00:00:00
Billions of dollars are spent spying on
00:00:02
Americans, whether it's NSA or CIA or
00:00:06
the FBI. And to make matters worse, we
00:00:08
know that the CIA can take control
00:00:10
remotely of a car's computer system in
00:00:13
order to crash the car, take it off a
00:00:14
bridge, or take control of your smart TV
00:00:16
and turn a speaker into a microphone,
00:00:19
>> even though the TV is off and broadcast
00:00:21
back to the CIA.
00:00:22
>> Can they do that with devices?
00:00:24
>> Absolutely. And I'll tell you how we
00:00:25
know. There was a CIA software engineer
00:00:27
who was disgruntled and he downloaded
00:00:29
tens of thousands of documents
00:00:30
classified above top secret and instead
00:00:33
of going to the Russians or the Chinese,
00:00:35
he went to Wikileaks and they became the
00:00:38
Vault 7 documents. So our whole lives
00:00:40
are out there potentially for someone to
00:00:42
use against us and every country has
00:00:44
these capabilities. Listen, I spent 15
00:00:46
years in the CIA. I love this country,
00:00:49
but one of the most important things in
00:00:50
my life is the issue of ethics, which is
00:00:52
why I blew the whistle on the CIA's
00:00:54
torture program. Because my superiors
00:00:56
kept repeating that torture worked, but
00:00:58
besides being illegal, immoral,
00:01:00
unethical, it just wasn't true. And I
00:01:02
would let them send me to prison again
00:01:04
because it was the right thing to do. I
00:01:07
mean, we know that they were
00:01:08
experimenting on American citizens and
00:01:10
spreading diseases in American cities.
00:01:13
>> This is the stuff of movies.
00:01:14
>> It is. And because you've been in this
00:01:16
world that the average person really has
00:01:18
no idea about, I have to ask you, who do
00:01:20
you think is the real adversary of the
00:01:22
West, what are you most concerned about
00:01:23
in the world at the moment? And what
00:01:24
about everything that's going on with
00:01:26
Trump in Venezuela and Greenland? And
00:01:27
then, do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a
00:01:29
spy?
00:01:30
>> Yes.
00:01:30
>> Who do you think he was working for?
00:01:32
>> The Israelis.
00:01:32
>> Why?
00:01:38
Listen, my my team gave me a script that
00:01:40
they asked me to read, but I'm just
00:01:41
going to ask you um in the nicest way I
00:01:43
possibly can. Thank you first and
00:01:45
foremost for choosing to subscribe to
00:01:46
this channel. It is um it's been one of
00:01:48
the most incredible crazy years of my
00:01:50
life. I never could have imagined. I had
00:01:52
so many dreams in my life, but this was
00:01:53
not one of them. And the very fact that
00:01:55
these conversations have resonated with
00:01:56
you and you've given me so much feedback
00:01:58
is something I will always be
00:01:59
appreciative of. And I almost carry away
00:02:01
a sort of burden of uh responsibility to
00:02:03
pay you back. And the favor I would like
00:02:05
to ask from you today is to subscribe to
00:02:07
the channel if you um would be so
00:02:09
obliged. It's completely free to do
00:02:10
that. Roughly about 47% of you that
00:02:13
listen to this channel frequently
00:02:14
currently don't subscribe to this
00:02:16
channel. So if you're one of those
00:02:17
people, please come and join us. Hit the
00:02:18
subscribe button. It's the single free
00:02:20
thing you can do to make this channel
00:02:21
better. And every subscriber sort of
00:02:23
pays into this show and allows us to do
00:02:25
things bigger and better and to push
00:02:26
ourselves even more. And I will not let
00:02:28
you down if you hit the subscribe
00:02:29
button. I promise you. And if I do,
00:02:31
please do unsubscribe, but I promise I
00:02:32
won't. Thank you.
00:02:41
John Kuryoku, the world knows your name.
00:02:45
Why?
00:02:47
Why does the world know your name?
00:02:50
>> I can give you two answers.
00:02:54
One, I'm proud to say that I blew the
00:02:57
whistle on the CIA's torture program in
00:03:00
a nationally televised interview with
00:03:03
ABC News. The second reason is
00:03:07
I blew the whistle a long time ago and
00:03:10
just in the past 18 months, I seem to
00:03:13
have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm
00:03:16
sweet spot and all of a sudden my
00:03:19
message is getting out there. And you
00:03:22
went to prison for blowing the whistle.
00:03:23
>> I did and I would do it again tomorrow.
00:03:26
I really would. You know, I was I was
00:03:28
giving an interview to the BBC the day
00:03:30
after I got out of prison. They were the
00:03:33
first uh outlet to ask for an interview.
00:03:36
And so I gladly gave it to them. And the
00:03:39
interviewer said
00:03:42
kind of perturbedly,
00:03:45
"You're not showing any remorse or
00:03:48
contrition." And I said, "No, I'm not
00:03:50
remorseful. I'm not contrite. I would do
00:03:53
it again. I would let them send me to
00:03:56
prison again because it was the right
00:03:58
thing to do."
00:04:00
>> And you were a spy in the CIA.
00:04:02
>> Yeah. I was quite an accomplished spy in
00:04:05
the CIA. I spent 15 years in the CIA.
00:04:08
The first half of my career was in
00:04:09
analysis and uh and I got bored,
00:04:12
frankly. And so I made an unusual at the
00:04:15
time change to counterterrorism
00:04:17
operations. And then I was the chief of
00:04:20
CIA counterterrorism operations in
00:04:22
Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks.
00:04:24
>> And if I'd never heard about the CIA
00:04:26
before and I had never heard about your
00:04:29
role in the CIA before and I was a
00:04:32
16-year-old,
00:04:33
>> right?
00:04:33
>> How would you explain to me what you did
00:04:36
there? What your role was and what the
00:04:38
CIA is?
00:04:39
>> Sure. The CIA is an intelligence service
00:04:43
whose job it is at its most basic level
00:04:48
to recruit spies to steal secrets and to
00:04:51
analyze those secrets so that the
00:04:53
policymakers can make the best informed
00:04:55
policy. After 9/11, we were expecting an
00:05:00
attack, to use Osama bin Laden's words,
00:05:02
that would dwarf 911.
00:05:05
And so my job was to infiltrate al-Qaeda
00:05:09
by recruiting members of al-Qaeda
00:05:12
to tell us when and where that next
00:05:15
attack was going to come so that we
00:05:17
could disrupt it. We could
00:05:21
kill or capture the leadership and
00:05:23
destroy the organization.
00:05:26
>> And give me a range of the things that
00:05:28
you did during your time in the CIA just
00:05:30
for a very topline range of the types of
00:05:32
things you worked on. Oh, sure. Um, as
00:05:35
an analyst, it was actually quite
00:05:37
straightforward. Uh, we would write for
00:05:40
the president, the vice president, the
00:05:42
secretaries of state and defense, and
00:05:44
the national security adviser.
00:05:46
>> And who were the presidents during this
00:05:47
that time?
00:05:47
>> Uh, when I started, it was George HW
00:05:49
Bush, the father, and then it was Bill
00:05:53
Clinton, then George W. Bush. There are
00:05:55
several different publications. There's
00:05:57
the president's daily brief, which is
00:05:59
the most important. I covered Iraq the
00:06:02
entire time that I was in analysis from
00:06:05
well before most Americans had ever
00:06:07
heard of Iraq. I was told actually that
00:06:10
it was a training account because
00:06:12
nothing ever happened there. Nothing
00:06:14
ever changed. And then
00:06:17
Iraq invaded Kuwait. The next day I got
00:06:21
to the office early. I was 25
00:06:25
years old, 26 years old. And uh my boss
00:06:29
said, "Don't take your jacket off. We're
00:06:31
going to the White House." I had never
00:06:32
been to the White House before except as
00:06:35
a tourist. And so we got in a car, went
00:06:37
to the White House. We're ushered into
00:06:39
the Oval Office. It's the president, the
00:06:42
vice president, the national security
00:06:45
adviser, the director of the CIA, my
00:06:48
boss, and me. And then we all sit down.
00:06:51
The president tells us, "Sit down." We
00:06:53
sit down and the president says,"Well,
00:06:56
now what do we do?" And everybody turns
00:06:59
and looks at me and it took me a second
00:07:02
and I said, "Uh, yes." I said, "Mr.
00:07:04
President, as you know, Iraqi troops
00:07:07
crossed the border at 2:00 this morning.
00:07:09
They the royal family has uh has run
00:07:12
away to uh Saudi Arabia. They've named a
00:07:15
new occupation governor, etc., etc. Do
00:07:18
we know who that is?" I said, "Yes,
00:07:19
sir." I gave him the name and I said,
00:07:22
"Actually, he uh he's the co-founder of
00:07:24
the Popular Front for the Liberation of
00:07:26
Palestine." The vice president shouts,
00:07:28
"Jesus Christ." And then the president
00:07:31
says, "Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you.
00:07:33
We'll take it from here." And I remember
00:07:35
saying to myself, "My friends would
00:07:38
never believe in a thousand years what I
00:07:40
was doing right now. They wouldn't even
00:07:42
believe me if I told them." That's what
00:07:44
an analyst does. When I switched to
00:07:46
operations again, the the job was very
00:07:49
straightforward. It was to recruit spies
00:07:51
to steal secrets. But then if you're
00:07:54
involved in counterterrorism operations,
00:07:56
there are a lot of extras that you have
00:07:57
to be trained in. So you go through the
00:08:00
normal spy training. This is how you
00:08:03
ingratiate yourself. It's something
00:08:04
called the asset acquisition cycle.
00:08:07
Spot, assess, develop, recruit. I meet
00:08:10
you at a cocktail party. You seem like a
00:08:12
nice guy. I introduce myself.
00:08:16
I ask, "Uh, so what do you do for a
00:08:18
living?" Well, if you tell me you manage
00:08:20
a shoe store, I'm going to say, "Well,
00:08:21
it was very nice meeting you." And I'm
00:08:23
going to go on to the next guy. But if
00:08:24
you tell me you work at the port, you
00:08:28
work in the Ministry of Defense, you
00:08:31
work in the Chinese embassy,
00:08:33
I'm going to invite you to lunch. I've
00:08:35
spotted you. I've assessed you. And my
00:08:38
assessment is I'd like to get to know
00:08:40
you. Then I begin to develop you. I'll
00:08:42
give you an example. I was in Pakistan.
00:08:45
I got a tip that uh that al-Qaeda, a
00:08:49
group of mid-level al-Qaeda fighters was
00:08:52
meeting every single day in a coffee
00:08:54
shop at 10:00 in the morning. My Arabic
00:08:57
was absolutely flawless at the time. And
00:09:01
so I had a bushy beard that I grew for
00:09:03
operational reasons.
00:09:04
>> Can I hear some of your Arabic?
00:09:06
>> Yeah. Uh,
00:09:08
it's nice to meet you. Or
00:09:12
Alhamdulillah.
00:09:16
Uh, so I uh I bought an Arabic newspaper
00:09:19
and I went to the coffee shop and I just
00:09:22
sat there and sure enough at 10:00 the
00:09:25
four of them came in. One of them looked
00:09:28
at me and I looked at him and that was
00:09:30
it. We made eye contact. I did that for
00:09:33
a week.
00:09:34
The second week I was there drinking my
00:09:37
coffee, sitting with my Arabic
00:09:38
newspaper, and the one who had looked at
00:09:40
me the week before, he nodded. So I
00:09:43
nodded back. That was it. No
00:09:45
communication otherwise. The third week,
00:09:48
I'm a regular now. He recognizes me.
00:09:52
So he says to me, I said, "May peace be
00:09:56
upon you." And I say, "And upon you
00:09:58
peace." One day he came in alone and I
00:10:02
said, "Please have a seat. Sit with me.
00:10:05
No sense in you sitting alone and me
00:10:06
sitting alone." So he sat down. We
00:10:09
started talking. And um I asked him how
00:10:12
long he had been in Pakistan. He said,
00:10:14
"Oh, I've been here for 5 years. I was
00:10:17
in Afghanistan. I was making jihad
00:10:19
against the Americans." And I said, "Oh,
00:10:22
that must have been hell on earth." He
00:10:24
said, "Oh." He said that the bombing of
00:10:26
Tora Bora was hideous. That was the word
00:10:28
that he used. It was hideous. And I
00:10:30
said, "And what about your family? How's
00:10:32
your family?" He said, "My wife and and
00:10:35
son and daughter are in Cairo. I've
00:10:38
never met my son." He was born just
00:10:40
after I left to make jihad. I said, "I'm
00:10:43
so sorry." And he said, "Yes, I'm I'm
00:10:45
lonely and I I want to go home." And we
00:10:49
continued this relationship.
00:10:51
And finally, I said to him, "Let me take
00:10:54
you to dinner. let's get out of the
00:10:56
coffee shop. The truth was I didn't want
00:10:58
one of his friends to walk in and see
00:11:00
us. So, we went to a restaurant for
00:11:02
dinner and I said, "Listen,
00:11:06
there's something that I haven't been
00:11:07
truthful with you about.
00:11:10
I'm not Lebanese."
00:11:13
And I said, "Actually, I'm American.
00:11:17
Are you okay with that?"
00:11:19
And he says, "I think so." I said,
00:11:22
'Well, actually,
00:11:24
I'm a CIA officer.
00:11:27
And he says, ' Okay.' So, he didn't run
00:11:31
screaming from the room or pull a gun or
00:11:34
anything. And he said,
00:11:38
"Why do you want me? Why do you want to
00:11:40
talk to me?" I said, "Actually, you have
00:11:42
access to something that I want." It was
00:11:44
very specific. And I told him what it
00:11:46
was. And he says, "And what will you do
00:11:49
for me?" And I said, "Anything your
00:11:52
heart desires."
00:11:54
And he said, "I want to go home."
00:11:58
I said, "I can do that." And
00:11:59
>> you wanted information presumably.
00:12:00
>> I wanted information, very specific
00:12:02
information,
00:12:03
>> which you can't share.
00:12:04
>> No. I'll go right back to prison. So,
00:12:08
uh, so um, we got him a passport. I
00:12:13
bought him a first class ticket and I
00:12:17
took him to the airport, gave him some
00:12:18
cash to get himself started again. And I
00:12:22
said, "Before you go, I have to ask you,
00:12:24
why did you agree to give me this
00:12:27
information? I mean, presumably I'm the
00:12:30
enemy." And he said, "I've been here 5
00:12:32
years, and you're the first person who
00:12:35
ever asked me about my family."
