March 14, 2025 • 59 mins
John Kiriakou, former CIA intelligence officer turned whistleblower, takes us deep inside the world of American intelligence operations and the moral dilemmas faced by those tasked with protecting national security. His decision to expose the CIA's torture program highlights the personal and professional consequences when conscience collides with classified operations.
• Early passion for Middle Eastern affairs sparked by the 1979 Iran hostage crisis
• Natural talent for intelligence recruitment, securing multiple foreign assets where others struggled
• Transition from analyst to operations officer due to his people skills and extroverted personality
• CIA actively seeks individuals with "sociopathic tendencies" who can work in ethical gray areas
• Decision to blow the whistle came after President Bush suggested "rogue CIA officers" were responsible for torture
• Simple surveillance techniques often prove more effective than complicated tradecraft
• Critical shortage of officers fluent in strategic languages like Chinese creates ongoing intelligence gaps
• Current CIA using artificial intelligence to predict which employees might become whistleblowers
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast.
I'm your host, Jack Hopkins.
Now, before I introduce today'sguest, I want to ask you a
favor.
Don't worry, it's not a hugefavor.
One of my episodes has almost60,000 views, but I've got just
(00:21):
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are watching my podcast episodesaren't subscribed.
Why does that matter?
In short, the greater mysubscriber numbers, the more
likely it is that I can get andfeature even more guests on my
(00:45):
podcast, guests that you want tohear from, and that's good for
you and it's good for me as well.
So if you haven't already,please like and subscribe, and I
thank you in advance.
Now let's get to today's guestfor today's episode.
Today's guest is John Kiriakou.
(01:06):
John is an American author,journalist and former CIA
intelligence officer.
He was jailed for what the CIAcalled exposing the
interrogation techniques of theCentral Intelligence Agency.
Much of the world, however, hada different view.
Much of the world, however, hada different view.
John Kiriakou was awhistleblower on the torture
(01:28):
program the CIA had been runningand that Gina Haspel later
testified to Congress hadexisted.
Gina Haspel was the seventhdirector of the CIA.
Now John was an intelligenceanalyst and operations officer
for the CIA's CounterterrorismCenter, senior investigator for
(01:49):
the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee and a consultant for
ABC News.
He was the first US governmentofficial to confirm, in December
(02:09):
of 2007, that waterboarding wasused to interrogate al Al Qaeda
prisoners, which he describedas torture.
Look, you are in for a treat.
I just finished this episodeand I already can't wait to get
him back on again, so, withoutfurther ado, let's dive right in
to this episode with thefascinating and intriguing John
Kiriakou.
All right, John, listen, I'vegot to tell you I've probably
(02:34):
learned as much about worldhistory from you as anyone else.
You know, in so many of thequestions that you answer, I've
always just been blown away atyour grasp of world history, and
instead of answering somethingwithin the context of, say, the
(02:54):
last five to ten years, you'reable to go way back, and I find
that most of the time when youprovide that additional context
oh, okay, well, this all looksdifferent then within this Right
right, yeah, good point.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Hey, may I tell you a quick story on that very issue.
Sure, I had just returned fromthe Middle East.
This was like 1996.
And I was assigned to mentor abrand new junior analyst, really
, really smart young woman.
She had just graduated from theUniversity of Virginia and she
was covering the United ArabEmirates.
(03:35):
And nothing ever happens in theUAE.
We're close friends with theUAE.
It was just someplace where shecould learn you know the
writing style and such.
Well, sure enough, iran invadedan island off the coast of
Sharjah, which is one of theseven emirates of the United
Arab Emirates.
It's actually two islands.
(03:57):
It's called Greater TunbT-U-N-B, and Lesser Tunb.
So Iran had Greater Tunb,sharjah had lesser Tunb and the
Iranians took it.
And this island is, like youknow, a mile by two miles.
Nobody lives on it or anything.
And I said to her justoffhandedly we're just chatting.
(04:19):
And I said the UAE government'snever going to do anything to
get that island back, they'rejust going to concede it to the
Iranians.
And she said why?
Why would they do that?
And I said because the islandis owned by Sharjah and they
don't give a shit about Sharjahbecause it's a minor emirate.
(04:39):
And I said look, foreign policyis run by Abu Dhabi and
business policy is run by Dubai,and in Dubai much of what they
trade is with Iran.
So why upset the apple cartover a little tiny island that
only has a couple of goats on it?
So the Sharjahs are just goingto be shit out of luck.
(05:02):
She goes into the boss's officeand she comes back out and she
sits down and she says I justresigned and I'm like what, why
did you do that?
