had the

01:14:45.380 like they have those flotillas that are going to gaza did you see that the prime minister of

01:14:49.800 ireland's sister was on one of them i'll tell you the irish hate the israelis and the israelis

01:14:56.820 hate the irish has that always been the case you think no only in the last eight or ten years let

01:15:02.460 me see this gaza aid flotilla activist home after torture ship nightmare scroll a little uh irish

01:15:08.840 activists have claimed they were kidnapped and beaten by israeli forces after their aid flotilla

01:15:13.500 to gaza was intercepted in international waters margaret connelly the sister of president connelly

01:15:19.160 was among the emotional arrivals at dublin airport on saturday they wanted us to suffer she said none

01:15:23.960 of them could look us in the eye what a dehumanizing thing to do to men and women aged from 22 to 75

01:15:29.900 that's just wild

01:15:31.220 imagine if like 1.00

01:15:32.020 Obama's sister 0.98

01:15:33.260 or

01:15:34.360 can you imagine

01:15:35.360 can't even imagine

01:15:36.120 I want to interview

01:15:37.120 Greta Thunberg

01:15:37.940 that would be fun

01:15:39.000 it'd be cool huh

01:15:39.660 yeah

01:15:39.920 I just would like to get

01:15:41.160 to see what she's like

01:15:42.120 you know I've never

01:15:43.000 been around her

01:15:43.560 I just see

01:15:44.080 you just see like

01:15:44.660 bits and clips of people

01:15:45.740 right

01:15:46.280 so it'd be pretty fascinating

01:15:48.060 the Irish detainees

01:15:49.320 were among hundreds

01:15:50.100 of participants

01:15:51.080 from other countries

01:15:52.260 who were also detained

01:15:53.520 when the latest iteration

01:15:54.660 of the global

01:15:55.880 Samud Flotilla

01:15:57.940 was stopped

01:15:59.420 by Israeli forces in international waters.

01:16:01.820 And a lot of these groups were trying to get there

01:16:04.080 to bring aid to the people in Gaza.

01:16:06.360 And then also, I think, to just document

01:16:08.460 what was going on there.

01:16:10.740 They've had the largest killing of journalists

01:16:13.960 in the history of time.

01:16:16.680 Yeah, of the world.

01:16:17.700 In the history of the world.

01:16:18.940 How are people not outraged?

01:16:20.760 Have you heard of...

01:16:21.820 I don't know if people have any feelings anymore.

01:16:23.400 I don't know what's going on.

01:16:24.520 Have you heard of Shireen Abu Akhla?

01:16:26.580 No, I couldn't even hear that.

01:16:27.860 I don't even know how to, you know.

01:16:29.420 I couldn't do it if I, yeah.

01:16:32.840 Shireen Abu Akla was an American citizen

01:16:35.540 and she was the top journalist on Al Jazeera.

01:16:39.900 So bring her up. 0.81

01:16:42.040 Shireen? 0.98

01:16:42.420 Shireen Abu Akla.

01:16:43.740 Abu Akla. 0.90

01:16:45.020 So again, American citizen.

01:16:47.240 She goes to Israel and she's covering the fighting

01:16:51.340 between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

01:16:53.140 I think it was in the West Bank.

01:16:54.720 There she is.

01:16:55.840 Yeah, in the West Bank.

01:16:56.720 so she's wearing a bulletproof vest that says press and she's wearing a helmet that says press

01:17:02.740 and she's she's taking cover behind a tree and an israeli sniper shot her in the face

01:17:07.980 and killed her killed her instantly so her funeral is held a couple days later in a greek orthodox

01:17:13.920 church in the west bank the idf raids the church beats the pallbearers and they drop the the coffin 0.98

01:17:23.380 You're lying.

01:17:24.240 Isn't that awful?

01:17:25.140 Let me see.

01:17:25.880 The manner of her death and the subsequent violent disruption of her funeral drew widespread

01:17:30.820 international condemnation of Israel.

01:17:32.880 During her funeral procession, the Israel police attacked the pallbearers at the St.

01:17:37.340 Joseph's Hospital in East Jerusalem with batons and stun grenades.

01:17:40.680 The hospital itself was also stormed by Israeli police officers who assaulted patients and

01:17:45.080 threw stun grenades.

01:17:46.660 What is-

01:17:47.400 An American citizen. 1.00

01:17:49.140 Unbelievable. 1.00

01:17:50.900 And we didn't say anything.

01:17:52.140 We didn't say anything.

01:17:52.760 well most of our media won't say a lot of stuff about this no what do you think's going on it

01:17:58.400 feels like this is almost like it almost feels like um like the twilight zone does that make

01:18:04.920 any sense to you yes very much well as someone who's seen like a lot of like psyops and things

01:18:09.980 that go on what's going on here like like does israel have like an end goal like i like i have

01:18:16.060 a lot of jewish friends that are great people and stuff like that right and one of my best friends

01:18:20.040 is an IDF special forces veteran. 0.99

01:18:22.420 No way.

01:18:23.140 Yeah.

01:18:23.600 How does he feel about this sort of thing?

01:18:25.200 He's ashamed.

01:18:26.200 He's ashamed.

01:18:27.140 He's like, we didn't used to be like this. 0.79

01:18:29.500 I just don't under, like, is there some goal of Israel

01:18:33.020 that's just a bigger goal, do you think?

01:18:35.320 Do you think so?

01:18:36.060 Well, the goal might be in the 2027

01:18:38.640 National Defense Authorization Act.

01:18:41.660 It integrates for the first time ever,

01:18:44.660 the Israeli and American militaries.

01:18:47.040 So they become like one military.

01:18:49.400 it's like who who thought of that oh my friend Ro Khanna actually is putting together wow he's

01:18:57.800 trying to put together a bill I think to challenge this I'm not good and I don't know if the term is

01:19:02.580 a bill I'm not sure so you know I'm more of an emotional guy than I like and respect Ro Khanna

01:19:09.640 I hope he runs for president he's a neat guy we had him on here and it was it was cool I think

01:19:14.700 he's a, I think he's a really interesting guy. I think he's brave. Um, I like the stuff that

01:19:19.860 he's brave enough to do. Um, see, and I say the same thing about Tucker Carlson. I think, I think

01:19:25.420 Tucker, I'll tell you something about Tucker is the Tucker that you see on the screen. That's

01:19:31.480 Tucker in real life. I agree. He's, he's the sweetest guy. He means exactly what he says.

01:19:37.500 He doesn't hold anything back. Totally honest. Well, I think it's like, you're just a human

01:19:44.140 being who lives in a country right and you're supposed to have these like things of what means

01:19:48.140 something and then you start to see all this stuff that you're like well this goes against

01:19:52.220 everything that i've learned exactly this goes against like especially like you grow up like

01:19:57.240 you see like every other book at the airport is about the holocaust for my entire life so it's

01:20:01.720 like every time you get on a plane you're grabbing one you're learning about and you're like you're

01:20:06.280 you you see these things that are wrong or that are like you know and then you see this thing

01:20:12.720 happening like well how is this and then if you mention like and people act like i don't know it's

01:20:19.200 almost like you feel like you're being just gaslit and then your media won't cover a lot of it that's

01:20:24.040 right so i don't know what's going i don't know and i don't know what's going on i was on i was

01:20:28.000 on the pierce morgan show not too long ago i go on every couple of months and i never been on his

01:20:32.880 show what's that guy like oh he's he's a good guy too and i have to be tall or not i haven't met him

01:20:38.680 in person actually only on zoom always wondered how tall he was somebody said he was like five

01:20:42.780 five dude what yeah that would surprise six one six one okay that makes more sense maybe the

01:20:49.620 exchange rate on him or something yeah it's the exchange rate so um i was on his show and i was

01:20:55.500 with um scott horton who's one of the most brilliant people i i've ever met um and alan

01:21:01.920 Dershowitz and, uh, Danny Ayalon, general Danny Ayalon, um, former, former Israeli general.

01:21:09.220 And when, there we are, there we are. So, uh, so when, when you're on with Dershowitz,

01:21:17.860 Dershowitz never shuts his mouth. That's it. That was what I was going to say.

01:21:21.840 Let me see. Former state agent John Kirikou, uh, believes Jeffrey Epstein.

01:21:25.440 Oh no, that wasn't it. That's Jeffrey Epstein. Uh, no, it was about, it was about Hamas and

01:21:30.420 Gaza. And he asked me, because I had said the least on this episode. And he said, do you believe

01:21:35.680 that Hamas is a terrorist organization? And I said, I said, yes, if the point was on October

01:21:41.840 7th was to attack civilians, the definition of terrorism is the act of using violence to instill

01:21:49.440 terror in a civilian population. So that's the definition of terrorism. So yes, Hamas is a

01:21:55.200 terrorist organization. He said, do you believe October 7th was a terrorist attack? And I said,

01:21:59.780 yes he said then what are you doing on this show i was supposed to be in the like anti-israel i 0.99

01:22:05.460 guess or whatever and i said pierce you can't have as a policy just kill everybody women children 0.64

01:22:12.200 the elderly wipe out every hospital every school every apartment block that's genocide yeah 0.96

01:22:18.020 somebody's gotta say it yeah i mean it's scary and then and then and then to think how would

01:22:26.180 our country be okay right now with us joining military forces with a group that's doing that

01:22:31.660 i'm sure not okay and then you have to ask what about these people like ted cruz and lindsey

01:22:37.320 graham lindsey graham said the other day a week ago that until i breathe my last breath i will 0.98

01:22:44.740 stand with israel why why oh that dude's just the newt rockney of fucking bullshit my god and cruz 1.00

01:22:51.580 is just as bad. And these clowns 1.00

01:22:53.600 from Florida that wear IDF 1.00

01:22:55.440 uniforms under the floor of the House, they should be 0.99

01:22:57.540 arrested. I didn't even see that.