00:12:38
So I said, "Best of luck. Never saw him
00:12:40
again.
00:12:43
That's the job.
00:12:44
>> I have to ask you,
00:12:47
>> take me on the journey of you being a
00:12:50
young man
00:12:52
>> in West Pennsylvania,
00:12:53
>> right?
00:12:55
>> To becoming a spy. What happened?
00:12:58
Because I'll be I'll be honest. You
00:12:59
know, I don't really know what my
00:13:01
perception of spies is, but it's not
00:13:03
you.
00:13:04
>> That's good.
00:13:06
>> That's good. See, because I kind of work
00:13:08
under the radar. M so that's really
00:13:10
interesting is I there's there's so many
00:13:14
um once you learn about spies as a
00:13:17
podcast like so if you go back a couple
00:13:18
of years and someone had told me about
00:13:20
spies I wouldn't have believed them I
00:13:21
wouldn't have believed that these things
00:13:22
actually happened
00:13:24
>> you know you hear about people going
00:13:25
undercover
00:13:27
>> and going to other countries and getting
00:13:29
secrets and and all of these things
00:13:33
>> and it's not until you meet the people
00:13:34
that said
00:13:36
yes that's me I used to do that that
00:13:38
you're sort you have this paradigm shift
00:13:40
in your mind and you go, "Oh my god,
00:13:41
what else might be going on?"
00:13:42
>> Right?
00:13:42
>> Because I lived in this world probably
00:13:44
up until the age of, I don't know, 30
00:13:45
years old where I kind of just assume
00:13:47
things are what they are
00:13:49
>> like as I see them. And then, you know,
00:13:51
you start to discover that there's
00:13:53
layers of secrecy. Nations are against
00:13:55
each other. They're doing all of these
00:13:56
covert operations. And even like as a
00:13:58
podcaster now, I have moments where I go
00:14:03
like, "How do I know that you're not
00:14:06
you're not here to steal secrets from
00:14:07
me?"
00:14:07
>> Right? So, you know what's funny? When I
00:14:09
had Andre Bustamante on the show, the
00:14:12
comment sections are always the same.
00:14:13
They're always like, "Once a CIA spy,
00:14:15
always a CIA spy."
00:14:16
>> I hate when people say that. It's so
00:14:18
intellectually lazy.
00:14:19
>> But I just I do wonder and I go, "Okay,
00:14:21
here's a super conspiracy theory. What
00:14:23
if the CIA have made spies do really
00:14:28
well in the YouTube algorithm so that
00:14:30
all of us as long form podcasters invite
00:14:32
them on and then they
00:14:34
>> You know what? I would agree with that.
00:14:36
I would have agreed with that a year ago
00:14:38
because Andrew Bamante has really made a
00:14:41
handsome living out of selling his
00:14:43
experience and he's on every podcast.
00:14:46
>> Yeah.
00:14:46
>> But I am the most anti-CIA former CIA
00:14:52
person that's out there.
00:14:54
>> But wouldn't that be the perfect CIA
00:14:55
agent?
00:14:58
>> I mean, if if I weren't constantly
00:14:59
criticizing the CIA as a as a an
00:15:02
organization that's just out of control.
00:15:04
Do you think the CIA are have a strategy
00:15:07
for podcasters and for podcasting?
00:15:09
>> I think yes, now they do. It took them a
00:15:11
little while to to get current, but just
00:15:15
like they over time developed a strategy
00:15:18
with Hollywood,
00:15:20
sure they're developing a strategy with
00:15:22
podcasters. You know, it was only in the
00:15:24
last 10 years that the CIA opened a
00:15:28
branch within the Office of Public
00:15:29
Affairs whose job it is solely to liers
00:15:32
with Hollywood studios. The FBI's been
00:15:35
doing this since the since the 40s. And
00:15:38
the goal is that everything that comes
00:15:40
out of Hollywood should be pro-CIA.
00:15:43
And you know, we end up with with Zero
00:15:46
Dark 30 and you know, the recruit and
00:15:49
the CIA, Argo, the CIA is always the
00:15:52
hero in these movies. If you were still
00:15:54
at the CIA now and your job was to in
00:15:56
infiltrate and
00:16:00
uh use creators or podcasters as an
00:16:03
asset for the CIA's objectives, how
00:16:06
might you design that plan? If we were
00:16:09
just hypothesizing,
00:16:11
you would have to have
00:16:14
a goal
00:16:17
that would be specific enough that you
00:16:18
could actually track the progress to it.
00:16:20
So, you can't just say, "Well, I'm going
00:16:22
to pay this podcaster x amount of money,
00:16:25
and we're going to we're going to we're
00:16:28
going to do something with the algorithm
00:16:29
to make him vastly popular among
00:16:34
men, you know, 18 to 30, let's say.
00:16:37
There's got to be more to it than that.
00:16:39
It has to be a message. You've got to be
00:16:41
able to get a specific, well-honed
00:16:45
message out there. And the message can
00:16:48
be anything.
00:16:50
It could be, you know, love the CIA,
00:16:53
we're the good guys. It could be support
00:16:55
the overthrow of the Iranian government.
00:16:57
It could be, you know, any criticism of
00:17:01
Benjamin Netanyahu is anti-semitism.
00:17:03
It could be anything you want it to be.
00:17:06
You just have to make sure that it's
00:17:07
repeated enough. See, this was the
00:17:08
danger with the torture program. This is
00:17:10
one of the very important reasons that I
00:17:12
went public when I did because my
00:17:15
colleagues, my superiors at the CIA kept
00:17:18
repeating this lie over and over and
00:17:22
over again that torture worked and that
00:17:25
torture got us information that saved
00:17:27
American lives. And that was just simply
00:17:29
not true. It was a lie. Besides being
00:17:32
illegal, immoral, unethical, it just
00:17:35
wasn't true. And so I decided before we
00:17:40
go down this road anymore, I'm going to
00:17:41
go public.
00:17:43
>> So can you take me back then? We got a
00:17:45
little bit sidetracked there, but
00:17:46
>> Sure.
00:17:47
>> John, how did you come to be a CIA spy?
00:17:51
>> When I was 9 years old, I told my
00:17:54
parents that I wanted to be a spy when I
00:17:56
grew up. it came time to apply for
00:17:59
college and I only applied at one
00:18:02
university, George Washington University
00:18:04
in Washington because it was two blocks
00:18:07
from the White House and it was one of
00:18:09
only three schools in America that
00:18:11
offered a Middle Eastern studies
00:18:12
program. I was one of only four people
00:18:16
in that brand new Middle Eastern studies
00:18:18
program. I stayed for a master's degree
00:18:21
in legislative affairs with a focus on
00:18:24
foreign policy analysis. I was taking a
00:18:27
class in that program called the
00:18:29
psychology of leadership. It was taught
00:18:32
by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr.
00:18:34
Gerald Post and he gave us an assignment
00:18:39
one uh one day where we had to shadow
00:18:41
our bosses. We had to just follow our
00:18:43
bosses for a week.
00:18:44
>> Your bosses?
00:18:45
>> Yeah. I worked at a labor union called
00:18:48
the United Food and Commercial Workers
00:18:50
Union. And so we were just supposed to
00:18:52
follow our boss around for a week and
00:18:54
then write a psychological profile. I
00:18:57
used dozens of, you know, footnotes from
00:19:00
psychological, you know, psychology
00:19:02
texts. And I ended up saying that he was
00:19:05
a sociopath with psychopathic and
00:19:08
possibly violent tendencies. And, you
00:19:10
know, I had these citations.
00:19:12
I passed the paper in. Dr. Post gives it
00:19:15
back to me a week later, gave me an A,
00:19:17
and then he wrote, "Please see me after
00:19:18
class." So I went up to him after the
00:19:21
class and I said, "Dr. Post, you wanted
00:19:23
to see me." He says, "Come to my
00:19:24
office." So we went down there. He
00:19:27
closed the door and he says, "Listen,
00:19:30
I'm not really a professor here. I'm a
00:19:33
CIA officer undercover as a professor
00:19:36
here, and I'm looking for people who
00:19:39
would fit into the CIA's culture. I
00:19:42
think you would fit into the CIA's
00:19:44
culture. Would you like to be a spy?"
00:19:47
And I said, "Yes,
00:19:50
I would." He picked up the phone and
00:19:54
called the number and he said, "Bob,
00:19:57
this is Jerry. I've got a good one for
00:19:59
you. Do you have some time?" And he
00:20:02
said, "Sure." He writes an address on a
00:20:04
scrap of paper. And he says, "Be at this
00:20:06
address in 20 minutes." It was only one
00:20:09
subway stop away. So I jumped on the
00:20:11
metro. I went to Rosland, Virginia, just
00:20:13
across the river. I had to buzz to be
00:20:16
led in. And a woman opens the door. She
00:20:17
says, "Are you here for Bob?" And I
00:20:19
said, "Yes." She says, "Come on in."
00:20:23
I'm sitting there for a moment and then
00:20:24
this like 6 foot6, 350 lb giant barrels
00:20:30
out of his office and he says, "John
00:20:32
Bob, how the hell are you? I want you to
00:20:35
be at the George Washington University
00:20:37
Medical School Saturday morning at 8:00.
00:20:40
We've got some tests for you." I said,
00:20:42
"Okay." And then we shook hands and I
00:20:45
left. So, Saturday morning, I went to
00:20:47
the GW Medical School auditorium. There
00:20:50
were like, I don't know, 200 people
00:20:53
there and they hand us a test. My wife
00:20:56
picked me up. She said, "How did you
00:20:58
do?" I said, "I have no idea."
00:21:00
>> Does your wife at this point know that
00:21:01
you were applying for the CIA?
00:21:03
>> Yes. And that was going to be pretty
00:21:05
much the extent of what she ended up
00:21:08
knowing cuz once I got in,
00:21:10
>> but you were allowed to tell her.
00:21:12
>> I was not allowed to tell her. No. So,
00:21:15
you told her anyway?
00:21:16
>> Yeah. When I first applied, they said,
00:21:18
"Listen, don't tell anybody because you
00:21:20
may go undercover. You may go under deep
00:21:23
cover, and we can't have people out
00:21:26
there who know that you're a CIA
00:21:28
officer."
00:21:29
>> Presumably, the CIA are smart enough to
00:21:32
be able to check if you've told her.
00:21:33
>> Yeah. And they ask you on the polygraph,
00:21:35
"Did you tell her?" Really?
00:21:37
>> And I said, "Yeah, I told her. She's my
00:21:39
wife. What am I going to do?" You know,
00:21:41
but it got to the point where I'd get
00:21:43
home from a day where, you know, I broke
00:21:45
into some guy's house and and planted a
00:21:47
camera on a bug and I'd get home and
00:21:49
she'd say, "How was your day?" I'd say,
00:21:51
"Great. What'd you do?" Not a darn
00:21:54
thing. And then my phone would ring at,
00:21:56
you know, midnight and a guy would say,
00:21:58
"The rain in Spain falls mainly in the
00:22:01
plane." And I'd say, "Uh, Marzy Oats and
00:22:04
Dozy Oats and Little Lambs Ivy." And
00:22:06
that means meet me at the yacht club
00:22:09
parking lot in three hours.
00:22:11
And then I'd leave. She's she would say,
00:22:13
"Where where are you going? It's
00:22:14
midnight. I got to work." So I'd leave.
00:22:18
I'd do my meeting. I'd come home 6:00 in
00:22:21
the morning just in time to shower and
00:22:23
shave and get dressed to go to work. And
00:22:24
she would say, "What was her name?"
00:22:28
And I I remember this one terrible time.
00:22:31
That's what she said to me. What was her
00:22:33
name? The truth is, I had been sitting
00:22:35
in a garbage dumpster waiting for a guy
00:22:38
to drive by down the alley and throw a
00:22:40
bag of documents in. And I stunk of
00:22:44
garbage and I said to her, "Do I
00:22:46
seriously smell to you like I've been
00:22:48
with a woman?"
00:22:50
Seriously.
00:22:53
So, we ended up getting a divorce.
00:22:59
>> So, you do the assessment presumably.
00:23:01
you get in and then you do training.
00:23:03
>> He He called me like two weeks later,
00:23:06
Bob did, and he said, "You blew the
00:23:08
doors off those tests." I said, "Oh,
00:23:11
great. Okay." So, a month later, they
00:23:13
summoned me to headquarters,
00:23:16
and uh I was interviewed by the Office
00:23:18
of Neareastern Operations, the Office of
00:23:22
Near Eastern Analysis, and the Office of
00:23:25
Leadership Analysis. I was offered the
00:23:27
analysis job on the Iraq desk. And what
00:23:30
is the sum total of the training you
00:23:33
were given in the variety of different
00:23:35
roles that you had? Like how do they
00:23:37
train?
00:23:37
>> Good question. That's a good question
00:23:39
and the answer is vastly different
00:23:42
depending on where you start your
00:23:44
career.
00:23:45
>> So because I started mine in analysis,
00:23:47
the immediate training was in mastering
00:23:51
the CIA's writing style. So the most
00:23:54
important product that the CIA writes
00:23:57
every day is the PDB, the president's
00:24:00
daily brief,
00:24:01
>> and it tells the president what
00:24:03
>> what you think he needs to know.
00:24:05
>> Okay?
00:24:06
>> So for example, when the Iraqis began
00:24:08
moving to the to the Kuwaiti border,
00:24:12
we had this big debate. Are they going
00:24:14
to are they going to cross the border?
00:24:16
Yes or no? So I said, "Listen, why don't
00:24:20
I call the American defense attaches in
00:24:23
Baghdad and I'll just ask him to drive
00:24:25
down there and look and tell us what he
00:24:27
sees?" He drives down there, drives
00:24:30
back, he calls me, and he says,
00:24:32
"Literally, the entire Iraqi military is
00:24:36
on its way to the Kuwaiti border." So we
00:24:38
wrote a thing for the president saying
00:24:40
Iraq is going to invade Kuwait and it's
00:24:42
probably going to happen in the next 48
00:24:44
hours. And when when did the president
00:24:46
see that particular briefing?
00:24:47
>> At 7:00 a.m. the next morning.
00:24:49
>> Okay. And is there ever situations where
00:24:51
the president would get it? In the
00:24:52
middle of the night.
00:24:53
>> Yes.
00:24:54
>> Yeah.
00:24:54
>> And be told in the middle of the night
00:24:56
that
00:24:56
>> Yes. There there are these levels of
00:24:59
immediacy.