And she said I realized that,no matter how much I like the
job, I'll never know as muchabout it as you do.
I said that is ridiculous.
I said I have a degree inMiddle Eastern studies.
(05:23):
You'll pick it all up.
You're really smart.
And she said no, I justrealized this just isn't for me.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's wild, and so my question then is I'm guessing
you were always kind of ahistory buff, yeah always and a
Middle East buff.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
When I was 15, the Iranians raided the American
embassy and took our peoplehostage and I was just
fascinated, glued to it, and youmight remember that that led to
the creation of Nightline right.
So Nightline on ABC was meantto give us the daily update on
(06:00):
the situation with the hostages.
I didn't know that, yeah, andthen, when there were no updates
to give, it became a nighttimenews program and then lasted for
decades.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Wow, how much did that benefit you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
As someone in the CIA , I can only imagine immensely,
yeah immensely is the word, butI was very fortunate, though,
jack, in that I knew when I was15 what I wanted to do.
When I was nine, I told myparents I wanted to be a spy.
When I grew up and when I was15, I had decided that I wanted
(06:39):
to be a spy in the Middle Eastwhen I grew up, and so I looked
for universities that hadspecific programs in Middle
Eastern studies.
At the time, there were onlythree.
There was Brigham Young, andthey did it just to teach their
would-be missionaries Arabic.
There was Rutgers in New Jersey,and I just didn't want to go to
(07:01):
school in Newark and um andGeorge Washington university,
which was literally one blockfrom the white house.
That's where the action is, andso I went to GW.
I was one of only threestudents enrolled in the in the
Middle Eastern studies programthere, but worth every single
minute, and I was able tospecialize.
(07:23):
That became um, that becamesomething that the CIA was
looking for in in the late 1980s, and I got lucky.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So you showed up with what you needed.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I was ready to go.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you know, I've got to tell you
something that I've multipletimes when watching you on other
podcasts and I've heard youtalk about this some but any
time you go a differentdirection than maybe what I'm
(07:58):
thinking not in terms ofpredicting what you're going to
say, but in terms of like beingon the same page as me and you
go a different direction.
The thing I'm always aware ofis that because I like you so
much, my ears, I'm payingattention and I'm, you know, I
(08:23):
don't go into that defensivemode.
Is that something aboutyourself that you recognized
early on that you could getpeople to warm up to you quickly
?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
No, frankly, really no.
In fact.
It's funny that you bring thisup because I was on the job I'm
going to say like six weeks.
So this is February, earlyFebruary of 1990.
And my boss, I was an analyst.
Most analysts are strongintroverts and I'm a strong
(08:59):
extrovert.
But my boss said to me you wouldbe a good operations officer.
And I said me, why would I be agood operations officer?
And he said people like to bearound you.
Yeah, and I just thought, okay,that's kind of odd, but all
right.
Well, the longer that I was inanalysis, the more I realized
(09:23):
that it wasn't really as great afit for me as I thought it was
going to be, because Iconsidered myself kind of an
intellectual, you know, I hadbachelor's and master's degrees,
I had multiple foreignlanguages, I was well traveled,
um, I would go to all of the uhthe uh events around town that
(09:43):
the think tanks were sponsoring.
And he's like no, you're kindof a fish out of water, you
should think about operations.
And it wasn't until, you know,seven and a half years had
passed and I got bored withanalysis that I decided to give
operations a try.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and did you find almost immediately, maybe
when you compared yourself toyour colleagues or other people
on that side of the CIA, that,wow, I'm good at this.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh, you know what?
One of my station chiefs andthis was in a big, active, major
station pulled me aside and hesaid over the course of my
30-year career, he said I hadfive recruitments and I remember
every single one of them.
(10:41):
He said you've been here twoyears and you have five
recruitments.
And I said, yeah, you know, ascrazy as it sounds, I kind of
have a knack for this, yeah.
And he said whatever you'redoing, just keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I would assume that gives you a level of confidence
going into an operation onceyou've kind of built that
foundation of trust of yourability to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, it became a joke.
You know we would have theseclassified staff meetings in the
embassies.
It's called a bubble.
It's called a bubble what it is.
It's a tempested, secure roomwhere you can speak freely.
There's a double wall.
(11:36):
Music is pumped in between thewalls, and you know you can't
intercept anything there, kindof like a skiff.
It's like a skiff, but a miniyeah, that's a good way to say
it.
It's a mini skiff.
So, um, my immediate boss, uh,had this, had this thing that he
did whenever somebody made arecruitment he would
congratulate them in the staffmeeting and then toss them a
(11:58):
snickers bar.
That was your award for, formaking a recruitment.