01:22:59.520 It was Congressman Fine.

01:23:01.820 Randy Fine. But you're like

01:23:03.560 an eight. You're supposed to have like a read

01:23:05.640 on these types of things. Like, what

01:23:07.500 do you think's going on?

01:23:09.400 I think it's AIPAC's money.

01:23:11.440 I think it's two things. It's AIPAC's money.

01:23:13.480 Millions upon millions and millions

01:23:15.400 of dollars in American politics.

01:23:18.300 So they have an inordinate

01:23:19.700 influence on our

01:23:21.520 political system. And AIPAC is the only group of its kind that does not have to register as a

01:23:28.400 foreign agent. You know, I've made a point on a couple of podcasts. Back in 2008, I got a very

01:23:36.180 small contract, just, I don't know, five, six thousand bucks to write four op-eds in support

01:23:43.880 of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce. So I wrote these op-eds. Oh, you should do business in Abu

01:23:49.400 Dabi it's really business friendly they love Americans everybody makes money all right send

01:23:54.100 I had to register as a foreign agent because I was uh I was I was publishing in support of a

01:24:01.940 foreign entity interesting what the heck is APAC doing 24 7 how come they don't have to register

01:24:07.680 as foreign agents yeah and I I think it seems like we have our our uh our people our government

01:24:13.500 officials are afraid to stand up to them I don't know why they're very afraid and then you have

01:24:16.720 But why do you think they're afraid?

01:24:18.840 They don't want to be primaried.

01:24:21.320 Even if you get primaried,

01:24:22.540 eventually somebody will win.

01:24:26.600 Yes, but

01:24:27.760 who among them has the courage

01:24:30.840 to be the first?

01:24:31.960 I mean, Massey stood up.

01:24:33.800 Massey took it.

01:24:35.040 I saw him about a week before the election.

01:24:38.120 But he can't be the only person in there.

01:24:40.060 Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene,

01:24:41.420 but she didn't have the guts. 1.00

01:24:42.380 She quit. 0.79

01:24:42.800 she quit halfway through her 0.99

01:24:45.020 what do you think they're compromising these people

01:24:47.000 like what are they saying to them

01:24:48.760 are they saying like something bad is going to happen

01:24:51.180 like what do you suggest

01:24:52.020 you will never work in politics ever again

01:24:55.080 we will hound you

01:24:57.180 for the rest of your career

01:24:58.620 then you have nothing to lose

01:25:01.180 that's what you and I say

01:25:02.440 you and I would stand up

01:25:04.680 bring up the thing about just the government

01:25:07.220 just like the government's being interacted

01:25:08.780 those two articles

01:25:09.440 the House Armed Services Committee has unveiled

01:25:12.740 its proposed 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which would see a record-shattering $1.15

01:25:18.860 trillion spent on the U.S. military over the next fiscal year. Among the bill's many provisions is

01:25:23.780 Section 224, entitled the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.

01:25:29.580 The provision would bring the U.S. and Israel into an unprecedented partnership covering

01:25:33.580 technology sharing, the co-production of weapon systems, and bilateral research and development

01:25:38.980 across multiple domains of warfare,

01:25:41.340 including biotech, autonomous systems,

01:25:43.540 AI, cyber warfare, and more.

01:25:45.620 Well, this could just mean that we are,

01:25:47.500 we're employing technology that they have, right?

01:25:52.640 Is there any more specifics about this?

01:25:54.200 It looks closer than that.

01:25:55.200 I'll tell you what, if-

01:25:56.320 And I'm not saying it isn't.

01:25:57.420 Look, it definitely scares me.

01:25:58.840 I mean, I don't want to be involved with a country

01:26:00.700 that's doing something like that.

01:26:02.180 And I don't think that's crazy for me to say that either.

01:26:04.400 Even if it's just this,

01:26:05.940 that means they're not going to have to steal the 2% of defense technology that we don't give them.

01:26:12.280 I'll give you an example. When I was still there, we were developing the F-35. So they came to us,

01:26:17.900 they said, we want the F-35. We want to be the first ones to have the F-35. We said, great,

01:26:21.960 we're going to give you the F-35. We're going to call it the F-35I for Israel. And it's going to

01:26:27.720 have just a barely slightly degraded, um, avionics system just in case, God forbid, you know, it 0.99

01:26:36.680 doesn't get shot down and then the Chinese and the Russians get it and then they can steal the 0.95

01:26:41.040 avionics. They said, no, not good enough. We want the, we want the F-35, the same one that you guys 0.73

01:26:45.700 fly. In the meantime, the Emirates came to us and they said, we want the F-35. We said, great. We're

01:26:50.260 going to give you the F-35E. We're going to call it for Emirates. And it's going to have just a 0.92

01:26:55.020 slightly degraded avionics package same thing we're giving the israelis they said fine we'll

01:26:58.800 take it the israelis then tasked their spies with stealing whatever the downgrade was in the in the

01:27:08.220 avionics so that they could re-upgrade it once they took delivery of the f-35 well now we're

01:27:12.600 just going to share everything with them we'll just give them the f-35 but can you like can you

01:27:16.740 fault a country like it's kind of interesting because i think if you if you think that we're

01:27:22.020 playing like that though i guess i always felt like we were out of the colonization era i know

01:27:27.720 i'm with you and and and i know what you're getting at and so it's like you can't fault

01:27:33.780 a country really for just trying to survive i don't i don't right and i'm not saying you are

01:27:37.780 i'm thinking i'm thinking out loud but let me finish this sentence real quick sure sure sorry

01:27:41.360 john um but yeah you can't fall like you know if a country's just trying to survive and they're

01:27:45.620 good at it and better at it than others, then it's like that has to be respected in some senses for

01:27:52.640 sure. Agreed. I don't fault the Israelis for doing this. If I were the prime minister of Israel,

01:27:57.200 I would do the same thing when it comes to acquiring defense technology. I fault the US

01:28:03.080 government and it makes not one whit of difference if there's a Democrat in the White House or a

01:28:09.000 Republican in the White House. We don't stand up to the Israelis. Yeah. You know, I will say Reagan 1.00

01:28:14.360 did in the so-called year of the spy when jonathan pollard was uh no actually it wasn't

01:28:20.820 reagan by then it was clinton wasn't it clinton stood up and said we're going to prosecute this

01:28:27.480 guy pollard he got 30 years and he did every single day of the 30 years peaked in 84 so when

01:28:36.380 was he arrested 85 okay so it was reagan it was reagan he did every single day of the 30 years

01:28:45.340 And then when he got out of prison, Miriam Adelson, or not Miriam Adelson, her husband, it was, what's his name?

01:28:53.920 Adelson, the king of Las Vegas, sent his private jet.

01:28:59.700 The jet took Pollard to Israel.

01:29:02.480 Netanyahu met him at the airport.

01:29:05.020 He kissed the ground.

01:29:06.060 and in an interview, Sheldon Adelson,

01:29:09.700 in an interview, he urged American Jews

01:29:13.300 to take up arms against the American government.

01:29:17.680 And then Huckabee meets with him

01:29:20.840 and welcomes him into the American embassy. 0.77

01:29:23.460 I would have shot him if he had come into the American embassy 0.86

01:29:26.100 and I were the ambassador. 0.90

01:29:27.320 Yeah, I just don't understand.

01:29:28.700 I think it makes it like, I don't know.

01:29:30.940 I think a lot of people are looking for guidance right now.

01:29:33.540 I think you're right.

01:29:34.220 If you're a regular person who we're just trying to get through the week, we want to believe in our country.

01:29:38.920 We get scared that our taxes are going towards like violent things and evil things.

01:29:43.860 That's the thing.

01:29:44.800 It starts to feel like there's something evil going on.

01:29:47.880 Yeah, and it's not like we're right and everybody else in the rest of the world is wrong.

01:29:54.080 You know, you look at these votes.

01:29:54.860 I don't know if I'm right about anything.

01:29:56.480 You look at these votes at the UN General Assembly and it's everybody in the world voting yes and voting no is the United States.

01:30:05.480 I'm serious about this because I served at the UN.

01:30:07.620 It's the United States, Israel, Costa Rica, and Palau, a little island with 30,000 people in the Pacific.

01:30:14.320 That's it.

01:30:15.380 And the whole rest of the world is voting the other way.

01:30:19.180 You've talked a lot.

01:30:20.240 You've worked in counterterrorism.

01:30:21.800 is it we like terrorism such an interesting term because it's like at a certain point

01:30:28.540 it feels like we're chasing the tail of the dog we let loose kind of does that make any sense even

01:30:35.700 yeah i like that i might steal that yeah steal it i don't even know exactly what it means but

01:30:40.640 um you know they just had a they i saw something the other day it was like uh

01:30:45.120 $300 billion to rebuild parts of—I don't think it's Iran, but I think it's Libya.

01:30:54.820 Can you look that up?