00:25:00
There's routine which is like who cares?
00:25:03
And then there is um priority which
00:25:07
means ah I'll get to it sometime today.
00:25:09
Then there's immediate which means you
00:25:11
should probably read it first.
00:25:14
But then there's flash,
00:25:17
which means, "Oh my god, something
00:25:19
terrible just happened. You should
00:25:21
probably wake the president." And then
00:25:24
there's critic, which means they're
00:25:26
coming over the embassy walls. We're at
00:25:29
war. Wake up the president. Scramble the
00:25:32
jets.
00:25:32
>> 911.
00:25:33
>> 911.
00:25:34
>> That's a critic.
00:25:37
>> So going back to this question of your
00:25:40
training.
00:25:40
>> Yeah. What is it that the
00:25:44
CIA teach you about human nature and how
00:25:47
to use human nature to your advantage
00:25:50
that could be transferable to other
00:25:52
disciplines in life like business or
00:25:55
well this is going to sound not very
00:25:58
nice but it's it's real life it's
00:26:02
everyday life especially in in business
00:26:05
the CIA actively seeks to hire people
00:26:09
who have what they call sociopathic
00:26:11
tendencies.
00:26:13
Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no
00:26:17
conscience. They'll just blow right
00:26:19
through a polygraph exam, but they're
00:26:21
impossible to corral. They're impossible
00:26:25
to to, you know, keep
00:26:29
under rain. Uh, and it's because they're
00:26:33
not able, their brains won't allow them
00:26:35
to feel regret or remorse. Now, in
00:26:38
business, most CEOs are sociopaths.
00:26:42
Most, not all, but most. Especially in
00:26:44
big companies, because they claw their
00:26:46
way to the top, usually on the backs of
00:26:48
the people around them. They don't feel
00:26:51
bad screwing the next guy to get that
00:26:53
next promotion.
00:26:55
The CIA wants people like that because
00:26:59
those are the people who are going to
00:27:01
break into a foreign embassy. A normal
00:27:03
person would not advocate breaking into
00:27:06
a foreign embassy. It's sovereign
00:27:07
territory of a foreign country. I would
00:27:11
I'd be glad to do it.
00:27:12
>> Why?
00:27:13
>> Because we're the good guys.
00:27:15
>> So, do you have sociopathic tendencies?
00:27:17
>> Absolutely.
00:27:19
>> And what are your sociopathic
00:27:20
tendencies?
00:27:22
>> My sociopathic tendency was to operate
00:27:25
in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas.
00:27:31
Specifically, that's what it was. I'm
00:27:34
really curious about what we can learn
00:27:36
about human nature from someone whose
00:27:38
job was to meet strangers and to get
00:27:40
them to basically sometimes to turn
00:27:42
against their own country.
00:27:44
>> Like I'm really interested in and I
00:27:46
think I think it's informative because
00:27:48
so many of us, you know, when we think
00:27:50
about what good leadership is or what
00:27:52
good sales man or womanship is,
00:27:56
>> um, it seems like there's transferables.
00:27:59
I guess for some people it's family. I
00:28:00
guess for some people it's something
00:28:02
else. that that that hook that you're
00:28:04
talking about, that thing that gets
00:28:05
them.
00:28:06
>> And the word that they use at the CIA
00:28:08
for the hook is a vulnerability. And
00:28:11
it's not really a vulnerability in every
00:28:14
case. Now,
00:28:16
95%
00:28:18
studies have been done about this
00:28:20
internally at the CIA. 95% of the people
00:28:23
who agree to become spies for us do it
00:28:26
for the money. Right? It's it's a simple
00:28:29
cash transaction. You give me money,
00:28:32
I'll give you secrets. 95%.
00:28:35
>> So you telling me that you think human
00:28:37
motivation is 95% driven by money?
00:28:40
>> Yes.
00:28:40
>> Really?
00:28:41
>> Yes. The rest was love and family,
00:28:46
um, ideology,
00:28:49
revenge, and excitement.
00:28:52
You're going to get a handful of people
00:28:54
who are hooked on James Bond movies, and
00:28:56
they will do it. I mean, you're going to
00:28:58
pay them anyway, but they will do it
00:29:00
just for the adrenaline rush.
00:29:02
>> It's interesting because when I look at
00:29:04
this list of things and I compare it to
00:29:07
business,
00:29:09
it I would say it's slightly different
00:29:11
from my experience of hiring people,
00:29:13
specifically of hiring people.
00:29:14
>> I tend to think that, you know, you
00:29:18
could one would ask themselves like why
00:29:19
would someone leave a company right now
00:29:21
like, I don't know, Open AI and go work
00:29:24
at a startup. They're going to get paid
00:29:26
way more at OpenAI. You've got these
00:29:28
this equity and these grants, but people
00:29:29
are on mass doing that. And even when I
00:29:31
think about the early days of Google,
00:29:33
people left the big conglomerates that
00:29:35
would pay them more. And they went and
00:29:36
worked for Larry and Sergey um getting
00:29:39
paid way less, right? but to be involved
00:29:41
in something small, scrappy, exciting,
00:29:44
>> and and so I and this is what what I
00:29:46
think about when I sit, you know,
00:29:47
probably I've had thousands of people in
00:29:49
my life now across my businesses, and
00:29:52
money is a factor, but it doesn't tend
00:29:54
to be the biggest factor. Mhm.
00:29:58
>> It tends to be, in my experience,
00:30:01
there's a particular hero's journey in
00:30:04
their mind that they want to be seen
00:30:06
through. They want to complete.
00:30:08
>> Uhhuh.
00:30:08
>> You know, there's a particular way that
00:30:10
they see themselves and they want to
00:30:12
fulfill that.
00:30:13
>> Oh, I could get that. I I work with a
00:30:16
with a very very tiny startup right now
00:30:19
called Ivy Cyber and uh it focuses on
00:30:21
privacy software. You know, things like,
00:30:24
you know, scrambling your data so it
00:30:26
can't be intercepted. that that sort of
00:30:28
thing. And
00:30:30
I've participated in a couple of pitches
00:30:32
to uh to angel investors
00:30:37
and they all say exactly the same thing
00:30:38
that you did.
00:30:39
>> And this is why I was confused when I
00:30:40
heard that money was 95%.
00:30:43
Because I I just think
00:30:47
especially in the work that I don't
00:30:48
know, especially in the work that you
00:30:49
do, I would assume
00:30:50
>> but look at it this way. I think this
00:30:52
would explain the discrepancy.
00:30:55
um you're comparing people who are
00:30:56
making a life
00:30:58
>> versus people who are betraying their
00:30:59
country.
00:31:01
>> True. And what's interesting as well is
00:31:04
in those examples that you've given,
00:31:07
money is actually a proxy to be able to
00:31:10
take care of my family.
00:31:12
>> Mhm.
00:31:13
>> And to be able to, you know, fulfill my
00:31:15
ideology and maybe to get excitement and
00:31:18
revenge. Do you know what I'm saying? So
00:31:19
even that guy that wanted the plane
00:31:21
ticket so he could fly home. Yeah. He
00:31:23
could he could have the money could have
00:31:24
got him home if you just given him
00:31:26
>> the reason why he wanted to go home was
00:31:28
because his family
00:31:29
>> his family that was it.
00:31:31
>> What's the extent of the things that the
00:31:33
CIA can get as a incentive for someone
00:31:36
to turn against their nation to give
00:31:39
secrets?
00:31:40
>> Quite literally anything you can
00:31:41
imagine.
00:31:42
>> Even if it's against the law.
00:31:44
>> Well, they're not going to get like
00:31:46
drugs or you know child prostitutes or
00:31:49
no not stuff like that. What if someone
00:31:52
said, "I want you to
00:31:55
um
00:31:58
get me a a green card."
00:32:00
>> Oh, yeah, sure.
00:32:01
>> What if they said,
00:32:02
>> "If the information is good enough, not
00:32:04
a problem."
00:32:04
>> What if they said, "I want you to I've
00:32:07
got this tax bill. I want you to make
00:32:10
the tax bill go away."
00:32:11
>> Okay. Give me Give me the plans to that
00:32:13
Russian tank. We'll make it happen.
00:32:15
>> What if it was an American? Would they
00:32:16
speak to the IRS here and just get rid
00:32:18
of it?
00:32:19
>> Oh, if it was an American citizen, you
00:32:21
mean? Yeah.
00:32:22
>> Uh, no.
00:32:24
>> But why?
00:32:25
>> No.
00:32:27
We normally don't recruit American
00:32:30
citizens. By law, the CIA can't operate
00:32:32
domestically. Although they have offices
00:32:34
all over the country. Those offices are
00:32:37
generally to to debrief business
00:32:40
leaders, seauite officers who travel to
00:32:44
denied areas. For example, if if you
00:32:47
take a trip to North Korea, let's say,
00:32:51
I'm going to call you and I'm going to
00:32:52
say, "You don't know me, but I'm from
00:32:55
the CIA and I understand you just went
00:32:57
to North Korea and I was wondering if I
00:32:58
could come over to your office for an
00:33:00
hour and just ask you about your trip."
00:33:03
99.99%
00:33:04
are going to say yes because they're
00:33:06
patriots. So, I go to your office, I
00:33:08
give you my business card, and we just
00:33:10
chat about, you know, your impressions
00:33:13
of the place and that kind of thing.
00:33:17
>> Just to close off on this point, are
00:33:18
there any skills that the CIA taught you
00:33:21
or trained you in that you think are
00:33:23
transferable for business that we
00:33:24
haven't talked about?
00:33:28
>> They they trained us also in lying and
00:33:31
lie detection. That was actually quite
00:33:34
important. You know, you at the CIA,
00:33:36
you're you're a trained liar. And this
00:33:39
is why the divorce rate is so high. It's
00:33:40
the highest divorce rate of any uh
00:33:43
entity in in the US government. It's
00:33:45
it's upwards of 80%.
00:33:47
>> Trained to lie. How do they train you to
00:33:49
lie?
00:33:50
>> Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. Um I work
00:33:53
for an import export company.
00:33:55
>> But do they teach you the art of lying?
00:33:57
>> Oh yeah.
00:33:57
>> And what is the art?
00:33:59
>> You know, it's it's hard to like it's
00:34:01
hard to pin down. You just sort of have
00:34:03
to have it. You have to have that
00:34:05
ability. But the hard part is you have
00:34:07
to keep the lies straight. I'll give you
00:34:10
another example. I've never told this
00:34:12
story before.
00:34:15
I was asked by headquarters. I was
00:34:17
overseas in the Middle East and I was
00:34:19
asked by headquarters to target one
00:34:22
specific officer of this foreign
00:34:25
country.
00:34:25
>> Target?
00:34:26
>> Yeah. Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never
00:34:29
met. I'm John. So nice to meet you.
00:34:32
>> Let me take you to lunch.
00:34:33
he had access to to information that we
00:34:36
really needed. Uh so they told me to
00:34:40
accidentally bump into him. So I
00:34:43
surveiled him for a week and he was
00:34:46
single and on Saturday morning he went
00:34:48
to a coffee shop. So I go into the
00:34:51
coffee shop and I'm looking at him and
00:34:52
he's looking at me and I said, "I know
00:34:55
you, Ministry of Foreign Affairs." He
00:34:57
said, "Yes. Do I know you?" I said, "I
00:34:59
am John from the American Embassy." "Oh,
00:35:01
nice to nice to see you." I said, 'Hey,
00:35:03
good to see you, too. You live in the
00:35:04
area? Yes, I do. I said, 'Oh, so do I. I
00:35:06
didn't. I lived like across town. Oh,
00:35:09
fancy meeting you here at this coffee
00:35:10
shop. I come here all the time. Do you?
00:35:12
Yeah, he says. I come here all the time.
00:35:13
Why don't you have a seat? He says. So,
00:35:15
I sit down. At the end of the
00:35:17
conversation, I go back to the embassy
00:35:19
and I read a cable and I said, he's gay.
00:35:22
I'm 100% sure he's gay. So, then we
00:35:24
started this conversation, headquarters
00:35:26
and I, how can we use that to our
00:35:28
benefit?
00:35:29
>> Did he have a wife?
00:35:30
>> No. He was single,
00:35:31
>> which was unusual at his age.
00:35:34
>> How did you know he was gay?
00:35:35
>> Oh, I I just It was a vibe.
00:35:39
>> Okay.
00:35:40
>> So,
00:35:42
headquarters says,
00:35:44
"We want you to pretend that you're
00:35:46
gay." I said, "Oh, come on, you guys.
00:35:49
No, we really need the information. You
00:35:51
got to pretend that you're gay." I said,
00:35:53
"Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle
00:35:56
Sam."
00:35:58
So, I call him and I said, "Hey, I have
00:36:01
two tickets to this show and I was
00:36:04
hoping maybe you'd be free. Maybe we'll
00:36:06
grab some sushi afterwards."
00:36:10
He said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So, we go
00:36:13
to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it.
00:36:15
And we go for sushi afterwards.
00:36:18
And then we go out again and he says,
00:36:21
"Why don't you come over to my place
00:36:22
some night and I'll I'll make dinner." I
00:36:24
said, "Great." So, I go over to his
00:36:25
place. made a lovely dinner and then I
00:36:28
thought, well, I have to invite him to
00:36:29
my place. So, I told my wife, you're
00:36:30
going to have to like get out. So, she
00:36:33
left. I made dinner. I removed all the
00:36:36
pictures of us together. And we had just
00:36:38
gotten married. So, we had like our
00:36:39
wedding picture up and everything.
00:36:42
At the dinner,
00:36:45
he leaned in to kiss me and I
00:36:47
instinctively backed off and he said,
00:36:49
"Oh my god, I'm sorry. I thought you're
00:36:51
gay." And I said, "Oh, no. I I am gay.
00:36:55
I'm I'm I'm not into hairy guys.
00:37:00
And he's like, "Oh,
00:37:02
okay." I said, "I'm sorry. I think
00:37:05
you're great, but I'm I'm not feeling
00:37:08
it."
00:37:08
>> You didn't kiss him?
00:37:09
>> No.
00:37:12
So, we remained friends and in the end,
00:37:15
he gave me the information because we
00:37:18
were friends. And then he he opened up.
00:37:20
He's like, "I can't tell anybody I'm
00:37:22
gay. They suspect I am." and they passed
00:37:24
me over for promotion. And my boss asked
00:37:26
me, "Is there something in your personal
00:37:28
life that you're not telling me? He
00:37:29
knows I'm gay." I said, "Listen, your
00:37:31
culture is backwards. Don't tell them
00:37:34
you're gay. Just say that you've just
00:37:36
never met the right woman." And
00:37:38
inshallah, the right woman is coming,
00:37:40
you know, in your life at some point.