You got a snickers bar and andthere was.
You know, sometimes it takes youa month, sometimes it takes you
a year to recruit somebody, andit just so happened that I
recruited three people in oneweek, and not that, you know, I
(12:20):
did all the work that one week.
It took me a year, a year and aquarter to get up to that point
and it just so happened thatthey all came to a head that one
week.
So he said, you know, I'd liketo congratulate Kiriakou for
recruiting, you know, mkGrasshopper, and he tosses me a
(12:42):
Snickers bar and everybody youknow, congratulations.
I'd like to congratulateKiriakou for recruiting MK
Orange.
And people are like, okay, andKiriakou gets a third one for
recruiting so-and-so.
And one of the other guys islike, dude, stop.
(13:03):
And I said I, it was just oneof those weeks.
Sure you're making us all lookbad and we're not going to get
promoted.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I think I'm sorry that's wild, you know I I've
never heard you asked thisquestion that I know of, and
that's not to say I've watched.
There may be some out there.
I haven't seen when you areworking in the Middle East.
How relevant is your personalskin tone?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
That's a good question.
And no, I haven't been askedthat.
I found, especially when I wasyounger and I didn't have this
gray hair and it was muchthicker than it is.
I fit in almost everywhere Iwent and my Arabic was so good
at the time.
People would ask me are youLebanese?
(13:57):
Because you kind of speak witha Yemeni accent, but you're too
tall to be Yemeni accent.
But you're too tall to beYemeni.
So the ability to fit in helpedme immensely.
And I'll tell you one thing itwas so funny I was invited to a
Rotary Club meeting in Abu Dhabiand the ambassador was there,
(14:23):
the deputy chief of mission andthe political officer all legit
State Department people.
So they're all sitting at thesame table and I decide to sit
with the Arabs.
Right, I don't want to sit withthe guys that I work with all
day long, sure.
So I'm sitting with the Arabsand one of these Arabs says to
me look at this, look at thistable over here, and he points
(14:45):
at the ambassador, the deputyambassador and the political
officer.
He says CIA.
And I said yeah, how can youtell?
He said the CIA guys always sittogether.
And I said Mohammed, that'sexactly why I'm sitting with you
.
Well, by the end of the year Ihad recruited Mohammed.
He's like holy shit.
(15:05):
I would never have guessed it.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Wow, yeah and, and you know what's always
fascinating to me about thosetypes of things we always think
of.
The ceia most people I wouldassume is based on a lot of
hollywood, right, right and andit's not Right, and I've got
(15:28):
some questions for you aboutthat.
That's one little thing thatyou would think.
Those guys made that mistake.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I know right.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right, right, yeah, that's me.
But was that something that,prior to him saying that, that
you'd kind of noticed too thatyou know I guess you had,
because you said you know whowants to sit with the people you
work?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
with all day.
Yeah and yeah.
But you know my station chiefs.
From my very first stationchief he said he said, well, he
said something that I lateradded to, when I was training,
you know, young officers.
He said that when you go to anevent, you must come back with a
fistful of business cards,otherwise why go to the event to
(16:17):
have free, you know, horsd'oeuvres?
Seriously Sure.
And and then later on in mycareer there, there was an
officer that I worked with.
We were in the same branch andshe was just not cut out for
this job.
She was really smart.
She had gotten a bachelor'sdegree at the University of
Michigan and a master's degreefrom Yale.
(16:38):
But smarts doesn't alwaystranslate into being a good CIA
officer.
Right, you have to bemanipulative, you have to be
able to think quickly on the fly.
So she was doing heroperational meetings and then
she would go back and they would.
They would ask her.
So what did you learn?
She's like he didn't reallyhave anything to say.
(17:00):
Well then you've got toterminate the contract, right,
tell them look, this isn'tworking out, thanks for your
time.
Here's $1,000 going awaypresent.
So I said to her one time my ownpersonal rule is, if you go to
an operational meeting and youcome back and you don't have at
(17:23):
least two intelligence reportsto write, you have failed.
The agent didn't fail.
It's not his fault that youdidn't ask the right questions,
you have failed.
And then the station chiefcalled me into her office and
she said I know what yourworkload is, but can you go with
this officer to her nextoperational meeting?
(17:44):
But can you go with thisofficer to her next operational
meeting and you do the meetingand you teach her how to elicit
the information because she'sfailing?
And I said sure.
So we went to the meeting andhad a nice conversation about
two hours.
And you know, we order someroom service and there's coffee
(18:04):
and we're we're laughing andtalking and it's more of just a
friendly conversation than it isanything else.
And then at the end of the twohours the guy got up and we
shook hands and he walked outand she goes you see what I mean
.