01:30:55.540 $300 billion to rebuild parts of Libya that we just blew up. 0.91

01:31:01.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:31:01.920 So right here, it says a truce, $300 billion investment plan in Hormuz.

01:31:06.200 What's in the deal draft that can end U.S.-Iran war?

01:31:09.920 U.S. and Iran mediators are now engaged in high-stakes negotiations aimed at ending the conflict despite a fragile ceasefire in the place and months of turmoil in the Middle East.

01:31:19.300 The possible truce plan includes key bargaining points between the two sides, including a $300 billion investment package and the crucial Strait of Hormones issue, making the agreement extremely closely watched for.

01:31:32.640 however one of the biggest developments emerging from the discussions is a proposed multi-billion

01:31:37.940 dollar reconstruction and investment package that could fundamentally reshape iran's economy

01:31:42.500 if a final deal is reached so it's just why it's like we just went there and got involved in this

01:31:50.280 i don't know if this is a taxpayer thing god i hope not but just the whole thing is like uh i

01:31:55.780 don't know you start to feel so defeated sometimes isn't that the truth and you start to feel like

01:32:01.000 your vote isn't going to do anything. Um, that's the scary part. And then part of this feels like

01:32:05.940 a long-term psyop, like it's a slow weakening of the values, like, okay, let's put things in this

01:32:12.360 society over time. That'll like, you know, tear apart the American family. And like, that'll like

01:32:17.900 poison people. And let's, do you think they're like, there's big psyops like that going on?

01:32:24.340 Like, let's put COVID out there so that, uh, people are separate from each other. And, um,

01:32:28.780 and that people can't go to meetings and meet up and so you start to deteriorate the value of human

01:32:33.840 connection and uh let's put let's make food so that it's just poisoning people and that it's um

01:32:39.640 you know that it's it's just gonna you know it's gonna make people sicker let's make health care

01:32:44.600 so it's not there's no real way uh besides extreme stress that you have to go through if you even

01:32:50.880 have to make a claim like you know do you think that some of that is just corporate greed and

01:32:56.040 stuff or do you think some of that's a longer term psyop by like bigger powers out there i don't i

01:33:02.720 i don't think it's a part of a bigger psyop okay um but i do believe firmly that it's mostly

01:33:09.220 corporate greed you just reminded me of something i's excuse me i saw recently um and it was this

01:33:16.000 experiment that i don't know somebody did i saw it on youtube where they put a they put a homemade

01:33:23.580 hamburger on the ground and they put a McDonald's quarter pounder on the ground

01:33:30.360 and then they photographed it, you know, over the course of days and then weeks

01:33:34.620 and then months. Bugs come, ants come, they go to the hamburger, they tear the bun down.

01:33:43.620 Mostly they went for the meat, but they end up, you know, a week later, it's just a spot on the

01:33:48.220 sidewalk even bugs won't touch a mcdonald's hamburger and then months later it's it looks

01:33:55.260 like it just came out of the package yeah and europeans can't understand how we eat like that

01:34:00.400 yeah like their laws are different mcdonald's can't do that in in european countries yeah let's

01:34:06.980 look at the ingredients right here the difference between uh mcdonald's europe and um mcdonald's

01:34:12.400 10 plus ingredients versus four ingredients wow so the u.s has 10 plus ingredients and yeah europe

01:34:18.760 has four uh ingredients in the u.s potatoes vegetable oil uh hydrogenated soybean oil natural

01:34:25.040 beef flavor wheat and milk derivatives dextrose sodium acid fice pyroso pyrophosate and salt

01:34:34.000 pyrophosphate pyrophosphate thank you and then europe has potatoes non-hydrogenated oil

01:34:40.240 rapeseed or sunflower

01:34:42.160 and dextrose

01:34:43.620 and look below that

01:34:45.000 contains hydrogenated oils

01:34:46.880 beef flavoring

01:34:47.580 and TBHQ

01:34:48.740 which are banned

01:34:49.580 restricted in EU

01:34:51.120 these are for the french fries

01:34:53.800 it says

01:34:54.400 contains hydrogenated oils

01:34:56.140 beef flavoring

01:34:57.040 TBHQ

01:34:58.600 and then it says

01:35:00.500 for Europe

01:35:01.380 that those are

01:35:02.080 those exactly

01:35:03.000 things are banned

01:35:04.420 and restricted in the EU

01:35:05.880 what about the burger

01:35:08.380 yeah what does it say

01:35:09.380 the u.s beef is 100 pure beef the additives several hundred additives several hundred

01:35:17.420 additives prohibited in eu and uh let me see europe says 100 beef from british irish farmers

01:35:26.520 no hormone treated beef and then uh the additives are stricter quality control and fewer additives

01:35:33.120 Look at the Big Mac sauce.

01:35:35.060 The special sauce on the Big Mac contains HFCS, xanthan gum, propylene glycol, alginate, and caramel color. 1.00

01:35:44.440 What the fuck? 0.99

01:35:45.540 Why? 1.00

01:35:46.200 I just, like, at some point you have to be like, well, what happened, you know?

01:35:49.880 And while the Europe Big Mac sauce contains simpler ingredients list and 40 fewer calories, it says,

01:35:57.780 the differences are EU food regulations are much stricter.

01:36:02.460 Customer preferences in local supply chains vary.

01:36:05.600 And the U.S. fries would likely be illegal to sell in Europe due to ingredient restriction.

01:36:10.300 Have you ever seen what's in the McRib?

01:36:13.660 I tell you what, I love those McRibs. 1.00

01:36:16.300 Well, the black community goes bonkers when they come back. 1.00

01:36:18.900 I know that. 1.00

01:36:19.180 You rush to McDonald's for McRib, but then when you see what's in it, you're like, oh my God.

01:36:23.500 Well, yeah, dude. 0.99

01:36:24.480 Anybody thinking it has anything to do with a fucking animal, the McRib? 0.99

01:36:28.780 But at a certain point, we are also guilty. 0.98

01:36:31.940 yeah we are it's like yeah yeah it's our own laziness it is and we give in and we just go do

01:36:37.520 it that's a big part of it so that's what's interesting too right now it's like there's a

01:36:41.980 real test of like what do i you know how much do i want to stand up for myself and but then also

01:36:47.100 how much can i some people are trapped financially by certain abilities and restrictions deserts yeah

01:36:52.420 so it's just kind of interesting and it's tough um and i don't want to get all super dour um

01:36:58.140 Um, what, uh, do you feel like there are a lot of, uh, foreign agents in America right

01:37:05.180 now?

01:37:05.560 Oh yeah.

01:37:06.280 In fact, there's an advertisement that you see on the sides of buses around Washington

01:37:11.360 saying that, and it's the, the advertisement is to visit the spy museum that there are

01:37:17.380 between 10 and 15,000 foreign intelligence officers in Washington, D.C.

01:37:23.120 In Washington, D.C.

01:37:24.080 More than anywhere else on the planet.

01:37:26.940 Wow.

01:37:27.760 Do you think that's real?

01:37:29.060 There's a spy on this bus.

01:37:30.800 Oh, that's what that advertisement says?

01:37:32.420 It's part of the...

01:37:33.560 Thank you, Edward Snowden.

01:37:36.160 It's part of the advertising campaign, yeah.

01:37:38.480 And is the campaign to, what, to hire more of them?

01:37:41.920 No, no, to get people to go to the spy museum.

01:37:44.260 Oh, it's to get them to go to the spy museum.

01:37:46.320 Dude, I've been in the spy museum before.

01:37:47.840 It's awesome.

01:37:48.440 It's great.

01:37:49.140 Spy museum's so good.

01:37:50.500 Yeah, it's really great.

01:37:51.440 I agree.

01:37:51.820 Times were different back in the day when it was like,

01:37:54.080 you'd be using a secret pen,

01:37:56.300 or like you'd have a helming pigeon with like a little backpack on.

01:37:59.700 No, now it's all so crazy sophisticated.

01:38:02.360 I was just telling somebody the other day about the CIA trained cats

01:38:10.800 to wander onto the Soviet embassy compound with collars that had listening devices on them

01:38:17.140 just to see what the Russians were saying when they come out of the embassy.

01:38:20.420 But that didn't work because you can't train the cats.

01:38:22.280 So they trained pigeons and they put little listening devices around their little pigeon feet and they would land on the window sills.

01:38:31.320 But the thing is that the Russians had double paned glass and they were piping music in between the two panes of glass.

01:38:36.960 So the pigeons couldn't hear anything.

01:38:38.920 No way.

01:38:40.140 What a game.

01:38:41.240 Like what a game of like espionage.

01:38:43.960 Oh, so much fun.

01:38:44.860 That's so – see, that kind of stuff is so exciting.

01:38:47.880 Now it feels like – I don't know.