00:37:42
And I actually Googled him a couple of
00:37:44
years ago, and he did become an
00:37:46
ambassador finally.
00:37:47
>> And he's still working in that country
00:37:49
now.
00:37:49
>> Mhm. Does that kind of stuff happen a
00:37:51
lot in the CIA where you have to take
00:37:53
one for the team?
00:37:54
>> Yes.
00:37:55
>> Have you ever taken one for the team?
00:37:56
>> No. You
00:37:58
>> I'm not sure you're telling the truth.
00:37:59
>> Well, I it came close.
00:38:01
>> When did it come close?
00:38:02
>> So, I was overseas. I was a brand new
00:38:04
operations officer
00:38:07
and there was a woman in this foreign
00:38:12
intelligence service who was the ugliest
00:38:16
woman I've ever seen in my life.
00:38:19
like you want to avert your eyes like
00:38:21
she came off the side of Notradam.
00:38:24
She was a, you know, a stone gargoyle
00:38:26
with a giant mole right here with a
00:38:28
giant hair coming out of it. That kind
00:38:30
of ugly.
00:38:32
So,
00:38:34
so I took her to lunch and she was very
00:38:37
nice. And then I thought I did something
00:38:39
kind of gutsy by C CIA standards because
00:38:42
it was early on in our relationship. I
00:38:43
invited her to go to lunch on a
00:38:46
Saturday. Now, as a rule, the people in
00:38:49
this country were not allowed to
00:38:51
socialize with us privately. It had to
00:38:54
be like their whole office, you know, or
00:38:57
several of them together. So, I asked
00:39:00
her just to meet me privately for lunch
00:39:03
on Saturday. Don't tell anybody.
00:39:05
>> So, she was someone from the Middle
00:39:06
East.
00:39:07
>> Yes. And she agreed. And I was like, "Oh
00:39:10
my god, she said yes." And I ran back to
00:39:12
the office. I was like, she said yes to
00:39:14
a lunch on Saturday alone. And my boss
00:39:17
says, "Okay, here's what I want you to
00:39:19
do. I want you to [ __ ] her." And I said,
00:39:23
"What?" I said, "Have you ever seen
00:39:25
her?" And he said, "I know, but we're
00:39:29
the good guys and you're going to have
00:39:31
to take one for the team." And I go, "Oh
00:39:33
my god." I said, I go,
00:39:37
"Okay, I'll do it." And he says, "No,
00:39:40
you're not going to [ __ ] We don't do
00:39:43
that." I said, "I don't know. Oh, I just
00:39:46
started this. I've never been an
00:39:47
operations guy before. How am I supposed
00:39:50
to know? He said, "Come on." He said,
00:39:52
"Just develop her like a normal person.
00:39:54
You don't have to [ __ ] her." I said, "Oh
00:39:56
my god, you almost gave me a heart
00:39:57
attack."
00:39:58
>> But they they might not be mad if you
00:40:01
did.
00:40:02
>> So long as I reported it and I got the
00:40:04
recruitment out of him.
00:40:05
>> It wasn't illegal to act, you know,
00:40:07
sleep with assets.
00:40:09
>> Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with
00:40:10
assets. It has happened to a couple
00:40:12
people I know and um they end up being
00:40:15
pulled back to the United States. You
00:40:16
have to sit in the penalty box if you do
00:40:18
that. You're not supposed to do that.
00:40:20
But yeah, it happens sometime.
00:40:21
>> So sextortion isn't a real thing.
00:40:23
>> It can be. We don't.
00:40:27
When I first got hired, one of the
00:40:29
old-timers told me the story of about an
00:40:32
ayatollah that they were trying to
00:40:34
recruit. And they set this ayatollah up
00:40:36
with a prostitute. And it was he had sex
00:40:39
with this prostitute in a room where
00:40:41
they had cameras everywhere. And so they
00:40:44
bumped him afterwards. They bumped into
00:40:46
him and said, "Hey, we have all these
00:40:48
pictures." And they laid out the
00:40:49
pictures of him, you know, butt naked
00:40:51
with this prostitute. And he said,
00:40:53
"Yeah,
00:40:54
give me that one, an 8 by10. Give me two
00:40:57
5x7s of that one. How about some wallet
00:41:00
size for this?" He's like, "Get out of
00:41:02
here." and he said, "You know, after
00:41:05
that, we just stop doing that. It
00:41:08
doesn't work. When you recruit somebody,
00:41:10
you really do need the relationship to
00:41:12
be based on mutual trust,
00:41:14
>> not coercion or pressure.
00:41:16
>> Threatening somebody, it's it's not
00:41:18
going to result in a productive
00:41:19
relationship. The Russians do it, the
00:41:22
Israelis do it, but most intelligence
00:41:25
services around the world don't."
00:41:27
because you've been in this world,
00:41:29
what is it that you know about the
00:41:31
nature of the reality that we all live
00:41:33
in that the average person really has no
00:41:37
idea about?
00:41:39
>> Do you know what I mean?
00:41:40
>> Yeah.
00:41:41
>> Because, you know, going back to what I
00:41:42
said earlier, 3 years ago, before I
00:41:44
started doing all this podcast stuff and
00:41:46
started interviewing people that had
00:41:47
been involved in spy work and the CIA
00:41:49
and all this, I was kind of like naive
00:41:51
to the way that the world worked. I
00:41:53
thought I thought if I have a password
00:41:55
on my device, my device is secure. And I
00:41:58
thought that you know,
00:41:59
>> right? All these kind of just simple
00:42:01
things, but what is it that you know
00:42:03
about the nature of reality that most
00:42:04
people don't?
00:42:06
>> Well, I I guess it's a couple of things.
00:42:10
You know, John Kennedy called the CIA
00:42:13
the best and the brightest,
00:42:15
and we're not. We're just average
00:42:18
people,
00:42:19
and we're not as smart as we think we
00:42:21
are. We're not as worldly as we think we
00:42:24
are. We've pretty much missed every
00:42:26
major global development since 1947.
00:42:29
From the, you know, the rise of the
00:42:31
Berlin Wall to the fall of the Berlin
00:42:33
Wall to the fall of the Soviet Union to
00:42:35
the Suez crisis and the Iran hostage
00:42:37
crisis and 9/11 and everything else. We
00:42:40
missed it.
00:42:42
We're really good at day-to-day, you
00:42:44
know, updates for the president. We're
00:42:46
really good at recruiting minor hangers
00:42:49
on around terrorist groups, but the the
00:42:52
big picture items were just not good at
00:42:54
it. Number one. Number two,
00:42:58
until 9/11, it was against the law, like
00:43:02
in stone, to spy on Americans.
00:43:05
And now billions of dollars are spent
00:43:09
spying on Americans. Whether it's NSA or
00:43:12
CIA or FBI or intelligence community
00:43:17
contractors,
00:43:19
nothing is secret. Nothing. And to make
00:43:23
matters worse,
00:43:25
let's say maybe you did do something
00:43:28
that law enforcement might be interested
00:43:30
in. They don't need a warrant anymore.
00:43:32
They don't need to go to a judge and
00:43:33
say, "Well, we have reason to believe,
00:43:35
you know, blah, blah, blah." All they
00:43:37
have to do is just buy your metadata
00:43:38
because it's for sale. Just go to the go
00:43:41
to the carrier. Just buy it. They don't
00:43:44
need a judge's order to do that. It's
00:43:46
all out there. We've made all we've made
00:43:48
ourselves vulnerable. All of our lives
00:43:50
are out there, whether it's on Facebook
00:43:52
or X or Insta or whatever.
00:43:56
If they really want to get you, they're
00:43:59
going to get you. Which reminds me of a
00:44:01
book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate.
00:44:05
He's a professor of law at Harvard and
00:44:06
it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he
00:44:09
argues in this book that we are so
00:44:11
overcriminalized,
00:44:13
so overregulated in this country that
00:44:16
the average American on the average day
00:44:18
going about his or her normal business
00:44:20
commits three felonies
00:44:23
every day.
00:44:24
You may not mean to, but you do. Every
00:44:27
day. So if they decide they want you,
00:44:31
they don't like your politics, they can
00:44:34
get your metadata, they can go through
00:44:36
that metadata, find crimes that they can
00:44:39
charge you with and ruin your life. And
00:44:42
there's nothing you can do to protect
00:44:44
yourself.
00:44:45
>> To some extent, they did that to you.
00:44:48
>> Yeah, they did. They did that to me
00:44:50
>> because you spoke out about a torture
00:44:52
program
00:44:53
>> that was happening in the CIA.
00:44:54
>> Yeah. John Brennan wrote a letter to
00:44:56
Eric Holder and said, "Charge him with
00:45:00
espionage
00:45:01
and Holder wrote back." Eric Holder was
00:45:04
the attorney general. Holder wrote back
00:45:05
and said, "My people don't think he
00:45:07
committed espionage." And John Brennan
00:45:09
wrote back to Holder and said, "Charge
00:45:11
him anyway and make him defend himself."
00:45:14
So they arrested me, charged me with
00:45:16
five felonies, including three counts of
00:45:18
espionage. Espionage can be a death
00:45:20
penalty case. Charged me with espionage.
00:45:24
They waited until I went bankrupt 10
00:45:26
months later with $2 million in legal
00:45:30
fees and then they dropped the espionage
00:45:32
charges and they said, "We can read the
00:45:35
espionage charges or you can take a plea
00:45:38
to this lesser charge."
00:45:40
What are you going to do?
00:45:42
Roll the dice knowing that the
00:45:44
government wins 98.2% of its cases
00:45:47
according to ProPublica
00:45:49
or do you just take the deal and make it
00:45:50
go away? And that's what I did. And you
00:45:52
got roughly two years in jail.
00:45:54
>> Yeah. I uh ended up doing 23 months.
00:45:57
>> Mhm.
00:45:58
>> And for anyone that doesn't know, this
00:46:00
was because at some point in your
00:46:02
career, you spoke out about torture
00:46:04
programs that were happening in
00:46:06
Guantanamo Bay and and elsewhere.
00:46:08
>> Yeah. And at secret prisons that the CIA
00:46:10
had set up around the world, right?
00:46:13
>> And going back up to the top of my
00:46:14
question here, I I'm really trying to
00:46:17
speak to Jane Dave who's listening to
00:46:19
this right now. Sure. They have a normal
00:46:21
life. Yep.
00:46:22
>> They're not really aware that spies
00:46:23
exist and the extent of the work they
00:46:24
do. They kind of assume that everything
00:46:26
they see and people they interact with
00:46:28
are normal and they think their devices
00:46:30
and everything else is secure. What
00:46:31
message do you have for them? A word of
00:46:33
warning or caution about the reality?
00:46:35
>> Yeah, that's a good question. Elliot
00:46:38
Spitzer, the former um governor of New
00:46:41
York, when he was attorney general of
00:46:44
New York, he said,
00:46:47
"Don't nod when you can motion.
00:46:52
Don't speak when you can nod, and don't
00:46:56
ever put anything in a text message."
00:47:01
At the CIA on our very first day, they
00:47:03
told us not to ever say or do anything
00:47:08
that we would be ashamed to see on the
00:47:10
front page of the Washington Post. I
00:47:12
took that seriously. The truth of the
00:47:15
matter is because of technology the way
00:47:17
it is today, our whole lives are out
00:47:21
there potentially for someone to see,
00:47:24
for someone to use against us.
00:47:26
So be careful what you say, be careful
00:47:29
what you write. even ingest because it
00:47:32
can be taken out of context to target
00:47:35
you.
00:47:38
>> And what about digital security? You
00:47:41
talked about the fact that it's possible
00:47:43
for these these forces and not just the
00:47:46
US, but other countries to be able to
00:47:48
hack and crack your devices and see
00:47:50
anything on your devices. I think we all
00:47:52
go around assuming that our devices are
00:47:53
secure.
00:47:54
>> They're not secure at all. At all. It's
00:47:57
not just, you know, NSA, CIA, FBI that
00:47:59
you have to worry about. It's the
00:48:02
British, the French, the Germans, the
00:48:04
Canadians, the Australians, the New
00:48:06
Zealanders,
00:48:07
the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis,
00:48:09
the Iranians.
00:48:11
I mean, everybody has these
00:48:13
capabilities. Everybody.
00:48:15
So, you've got to be very, very careful.
00:48:18
>> Capabilities to do what?
00:48:19
>> To intercept communications.
00:48:21
>> I've heard you say that they can hack
00:48:24
car systems. They could so they could
00:48:27
theoretically hack into my car.
00:48:28
>> Yes, we know that from uh Wikileaks.
00:48:31
There was something in 2017 called the
00:48:33
Vault 7 revelations. there was a a CIA
00:48:37
software engineer who was disgruntled
00:48:40
and instead of going to the Russians or
00:48:44
the Chinese,
00:48:45
he went to Wikileaks and he downloaded
00:48:48
thousands, tens of thousands of pages of
00:48:52
documents classified above top secret
00:48:55
and they became what Wikileaks called
00:48:58
the Vault 7 documents. So they included
00:49:01
things like the CIA for example will
00:49:05
hack into let's say the Iranian Ministry
00:49:09
of Interior computer system but they'll
00:49:12
leave little electronic clues all
00:49:15
written in cerillic.
00:49:17
>> Cerillic as well.
00:49:17
>> The cerillic is the is the alphabet the
00:49:20
Russian alphabet. Okay. Yep.
00:49:22
uh or they can take control of your
00:49:27
smart TV remotely and they can make the
00:49:30
speaker turn into a a microphone. So
00:49:33
even though the TV is off,
00:49:36
it can still hear everything that's
00:49:38
being said in the room and broadcast
00:49:40
back to the CIA.
00:49:41
>> Can they do that with devices? Do they
00:49:44
>> Oh, they could do that. When I first got
00:49:46
hired, they were able to do that.
00:49:48
>> So they could be doing that right now
00:49:49
with my
00:49:49
>> Oh, totally. My opinion.
00:49:51
>> Absolutely. Yes, that's old technology.
00:49:53
And then the thing about the car, this
00:49:56
was revoly. They can take control again
00:49:59
remotely of a car's computer system in
00:50:03
order to
00:50:06
well, I mean, in order to to kill you,
00:50:09
>> crash the car.
00:50:10
>> Crash the car. Take it off a bridge.