He just doesn't say anythingimportant.
And I said I got fourintelligence reports out of that
conversation.
(18:25):
And she said how?
And I said let's go over it.
So I said he said this.
And then he said B, and then hesaid C, and then he said D.
He's talking aboutproliferation.
He's talking about a shipmentof chemicals that's going to the
port of Rotterdam.
He's talking.
She goes what do I know aboutchemicals?
(18:45):
I said he told us what thechemical was.
I don't know about chemicalseither, but maybe it's a cocaine
precursor, maybe it's achemical weapons precursor.
What do I know?
You put it in an intelligencereport and you let the analysts
figure it out.
She's like I never thought ofit that way.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So I wrote out.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I read up the reports , yeah.
Yeah, and then she was okay.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And is that something in your experience?
For the most part, you'veeither got it or you don't.
You don't.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and you know, one of the
things that I learned relativelyearly on in my career was when
people come into the CIA alreadyhaving PhDs, they almost always
fail.
Interesting you're a PhD,you've just finished writing a
(19:44):
300-page dissertation and youare the world's leading expert
on this issue.
That's so narrow that literallynobody else in the world gives
a shit about it, but you thinkyou're so smart because you have
a PhD.
Okay, well, the presidentdoesn't give a shit about your
opinion on such and such anissue.
The president wants the entirething boiled down to half a page
(20:07):
with three bullet points.
So if you can't adapt to theCIA's writing style and tell the
president only what heabsolutely needs to know in
order to form the most cogentpolicy, then you're failing and
you probably should go intojournalism or academia, not
(20:30):
intelligence.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, interesting.
I knew a guy when I was a kidback in the 70s and I had the
privilege of growing up around a.
There were a bunch of World WarII vets still around.
Wow, oh, that's very cool, youknow, yeah, really.
World War II vets still around,oh, that's very cool, you know.
Yeah, really.
And interestingly enough, therewas part of me that had an
awareness even at that age ofhow significant this opportunity
(20:57):
was.
And there was a guy I don'tthink he went to school beyond
eighth grade, right A World WarII vet, went to school beyond
eighth grade, right A World WarII vet, and he could take a
fairly complex subject andcondense it down into two or
three sentences.
That would give you enough ofthe foundation of it that you
(21:21):
understood it, enough to want topursue more knowledge.
Not everyone can do that, youknow I had much smarter people,
educationally and IQ wise.
Talk to me about the same thing.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You know, I remember during my analytic stint in that
first seven and a half years,something happened in Kuwait and
I had to write something thatused to be called a snowflake
(22:09):
news of the day, and that's apage.
And then pages two, three andfour are.
Each page has two issues andeach issue gets two paragraphs,
fact and analysis.
Okay, so here's the breakingnews on page one, pages two,
three and four, that's six moreshort stories.
And then at the very back ofthe book is sort of the
long-term big-picture things.
(22:30):
You're allowed to go two pageson those, but then at the very,
very end is something called apage of snowflakes.
They no longer do this.
George HW Bush absolutely lovedthe snowflakes because they
were directly to the point of astory, a story that wasn't
important enough to put at thefront of the briefing.
So there were hard and fastrules about snowflakes.
(22:52):
They had to be three separatethoughts interrupted by ellipses
, dot, dot, dot.
And they could not be more than36 words.
So you'd say Queen of Englanddied today.
Dot, dot dot.
Prince Charles expected to takethe throne by noon tomorrow.
(23:17):
Dot, dot, dot.
There will be no change inBritish foreign policy toward
the United States.
That's a snowflake.
Okay, so one of the leaders thatI was covering in the Middle
East had what is colloquiallyknown as a nervous breakdown.
There is no such medicalcondition as a nervous breakdown
(23:37):
.
It's just a word that we alluse, right, or a term.
So I went to him and I said,hey, I wrote a flake for the
president because he knows thisleader very well.
They're on the phone all thetime.
And here it is.
It was like 30 words Kingso-and-so had a nervous
(23:58):
breakdown.
And I put parentheses, notparentheses, quotation marks
around nervous breakdown,because I knew he would object
to the term because it's not amedical term.
And he's like, yeah, you have tocoordinate with all the other
analysts who who cover the sameissues so that there's agreement
where you know the entireintelligence community agrees
(24:21):
that this, this is the situation.
So he's like, yeah, I can't, uh, I can't, agree with this.
I'm going to have to make acouple of changes.
I said, yeah, make whateverchanges you want, You're the
psychiatrist to have to make acouple of changes.
I said, yeah, make whateverchanges you want, you're the
psychiatrist.