01:38:50.700 it feels like we're entering sometimes like a surveillance state or we are we are it's not like

01:38:54.580 the old days you know one of the best recruitments i ever made theo i was doing surveillance on this

01:38:59.420 guy for a week i thought you know this guy would be an interesting target he doesn't have he doesn't

01:39:04.160 make much money um oh you were doing surveillance on a guy on a guy and what does that mean you're

01:39:09.900 doing surveillance you're like you're wandering around in the distance yes that's exactly what

01:39:13.440 it means yeah you're just wandering around the distance watch him every day see where he goes

01:39:17.020 what he does, where he hangs out, who he talks to. His wife had left him, but I noticed he walked

01:39:23.180 his dog every morning at 6.30. Every morning he'd leave the house at 6.30 and he would walk across

01:39:28.560 the park. The dog would do his business and then he'd walk back. So I asked in the office, I said,

01:39:32.880 hey, does anybody have a dog? And one of the women's like, yeah, I have a dog. I said, can I 1.00

01:39:37.100 borrow your dog for a week? She says, for what? I said, I want to accidentally bump into this guy

01:39:43.660 and while he's walking his dog,

01:39:46.020 I want to walk your dog

01:39:47.180 and then I meet him

01:39:48.080 and I'm going to say hello

01:39:48.840 and then the next day

01:39:49.720 I'm going to say hello again

01:39:50.580 and then the third day

01:39:51.240 I'm going to invite him to lunch

01:39:52.540 and whatever.

01:39:53.740 It was the best recruitment

01:39:54.680 I ever made in my entire career

01:39:56.140 and we bonded over the dogs

01:39:58.200 and it wasn't even my dog.

01:39:59.520 At the end of the week,

01:40:00.180 I just gave her a dog back.

01:40:01.660 And did you learn something

01:40:02.400 from the guy?

01:40:03.220 Oh my God.

01:40:05.900 This guy was like

01:40:07.220 every case officer's

01:40:08.880 dream recruitment.

01:40:11.000 And recruitment means

01:40:11.920 somebody that you're just,

01:40:12.620 you're trying to gain intel from the person you you pitch him you say look i'm with the cia oh

01:40:18.640 you're paid you told him that oh yeah i'm with the cia i know who you are i know what you do

01:40:23.020 and i'm willing to pay you very handsomely to give it to me and he's like how handsome he is handsome

01:40:30.300 and i gave him a number what's that number ballpark well this is 25 years ago and then

01:40:37.780 It was $5,000 a month.

01:40:39.180 It would probably be $20,000 a month now.

01:40:43.340 Good money.

01:40:44.320 And he wanted all of his expenses.

01:40:46.160 I said, what expenses do you think you're going to have?

01:40:48.820 What, dog shots for the dog?

01:40:50.300 I know, right?

01:40:51.000 So, oh, he nickel and dimed me the expenses.

01:40:53.720 And my boss would always say, just give it to him.

01:40:56.260 Just give it to him.

01:40:56.900 Because the information was so great.

01:40:59.460 So we had these-

01:41:00.780 Information about what?

01:41:01.740 His country.

01:41:02.700 Oh, okay.

01:41:03.040 He worked in the embassy.

01:41:04.340 Got it.

01:41:04.700 Of his country.

01:41:05.420 and uh i gave him a disposable cell phone and back then you had to buy these little cards at

01:41:12.400 the convenience store and you scratch them off and you put the number in your phone and it gives

01:41:16.360 you units you know i remember that and um so the phone was only supposed to be used to call me

01:41:21.880 he used it for everything he'd give me like 800 phone bills at the end of the month 0.93

01:41:26.180 and i'm like come on man come on that's awesome five grand already that dude's a freaking snake

01:41:34.400 I love that. 0.56

01:41:35.280 Yeah.

01:41:35.800 My boss, just pay it.

01:41:37.260 Just pay it. 0.99

01:41:38.980 Acoustic Kitty.

01:41:40.420 Oh, my gosh.

01:41:41.880 Oh, it's an...

01:41:42.480 Oh.

01:41:43.340 Acoustic Kitty was a central intelligence agency project launched by the Directorate

01:41:47.900 of Science and Technology in the 1960s.

01:41:49.760 It was intended to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies.

01:41:54.460 In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon implanted a microphone in the cat's ear canal,

01:41:59.300 a small radio transmitter at the base of its skull, dear God,

01:42:03.280 and a thin wire into its fur.

01:42:06.680 This would allow the cat to innocuously record

01:42:09.780 and transmit sound from its surroundings.

01:42:13.620 Due to problems with distraction,

01:42:15.560 the cat's sense of hunger.

01:42:16.940 It sees a bird.

01:42:18.240 Had to be addressed in another operation.

01:42:21.180 $20 million.

01:42:22.640 $20 million, dude. 1.00

01:42:24.620 And that's your Somali fraud right there. 1.00

01:42:27.220 The first acoustic kitty mission was to eavesdrop 1.00

01:42:29.340 on two men in a park outside the Soviet embassy

01:42:31.760 in Washington, D.C.

01:42:32.720 The cat was released nearby, but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately.

01:42:38.800 However, this was disputed.

01:42:42.620 The equipment was taken out of the cat.

01:42:44.580 The cat was re-sewn for a second time and lived a long and happy life afterwards.

01:42:48.940 That sounds like a cover-up.

01:42:50.380 Nothing to see here, folks.

01:42:52.640 Just a cat that has call waiting, you know? 0.99

01:42:54.940 That's fucking insane, dude. 0.98

01:42:56.980 I worked with this one guy who was going to a denied area. 0.99

01:43:00.920 Denied area is a place where CIA people just can't go, right?

01:43:04.840 But he looked kind of ethnic and he could fit into, you know, whatever, the culture.

01:43:09.980 And so I said, buddy, aren't you afraid of like being kidnapped and then we just never see you again? 0.95

01:43:16.020 And he said, yeah, they offered to implant a chip, a beacon, a ping in my butt crack, he says. 0.98

01:43:23.560 And I said, nah, leave my butt crack alone. 0.99

01:43:25.840 Yeah. 0.99

01:43:26.780 Yeah.

01:43:27.840 That's, yeah.

01:43:29.680 That's fair.

01:43:30.920 I think that should be our national anthem.

01:43:36.060 How weary do people have to be of being spied upon today?

01:43:39.840 Do you think, like, there's a lot of these new, like, data center projects and stuff like that's going on with that?

01:43:46.440 First, let's talk, yeah, real quick about the data centers.

01:43:48.800 What do you think is really going on?

01:43:50.380 Because if you look at the size of these places, like, we don't need that much data.

01:43:55.780 Like, we're already using our phones.

01:43:57.320 We already have, like, televisions.

01:43:59.740 Like, you know, there's already like a lot of stuff being stored on servers.

01:44:03.800 How are we jumping to a level where we need that?

01:44:06.940 That's what I want to know.

01:44:07.940 Oh, I have to agree.

01:44:09.380 Besides the fact that they use massive amounts of water.

01:44:12.700 And oddly enough, they're located in a lot of states that don't have a ton of water, like Texas.

01:44:17.600 Yeah.

01:44:17.940 Or you go out to Loudoun County, Virginia.

01:44:20.960 Okay, we have enough water.

01:44:22.340 But Loudoun County, Virginia, you drive for miles and miles.

01:44:25.480 And they're just these never-ending gigantic complexes of data centers.

01:44:29.740 The proposed Stratos project in Utah is a massive 40,000-

01:44:34.820 There's no water in Utah.

01:44:35.980 A 40,000-acre AI data center campus.

01:44:40.440 Two and a half times larger than Manhattan.

01:44:43.540 Yeah.

01:44:45.040 I wonder how long the actual data, how big the-

01:44:47.380 Oh, and just the data center requires more than double the current energy consumption

01:44:52.060 of the entire state of Utah.

01:44:54.120 Yeah.

01:44:54.660 Come on.

01:44:55.340 I mean, that's unbelievable.

01:44:56.000 What do you think is really going on there?

01:44:57.560 Do you have any intel about it?

01:44:58.720 You have to assume that this is Intel related because look at the companies that are involved.

01:45:04.740 We're talking about Palantir and NVIDIA and Abraxas and all these big companies that either took CIA investments to get started as seed money or are staffed by retired senior CIA officers.

01:45:20.460 They're not doing it for their health.

01:45:23.200 Why is this – so is the CIA now is spying on our own people?

01:45:27.620 Oh, yeah, that's what Ed Snowden warned us about.

01:45:30.000 Yeah, without Ed Snowden's revelations, we wouldn't have any idea that NSA and CIA were spying on Americans, which is not just illegal.

01:45:38.020 It's a part of NSA's charter that it may not spy on Americans.

01:45:44.180 And this place in Utah, he and Julian Assange told us about Utah.

01:45:50.100 This new compound in Utah that NSA has built has enough memory, storage space for every phone call, every email, and every text message from every American for the next 500 years.

01:46:04.180 Wow.

01:46:05.000 Why?

01:46:05.540 Just that building?

01:46:06.420 Uh-huh.

01:46:06.920 Then why do they need all these buildings?

01:46:08.220 Yeah, why?

01:46:08.660 They're everywhere.

01:46:09.900 What are they collecting?

01:46:11.620 I'm not sure.

01:46:12.940 And that's it.

01:46:13.520 It's like what – it must be – it's got to be all of our information.

01:46:18.760 What would you do right now?

01:46:20.380 Is there any way that people can protect themselves?

01:46:22.100 Do you know?

01:46:23.640 It's almost impossible now.

01:46:26.500 I wrote a series of books during COVID for Skyhurst Publishing,

01:46:30.040 the CIA Insider's Guides to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection,

01:46:34.900 Lying and Lie Detection, and Disappearing and Living Off the Grid.

01:46:38.580 They put them together, and they're republishing them in the next month, I guess,

01:46:42.840 as one volume, CIA skills, tactics,

01:46:48.040 and the ultimate guide to CIA skills, tactics, and techniques.

