Valuetainment - July 10, 2025


＂Definition Of The Deep State＂ - Ex-CIA Whistleblower NAMES Agency’s Most Powerful Insider


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

149.33821

Word Count

1,117

Sentence Count

88

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

In 2002, the CIA interrogated Abu Zubaydah at a secret prison in Pakistan. The CIA waterboarded him 83 times, and he still says nothing. In 2005, an inspector general investigation into the CIA waterboarding program found that it was a cover-up.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 There's a presidential press conference and a reporter asks President Bush about these
00:00:05.720 reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Committee
00:00:10.120 of the Red Cross saying that the CIA was torturing its prisoners.
00:00:14.000 And the president looks right in the camera and he says, we do not torture.
00:00:21.200 And I said to my wife, who was a senior CIA officer, he is a bald faced liar.
00:00:27.540 He's looking the American people in the eye and he's lying.
00:00:31.200 Now, in retrospect, he may not have known, but he said, we don't, we do not torture.
00:00:36.780 Two days later, he's walking out of the South Portico of the White House to go to the-
00:00:43.260 Is this it, by the way?
00:00:44.200 Is this when he says we don't torture people?
00:00:46.880 Yes.
00:00:47.100 Played rap?
00:00:48.040 We-
00:00:48.420 Something else.
00:00:49.000 There's been a lot of talk in the newspapers and on TV about a program that I put in motion
00:00:58.300 to detain and question terrorists and extremists.
00:01:02.440 I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American
00:01:10.300 people.
00:01:12.040 And when we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you
00:01:18.740 bet we're going to detain them.
00:01:21.020 And you bet we're going to question them.
00:01:22.720 Because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence,
00:01:30.080 so we can help them, help protect them.
00:01:32.260 That's our job.
00:01:33.220 But it doesn't say-
00:01:34.240 Secondly, this government does not torture people.
00:01:38.500 Got it.
00:01:38.840 You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligation.
00:01:43.880 And then go to the other clip, Rob, I just sent you.
00:01:45.720 Is this your interview with Brian?
00:01:47.180 This is you?
00:01:47.780 Yes, that's the Brian Ross interview.
00:01:49.060 So press play just to see the first 30 seconds.
00:01:50.900 John, you were involved in the capture of Abu Zubaydah?
00:01:53.000 I was.
00:01:54.300 And tell me about that, how it happened.
00:01:56.940 It was quite a long process.
00:01:58.980 We had information that Abu Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan, in either Faisalabad or Lahore.
00:02:02.720 At what point of this interview do you say that we do waterboard?
00:02:06.180 How far along did it go?
00:02:06.980 It was pretty well into the interview.
00:02:10.000 And, you know, I made a very serious mistake in that interview.
00:02:17.700 When Mitchell and Jessen were out in-
00:02:20.700 This requires a little bit of background.
00:02:22.380 When they were out at the secret site, okay, so there's this CIA team and an FBI team.
00:02:27.600 The FBI interrogation team is headed by an FBI agent named Ali Sufan.
00:02:32.760 Ali and I worked together in Pakistan.
00:02:34.860 And he was, he was what every FBI agent should be, right?
00:02:39.340 This guy was a professional from the word go.
00:02:43.960 And he established this relationship with Abu Zubaydah so that Abu Zubaydah was giving him actionable intelligence.
00:02:52.080 Like real intelligence that saved American lives.
00:02:56.120 On August the 2nd, 2002, for reasons that have never been clear, George Tenet asked President Bush to move primacy of the Abu Zubaydah operation or Abu Zubaydah interrogation from the FBI to the CIA.
00:03:14.640 And that day, August 2nd, the CIA began torturing Abu Zubaydah.
00:03:19.120 He immediately went silent.
00:03:21.440 Okay.
00:03:22.200 Now, the mistake I made in the Brian Ross interview is I said Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded once.
00:03:29.160 I said it was torture and it was wrong and it was illegal.
00:03:31.200 But I said that it worked because he had been waterboarded once and he gave us actual intelligence.
00:03:35.680 That was not true.
00:03:37.840 Now, the reason I said that was because Mitchell and Jessen reported that he had been waterboarded once.
00:03:47.940 Now, how did they get away with that?
00:03:49.000 Now, the CIA and the FBI historically had hated each other so much that even their computer systems were incompatible with one another.
00:03:59.280 And so Ali Soufan every day is interrogating Abu Zubaydah and then he's writing up these cables saying he said this and he said that and he said the other thing and this thing.
00:04:08.980 And, you know, we need to talk to this country and talk to that country.
00:04:12.320 That information was never making its way back to the CIA because the systems were incompatible.
00:04:19.600 Mitchell and Jessen take over.
00:04:22.100 They waterboard Abu Zubaydah.
00:04:24.300 He clams up, stops talking entirely.
00:04:28.020 They waterboard him 83 times.
00:04:32.460 And he still says nothing.
00:04:34.540 So they go into the FBI system.
00:04:36.980 They pull out Ali Soufan's cables.
00:04:39.200 They retype the cables in the CIA system and they say we waterboarded him once and, oh, my God, look what he told us.
00:04:48.120 And I said to my boss, the deputy director, I said maybe I'm wrong about this.
00:04:53.500 Right.
00:04:53.980 I still think it's I still think it's crime, but maybe it actually works.
00:04:58.540 Well, it wasn't until 2005 that the CIA inspector general found in an investigation that this had happened, that they had faked the intelligence essentially.
00:05:11.380 And it wasn't until 2009 that it was finally declassified.
00:05:15.700 And in 2005 was when they destroyed all the evidence, right?
00:05:18.640 Exactly.
00:05:19.660 So the White House counsel, Harriet Myers, told.
00:05:24.880 Jose Rodriguez, who was the deputy director for operations and Gina Haspel, who was the head of counterterrorism at the time and later became the CIA director.
00:05:35.040 Don't destroy the videotapes of the torture sessions.
00:05:39.540 As soon as they got back to the building, they put them all in an industrial grinder and they destroyed everything.
00:05:46.460 How do you feel about Gina?
00:05:49.020 You know, I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post when her appointment as director was announced.
00:05:55.600 And I said, in the halls at the CIA, we used to call her bloody Gina Haspel because she she went out to the secret site to observe the torture just for the kick of watching the torture.
00:06:07.880 Get out of here.
00:06:09.420 She was 1000% pro-torture.
00:06:12.820 And the other thing is, you know, we talk a lot nowadays about the deep state.
00:06:18.020 She was the definition of the deep state.
00:06:20.480 Wow.
00:06:20.760 She was 30 plus years at the CIA.
00:06:23.420 Like, wouldn't you want an outsider to be the adult in the room?
00:06:27.020 Hi, everybody.
00:06:27.840 I'm John Kiriakou, former CIA officer.
00:06:30.800 Please find me on Manect.
00:06:31.980 We have a lot to talk about CIA, FBI, DOD, torture, secret prisons, international renditions.
00:06:39.880 Maybe you or your child want to apply for a job at the CIA and are looking for some tips.
00:06:44.860 Let me know.
00:06:45.660 There's a lot we can talk about.
00:06:47.800 You pick the subject.
00:06:48.780 We'll make it happen.
00:06:49.860 Again, it's on Manect.
00:06:51.380 Thanks.
00:06:51.880 And I'll see you soon.
00:06:53.140 If you enjoy this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:06:56.020 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:06:58.800 We'll see you soon.