He was a psychiatrist with bothan MD and a PhD in psychology.
So he sends it back to me and ithas 56 words, and I said, larry
(24:42):
, we can't, we can't send thisto the president, it has 56
words.
He said, yeah, but I need 56words to explain the situation.
And I said we can't send it.
They will not send it to thepresident.
I mean, you and I can write5,000 words, they're not going
to send it to the president.
36 words.
And so it actually had to go upthrough the chain of command
(25:05):
and they just went back to myoriginal thing with the
quotation marks around itFascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
It's interesting, and I'm thinking probably not at
all for the same reasons.
But when I write my newslettersand it's, it's nothing I was
ever taught.
Obviously no english teacherwould ever teach you this.
I rarely use commas.
Where I would have a comma, Iput dot, dot, dot dot Because in
my mind and I've had somefeedback from subscribers a
(25:39):
comma doesn't necessarily dotranslate into doing what it's
supposed to do, which is kind ofcreate that separation.
But dot dot dot forces you todo it because the distance your
eyes have to track a distancebefore they pick up again, so it
(26:00):
almost forces the reader into apause.
So, um, yeah, that's justfascinating that that's how you
had to write those snowflakesyou know.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
getting back to the issue of the phds, they just
could not adapt to that kind ofwriting style.
They could not adapt to notputting in their own thoughts
about whatever happened to behappening around the world.
It's like nobody at the WhiteHouse gives a shit about your
(26:29):
thoughts.
Just lay out the facts.
You can put your thoughts atthe very end.
And of all the PhDs I met whocame into the CIA with the PhD,
only one actually made it as acareer.
The other ones just ended upwalking out ended up walking out
(26:55):
.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
I'm sure you there's a good chance you would agree
that you met more operativeswithout the educational
background who were betterpsychologists than some of the
PhDs.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Oh my God.
You know it's funny when, whenyou're going into operations,
you have to take an enormousbattery of psychological exams
because they want to make surethat you have the right
personality to do something likethis and they want to make sure
that you are able to operate,sometimes under extreme pressure
.
Extreme pressure because notjust while you're doing the job,
(27:26):
but you're doing the job whilesomebody else is trying to shoot
you.
Somebody else is trying toshoot you, you know, and it's no
wonder, everybody has PTSD.
But I was very taken when I gotmy psychological exams back.
I tested right smack in thecenter of this bell curve in
(28:00):
terms of personality type, but Itested much smarter than the
average operations officer and Ikind of made a joke about it
with the hiring officer and hesaid you know you make a joke,
but seriously, these tests tellme you're going to be successful
because you already know theissues.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
we just needed to make sure that your personality
could handle the pressure and Icould and assuming you were a
good student in high school,yeah, I was pretty much come
natural to you in terms of youdidn't run into things where
you're like oh my God, I can'tdo this.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I'll tell you what trig and chemistry tripped me up
, but I didn't really care abouttrigonometry and chemistry.
I wanted to be a spy, sure, andmy intent was to be a spy, and
so that's really all I focusedon or cared about.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, Shift gears here for a minute.
It's perhaps one of the thingsyou are most known for, but I
don't think I've ever heardanybody ask you this specific
question going to become awhistleblower?
Was there a?
(29:15):
Was there?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, and I and I wish I could tell you it's
because you know on principle Istood up and I decided it was
nothing like that.
Brian Ross called me from ABCNews in early December 2007.
And he said that he had asource who said that I had
(29:39):
tortured Abu Zubaydah.
I said that was absolutelyuntrue.
I was the only person who waskind to Abu Zubaydah.
I said I've never laid a handon Abu Zubaydah or on any
prisoner ever.
And he said well, you'rewelcome to come on the show and
defend yourself.
I said, yeah, I'll think aboutit.
(29:59):
But then that week two thingshappened.
President Bush gave this isGeorge W Bush gave a press
conference in which he lookedright in the camera and he said
we do not torture like that.
And I happened to be sittingwith my wife, who is also a
senior CIA officer, and I saidhe is a bald-faced liar, he is
(30:20):
looking the American people inthe eye and he's just lying to
us.
And then that Friday he waswalking from the South Portico
of the White House to thehelicopter to fly to Camp David
and a reporter shouted aquestion about torture and he
stopped and he turned and hesaid well, if there is torture,
(30:41):
it's because of a rogue CIAofficer.
And I said to my wife BrianRoss's source is at the White
House and they're going to tryto pin this torture program on
me.
I was opposed to it from 2007.
I mean, I'm sorry, from 2002.
This was 2007.
But I had kept my mouth shut,thinking somebody is going to
(31:03):
come out and say something Right.