00:50:12
Take it into a tree. Sure.
00:50:15
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00:50:17
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00:50:19
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00:50:23
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00:50:26
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00:50:28
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>> I've heard you talk about sleeper agents
00:52:09
before.
00:52:09
>> Yes.
00:52:10
>> What is the What is a sleeper agent?
00:52:12
Yeah, the Russians are very good with
00:52:15
sleeper agents. We Americans don't have
00:52:18
no no other country that we know of uses
00:52:21
sleeper agents. A sleeper agent is
00:52:22
someone who is taken virtually from
00:52:26
birth and trained to be of another
00:52:31
nationality. For example, let's say
00:52:34
you're born in Russia
00:52:36
and from the age of, you know, two, they
00:52:40
take you from your family with your
00:52:42
family's acquiescence and they take you
00:52:45
to an Americanstyle town that they've
00:52:49
built out in the hinterland in Russia.
00:52:52
And they teach you to speak English with
00:52:55
an American accent. You watch American
00:52:58
TV shows. You watch American movies. You
00:53:01
eat American food. You get an American
00:53:03
style education.
00:53:05
So, I have no idea that you're not
00:53:08
American. You speak English just like I
00:53:11
do. You know, all the same, you know,
00:53:13
social references that I make. You
00:53:15
follow the Philadelphia Eagles, you
00:53:18
know, or or the, you know, San Francisco
00:53:21
49ers or whatever.
00:53:24
and then they send you to the United
00:53:25
States on a on a fake with a fake ID.
00:53:29
What they'll do is they'll go through I
00:53:32
was born in 1964. So, they'll go through
00:53:35
death records from 1964 and they'll look
00:53:37
for for deaths where the person was only
00:53:40
a day or two old
00:53:43
and they'll take that name and the birth
00:53:45
date and they'll get a social security
00:53:47
card with the birth date and then
00:53:50
they'll use the social security card to
00:53:52
get you a passport, an American
00:53:54
passport. So, you come here on your
00:53:55
American passport, everything's legit.
00:53:58
Now, your name is, you know, Bob Smith,
00:54:00
which was really that baby's name that
00:54:02
died. and you get a job, let's say, as a
00:54:07
travel agent,
00:54:09
and you may work as a travel agent for
00:54:12
20 years
00:54:14
and never hear from them,
00:54:17
but then they'll activate you and
00:54:19
they'll say, "We want you to go take
00:54:21
care of this target over here.
00:54:23
>> Kill him."
00:54:23
>> Yeah. Or, "We want you to get a job at
00:54:27
the defense department and give us
00:54:29
everything that you that you can steal."
00:54:32
Whatever. There's a woman in my
00:54:34
neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper
00:54:36
about a year ago. She was an elementary
00:54:38
school teacher and they grabbed her and
00:54:41
they ended up trading her back to the
00:54:42
Russians for two Americans. So, they're
00:54:46
they're out there. I I interviewed a a
00:54:48
sleeper, a former sleeper on my own
00:54:51
podcast a couple of weeks ago. He was
00:54:54
from the East German Intelligence
00:54:56
Service and he was raised as an American
00:55:00
and sent to New York.
00:55:03
He got a job, I forget, doing what, like
00:55:05
restaurant supply company or something
00:55:08
like that. And he got married and he had
00:55:13
a daughter. and he told me, "As soon as
00:55:16
I looked at her face the day she was
00:55:19
born, I realized this life wasn't for me
00:55:22
anymore."
00:55:24
So they
00:55:27
sent him an activation. What they do is
00:55:28
they'll send you a radio message and he
00:55:30
didn't respond to it. And he told me he
00:55:33
was on the subway one day. He's just
00:55:35
standing there holding the strap and
00:55:37
this guy came up to him and the guy
00:55:39
grabs the strap next to him and whispers
00:55:42
in his ear, "If you don't report back, I
00:55:45
have to kill you."
00:55:47
And so he ran straight to the FBI field
00:55:51
office in New York and he said, "I'm an
00:55:53
East German sleeper and I want to turn
00:55:55
myself in." And he became a prolific
00:55:58
source for the FBI.
00:56:00
>> So he was
00:56:02
taken as a young person.
00:56:04
>> Yes. What was his story?
00:56:05
>> Yeah. Taken as a young person, sent to
00:56:08
Russia to become American.
00:56:11
>> They set him up with this phony
00:56:12
identity.
00:56:13
>> And then after he had gone through all
00:56:16
the training, he came over here young.
00:56:17
He was like 20 or 22. And uh and did
00:56:22
this for 25 years.
00:56:25
And then he said as soon as his daughter
00:56:27
was born, he was like, "Wow, this is
00:56:30
what life is for, not being a sleeper."
00:56:33
Do you think the average person
00:56:34
listening to this conversation right now
00:56:36
is interacting in their life at this
00:56:39
exact moment in time with someone who is
00:56:42
involved in espionage, spying, the CIA
00:56:47
or some international
00:56:49
equivalent? Probably not
00:56:52
because
00:56:55
they're mostly focused. Foreign
00:56:57
intelligence officers are going to be
00:56:59
spread out all over America. If if if a
00:57:03
listener of this podcast is working in a
00:57:07
defense company, a defense contractor
00:57:10
anywhere in America, then my answer is
00:57:12
yes. Yes, you're probably encountering
00:57:17
espionage of some sort or somebody
00:57:19
committing espionage, whether it's
00:57:22
Russian, Chinese, or Israeli. They're
00:57:23
the three biggest ones that go after us.
00:57:27
um in Washington.
00:57:32
I mean, foreign spies there there could
00:57:34
be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I
00:57:37
remember my first wife um she was
00:57:41
teaching ballet at a small private
00:57:42
school and one of the uh the students
00:57:45
there, they were all like four, five,
00:57:47
and six years old. One of the students
00:57:49
there, her father was a Belgian
00:57:50
diplomat. And so we would sit and talk
00:57:53
and oh, aren't the kids talented? And
00:57:56
oh, this is so much fun. They look so
00:57:57
cute in their little tutus. And then I
00:57:59
went to work one day and as I was
00:58:01
walking in, he was walking in and I
00:58:03
said, "Oh, come on, Peter." And he's
00:58:06
like, "You know, I thought you were a
00:58:08
spy." And I said, "I actually didn't
00:58:11
think you were a spy." He was just going
00:58:14
for a liaison meeting.
00:58:16
We had a good chuckle about it. And I
00:58:18
said, "Listen, don't tell anybody."
00:58:21
Right. Right. Right. Right. Sorry.
00:58:26
So, I'm trying to figure out how many
00:58:27
how many spies do you think there are in
00:58:30
the United States? If you think about
00:58:32
>> foreign spies,
00:58:33
>> foreign spies, domestic spies, people
00:58:36
that are basically undercover,
00:58:38
>> including Americans, you mean?
00:58:39
>> Including Americans.
00:58:40
>> The number of CIA employees is
00:58:42
classified. The number of CIA employees
00:58:45
undercover is actually even more highly
00:58:47
classified. I can give you a guesstimate
00:58:50
>> but also you know Russia, China.
00:58:52
>> Yeah. 50 to 60,000 altogether.
00:58:56
>> 50 to 60,000 in the United States.
00:58:58
>> Mhm.
00:58:59
>> So by a couple of degrees of separation
00:59:01
if you know 100 people.
00:59:03
>> Yeah. You're probably going to know one.
00:59:06
>> Sure.
00:59:08
>> You said there's probably about 50,000
00:59:10
in the United States. So, I've just done
00:59:12
some quick math on my notepad here,
00:59:15
which means that in order to know one,
00:59:19
you'd need to meet 6,600 people.
00:59:22
>> Okay.
00:59:23
>> Because the US population is roughly 330
00:59:25
million people.
00:59:25
>> That's right.
00:59:26
>> And I and then I did some other maths
00:59:27
and did some research and I asked um the
00:59:30
question I was trying to figure out is
00:59:31
how many people does the average person
00:59:32
meet a year?
00:59:33
>> And it's roughly about 3 to 10,000
00:59:37
people. So theoretically,
00:59:39
>> so the chances are good
00:59:41
>> every year
00:59:43
statistically,
00:59:45
according to my napkin math, you're
00:59:48
meeting one of these undercover spies.
00:59:52
One a year.
00:59:54
>> There it is.
00:59:56
>> Now, that number I gave you is I'm
00:59:59
lumping like all CIA people and all
01:00:02
foreign intelligence officers in the
01:00:03
United States.
01:00:06
>> Interesting. But again, if you work for
01:00:10
an American defense company, Northrup,
01:00:12
Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, any of
01:00:15
them, your chances of encountering a
01:00:18
foreign intelligence officer are even
01:00:21
money.
01:00:22
>> Can't you, as a spy with the United
01:00:24
States, ask the United States to give
01:00:26
you loads of money? Like, can't you say,
01:00:28
"You really want me to go do that? Can I
01:00:29
have a million dollars?"
01:00:31
>> Because you're giving you're potentially
01:00:33
giving away a lot of money to other
01:00:34
>> Oh my god. giving away like unlimited
01:00:36
amounts of money
01:00:37
>> cuz your budget when you were a spy. How
01:00:38
much was it
01:00:39
>> after 911? It was unlimited.
01:00:41
>> What does that mean? It means you can
01:00:42
basically give away as much money as you
01:00:44
need to.
01:00:45
>> If I approach somebody and he says I can
01:00:48
give you
01:00:49
this terrorist. I want 10 million. I'm
01:00:53
like done.
01:00:54
>> What was the most you ever gave in?
01:00:56
>> 10 million.
01:00:56
>> You gave someone 10 million for what?
01:01:00
>> Abu Zabeda.
01:01:02
>> Who's Abu Zabeda? We believed that Abu
01:01:04
Zuba was the number three in al-Qaeda.
01:01:07
He wasn't the number three, but he was a
01:01:09
very bad guy. I led the raids that
01:01:11
captured Abu Zuba in Pakistan, Fisalabad
01:01:14
Pakistan in March of 2002.
01:01:17
And um
01:01:19
the State Department had a $10 million
01:01:21
reward. We ended up giving the 10
01:01:23
million to the Pakistani intelligence
01:01:25
service. It wasn't
01:01:26
>> a person
01:01:27
>> a person. It was just really great
01:01:29
analysis that led us to him. But there
01:01:34
were others in the so-called war on
01:01:36
terror
01:01:40
who
01:01:42
got more than 10 million and got it like
01:01:46
within 24 hours.
01:01:49
>> Individuals.
01:01:50
>> Individuals.
01:01:51
>> How much?
01:01:53
>> One got 25 million.
01:01:55
>> Just a person.
01:01:56
>> Uh-huh. And the thing is, you know,
01:01:58
there's a lot of danger there. If you're
01:02:00
a if you're a, you know, a shepherd or a
01:02:04
tea boy and you make $40 a month and all
01:02:09
of a sudden you have $25 million,
01:02:13
something's up.
01:02:14
>> And what was the 25 million for?
01:02:17
>> It was for a very high ranking
01:02:23
foreign terrorist who was brought to
01:02:25
justice. I I can't I can't say because
01:02:29
it was never
01:02:31
publicly disclosed. But what we would
01:02:33
have to do in a a situation like that is
01:02:37
we would have to tell the the source,
01:02:39
you can't live here anymore. Pick a
01:02:42
country and that's going to be home from
01:02:45
now on. And then we go to that country
01:02:46
and say, hey, can you do us a solid?
01:02:48
We've got this guy who, you know, he
01:02:50
really came through and he's not going
01:02:53
to be a burden on your economy
01:02:55
>> cuz he's got $25 million.
01:02:57
>> Which country did he pick?
01:02:58
>> Oh, I can't I can't tell you that.
01:03:02
>> He wanted He wanted to stay in the
01:03:03
region. He He wasn't willing to move to
01:03:06
the United States, for example,
01:03:08
>> cuz we're happy to take him. You're
01:03:10
welcome to come to the United States.
01:03:11
He's like, absolutely not.
01:03:13
>> You went to Dubai.
01:03:14
>> I would.
01:03:15
>> Yeah. With the tax code.
01:03:19
Interesting.
01:03:21
H
01:03:23
I think I'm I think I'm Yeah, you can
01:03:25
tell my bias from the questions that I
01:03:26
ask about the things that fascinate me
01:03:28
about espionage and spies is just it's
01:03:31
the un their understanding of human
01:03:33
nature and what motivates us and the
01:03:35
psychology of humans that you can learn
01:03:37
from um spies and the nature of human
01:03:41
beings I guess.
01:03:42
>> Right. And also, I guess the other thing
01:03:43
that really fascinates me is just
01:03:47
I've had so many mind mind-blowing
01:03:49
moments where I've learned just how
01:03:51
fragile the reality that I believe is.
01:03:54
Like I thought things were secure and I
01:03:55
thought they were as they are, but
01:03:57
>> right,
01:03:57
>> it just doesn't appear to be that way.
01:03:58
There appears to be lots of secrets.
01:04:00
>> And you know, conspiracy theorists get a
01:04:02
hard time, but actually the more I've
01:04:05
done this as a job, the more I go, hm,
01:04:06
conspiracy theorists are right more than
01:04:09
I expected. See, and that's an important
01:04:12
point.
01:04:14
I
01:04:17
I hate conspiracy theories that run a
01:04:20
muck, but you know, the the the a former
01:04:22
CIA director is the one who came up with
01:04:24
the term conspiracy theory.
01:04:27
>> And it was it was a way for the CIA to
01:04:29
discredit people by making them sound
01:04:31
like crazy people when in fact there was
01:04:34
such a thing called MK Ultra. There was
01:04:37
such a thing called, you know, operation
01:04:39
grasshopper or or MK Chickwit or, you
01:04:43
know, the CIA did crazy crazy stuff from
01:04:47
roughly 1952 to 1975.
01:04:50
For example, they um experimented with a
01:04:54
a virus
01:04:57
that they
01:04:59
that they released in San Francisco.
01:05:01
They waited for an unusually foggy, like
01:05:04
heavily foggy day. They released it into
01:05:07
the atmosphere just to see if it would
01:05:09
make people sick. And 11 people went to
01:05:12
the emergency room with this rare upper
01:05:15
respiratory infection. And then they
01:05:16
were like, you know, high fives. Yeah,
01:05:19
it works. And then they they started
01:05:21
experimenting with LSD. LSD was a big
01:05:24
thing at the CIA in the early days. We
01:05:27
were convinced. See, and this this is
01:05:30
this is where counter intelligence is
01:05:32
important.