01:46:50.700 There we go.

01:46:51.200 But when it comes to protecting yourself from the data state,

01:46:56.800 you got to go Eric Rudolph or Unabomber

01:47:00.180 and just own no technology at all.

01:47:03.700 It's the only way to protect yourself.

01:47:05.640 Otherwise, you're going to be scooped up in all this.

01:47:08.280 Now, the odd thing is, according to Ed Snowden,

01:47:11.680 NSA, CIA, other governmental organizations are scooping up all this data and they're just

01:47:19.740 holding it. Why? Why are they holding it? Now, time was really until the immediate post 9-11

01:47:27.160 period where if the government wanted your information, they had to go to a federal judge

01:47:34.180 and say, we want Theo Vaughn's information and this is the reason we want it. And the judge had

01:47:38.720 to say, okay, that's a legitimate reason. I'll sign the warrant. Now they just write something

01:47:44.200 called a national security letter. They give it to your provider and they say, give us everything

01:47:50.000 you have on Theovan and they just turn it over. Or they go to these new data centers and just put

01:47:56.980 your name in, your information and everything pops up. They don't even, you don't have any

01:48:00.520 legal protections. They just take whatever they want. And that's legal now they can do that?

01:48:05.600 And it's legal now.

01:48:06.600 How'd that become legal?

01:48:07.640 In the National Defense Act of 2016.

01:48:11.740 National Defense Authorization Act of 2016.

01:48:14.320 Wow.

01:48:14.840 Yeah.

01:48:15.260 Which also, this is a pet peeve of mine that nobody knows about.

01:48:20.480 It also, for the first time in American history, allowed the American government to propagandize the American people.

01:48:26.940 It was always illegal for our government to propagandize us.

01:48:31.100 What does it mean?

01:48:31.640 Well, for example, the Voice of America, that's our government's propaganda news outlet, and we beam it overseas so everybody gets the official U.S. point of view.

01:48:43.080 Okay, back in the 80s, the Reagan administration came up with these two broadcasters called Radio Marti and TV Marti to beam at Cuba. 0.53

01:48:56.300 And the Cubans try to jam them all the time.

01:48:58.840 But what they mostly are used for is to broadcast baseball games in Spanish, which the Cubans love. 0.55

01:49:05.520 Got it.

01:49:06.260 I flew down to Cuba to do a study.

01:49:09.080 I did a study for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when I was the chief investigator there.

01:49:13.180 And nobody watches TV Marti.

01:49:17.520 You can only actually get it in the waiting room of the U.S. consulate.

01:49:23.780 Got it.

01:49:23.960 So if you're there to apply for a visa, you can watch a soap opera in Spanish that's American propaganda.

01:49:29.420 Nobody cares.

01:49:30.760 Radio, people like listening to baseball.

01:49:34.520 So Dish Network, when it began selling services in Florida,

01:49:44.000 found that there was this just narrow swath along the shore on the west coast of Florida

01:49:51.500 where you could pick up TV Marti.

01:49:54.240 That's illegal.

01:49:55.360 You can't propagandize the American people.

01:49:57.560 As Americans, we're not allowed to watch

01:49:59.800 our own government's propaganda.

01:50:02.160 So instead of telling Dish Network,

01:50:04.680 well, you're going to have to move your satellite

01:50:06.980 or do something or pixelate it or whatever,

01:50:11.200 said, no, no, no, we'll change the law.

01:50:14.220 And so in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016,

01:50:17.800 the Obama administration said,

01:50:19.200 no no we can propagandize americans now wow and so now radio tv are no problem wow yeah but i mean

01:50:27.520 we're always propagandizing i mean people put out propaganda all the time yeah i went to yemen in

01:50:32.860 2011 uh when i was with the senate foreign relations committee my fifth trip to yemen

01:50:36.840 every time i'd go to yemen it's worse than the previous time so i have a meeting with a defense

01:50:42.640 attache and he was so proud of this thing that he was doing this psyop i hate that word

01:50:48.240 psyop i said sure what's your what's your psyop and he goes we're funding a radio station here

01:50:55.480 modeled on npr and it plays american jazz and then it has a call-in show so young yemeni guys can call 0.98

01:51:05.560 in and talk about the jazz i'm like what the fuck are you talking about that's this terrible idea

01:51:12.360 nobody's gonna listen to that and nobody did and they shut it down after a year 0.95

01:51:16.360 but that's that's what we're doing but what was the goal of it even to make people pro-american

01:51:21.600 because they would be like oh americans have jazz oh so i'm going to be pro-american now

01:51:26.340 it's like what are you thinking you you sit there that sounds like money laundering yeah seriously

01:51:30.100 that's what it sounds like um how do i know i can believe you about anything kind of people ask you

01:51:35.920 that all the time oh yeah people ask me all the time um because who would believe anybody there's

01:51:40.100 xci who would even you know i'm saying oh that's such a thing with me you know generally i don't

01:51:46.040 read the chats anywhere right everybody i talk to at your level you tucker carlson you know

01:51:54.660 patrick bett david rogan whomever they never read the chats sometimes i can't help it and i'll scan 0.99

01:52:01.880 them the only time i ever respond is when people say once cia always cia moron you thought you 0.98

01:52:11.980 thought all of that all up on your own, huh? That's true. That's true. So I said, I said to 0.99

01:52:16.860 one guy, I said, you know what? Let me call Ed Snowden and the sons of Philip Agee and Ray

01:52:23.140 McGovern and tell them that you think they're all still in the CIA. So I went to prison for

01:52:31.000 telling the truth. And I would do it again in a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. Nobody else has gone

01:52:38.760 to prison for ratting out the cia and its illegal you know programs i was proud to do it that's a 0.98

01:52:45.880 good answer thank you it's a really good answer if you look at here it is i can say this if you

01:52:52.260 really went to jail and everything then it's a great answer and if you did it i'll believe you 0.85

01:52:57.480 i believe you but also there's a little part of me that's like if he didn't then that's fucking 0.98

01:53:01.840 even colder that he's making it up and living it nobody that's the most cia shit that would be 0.97

01:53:07.380 pretty intense but that's what i'm saying yeah yeah no nobody in the world hates me as much as 0.97

01:53:11.560 my ex-wife does from spending all that time in the cia or in jail at least jail you have a good

01:53:16.520 excuse after but she came every month with the kids and visited me in jail for two years yeah

01:53:21.080 and so why does she hate you then oh no that's that's all yeah post story post yeah i'm actually

01:53:27.340 prohibited by court order from answering that question well that's i think that's amazing that

01:53:32.880 She did that and brought your kids to do it.

01:53:34.660 She was great.

01:53:35.860 She was great. 0.97

01:53:36.740 A lot of wives, I mean, I think I can't even imagine it's a tough thing for families,

01:53:40.560 especially if you had young children. 1.00

01:53:44.220 Kudos to her for that.

01:53:45.380 Yeah.

01:53:47.620 Was being in prison kind of fun?

01:53:51.840 Fun.

01:53:55.000 No, I wouldn't say fun.

01:53:57.940 Like what was kind of cool about it?

01:53:59.140 I've always wanted to go to jail.

01:54:00.820 You know, there's this old saying

01:54:02.960 that you don't go to jail to make friends.

01:54:04.760 And I made some lifelong friends in jail.

01:54:09.000 Mostly named Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno.

01:54:13.560 Yeah.

01:54:13.920 Okay.

01:54:14.440 Genovese.

01:54:15.040 So a lot of good storytellers in there, I bet.

01:54:18.120 Listen, those guys were so honorable.

01:54:22.140 I learned so much from those guys in just 23 months.

01:54:26.080 Wow.

01:54:27.200 Lessons I'll carry with me forever.

01:54:29.600 Real honor.

01:54:30.460 It's funny. 1.00

01:54:30.820 The Italians were the smallest, they call them gangs in prison.

01:54:35.020 The Italians weren't a gang.

01:54:36.680 I'll use the word gang just for the purpose of this response.

01:54:40.280 They were the smallest gang in the prison, yet commanded the highest level of respect.

01:54:45.260 Really? 1.00

01:54:45.900 More than the blacks and the Latinos? 1.00

01:54:47.980 The blacks and the Latinos were always at each other's throats. 1.00

01:54:51.800 For example, it was Crips and Bloods, and there was this uneasy peace between them just 1.00

01:54:57.720 because it's not worth upsetting the apple cart. And everybody goes to solitary and then gets

01:55:02.940 spread out all over the country. For the Latinos, it was far more complicated because it was

01:55:08.300 Burachos, Norteños, Latin Kings, MS-13, Mexican Mafia, and then the individual cartels.

01:55:18.860 So overall, there's one gigantic Hispanic prison gang called Pisces. And then within Pisces are 0.78

01:55:26.340 all the different divisions. Gosh. Yeah. And the Pisces, if you were Hispanic, you were automatically

01:55:32.440 in Pisces, whether you liked it or not. And you had to work out every single day. Oh, that's 0.93

01:55:37.460 pretty good. For the coming race war with the blacks. Right. And the whites are like, we have 1.00

01:55:43.160 nothing to do with this. Yeah. I just want to, I would just want to do it just to get in shape. 0.97

01:55:47.400 Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you need motivation. We had, we had Aryan Brotherhood. What's that? What

01:55:52.960 are they doing? What are they up to? You know, Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is far more violent

01:55:58.580 than Aryan Brotherhood. And they're not, it says right there, they're not connected. I never met 0.93

01:56:03.800 anybody from the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Aryan Brotherhood at a low security prison 1.00

01:56:08.540 just wants to sort of, you know, go along to get along. Yeah. Yeah. You stay out of my way. I'll 0.98

01:56:15.340 stay out of yours. My very first day in prison, my very first hour in prison, when the guard

01:56:21.200 dropped me off in my cell. The only thing he said to me the whole time I was checking in and getting

01:56:27.860 processed was if somebody comes into your cell uninvited, that's an act of aggression. And I

01:56:34.580 said, great, thank you. I've been here 40 minutes. I'm going to get my ass kicked now.