But nobody did.
And it was that moment whenBush stopped and said rogue CIA
officer.
That I decided I'm going public.
And I decided in the daysbetween my call to Brian Ross
and the day of the interviewthat, no matter what he asked me
(31:24):
, I was going to tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
And it goes without saying, you were fully aware of
potential consequences, I assume.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
You know I actually wasn't and in my own defense
I'll tell you why I wasn't.
It is a felony in the UnitedStates.
It's actually in the US Code.
It is a felony to classify acriminal act.
Right?
You can't classify a program ifthe program is a violation of
(31:58):
US law.
Torture was clearly illegal.
We have laws going back to 1946saying that exactly those
methods that we were using wereoutlawed.
And I thought those methodsthat we were using were outlawed
and I thought going public isnot revealing classified
information because it's illegalto classify a torture program.
(32:19):
The FBI investigated me for afull year, from December of 2007
to December of 2008, and thenwrote a letter to my attorney
saying that they were decliningto prosecute me because it was
illegal to classify a crime.
But then, a month later, whenBarack Obama became president,
(32:39):
john Brennan convinced EricHolder to secretly reopen the
case against me and then theyhad me.
Wow, it was ugly.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
When Did you have any colleagues who were surprise
supporters and backers when thisall went down?
Were there any people who youwould have never guessed in a
million years that they'll?
They'll put their reputation onthe line to to back me?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, there was one in particular.
He was a retired deputydirector of the CIA.
I had worked for him at thevery start of my career and I'll
tell you he was a mean SOB.
But he and I went to the middleEast once together.
I went as his you know hatholder.
He was I'm not exaggeratingwhen I tell you he was eight
(33:40):
grades above me, that's howsenior he was.
So I went as his hat holder andhis his note taker, and we went
to a country that I had coveredvery closely and he was
impressed with the depth ofknowledge that I had in this
(34:03):
country and its politics.
So he liked me.
Even though he was a mean sonof a gun, he liked me.
I mean, we could hear him in hisoffice like screaming, swearing
at people.
I heard him fire a guy one time, just screaming like a crazy
person.
And then he announced he wasgoing to take two months off as
a sabbatical.
Well, you can't, you can't dothat.
(34:24):
But this is what they weretelling me two months off as a
sabbatical.
And then I heard through thegrapevine that he was actually
taken two months off to donate akidney to his sister.
His sister was dying.
So I emailed him from my privateaccount to his private account.
I said what a wonderful thing.
You know heal quickly.
You're a role model.
(34:44):
God bless you for what you'redoing for your sister.
Well, that that just aced itfor the rest of my career.
So when I blew the whistle heemailed me.
He had just retired.
And he emailed me the next dayand he said you have chosen a
difficult path, but I'm gladsomebody did.
I only wish I had had the gutsto do it myself and I saved that
(35:14):
email as a souvenir that Iwasn't crazy, I wasn't a traitor
, I had done the right thing.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, yeah, and I guess it goes without saying
that you had people who youmight have thought would be
supportive, who ran the otherway.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Oh listen, I had relatives who ran away from me.
Yeah, Relatives.
You really get to understandwho your friends are truly, who
they truly are, when somethinglike this happens.
How?
Speaker 1 (35:46):
have you stayed, not just then, but even now?
How have you stayed connectedto your own North Star, so to
speak, with this dualityexisting?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I'm going to answer that question by telling you an
anecdote that I give at collegesand universities.
When I speak there, I alwaysuse this example because I've
always thought it was sopowerful.
So I say let's say you are aCIA operations officer and you
(36:22):
have recruited a bona fideterrorist Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,
ISIS bad guy, yeah, and you meetwith him once a month at a
hotel in the Middle East andthis guy has given you
actionable intelligence that youhave used to save the lives of
Americans, yeah.
(36:43):
So you fly out to meet with himand at the start of the meeting
he says to you you know what?
I've given you everything thatyou've wanted.
And today you're going to dosomething for me.
You're going to go out andyou're going to get me a
prostitute, or I'm not talkingto you ever again.
So I ask give me a show ofhands, how many of you will get
(37:05):
him the prostitute?
And usually about 80% put theirhands up and I say, yeah, you
would give him the prostitute.
It's unseemly, it's dirty, it'sgross, but this is the job that
we've chosen.
So you're going to go out, youget him the prostitute.
What if he asks you for a childprostitute?
What do you do and people willkind of look around discreetly
(37:31):
and then, like 10%, willgingerly put their hand up.
And I say absolutely not, notunder any circumstances.
But see, here's the rub.
There's no rule.