01:05:35
The Chinese
01:05:38
told us in like 1951
01:05:41
that the Russians were using LSD to try
01:05:46
to engineer it to be used as a mind
01:05:49
control drug.
01:05:51
That wasn't true. That was
01:05:53
disinformation. The truth was the
01:05:55
Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese
01:06:00
did.
01:06:01
So they tried to throw us off the off
01:06:04
the scent by blaming the Russians.
01:06:08
We panicked and by 1952 we started this
01:06:11
program called MK Ultra which began by
01:06:15
using LSD
01:06:17
um experimentally.
01:06:19
What the CIA did was they they started
01:06:21
by dosing their own employees without
01:06:23
telling them.
01:06:25
Um, several committed suicide. One
01:06:28
jumped out of a hotel window
01:06:29
>> with the hope that
01:06:31
>> yeah, we'll just see what happens. See
01:06:32
what they say. See how it feels, you
01:06:34
know, see if we can control them. See if
01:06:36
we can plant memories that didn't
01:06:38
actually happen. And then they decided,
01:06:41
no, it's not a good idea to dose our own
01:06:43
people. Let's just dose strangers out in
01:06:46
public. So they went to San Francisco.
01:06:49
They
01:06:50
rented a safe house and they hired
01:06:54
prostitutes to go out on the street,
01:06:57
pick up John's, bring them back to the
01:06:59
safe house.
01:07:00
>> John's
01:07:01
>> John's people who hire prostitutes, men
01:07:03
who hire prostitutes,
01:07:05
dose the John's with uh LSD and just see
01:07:09
what happens.
01:07:12
But I mean these are like serious
01:07:16
crimes you're committing against people.
01:07:18
>> Just reading about it here. It says
01:07:19
under Operation Midnight Climax.
01:07:22
>> Interesting name. Operation Midnight
01:07:24
Climax. The CIA paid sex workers to lure
01:07:28
men to safe houses where agents drugged
01:07:30
them and then watched them through
01:07:32
oneway mirrors and recorded their
01:07:35
behavior.
01:07:36
>> Exactly.
01:07:36
>> They tried to erase their personality.
01:07:40
Nice, huh?
01:07:42
>> The goal was often to break and rebuild
01:07:44
the human mind. In 1973, the CIA
01:07:48
director ordered mass destruction of the
01:07:50
MK Ultra files, what we know comes from
01:07:53
accidentally surviving documents,
01:07:55
meaning this is a sanitized version.
01:07:57
>> That day, he testified before the church
01:08:01
committee. The church committee
01:08:04
specifically told him, "Do not destroy
01:08:07
any documents." He went back that
01:08:10
afternoon to the CIA and said, "Destroy
01:08:13
everything." Why?
01:08:16
>> Because it it was damning. They were
01:08:18
experimenting on American citizens. They
01:08:21
were they were experimenting by
01:08:24
spreading diseases in American cities.
01:08:28
And so
01:08:30
he was held in contempt of Congress. He
01:08:33
was fined like $150
01:08:37
and um about 15% of the documents were
01:08:41
overlooked and survived.
01:08:44
We'll never know exactly what happened
01:08:46
under MK Ultra.
01:08:49
As we sit here now, there's people on
01:08:51
the streets of Iran that are protesting
01:08:55
the leadership there. And the CI the CIA
01:08:58
are often associated with some of the
01:09:01
coups going back to the 1950s. Yes. And
01:09:03
other countries toppling elected leaders
01:09:05
to protect US interests.
01:09:07
>> Yes.
01:09:09
>> Do you think the CIA are involved in
01:09:11
Iran at the moment?
01:09:12
>> Probably. I think the Israelis are
01:09:14
heavily involved in Iran at the moment.
01:09:16
I'll tell you why. for a couple of
01:09:18
reasons, more than a couple. Number one,
01:09:20
in the so-called 12-day war that we saw
01:09:22
last year, the Israelis were absolutely
01:09:25
masterful in the way they went after the
01:09:29
Iranian leadership. What they did was
01:09:33
they
01:09:35
focused on recruiting Afghan refugees.
01:09:39
Iran was home to more than 2 million
01:09:42
Afghan refugees. And as essentially
01:09:46
illegal aliens, they could not avail
01:09:49
themselves of medical care,
01:09:53
the welfare system. They're starving,
01:09:56
right? They only eat if they can beg for
01:09:58
enough to to buy food. And so the
01:10:00
Israelis went to these people very
01:10:02
discreetly and said, "Hey, you know,
01:10:03
we'll give you $200 a month if you tell
01:10:06
us where the generals live. In which
01:10:10
apartments do the generals live? Where
01:10:11
do the nuclear scientists live?"
01:10:14
The Israelis killed the top 12 generals
01:10:19
across the entire Iranian military and
01:10:21
killed almost every Iranian nuclear
01:10:24
scientist because what they were able to
01:10:26
do was to recruit these Afghans to not
01:10:29
just tell them where they were living,
01:10:31
where the generals and the scientists
01:10:32
were living, but what their cell phone
01:10:35
numbers were. And so the Israelis were
01:10:37
able to geollocate the cell phones and
01:10:41
then that's where you fire the missile.
01:10:44
They killed all of them. And then after
01:10:46
the Iranians finally realized
01:10:49
it's the cell phones, they ordered that
01:10:51
no senior military officials and no
01:10:54
scientists could carry cell phones. But
01:10:57
it never dawned on them to tell the
01:10:59
bodyguards not to carry cell phones. And
01:11:02
so the Israelis started rocketing the
01:11:04
bodyguards and just killed everybody
01:11:06
else.
01:11:06
>> Have you ever killed anybody?
01:11:08
>> No, thank God. My children asked me
01:11:10
that. And I told them very proudly that
01:11:13
I have never taken any action that
01:11:14
resulted in the death of another human
01:11:16
being. There's one kind of half
01:11:18
exception.
01:11:20
And I think about this all the time.
01:11:23
In 1993,
01:11:27
I guess it was.
01:11:30
I was sitting in the morning meeting. I
01:11:32
told you earlier that every unit meets
01:11:35
every day at 9:00 and you just talk
01:11:37
about what happened in the country that
01:11:39
you cover overnight. Was in the morning
01:11:42
meeting and the secretary came in and
01:11:44
she said, "John, General Powell is on
01:11:47
the phone for you. Call him Powell." I
01:11:49
said, "General Powell? How does he know
01:11:51
who I am?" and she said, 'I don't know,
01:11:53
but he asked for you by name.
01:11:56
My boss is like,"Well, go answer the
01:11:58
phone." So, I went to my desk and I
01:12:00
said, 'Good morning, General Powell.
01:12:01
This is John Kiryaku. And he says,
01:12:03
"John, if the Iraqis were going to kill
01:12:06
the president, who would actually be in
01:12:08
charge of that operation?"
01:12:11
And I said, "Well, if you're talking
01:12:12
about the attempt to kill President
01:12:14
Bush, George HW Bush,
01:12:18
he had been visiting Kuwait." I said
01:12:20
Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi
01:12:23
intelligence services Basra station but
01:12:26
Basra station is headed by
01:12:30
um Sabra Abduliz Adori the director of
01:12:33
the Iraqi intelligence service he says
01:12:35
where does he sit I said Baghdad where
01:12:38
exactly in Baghdad I said if you hold on
01:12:40
a second I'll look up the address so I
01:12:42
looked it up I gave him the address he
01:12:44
says thank you and he hangs up the phone
01:12:47
I go back in the
01:12:49
They were like, "What did he want?" I
01:12:50
said, "He wanted to know about Sabradori
01:12:54
and the attempt to kill President Bush."
01:12:56
Like, "Okay."
01:12:58
Eight hours later, we fired 47 cruise
01:13:01
missiles into Iraqi intelligence service
01:13:03
headquarters. But by then, it was the
01:13:05
middle of the night in Baghdad and we
01:13:07
killed the janitor.
01:13:09
So the next day, I said to my boss, "I
01:13:13
killed that janitor." And he said, "I
01:13:15
knew you were gonna say that. You didn't
01:13:17
kill the janitor. You had no idea what
01:13:19
Pal was going to do with him with the
01:13:20
information.
01:13:22
I said, I know, but I still feel guilty
01:13:24
about it.
01:13:26
Other than that, thank God I never had
01:13:29
to do it. I'm not sure how I would sleep
01:13:32
at night.
01:13:34
>> Do the US still assassinate people by
01:13:37
the CIA?
01:13:38
>> Absolutely. Yes. When Barack Obama was
01:13:41
president, John Brennan uh in the first
01:13:44
term was the deputy national security
01:13:46
adviser for counterterrorism and he
01:13:48
started something called the Tuesday
01:13:50
morning kill list meeting. So it would
01:13:53
be Brennan, it would be the National
01:13:55
Security Council attorney, somebody from
01:13:58
the CIA uh general counsel's office and
01:14:02
a representative of the director of the
01:14:04
counterterrorism center. And every
01:14:05
Tuesday morning they would meet at the
01:14:07
White House, come up with a list of
01:14:08
people to kill that week. The teams
01:14:10
would fan out around the world, kill
01:14:13
their targets, and then go back and meet
01:14:15
next Tuesday morning.
01:14:16
>> And are these world leaders or are they
01:14:18
normal?
01:14:19
>> No, these are these are ground level
01:14:21
terrorists.
01:14:22
>> Okay. So, it could be
01:14:26
someone that appears to be a normal
01:14:27
civilian, but is doing something that
01:14:29
they don't like.
01:14:30
>> The law is pretty clear on this. it it's
01:14:34
supposed to be somebody who poses a
01:14:37
clear and present danger to the United
01:14:40
States, to an American citizen, or to an
01:14:43
American installation,
01:14:45
>> which can be quite a vague.
01:14:48
>> See, that's the thing. It sounds like
01:14:50
it's clear. It's actually not at all
01:14:52
clear. And when they get back from these
01:14:56
missions, we just have to take their
01:14:58
word for it.
01:14:59
Which um spy force around the world did
01:15:01
you think was the most
01:15:04
impressive?
01:15:05
>> Oh, the Israelis.
01:15:07
>> Really?
01:15:07
>> Yeah. The Israelis have no rules.
01:15:11
They'll kill anybody. Uh what was it 3
01:15:15
years ago? This uh this pager operation.
01:15:20
>> Oh, it was so fascinating.
01:15:21
>> Good lord. It was it was a work of
01:15:23
genius.
01:15:24
>> It is genius. It is.
01:15:26
>> It was totally illegal.
01:15:27
>> Totally illegal. But it was genius. The
01:15:30
the moving parts.
01:15:32
>> I I didn't believe it was real. I had to
01:15:34
like re I was like, there's no way that
01:15:36
this is real. This is the stuff of
01:15:37
movies.
01:15:38
>> It is.
01:15:39
>> For anyone that doesn't know, what was
01:15:41
the story?
01:15:42
>> Ah, yeah. Okay. So, the Israelis knew
01:15:47
that Hezbollah, the terrorist group
01:15:49
Hezbollah from Lebanon, was
01:15:51
communicating using pagers. They didn't
01:15:53
want to use cell phones cuz they didn't
01:15:55
want the Israelis to intercept their
01:15:56
phone calls. And they thought, "Oh,
01:15:57
pagers, th those are safe." So the
01:16:01
Israelis
01:16:03
bought a company in like Hungary, I
01:16:07
think it was, that made pagers
01:16:10
and they got Hezbollah to order the
01:16:13
pagers from this company.
01:16:16
They were able to insert explosives in
01:16:19
the pagers. And the pagers went to like
01:16:21
Taiwan and from Taiwan to Thailand and
01:16:24
then from Thailand to I forget where,
01:16:27
Syria, I guess. And then from Syria to
01:16:29
Lebanon.
01:16:31
And so what the Israelis did was they
01:16:34
were able to activate the explosives in
01:16:37
all the pagers simultaneously,
01:16:40
>> killing people.
01:16:41
>> They killed everybody of any import.
01:16:46
They essentially decapitated Hezbollah.
01:16:49
And then the ones they didn't kill in
01:16:50
that operation,
01:16:52
they bombed the apartment buildings
01:16:54
where they lived. See, this is the
01:16:55
thing, too, about the Israelis. If they
01:16:57
want to kill you, they won't
01:17:01
they won't like just do a close-in hit.
01:17:03
They'll blow up the entire city block
01:17:06
where you live. They'll kill a thousand
01:17:09
people just to get you. And they don't
01:17:12
care. And then then they say, "What are
01:17:14
you going to do about it? You going to
01:17:15
go to the International Court of
01:17:17
Justice? Do they do they really do this?
01:17:20
>> Yeah.
01:17:20
>> Uhhuh.
01:17:22
>> Did Did you ever interact with them?
01:17:23
>> Yes.
01:17:24
>> And how did you find them to be
01:17:26
>> miserable?
01:17:28
My very first briefing that I ever gave
01:17:31
as a junior analyst was to the Israelis.
01:17:34
My boss said, "Okay." He says, "You're
01:17:36
going to give your first classified
01:17:38
liaison briefing." So, it's going to be
01:17:41
the Israelis and there are a couple
01:17:43
things you should know. I said, "Okay."
01:17:45
He said, 'We don't allow the Israelis
01:17:47
into the building
01:17:49
ever.' I said, 'Why not?' He said, '
01:17:51
Because they spy on us.' Not only do
01:17:53
they spy on us, they would always bring
01:17:55
gifts like, "Oh, we brought this
01:17:57
wonderful gift for you and you every
01:18:00
every time somebody tries to bring
01:18:01
something in, you have to x-ray it and
01:18:03
it's got like listening devices and it's
01:18:05
packed with two years worth of
01:18:07
batteries." We're like, "You guys, you
01:18:09
have to stop doing this. Every time you
01:18:11
come here, you try to bug our conference
01:18:12
rooms. You got It's bad form. you have
01:18:14
to stop doing it. And then they're like,
01:18:16
"Oh, okay. Okay. We knew you would find
01:18:19
it. We're just kidding. Come on." So, we
01:18:23
have to meet them miles away from
01:18:26
headquarters in a place that we rent.
01:18:31
So,
01:18:32
he said, "Nothing over the secret level.