01:56:40.100 Sure enough, as soon as he left, these two guys walked into my cell, just walked right in. One 1.00

01:56:45.420 of them had a swastika that took up his entire neck and then came up onto his face. And the

01:56:50.240 other one had fuck you tattooed on his eyelids oh yeah that check i mean that's yeah and so i jump 0.99

01:56:56.440 up i go what do you want because i thought you know if i'm going down i'm taking one of them 0.99

01:57:01.320 down with me at least what do you want and the the one with the swastika he says you're the new

01:57:06.580 guy i go yeah so this is like this sounds like a story from like the 1940s isn't it awful

01:57:13.460 it was i said in my second book prison is a combination of seventh grade the lord of the

01:57:20.640 flies and a mental institution and it's set in the 1950s that's hilarious so i go what do you want

01:57:26.640 he goes you the new guy i said yeah so and he goes i'm standing there like this he goes you 0.98

01:57:32.420 and i go no i'm not a he says they were bummed out you a rat no no no gaze allowed you a rat 0.78

01:57:40.960 I said, no, I'm not a rat. 0.98

01:57:42.680 You a chomo?

01:57:43.980 I go, I don't know what that word means. 1.00

01:57:47.060 He goes, chomo, child molester.

01:57:49.780 I said, no, I'm not a child molester. 1.00

01:57:51.460 That's good. 0.98

01:57:52.320 And then he says, you can sit with the Aryans in the cafeteria. 0.95

01:57:56.880 And I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm with the Aryans now. 0.85

01:58:01.160 But then a couple of months later.

01:58:02.240 Simple rules.

01:58:02.780 I was across the hall from a captain in the Bonanno family.

01:58:06.560 And he said to me one day, he goes, let me ask you a question. 0.97

01:58:09.100 why do you sit with those nazi retards every day and i said i don't know i said my first day here 0.95

01:58:16.440 they just told me sit with them and he goes from today you are with the italians i said it's about 0.92

01:58:23.920 time that was it yeah took you long enough you got drafted yeah but they were the best yeah but

01:58:30.100 a lot of good stories dude any good story come to mind from somebody you like a good story you

01:58:34.240 heard in, uh, in prison. Yeah, there's, there's one. I'm actually, you're going to think less

01:58:39.100 of me and I don't care. That's fine. I could tell you some stuff that would probably make it even.

01:58:46.560 There was a guy in my housing unit who was a serial killer. He was called truck because he

01:58:52.320 drove long distance trucks from East coast to the West coast. And he would pick up prostitutes at, 0.85

01:58:57.060 uh, truck stops and he would rape them and murder them, drive them a couple of hundred miles down 1.00

01:59:02.660 the highway and then dump the bodies out. So the cops estimated that he killed 14. It was probably 0.98

01:59:08.720 more than that, but, um, he strangled one and she survived and she was able to give the cops the

01:59:14.400 license number. Now this was in the days before DNA training, DNA testing. So this guy. Before

01:59:20.620 DNA testing. Yeah. This was in the seventies. Oh, he'd been in for a long time. He was doing life.

01:59:23.960 Got it. So, um, for reasons that were never clear to me, this guy constantly sought my approval.

01:59:31.280 he was full of shit 1.00

01:59:32.860 he would come up 1.00

01:59:34.140 he had the worst breath

01:59:35.220 because he had just these 1.00

01:59:36.000 blackened rotten nubs

01:59:37.560 where his

01:59:38.020 that used to be his teeth

01:59:39.580 and he was saying 1.00

01:59:40.460 that makes my fucking dick soft dude 1.00

01:59:41.960 oh it's awful 1.00

01:59:42.440 awful

01:59:42.980 he goes

01:59:43.560 you CIA

01:59:44.300 and I said

01:59:45.280 yeah I used to be

01:59:46.360 he goes

01:59:47.060 I did work for the CIA

01:59:48.880 I ran a shrimp boat

01:59:50.560 full of weapons

01:59:51.480 to Angola 1.00

01:59:52.680 I go get the fuck out of here 1.00

01:59:54.140 I didn't know he was a 1.00

01:59:55.120 serial killer 1.00

01:59:55.760 I go get the fuck out of here 1.00

01:59:57.160 shrimp boat to Angola 1.00

01:59:59.280 have you ever been

02:00:00.600 on a shrimp boat. And I walked away. People are looking at me like, are you crazy? Do you know

02:00:05.660 who that is? Well, I didn't know who it was. So instead of making him mad, it just made him

02:00:12.280 more actively seek my approval. So I'm a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Oh yeah. And he would

02:00:20.160 say, Hey John, the Steelers are the game of the featured game of the week. I saved you a seat in

02:00:24.920 the TV room. I'm like, ah, thanks truck. Like, okay, John, uh, I, I know you listen to classic

02:00:30.800 rock. There's a new classic rock station, 1600 AM. You should check it out. I'm like, okay,

02:00:35.420 thanks truck. In the meantime, there's this guy we called cat in the hat. Cause he had this oddly

02:00:41.880 elongated head, like a birth defect kind of giant cat in the hat head. And he comes up to me one day

02:00:48.940 and he said, Hey, I heard you had a, an empty bunk in your, in your cell. I want to move into your

02:00:53.180 cell i heard it's a good cell and i said well not so fast buddy i said we don't allow any pedophiles

02:00:57.520 in our cell and no rats i said what's your crime he goes murder for hire and no i don't even care

02:01:04.440 about that yeah but the other guy i can't speak for the other guys yeah i was trying to like i

02:01:09.400 was trying to be a part of the group you know like go on go on so uh so he says uh i in murder for 0.76

02:01:18.580 hire i said i don't think i like that any better than the pedophiles the rats what were the 0.97

02:01:22.480 circumstances. And he said, I owed the mob a lot of money, a hundred thousand in gambling. I couldn't 0.95

02:01:28.060 pay it. So I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner and I hired a hit man to kill 0.99

02:01:33.040 him. And, uh, and the hit man got, uh, got caught. I said, let me think about it. Well, think about 0.52

02:01:39.680 it. I went straight to the law library and I looked up his case and that wasn't it at all.

02:01:43.420 It was true. He owed the mob a hundred thousand. He took out the life insurance policy. He hired

02:01:47.880 the hitman, he got caught because of course he's going to get caught. Where's the first place the

02:01:53.460 cops are going to go? Where the money went. And he ratted out the hitman so that he wouldn't get

02:01:57.760 the federal death penalty. Instead, he got 20 years. So I said, no rats in the room.

02:02:05.280 So he was mad at me. Anyway, one day, Jake Tapper comes up to the prison to interview me

02:02:13.000 and I get called down to the lieutenant's office. Normally, if you're called down to the

02:02:16.960 lieutenant's office, it's to go to solitary. If you come back, usually it's because you ratted

02:02:22.200 somebody out. Well, I went down there to sign the waiver so I could give Jake Tapper the interview.

02:02:28.400 So I'm sitting in the TV room next to Truck. Truck was very, very sensitive about being called a

02:02:34.220 chomo because that girl that he strangled was 16, which technically made him a chomo, right?

02:02:39.340 So Truck's sitting here. I'm sitting here. Right here is Cat in the Hat with his back toward me. 0.70

02:02:45.120 he's on the computer there's like this internal internet not internet internal email system

02:02:50.460 he doesn't see me I'm sitting 18 inches away from him and then he says to the guy next to him

02:02:56.420 do you hear Kiriakou got called down to the lieutenant's office he goes that guy's a 0.99

02:03:01.300 fucking rat he went down there to rat us out and I just sat there watching the game and then truck 1.00

02:03:07.000 says that fucking guy just called you a rat and I said an hour ago I heard him call you a chomo 1.00

02:03:14.300 which was a total lie 1.00

02:03:16.600 I just made it up

02:03:17.280 he didn't say a single word

02:03:19.260 he just stood up

02:03:20.660 walked over here

02:03:21.960 and beat this guy

02:03:23.640 almost to death

02:03:25.180 they had to land a helicopter

02:03:28.480 in the yard

02:03:29.120 to life flight

02:03:30.080 cat in the hat

02:03:30.840 to Pittsburgh

02:03:31.340 they gave truck

02:03:33.960 five more years

02:03:34.800 and cat scanning the hat

02:03:36.720 huh

02:03:36.900 yeah it's cat scanning the hat

02:03:38.660 see how come I didn't think of that

02:03:40.260 because I'm not a comedian

02:03:41.460 I should have put that in my book

02:03:42.560 I don't know

02:03:42.960 is there any real value

02:03:43.900 me thinking of that that's a good question six weeks later cat in the hat is finally released 0.89

02:03:48.580 from the hospital he comes he's all fucked up still and um and he's like this somebody had 0.96

02:03:54.540 told him what had happened he goes i i wanted to say i'm sorry for calling you a rat i should 0.96

02:04:01.140 never have said that and everybody stops to look to see what i'm going to say well what am i going

02:04:07.220 to say ah forget it it's all water under the bridge i go listen look at me look at me and he

02:04:12.640 lifts his head up. And I said, so help me, God, if I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again,

02:04:19.400 you're dead. And they won't even find you. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So everybody's like, 0.99

02:04:27.080 the CIA guy's tough after all. But I said in the book, one of my rules that I learned at the CIA,

02:04:34.440 let others do your dirty work. And then I get called down to the lieutenant's office again.