Remember, your job overseas isto break the law.
Your job is to get somebody tocommit treason or espionage, for
(37:57):
you Headquarters isn't going tocare if you go out looking for
a child prostitute.
But listen, some things reallyare black and white, right or
wrong.
And getting a man a childprostitute is just wrong.
So you have to go into this jobwith your own moral compass.
(38:18):
You have to go in with your ownset of personal ethics, because
they're not going to teach itto you.
There are no ethics classes atthe CIA there are no ethics
classes at the cia.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, I and to.
To rephrase a little bit whatyou said about this, your job is
to break the law.
I.
Part of that could be construedby some people in the cia, as
my job is to be as unethical andimmoral as is required to, and
you will bump up against lots ofofficers who've taken that
position.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
So without your own solid setof values and your own north
(39:02):
star, so to use that um, you cango off the path really quick,
I'm assuming.
Oh, yeah, yeah, most definitely, you really can.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Over the years, too, you read in the papers about oh
so-and-so, a CIA officer wasarrested and charged with rape,
or charged with embezzlement, orcharged with this or charged
with that, because they reallybelieve that they're the good
guys under any circumstances andthey can get away with anything
they want to get away with.
(39:32):
They don't have that moralcompass, they're just in it for
themselves.
They're in it for their owngratification, whether it's sex
or money or fancy watches orwhatever.
And they get caught.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Which leads to a question leads to a question
I've.
This is a question I've reallybeen wanting to ask Is there a
gray area between sociopathy anda good CIA?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Oh, most definitely, Most definitely.
I've said this many times inpodcasts, but I think it bears
repeating.
The CIA actively seeks to hirepeople who have sociopathic
tendencies, not sociopaths,because sociopaths have no
conscience and they'reimpossible to control and they
just blow right through thepolygraph exam.
(40:26):
You don't want people who haveno conscience.
Somebody with a sociopathictendency does have a conscience,
does react in the polygraph,but because we're supposed to be
the good guys, is willing towork in legal, moral and ethical
gray areas, right.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Interesting.
I will relate a personal story.
When I first showed up at theNaval Special Warfare Center for
BUDS and I was not a SEAL I hada spinal injury and was med
dropped early on, so I make thatclear, I was not a SEAL and
we're running in formation oneday and one of my class leaders
(41:10):
went on to work, I think, on ajoint terrorism task force for
the Obama administration.
Jeffrey Eggers was his name andyou know.
So you've got a couple of guyswho usually are academy guys,
who are your.
You know the class officers.
And we're running in formationone day and I don't know who
(41:33):
initiated the cadence, but thecadence was throw the candy in
the courtyard, watch thechildren gather around, lock and
load your MP5, blow thoselittle s**t down.
Now let me tell you what wenton in my head at that point.
(41:57):
I've always been prettyself-aware and I realized this
group, we're not like otherpeople, most other people, not
that.
I thought, oh yeah, shootingkids, that's cool.
(42:20):
It wasn't that.
But it was that I sang thecadence and that none of us
looked at each other like thatwas strange.
And I thought you know, I cameinto this knowing what the job
is, and so have, bothconsciously and unconsciously,
(42:46):
accepted that role, that duty.
And so, as I went on throughlife and pursued the psychology
path, I was very aware that Iwas not a sociopath, of course,
but I'm very clear that I dohave sociopathic tendencies, or
(43:09):
I would have probably never havewanted to go there in the first
place.
Yeah, how many people show upthere knowing that about
themselves?
Almost none.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Really, I think that they don't even really consider
it.
In fact, I tell this one story,but I only realized its import
in retrospect.
So when I was being interviewedfor the job this is 1989, I'm
being interviewed for the joband there are like four other
(43:41):
men and one woman and we'regiven this scenario.
Let's say that you're servingoverseas and you get a cable
from headquarters and they wantsome figures on the Indonesian
economy.
Okay, so go out and collect it.
(44:03):
So you start targeting theIndonesian second secretary for
economic affairs at the embassyand you take him to lunch, you
hit it off, you take him todinner.
You have a great time.
You introduce your wives, yourwives get along.
You start going to day tripstogether, maybe you go for a
(44:24):
weekend together.
But after all this developmentyou come to the conclusion that
he's just not recruitable.
But headquarters needs thatdocument.
So what do you do?
So one guy raises his hand andhe says well, headquarters wants
the document.
So you have to double down andyou have to just keep doing what
you're doing until finally he'swilling to turn over the
(44:46):
document.
And then this woman raises herhand and she says well, maybe
you can get the wives moreengaged and maybe you can get
the document through the wife.