01:18:36
No top secret information. Just up to
01:18:38
secret." I'm like, "Okay." So, I go with
01:18:40
like a dozen analysts. And because I'm
01:18:43
the junior most analyst, I've only been
01:18:45
on the job at this point, I'm going to
01:18:47
say six weeks or so, I went last. So,
01:18:51
the first analyst says, "I'm the chief
01:18:52
analyst, and this is my briefing." And
01:18:55
then the next guy says, "I'm the
01:18:56
political analyst, and I'm the
01:18:57
econalist, and I'm the military analyst,
01:18:59
and I'm the oil analyst, and you know,
01:19:02
the tech analyst, and it comes to me."
01:19:04
So I said, because I was overt at the
01:19:08
time, I was not undercover. I said, "My
01:19:11
name is John Kiryaku, and I'm going to
01:19:12
brief you on Saddam Hussein's
01:19:14
psychological state of mind."
01:19:17
Well, there were two Israelis there. One
01:19:19
was from Mossad, and one was from
01:19:21
Shinbet. Shinbet is the FBI of Israel,
01:19:25
and Mossad is the CIA of Israel. So the
01:19:29
Shinbet guy, he has his glasses down
01:19:31
like this, and he he he goes like this.
01:19:33
He says, "Spell your name."
01:19:36
So I spell it K I R. I spell it. And he
01:19:40
goes, "You are
01:19:43
Jewish." I said, "Don't you dare. I am
01:19:47
not recruitable. Don't you dare even try
01:19:50
it."
01:19:52
I was furious. We went out of the
01:19:54
briefing. I was going to explode.
01:19:56
Everybody started laughing at me.
01:19:57
They're like, "They do that to every one
01:20:00
of us. every one of us.
01:20:02
>> They try and recruit you.
01:20:04
>> Yeah.
01:20:05
>> To turn against the United States.
01:20:07
>> Yeah.
01:20:09
On my very first day at the CIA, we got
01:20:11
a briefing from the CIA's director of
01:20:13
security and he said that all of us have
01:20:16
to have in the very front of our minds
01:20:20
the concept of counter inelligence. For
01:20:22
example, he said there's a steakhouse
01:20:25
right down the road on Route 123. It's
01:20:28
the it's the nearest restaurant to the
01:20:30
CIA. He goes, "Don't ever eat there."
01:20:35
Why? Because the KGB thinks we all eat
01:20:38
there. So all the customers are KGB
01:20:41
officers waiting for CIA people to walk
01:20:44
in and start talking about work. Don't
01:20:46
ever eat there. I've never eaten there
01:20:48
to this day
01:20:49
>> because they're potentially all Russian
01:20:50
spies. H. So he said, "Our Israeli
01:20:55
friends have two officers in their
01:20:58
embassy, one from Mossad, one from
01:21:00
Shinbet. The FBI has identified
01:21:05
187 undeclared Israeli intelligence
01:21:08
officers spread all across the United
01:21:12
States, mostly at defense contractors
01:21:15
trying to steal our secrets." Now, we
01:21:18
give the Israelis 95%
01:21:22
of our defense secrets. You want the
01:21:23
F-35? Done. Here's the F-35. You want
01:21:26
this advanced missile? Here you go. It's
01:21:28
on us. So, they steal the remaining 5%.
01:21:34
>> Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?
01:21:38
>> I believe very strongly he was a spy.
01:21:40
Yes.
01:21:41
>> And who do you think he was working for?
01:21:42
>> The Israelis. I'm confident it was the
01:21:45
Israelis. Why
01:21:48
Jeffrey Epstein
01:21:50
is kind of the stereotypical example
01:21:54
that they give you in training for
01:21:56
what's called an access agent. This is a
01:21:59
different kind of recruit. So, for
01:22:02
example, if you're a foreign
01:22:04
intelligence service and you want
01:22:06
information like close-in information
01:22:09
from a former president,
01:22:12
from the CEO of the biggest company in
01:22:15
the world, from a member of the British
01:22:17
royal family, you're not going to
01:22:19
recruit these guys. You're not going to
01:22:20
recruit Bill Clinton or Bill Gates or
01:22:23
Prince Andrew. So, you do the next best
01:22:25
thing. You recruit somebody who has
01:22:28
regular access to them. And that person
01:22:31
that you recruit is going to need to
01:22:33
make these people feel comfortable and
01:22:36
appreciated.
01:22:37
And so you give him plenty of money. So
01:22:40
he has this house on an island or he has
01:22:43
the whole island. And maybe you bring in
01:22:46
young girls, you get them in
01:22:48
compromising positions just in case you
01:22:51
need to use what's called compromat
01:22:54
compromising
01:22:56
pictures.
01:22:58
We know we know now that Jeffrey
01:23:00
Epstein's house on the island
01:23:04
had video cameras,
01:23:07
hidden video cameras in literally every
01:23:09
room, including the bathrooms.
01:23:13
Why
01:23:16
Why would he care what was going on
01:23:18
unless it was to use that information
01:23:20
against people? As I said, only the
01:23:24
Israelis and the Russians use
01:23:29
extortion as a motivator.
01:23:33
>> So, would they have made Jeffrey Epstein
01:23:35
rich?
01:23:36
>> Yeah.
01:23:36
>> In order to give him that access?
01:23:38
>> How could they have done that?
01:23:40
>> Oh, that's easy. I mean, you you do I
01:23:44
mean, governments are the only ones
01:23:45
really that can money that can launder
01:23:47
money unfettered. And you can also do it
01:23:50
through real estate, through fine art,
01:23:52
and through horses. Those are the three
01:23:54
easiest ways to launder money today.
01:23:58
Fine art, real estate, and raceh horses.
01:24:02
>> But presumably,
01:24:04
he would have spoken out at some point,
01:24:06
no, he would have said something or
01:24:08
>> no, but it would explain why he got a
01:24:10
sweetheart deal in 2006. I mean, this is
01:24:13
a guy that's been convicted of child sex
01:24:16
crimes
01:24:18
and he gets 6 months of house arrest
01:24:20
with an ankle bracelet. We have
01:24:22
mandatory minimums in this country.
01:24:23
That's a 5-year mandatory minimum of
01:24:25
first offense.
01:24:26
>> He definitely had some interesting
01:24:27
power, didn't he?
01:24:29
>> Mhm. And
01:24:31
Alex Aosta, who was the prosecuting
01:24:34
attorney at the time and then later
01:24:36
became Secretary of Labor under Trump,
01:24:39
Trump won. Alex Aosta said that he was
01:24:43
ordered by the attorney general to give
01:24:47
Epstein the sweetheart deal. Well, who's
01:24:49
the only person that can order the
01:24:50
attorney general to do something? It's
01:24:52
the president.
01:24:55
So,
01:24:57
was it because
01:24:59
>> Epstein was was working on Clinton? Most
01:25:03
of the people down there were Democrats.
01:25:04
I mean, what what was the reason? Maybe
01:25:08
he was working for the US government.
01:25:11
>> It's possible that he could have been
01:25:12
doubled against the Israelis or others.
01:25:15
Sure. Sure, that's possible.
01:25:18
>> If you had to bet
01:25:19
>> Mhm.
01:25:20
>> what would you say if you had to bet
01:25:22
everything you have
01:25:24
on either him being a spy or not a spy?
01:25:27
>> Yeah.
01:25:28
>> What would you bet on?
01:25:29
>> He was a spy. I feel very confident in
01:25:32
that assessment.
01:25:34
I debated Alan Dersowitz about this on
01:25:36
the Pierce Morgan show one time. It was
01:25:39
it was Scott Horton and me who said that
01:25:42
he was an Israeli spy and it was Alan
01:25:44
Dersowitz and General Danny Ayalon, the
01:25:48
former head of Mossad.
01:25:51
Ayalon was kind of into it in terms of
01:25:54
having a fun time. He was just having a
01:25:56
fun time with the conversation. He
01:25:58
wasn't going to admit to anything.
01:26:00
Durowitz was Epstein's attorney.
01:26:04
So, I said that that I believed Epstein
01:26:07
was an Israeli spy. And Duritz
01:26:09
interrupts me like attorneys do. And he
01:26:13
says, "That is outrageous. If he had
01:26:16
been a spy, he would have told me
01:26:18
because I was his attorney and I could
01:26:21
have gone to the White House and I could
01:26:22
have gotten him a better sentence." And
01:26:24
I said, "Wait a minute. You could have
01:26:27
gone to the White House to say, "Go easy
01:26:29
on Jeffrey Epstein because he's an
01:26:31
Israeli spy collecting information from
01:26:34
American politicians. If I were the
01:26:37
president, I would have hung him from a
01:26:38
tree."
01:26:41
And then Piers Morgan said, "General I
01:26:43
Allen, was he a spy?" And he goes,
01:26:48
"Who knows?
01:26:50
>> Who knows?"
01:26:52
>> It's like, come on, man. Who do you
01:26:54
think is the real adversary of the West?
01:26:58
Because we often talk about it being
01:26:59
Russia or
01:27:00
>> I think it's China.
01:27:01
>> Why? What is it that we don't realize
01:27:03
about China and their agenda?
01:27:05
>> Oh, wow. So much. The Chinese are so
01:27:09
good at what they do. And the Chinese
01:27:11
are so patient. You know, in the United
01:27:14
States, we we don't have long-term
01:27:18
timelines for for anything. When we want
01:27:20
something, we want it now. Is that in
01:27:22
part because we have this four-year
01:27:23
election cycle?
01:27:24
>> Yes, I believe that it is. The Chinese
01:27:27
will plan for something 25 years down
01:27:29
the road
01:27:30
>> because they all still be in power then.
01:27:32
>> Yeah. And so, you know, they're really
01:27:36
good at stealing technology.
01:27:39
There are more Chinese PhD students in
01:27:41
the hard hard sciences here in the
01:27:43
United States than you can shake a stick
01:27:45
at. They're everywhere. They're they're
01:27:47
at every major university and they're
01:27:49
really really smart.
01:27:52
And then often times they'll say, "Oh,
01:27:53
you know, I've had such a great
01:27:55
experience here. I'd like to stay in the
01:27:56
United States." Yeah, I bet you would. I
01:27:59
bet you would. So you can spy for China.
01:28:02
>> Do you think that's happening?
01:28:04
>> Every single day.
01:28:06
>> You think that Chinese students are in
01:28:09
America spying on behalf of China?
01:28:11
>> Yes.
01:28:13
>> Yes.
01:28:14
>> How could you be so sure?
01:28:15
>> I'm 1,000% sure.
01:28:17
>> How could you be so sure? because we
01:28:19
frequently arrest them and then trade
01:28:21
them for Americans who are in Chinese
01:28:23
prisons.
01:28:27
>> Yeah.
01:28:28
>> And they're masquerading as students.
01:28:31
>> Mhm. PhD candidates always in the hard
01:28:34
sciences. Always.
01:28:37
>> So, China are the long-term adversary.
01:28:39
And what is it that China China want?
01:28:42
What is it they're doing?
01:28:44
>> And what is the outcome?
01:28:44
>> I think they want a couple of things. I
01:28:46
think that
01:28:48
on a more immediate basis they want
01:28:49
reunification with Taiwan. It's going to
01:28:51
happen someday. Even the Taiwanese will
01:28:53
tell you, "Yes, we're a part of China,
01:28:57
but we're kind of not a part of China.
01:28:59
We're not really independent, but we are
01:29:01
kind of independent."
01:29:02
Even American policy is that Taiwan is a
01:29:05
part of China, and eventually someday
01:29:07
they'll be reunited. Do you think with
01:29:11
everything that's going on at the moment
01:29:12
with Trump in Venezuela and Greenland,
01:29:14
this is going to create cover for
01:29:16
>> Oh, I was hoping you would ask me a
01:29:18
question like that. I think that's very
01:29:20
that's a very important issue that that
01:29:23
the media really aren't talking about.
01:29:26
So,
01:29:28
let's put it in the context of what
01:29:30
happened last week in Venezuela because
01:29:32
they're all moving parts of the same of
01:29:36
the same policy.
01:29:38
So,
01:29:41
we we sent a Delta Force squad into
01:29:44
Venezuela a week ago and we snatched
01:29:46
President Maduro and he faces
01:29:48
international narcotics trafficking
01:29:50
charges in New York. Okay. Some people
01:29:52
are for that, some people are against
01:29:54
it. Whether you're for it or against it,
01:29:57
it's happened. There's nothing we can do
01:29:58
about it now. But
01:30:02
that operation may have inadvertently
01:30:06
given the green light to something that
01:30:07
both the Russians and the Chinese have
01:30:09
long sought. The United States really is
01:30:11
the only true superpower in the world.
01:30:14
You know, the Chinese have a lot more
01:30:16
people. They have lots of nuclear
01:30:18
missiles, but they have one aircraft
01:30:20
carrier. We have 12, soon to be 14. We
01:30:24
have way more long-distance bombers. We
01:30:26
have way more fighters. The Russians are
01:30:28
bogged down in a war in in Ukraine.
01:30:31
They're winning the war, but they're
01:30:32
bogged down nonetheless. So,
01:30:36
did this did this reinstitution of the
01:30:39
Monroe Doctrine saying that, you know,
01:30:42
from 1814 that that the Western
01:30:44
Hemisphere is the is the territory of
01:30:48
the United States, it's up to us to
01:30:50
protect it from foreign powers. Well, in
01:30:53
1814, that meant the British Navy. We
01:30:56
don't really need a Monroe Doctrine and
01:30:58
it's not up to us whether the Argentines
01:31:01
want to have good relations with China
01:31:03
for example.
01:31:05
We invoked the Monroe Doctrine in this
01:31:08
operation to snatch Maduro. So does that
01:31:11
mean then that if we have a sphere of
01:31:14
influence that is the Western Hemisphere
01:31:16
that the Chinese have a sphere of
01:31:18
influence that includes Taiwan that the
01:31:21
Russians have a sphere of influence that
01:31:23
includes Ukraine? because that's kind of
01:31:25
what it seems. It looks like we've given
01:31:27
the green light to both of those
01:31:29
countries and that we're conceding the
01:31:32
fact that it's a unipolar world right
01:31:35
now in favor of a multipolar world. Now,
01:31:38
personally, I think a multipolar world
01:31:40
is safer.
01:31:41
>> What's a multipolar world?
01:31:42
>> Multipolar world is where there's not
01:31:44
just one superpower. There are three or
01:31:47
more.
01:31:49
So in terms of policy, this simple act
01:31:54
of just sending a team in to grab Maduro
01:31:57
has turned international diplomacy on
01:31:59
its head.
01:32:02
What do we do if the Chinese invade
01:32:04
Taiwan? Do we really want to send
01:32:07
American soldiers to, you know, to fight
01:32:09
and die for Taiwan?