02:04:39.440 Because as he's beating them, I sat back down.

02:04:42.040 I'm watching the game.

02:04:43.120 Everybody else runs. 0.98

02:04:44.160 As soon as there's a fight, everybody just runs like cockroaches. 0.94

02:04:47.180 That's insane, though, man. 0.91

02:04:47.660 Right?

02:04:48.260 So I'm watching the game.

02:04:49.880 Kiriakou, lieutenant's office, immediately.

02:04:53.320 They always do it the same way.

02:04:54.460 It's like they're caricatures of themselves.

02:04:57.320 So I go down there.

02:04:59.500 And one of the lieutenants, there are two of them.

02:05:01.940 And he says, so tell us about this fight.

02:05:05.000 I go, what fight?

02:05:07.220 What fight?

02:05:08.460 You're going to be a smart guy now. 1.00

02:05:09.840 I said, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. 0.99

02:05:12.440 The fight. 1.00

02:05:13.520 We had four cameras showing you saying something to that crazy person,

02:05:19.760 and then he got up and beat the other guy.

02:05:22.220 I said, I was watching the Steelers game.

02:05:23.900 I don't know what you're talking about.

02:05:26.120 Oh, you're not going to tell us about the fight?

02:05:27.660 I said, you know what?

02:05:28.520 Maybe I will tell you about the fight.

02:05:30.060 Maybe it was you that started the fight.

02:05:32.000 Did you ever think of that?

02:05:33.320 Maybe it wasn't me.

02:05:34.520 I was an innocent bystander.

02:05:35.980 Maybe you put them up to fight each other.

02:05:38.460 I think I might make a complaint against you. 1.00

02:05:40.820 He goes, get the fuck out of my office. 0.98

02:05:43.480 And I wrote in my book, rule number one, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. 0.98

02:05:50.660 And as I was walking out, I just said, exactly.

02:05:55.600 Dang, bro.

02:05:56.420 I don't even know what to think anymore.

02:05:59.340 You know, I figured-

02:06:00.400 Sometimes that's where you get people to that point.

02:06:02.720 You're like this, you know-

02:06:03.820 They pushed me and pushed me and pushed me.

02:06:05.620 And at sentencing, the judge sentenced me to a minimum security work camp, and the CIA was furious that I got such a light sentence, and I was going to a minimum security camp.

02:06:15.980 So the CIA intervened to send me to a low security prison, which is an actual prison with the double walls.

02:06:24.680 Why did they do that?

02:06:26.360 They were furious.

02:06:27.540 The CIA was?

02:06:28.080 When I was first charged, I mean, this is a potential death penalty case.

02:06:33.300 Three counts of espionage for talking to ABC News and the New York Times.

02:06:38.060 Because you were talking to them about torture, right?

02:06:41.860 What cases specifically were you talking to them about?

02:06:44.060 Abu Zubaydah.

02:06:46.540 And they were furious because nobody had ever confirmed that there was a torture program.

02:06:52.580 And I said it was illegal.

02:06:54.040 Besides being immoral and unethical, it's illegal.

02:06:56.820 you want to torture people god bless but you got to change the law first we're a nation of laws

02:07:01.500 which countries you think had the most like the toughest torture programs over the years

02:07:06.380 or do you even know over the years like let's go back a hundred years

02:07:13.380 the chinese the vietnamese and the belgians the belgians if you can imagine the the horrors that 0.99

02:07:20.140 they perpetrated in congo of of epic proportions um yeah the russians the iranians the israelis 0.94

02:07:31.320 the united states is it weird like we talk about the term terrorism now but it's like it definitely

02:07:37.580 feels like when you talked about it a few a little bit earlier it's like it feels sometimes it's like

02:07:41.640 how much is america like a terrorist state in the world and i hate to say that because this is the

02:07:47.360 country that we live in yeah but it's like i think at a certain point if you use it you know i don't

02:07:53.280 know i don't know you know it's got to be hard to figure that out but it's like um you know it's like

02:07:59.800 when do you use like fear tactics and and that sort of thing to make sure that everything's okay

02:08:05.920 you know um yeah i don't know it's like do you here's my question do you think it's possible

02:08:13.040 for america to get to a place uh where we're an actual peacekeeper or do you think it's possible

02:08:20.160 to keep peace without terror make any sense or not yeah that's a hard question good you know and

02:08:27.240 and i think my answer has changed over the years i believed for a very long time that we were the

02:08:34.180 good guys i was a true believer that's why i worked there we were the good guys and we still

02:08:39.660 I think as people, we still are.

02:08:41.160 As people, we still are.

02:08:41.760 As citizens, we still are.

02:08:42.940 Agreed.

02:08:43.620 Agreed.

02:08:44.080 We still are.

02:08:44.860 Somebody commented on a Facebook post that I made the other day.

02:08:48.820 Like, I heard you say that the United States is the best country in the world.

02:08:54.240 You should be ashamed of yourself.

02:08:56.620 I was like, I believe that the United States is the best country in the world.

02:08:59.500 That's why I live here.

02:09:00.780 I could go live in some other country if I wanted to, but this is the best country in the world.

02:09:05.640 We have problems.

02:09:06.980 Every country has problems.

02:09:08.260 But the reason why I'm as active and as vocal as I am is because I want to change the things

02:09:14.180 that I disagree with. I don't think we should be a nation that tortures people or murders people

02:09:21.940 without trial. If somebody is a clear and present danger, which is the language that's used in the

02:09:27.140 amendment to 1, 2, 3, 3, 3. Okay. Clear and present danger. They're getting ready to, you know,

02:09:33.380 deliver the dirty bomb or, you know, whatever. Okay. Sometimes we have to work in the shadows 0.77

02:09:39.780 awful, but, but it's a fact of life. But if you just send teams around the world to kill people 0.99

02:09:45.700 whose politics you don't like people who have never been charged with a crime, then shame on

02:09:51.420 us. That's not what the founding fathers gave us. So if you want to torture people, you got to

02:09:57.040 change the law. Ronald Reagan said, we were a shining city on a hill, right? We're a beacon

02:10:04.060 of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties. That's the country I want to be.

02:10:09.940 Same. That's what most people want to be.

02:10:12.460 Exactly.

02:10:14.180 Do you think we can get back to that place or what do you think?

02:10:16.800 I think it's possible.

02:10:18.100 You do?

02:10:18.400 I think it's going to take a very long time, but I think it's possible. And I think we have to start

02:10:24.560 by trying to snap out of this mindset

02:10:28.580 that we have to be the world's policemen.

02:10:31.320 Like, why?

02:10:33.780 I have relatives in Greece and friends all over Europe,

02:10:36.780 and they ask me the same question all the time.

02:10:38.300 Why are you guys doing this?

02:10:40.400 Like, did we really need to overthrow Libya?

02:10:44.960 Qaddafi, rather, in Libya?

02:10:46.580 Of course not.

02:10:47.300 I think a lot of people don't know what's going on.

02:10:49.140 They just want their families to be okay.

02:10:50.720 They don't want data centers.

02:10:51.780 A lot of people do not want AI. 0.99

02:10:53.300 They don't give a shit about it. 0.98

02:10:54.360 It's not going to benefit them. 0.99

02:10:55.620 I'm genuinely frightened.

02:10:56.380 Oh, the Pope is frightened.

02:10:57.480 I'm trying to get the Pope to come in.

02:10:59.120 I offered that I would go to the Vatican and talk with the Pope.

02:11:01.520 Oh, that's wonderful.

02:11:02.560 I want to learn about what he thinks.

02:11:04.760 The Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church just issued an encyclical,

02:11:09.080 100% supporting everything the Pope said on this.

02:11:12.020 Wow.

02:11:13.920 Yeah, I mean, it would be a blessing to get to talk with him and just learn.

02:11:16.400 I just want to be able to share a message, be a part of, not me share,

02:11:21.720 but just be like you know just part of the telephone game of of helping or being a part

02:11:28.660 of the message getting out if i can yeah because i do think it's important we don't want that

02:11:33.140 nobody wants it 30 people want it a hundred people want it with a lot of power exactly we don't want

02:11:39.120 it exactly yes nobody wants it nobody wants it yeah there it is right nobody wants it cyclical

02:11:46.380 yeah i read about this i've read part of the popes but i haven't seen this new one this is from

02:11:51.240 the Orthodox Church?

02:11:53.160 Yeah, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop.

02:11:55.220 It's Elpidoforos, his name,

02:11:58.140 endorsing everything the Pope said about AI.

02:12:01.300 You have a new podcast.

02:12:02.460 Thanks, Sean, for hanging out.

02:12:03.560 Sorry if I haven't had the best questions at a certain point.

02:12:05.980 No, your questions were great,

02:12:07.400 and they cut right to the heart of things.