01:32:11
>> What do you think would happen if China
01:32:13
tomorrow said, "You know what? We're
01:32:14
going to take Taiwan."
01:32:15
>> You know what? Honest to God, I think
01:32:17
nothing would happen.
01:32:21
I think we would rush to protect
01:32:23
Australia, Japan, South Korea, the
01:32:26
Philippines, Thailand. We'd rush to
01:32:29
protect them.
01:32:30
>> Why?
01:32:30
>> Because they're they're major non-NATO
01:32:32
allies. They're good friends, close
01:32:34
friends. But in terms of going to Taiwan
01:32:36
to fight Chinese soldiers,
01:32:39
I can't imagine it.
01:32:40
>> Trump told the New York Times that
01:32:42
whether China moves on Taiwan is
01:32:44
ultimately up to Chinese President Xi
01:32:47
Jonging. not the USA. Adding that he's
01:32:50
told he would be very unhappy if China
01:32:53
changed the status quo. He claimed he
01:32:56
doesn't think Xi will act while he's
01:32:58
president.
01:32:58
>> See, and that is actually what the
01:33:01
long-term policy is. The long-term
01:33:03
policy is sure someday
01:33:07
to be determined later you guys can
01:33:09
unify.
01:33:10
>> Just don't do it while I'm here.
01:33:11
>> Yeah. Don't do it today.
01:33:14
>> Maybe when Trump goes.
01:33:16
>> God forbid.
01:33:17
So going back to this point, you said
01:33:19
they want Taiwan. What else do you think
01:33:21
China want?
01:33:22
>> Well,
01:33:24
do they want to see the US fall?
01:33:26
>> Yes, sure.
01:33:28
>> And are they actively doing things to
01:33:31
encourage that?
01:33:32
>> Yes, but not the things that
01:33:35
that you would expect.
01:33:38
Instead of running around the world, you
01:33:40
know, overthrowing governments, invading
01:33:43
countries, which is what we do,
01:33:47
they go to countries and say, "Hey, you
01:33:50
need a new highway system, we'll pay for
01:33:52
it. You need a new airport, no problem.
01:33:55
You need a new hospital electrical grid,
01:33:58
we have plenty of money from our
01:33:59
gigantic trade surplus. We'll pay for
01:34:01
it. We just want to have really good,
01:34:04
friendly relations with you." And that's
01:34:06
what they do. The Chinese essentially
01:34:08
own Africa right now.
01:34:10
>> What are you most concerned about in the
01:34:12
world at the moment? What what does
01:34:14
actually keep you up at night? What
01:34:16
frightens me the most is that the US
01:34:21
government
01:34:22
over the last
01:34:26
well really over the last
01:34:29
50 years or 55 years has so inflated its
01:34:34
military budget
01:34:37
that what we spend on the Pentagon is
01:34:41
now more than the next eight largest
01:34:44
countries combined. mind.
01:34:46
Right.
01:34:48
Donald Trump right now spends a a
01:34:51
trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon
01:34:53
budget. He's asking for next year to be
01:34:55
a trillion and a half.
01:34:58
We can't afford it. Our interest on the
01:35:01
national debt is now the third largest
01:35:04
expenditure in government between the
01:35:06
Pentagon and Social Security and then
01:35:09
the the interest on the debt.
01:35:10
>> And why does this bother you?
01:35:12
>> Because we're going bankrupt. And all
01:35:14
the while, the China, the Chinese are
01:35:16
letting us spend ourselves into
01:35:18
oblivion. The Chinese don't spend that
01:35:20
kind of money. How come I can't have a
01:35:22
bullet train that goes 400 miles an
01:35:24
hour? How come I can't get to Chicago in
01:35:27
3 hours by train? You know, how come the
01:35:31
airports in my country look like [ __ ]
01:35:34
And you go to Chinese airports and
01:35:36
they're pristine with like the most
01:35:39
amazing services and the best
01:35:41
restaurants. How come Chinese roads
01:35:44
don't have potholes? And in my town,
01:35:47
it's like driving across Bosnia.
01:35:51
It's because they decided not to spend
01:35:52
their money on weapons. They spend it on
01:35:56
infrastructure.
01:35:57
>> Do you think that's likely that the US
01:35:59
could go bankrupt effectively?
01:36:02
>> I do.
01:36:04
Yeah, I do. We can't keep up this pace.
01:36:06
It's not possible. We're going to have
01:36:09
to we're going to have to raise taxes
01:36:11
and cut the budget.
01:36:15
>> What's the most important thing that we
01:36:16
didn't talk about that we should have
01:36:17
talked about, John?
01:36:19
>> Oh, that's a good question.
01:36:22
One of the most important things in my
01:36:23
life to tell you the truth, uh, is the
01:36:25
issue of ethics. I love this country
01:36:28
more than anything else in the world,
01:36:31
and I wanted to do the right thing.
01:36:33
We're a country of laws and we have to
01:36:37
obey our laws, which is why I blew the
01:36:40
whistle on the torture program.
01:36:41
>> Who's not obeying the laws?
01:36:43
>> Our government.
01:36:43
>> In what way?
01:36:46
>> We've gotten to the point, and it
01:36:48
started around the year 2000 or 2001. We
01:36:53
got to the point where if we want to do
01:36:56
something, we just do it.
01:36:58
>> Like what? In 1946,
01:37:02
we passed something called the Federal
01:37:04
Torture Act, which banned torture.
01:37:08
Okay. Also in 1946,
01:37:11
we executed
01:37:13
Japanese soldiers who waterboarded
01:37:16
American prisoners of war. That was a
01:37:18
death penalty offense to waterboard
01:37:20
someone. All right. In 1968, on January
01:37:25
the 11th, 1968,
01:37:27
the Washington Post ran a front page
01:37:30
photograph of an American soldier
01:37:33
waterboarding a North Vietnamese
01:37:34
prisoner. When the when the picture ran,
01:37:37
the Secretary of Defense, Robert
01:37:39
McNamera, ordered an immediate
01:37:41
investigation. That soldier was
01:37:43
arrested. He was charged with torture
01:37:46
and he was sentenced to 20 years of hard
01:37:49
labor at Levvenworth.
01:37:52
And then in 2002,
01:37:55
it's legal. We can do it. We can do it
01:37:58
because we're the good guys.
01:38:00
The law never changed. We changed. And
01:38:04
my point was always either we're going
01:38:06
to be the good guys or we're not. Either
01:38:09
we're going to be what Ronald Reagan
01:38:11
called a shining city on a hill or we're
01:38:14
not. It when I was when I was stationed
01:38:17
in Bahrain, I was the human rights
01:38:18
officer. So, I had to write the human
01:38:20
rights report every year that we sent to
01:38:22
Congress. Well, imagine
01:38:25
if John goes in to see the Minister of
01:38:27
Interior. And I say, "Your Highness, you
01:38:32
cannot pick up a 15-year-old kid for
01:38:35
marching in a peaceful pro-democracy
01:38:38
demonstration and then murder him, beat
01:38:40
him to death in the in the police
01:38:43
station, and call his parents to come
01:38:45
and pick up the body." You can't do
01:38:46
that. I have to report that to Congress
01:38:48
and you're going to lose your your
01:38:50
rights to buy American military
01:38:52
hardware. But then the CIA station chief
01:38:56
goes in an hour later and says, "Don't
01:38:59
pay any attention to the human rights
01:39:01
guy. I'll give you $10 million. If you
01:39:04
set up a secret prison here, we're going
01:39:06
to send you some prisoners. You torture
01:39:09
them and then you give us a write up of
01:39:11
everything they say during torture."
01:39:13
Who's he going to listen to? Is he going
01:39:15
to listen to me?
01:39:15
>> Did that happen? Yes.
01:39:20
He's not going to listen to me.
01:39:23
If all of a sudden torture is legal just
01:39:25
cuz we say it is and then Congress is
01:39:28
like, "Oh, we don't know anything
01:39:29
because it's a secret program, so we
01:39:32
can't talk about it."
01:39:33
>> Do we still torture people?
01:39:34
>> No.
01:39:35
I am very proud to say that
01:39:41
when the McCain Feinstein anti-torrture
01:39:43
amendment was passed into law in
01:39:46
December of 2014, John McCain got up on
01:39:49
the floor of the Senate and said it was
01:39:50
because of me, because of my
01:39:52
revelations. He said, "If I had not told
01:39:54
the American people that the CIA was
01:39:58
torturing prisoners in their name,
01:40:01
we would never have known."
01:40:03
That's why I say it was worth it.
01:40:09
>> Do you think you should be pardoned by
01:40:11
by President Trump?
01:40:12
>> I do.
01:40:13
>> Have you written him?
01:40:16
I've
01:40:18
I've
01:40:20
be careful with my language here. I
01:40:24
applied. My name is in the system. I
01:40:28
have very
01:40:31
very high level supporters
01:40:35
who have approached him personally
01:40:38
and I'm hopeful that it happens.
01:40:45
John, we have a closing tradition where
01:40:46
the last guest leaves a question for the
01:40:47
next not knowing who they're going to be
01:40:48
leaving it for. And the question left
01:40:50
for you is, what's something you stopped
01:40:53
doing that improved your life more than
01:40:55
anything you started?
01:40:59
feeling sorry for myself.
01:41:05
I I'll be honest with you. I have
01:41:07
struggled with depression my entire
01:41:09
life.
01:41:11
And after my second divorce,
01:41:15
I went through this period where I was
01:41:16
just I couldn't pull myself out of bed
01:41:19
in the morning because I felt so sorry
01:41:23
for myself. because of the divorce or
01:41:26
because of your life or because
01:41:27
>> the whole thing. I I believed I was just
01:41:30
a loser. I was in my 50s,
01:41:34
unemployable,
01:41:35
convicted felon, barely able to make
01:41:39
ends meet, worried about where my rent
01:41:41
was coming from one month to the next.
01:41:46
And then I thought, "Fuck you. What's
01:41:49
wrong with you?
01:41:51
You don't have to answer to anybody."
01:41:53
And I I told myself no more feeling
01:41:57
sorry for myself. I was going to go make
01:41:59
a career on my own. And so I knew I
01:42:02
would never work for government again. I
01:42:04
knew I would never work in corporate
01:42:05
America again. After I left the CIA, I
01:42:07
was the head of the competitive
01:42:09
intelligence practice at Deote and Touch
01:42:11
spying on Ernstston Young and PWC and
01:42:14
IBM. And it was great fun. I'll never
01:42:17
work in in the corporate world again. So
01:42:20
I decided I'm going to do what I'm good
01:42:22
at.
01:42:23
and I'm a I'm a terrific writer and I'm
01:42:28
told that I'm a gifted storyteller. So,
01:42:30
I'm going to write books. I have two
01:42:33
syndicated newspaper columns that run in
01:42:36
212 small town papers around the
01:42:38
country. I'm on TV all the time. I have
01:42:41
three podcasts, Drogram, every day on on
01:42:45
both YouTube and Rumble. Thanks for
01:42:47
letting me plug them by the way.
01:42:48
>> Go ahead.
01:42:49
>> Uh Deep Focus on YouTube and on Apple
01:42:51
Podcast. John Kuryaku's Dead Drop, which
01:42:54
is just story after story after story.
01:42:57
And now I make a perfectly great living.
01:42:59
I I'm in a long-term relationship with
01:43:01
the woman I'm crazy about, and life is
01:43:04
good.
01:43:05
>> And it all started with that decision to
01:43:06
stop feeling sorry for yourself.
01:43:08
>> Yes. If people around me keep saying,
01:43:11
"You've done nothing wrong. You're a
01:43:13
hero for what you did." And deep down, I
01:43:16
would do it again, then why am I feeling
01:43:18
sorry for myself? I'm right. They're
01:43:21
wrong. They're criminals. So, I'm just
01:43:24
going to go on with my life. And that
01:43:27
snapped me out of it.
01:43:30
So, don't feel sorry for yourself.
01:43:34
Do something about it.
01:43:36
Act.
01:43:38
>> John, you are someone that is very good
01:43:40
at storytelling. You are. You've written
01:43:42
many books. I'm going to link all the
01:43:43
books below. So many incredible books.
01:43:45
I've got some of them here with me on
01:43:46
the floor. Um, I could go through all of
01:43:48
them, but we need another couple of
01:43:50
days. Um, John, thank you.
01:43:53
>> Thank you.
01:43:54
>> Thank you so much for your incredible
01:43:55
storytelling, your wisdom, but also just
01:43:57
giving us a window into a world that
01:43:58
most of us know nothing about because
01:44:00
there's so many lessons that I think are
01:44:01
pertinent to all of our lives riddled
01:44:03
amongst there. And I think, you know,
01:44:06
I hope you do get pardoned.
01:44:08
>> Thank you. I hope so. I've got my
01:44:10
fingers crossed.
01:44:11
>> And when you do, hopefully we can come
01:44:12
back again and have another
01:44:13
conversation.
01:44:14
>> I look forward to that. It's been such a
01:44:15
pleasure.
01:44:16
>> Pleasure is mine. Thanks for the
01:44:17
invitation.
01:44:21
>> This is something that I've made for
01:44:23
you. I realize that the direio audience
01:44:25
are striv
01:44:29
goals that we want to accomplish. And
01:44:30
one of the things I've learned is that
01:44:32
when you aim at the big big big goal, it
01:44:35
can feel incredibly psychologically
01:44:38
uncomfortable because it's kind of like
01:44:39
being stood at the foot of Mount Everest
01:44:41
and looking upwards. The way to
01:44:43
accomplish your goals is by breaking
01:44:45
them down into tiny small steps. And we
01:44:48
call this in our team the 1%. And
01:44:49
actually this philosophy is highly
01:44:51
responsible for much of our success
01:44:53
here. So what we've done so that you at
01:44:56
home can accomplish any big goal that
01:44:57
you have is we've made these 1% diaries
01:45:01
and we released these last year and they
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all sold out. So I asked my team over
01:45:05
and over again to bring the diaries back
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but also to introduce some new colors
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and to make some minor tweaks to the
01:45:09
diary. So now we have a better range for
01:45:14
you. So if you have a big goal in mind
01:45:16
and you need a framework and a process
01:45:18
and some motivation, then I highly
01:45:20
recommend you get one of these diaries
01:45:22
before they all sell out once again. And
01:45:24
you can get yours now at the diary.com
01:45:26
where you can get 20% off our Black
01:45:28
Friday bundle. And if you want the link,
01:45:30
the link is in the description below.
01:45:35
Heat. Heat. N.