02:12:08.880 Trying to get my brain back on track a little bit.

02:12:11.440 It's just been like a long month,

02:12:12.620 but before you do leave,

02:12:14.680 I know you have a podcast that you're starting your own.

02:12:16.600 Finally, thank you.

02:12:17.820 Finally, thank you.

02:12:18.740 You've been on, you've been on all of them. So you have to start your own and it's called the briefing room. Yeah. John Kiriakou's briefing room. John Kiriakou's briefing room. We're going to launch it in about four weeks. If you go to real John Kiriakou on YouTube, it'll pop up saying coming soon. Please, please, please subscribe. And I have another one too called John Kiriakou's dead drop. That's on Apple podcast and Spotify. It's just story after story after story.

02:12:47.100 and it's, it's been actually very popular, been very lucky. We've gone up to number five

02:12:51.380 in the history category worldwide. Oh, it's exciting. Really? Yeah. Very exciting. Yeah.

02:12:56.680 It's an exciting time. I mean, that's one thing that we also have to remember is like, sure.

02:13:01.260 Things seem this way and that way, but also it isn't like, if you can see excitement as like

02:13:07.140 being of all things and not just things that seem positive, but things that could seem, um,

02:13:14.500 to be decided then there is a lot of excitement and so that's like a nice way to think about

02:13:21.520 things agreed um and you this is your book the ultimate guy to cia skills tactics and techniques

02:13:28.140 is there a basic one you can give us out of the book man that's just something that you can notice

02:13:32.100 about people yeah the one the part that i'm proudest of in this book is the section on

02:13:36.760 surveillance and surveillance detection i took it so seriously that i actually became a surveillance

02:13:41.120 instructor at the CIA for the last, uh, two years that I was at headquarters. Um, I'll tell you

02:13:47.880 something that happened to me when I was in Pakistan, I was always very, very, very careful

02:13:54.000 about my own personal security. And, um, I noticed one day I was staying at a, at a guest house,

02:14:03.280 a little 14 room guest house. And, uh, I noticed one day there's a guy in a motorcycle. He's trying

02:14:09.420 really hard to stay in my blind spot. And the only reason I even noticed him was he had a red

02:14:13.780 motorcycle helmet on and nobody in Pakistan wore motorcycle helmets. I don't even know where you

02:14:19.300 would buy a motorcycle helmet. So I was like, huh, that's funny. I speed up. He speeds up. I slow

02:14:24.340 down. He slows down. I change lanes. He changes lanes. I'm like, oh, this, this isn't good. I get

02:14:29.860 to the entrance to the diplomatic quarter, which was the part of town where all the embassies were

02:14:33.380 and he breaks off. Well, I work like 14, 15, 16 hours every single day. I get to work when it's

02:14:39.760 dark. I leave work when it's dark. And so I pull out of the diplomatic quarter and the guy's on me

02:14:46.200 again. And I was like, oh, this is definitely not good. I was worried about it all night.

02:14:52.720 So the next morning I get up at five o'clock in the morning and I'm taking a different route to

02:14:56.300 work every day. I'm leaving at a different time every day. My routes to work don't make any sense

02:15:00.380 just to make sure I'm not being followed.

02:15:02.540 And now twice I am being followed.

02:15:04.340 There's a definition of surveillance at the CIA.

02:15:06.940 It's multiple sightings at time and distance.

02:15:09.800 So you see the person more than once

02:15:12.380 at different times of the day and at different places.

02:15:16.480 So we have a database.

02:15:18.640 So I put in the database when I first arrived.

02:15:20.640 I think I'm under surveillance.

02:15:21.780 It's a motorcycle.

02:15:22.680 Here's the license number.

02:15:23.780 This is a description of the guy.

02:15:25.180 He's wearing a red helmet.

02:15:27.580 Next day, I get up at five o'clock in the morning.

02:15:29.300 I just opened the door a crack I look up and down the street I don't see anybody

02:15:33.120 so they had assigned us these like poles these retracting poles with a mirror on the bottom so

02:15:39.060 I look under my car I don't see any explosives or tracking devices or anything so you got to be

02:15:44.140 careful you know so I get in the car I go like two blocks and the guy's on me again so I finally get

02:15:52.540 to the office and I waited for the security officer to come in and I said listen I'm under

02:15:58.720 surveillance. I'm a hundred percent sure I'm under surveillance. I told him about the three

02:16:02.720 sightings. He's like, Ooh, this isn't good. I said, I know. He said, we have to wait until the

02:16:06.780 chief comes in. So finally the chief comes in around seven. And I said, I'm under surveillance,

02:16:14.020 a hundred percent certain. So I explained to him the three different sightings and he's like,

02:16:20.620 well, you know what you have to do. And I said, I, I know. He goes, you never popped your cherry

02:16:28.420 that way, did you? Let's shoot somebody. And I said, Nope, never needed to. He's like, well, 1.00

02:16:34.340 we're going to have, we're going to have teams out there. Don't worry. We're going to have guys all

02:16:37.780 around you. You're not going to be alone. I'm like, okay. All right. I was very worried. So I

02:16:42.820 get back to my office, my office, it was me. I was the only staff officer and six retirees who had

02:16:49.100 all been in the senior intelligence service. Every one of the six had either been the chief or

02:16:54.080 deputy chief of Near Eastern Operations. One had been the assistant deputy director of the CIA,

02:16:59.900 but they all came back after 9-11 for patriotic reasons. But if you're a contractor, you can't

02:17:06.160 be the chief. So they all worked for me, right? And word got around. They're like,

02:17:11.360 don't worry, buddy. We're all going to be out there. Don't worry about a thing. I'm like,

02:17:14.920 I'm very worried. That afternoon, I have a meeting at a safe house that we shared with

02:17:20.720 the Pakistani intelligence service. We interrogated a prisoner and I get up to leave

02:17:26.460 and I don't know what possessed me to stop. And I turned and I said, General Muhammad,

02:17:32.460 are you following me? And he says, no, why? I said, because I'm under surveillance. I'm a hundred

02:17:39.520 percent sure that I'm under surveillance and I'm going to kill the guy this afternoon. 0.86

02:17:44.040 and he's like no it's not us i never saw him again so weeks later we heard that a bunch of 0.52

02:17:53.080 them were sitting around the table and one of them said the new guy kiriaku he's a nice guy

02:17:59.120 and everybody's like yeah he's a very nice guy and then one of them said you know what nobody's 0.54

02:18:04.800 that nice he's probably being nice just to to trick us into a sense of complacency we don't

02:18:13.740 know what he's doing when he's not here he's probably spying on us i wasn't but they put

02:18:21.380 the worst surveillance officer in the entire pakistani intelligence service on me so instead

02:18:27.900 of two blocks back he's right there in my blind spot and it was only because i stopped before i

02:18:34.340 got to the door that afternoon and asked general muhammad if they were following me if that's the

02:18:39.820 only reason that guy's not in the ground today i was going to kill him that were you oh yes i was 0.98

02:18:45.380 dang john because i was convinced he was going to kill me that big guy that's crazy bro dang dude 0.98

02:18:53.900 i think everybody wants to shoot somebody but they don't let you i worked with a guy great friend 0.97

02:18:59.040 go to the same church from the same men's group they don't let you and he's a psychiatrist

02:19:02.380 sorry you made me laugh he's a psychiatrist and he said to me i find it fascinating that you don't

02:19:11.980 have ptsd and i said is that good or bad he said from a psychiatric point of view and i said yeah

02:19:17.420 he goes not good i said i wasn't afraid of those people steve i was not afraid of them yeah it is

02:19:25.960 interesting man the things that we hold what's going on inside of us you know how it comes out

02:19:31.040 what gets figured out you know you just never know you never know what's going to bother you

02:19:35.440 you never know what's going to stick in your mind and bother you and fester for years

02:19:39.200 it happens yeah the stories man and about just making a story you know i mean you seem like the

02:19:47.380 kind of guy that likes to make a story you know i like telling these stories and people say i'm

02:19:52.280 living a story though oh yeah yeah oh listen i'm an adrenaline junkie i don't know what i would do

02:19:56.360 if i didn't have these stories in my past i'd be like oh my god my first wife she's like i want

02:20:01.020 to move back to Ohio and I want you to sell car insurance with my cousin Dean. I said, I would 1.00

02:20:05.200 rather cut my throat than move to Ohio and sell insurance with your cousin Dean. I'd rather join 0.97

02:20:10.640 the Aryan Brotherhood in prison. Seriously. Seriously. And you did. And I did. So I take 1.00

02:20:16.440 insurance next time. Yeah. Next life. John, tell your son I said, what's up that you mentioned

02:20:22.700 on the way in. Thank you. Max. Max, tell him I said, what's up. And is Kiriakou, is it Greek?

02:20:28.140 Greek.

02:20:28.660 Greek.

02:20:29.320 I was thinking about that.

02:20:30.760 You have a new book.

02:20:31.540 You have a new podcast.

02:20:32.380 Thank you so much for your time, brother.

02:20:33.440 Thank you.

02:20:33.960 Thanks for the invitation.

02:20:34.880 It's great to meet you.

02:20:35.620 You too, man.

02:20:36.100 It's a pleasure.

02:20:36.560 Thank you.

02:20:36.880 Thanks.

02:20:58.000 But it's gonna take

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - June 05, 2026

#661 - John Kiriakou

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