And I'm looking around asthey're answering, answering
their, their answers, and I'mlike I put my hand up and I said
you break into the embassy andyou steal it.
And he says that's exactly whatyou do you break into the
(45:07):
embassy and you steal it.
Well, that's a sociopathictendency.
A normal person wouldn'tadvocate breaking into a foreign
government's embassy andstealing documents.
But we're the good guys andthis is for the greater good and
you know, usa, usa.
But that's what a sociopathictendency is.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I didn't know that was a sociopathic tendency, it
just seemed like a logicalanswer to me Would you agree
that without good people whohave sociopathic tendencies we'd
be in trouble?
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yes, because then all you're left with is a criminal
organization.
That's a mob family you'redescribing, not an intelligence
service, sure.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Change the topic here again.
I know you've got a timelinetoday what are, to the extent
that you can and I realize thereare some things you just can't
talk about, but to the extentthat you can, what are?
I mean, it's a two-partquestion.
First, what is a surveillancemethod that, for its simplicity,
(46:18):
was surprisingly effective?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
that's a great question.
I was always partial to footsurveillance.
You know, when you're workingin a big city, a capital city,
you I was always partial to footsurveillance.
You know, when you're workingin a big city, a capital city,
usually traffic is terrible.
Anywhere in the world trafficis terrible.
So it's better to do it on foot, unless you're willing to drive
way out into the boondocks todo your meeting.
(46:45):
So one thing that was easy andvery effective was a technique
that the CIA callsstair-stepping.
So if you're looking at a mapand a stair-step is you go
straight one block, make a right, go one block, then make a left
one block, then a right oneblock, go one block, then make a
left one block, then a rightone block, left one block, right
(47:08):
one block, and so it looks likea staircase right.
But every time you go to crossthe street you look both ways to
cross the street, but you'rereally looking for surveillance,
gotcha, and so they don't knowwhere you're going and you're
(47:28):
making all these turns, butyou're acting very normally and
you're just looking to cross thestreet and then you cross the
street and then you make a leftand then you make a right and
then you make a left and make aright.
Spotting surveillance couldn'tbe any easier than that.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, that's fascinating and again, so simple
.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, very simple.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Doesn't cost anything .
Simple, yeah, very simple,doesn't cost anything.
Part two of that, then, iswhat's something that you were
taught or picked up regarding?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
surveillance, that was surprisingly ineffective.
In real time, that wassurprisingly ineffective.
Yeah, dead drops, really.
Yeah, I was bad at dead dropsfor a while.
It was the only thing intraining that I struggled with.
I mean, it sounds easy.
You just, you know, you put themessage, you know, underneath
(48:23):
the footbridge, or you put itunder a rock, or whatever.
I had a colleague who put oneinside a condom, because who's
going to touch a condom?
You know?
Sure, but they're far morecomplicated than just that.
So what you do for a dead dropis, first of all, you have to
identify a place that's suitablefor a dead drop.
(48:44):
But if you're in asophisticated country like the
United States or Russia or Chinaor Cuba or Israel or even
France or places like that thathave really sophisticated
intelligence services, justbeing able to identify a place
for a viable dead drop is very,very difficult.
Number one, number two let'ssay you have a place for a
(49:08):
viable dead drop.
You've got to do several things.
First, you do a two or threehour or, in the case of Russia
or China, an eight hoursurveillance detection route to
make sure you're not beingfollowed.
You go to the dead drop, youmake the drop, then you do a
surveillance detection routeeither back to your house or to
(49:29):
your office.
So you do two, three, five,eight hours to the drop and two
hours back.
That's a full day.
That's a full work day.
Just to drop a document orsomething.
Number two then you have to doa surveillance detection route
(49:56):
to a predetermined site to makea chalk mark so that you tip the
agent to know that there'ssomething waiting for him at the
dead drop.
So just to leave a singledocument or a piece of microfilm
or a microphone or a photographor whatever it is you're
dropping at the drop site.
You're talking about a 16-hourworkday.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Well, that's not practical.
Yeah, what's interesting aboutthat is a simple piece of chalk
being part of fairly Well, I'lltell you what In training this
really got me.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
This is the only time I was criticized in training.
So we're training in NorthernVirginia and I have a dead drop
site.
That's a little bit farther out.
In the boondocks I found a rock.
I had a fake rock that you canput a key in.
You know, people put them infront of their houses and it was
(50:56):
the same color, the same shapeas real rocks in the parking lot
of an office building way outin the Virginia suburbs.
So perfect.
So you know I'll put themessage in there.
Just throw it in with the otherrocks and tell the agent you
know this is where it is.
(51:19):
So then I do the surveillancedetection route to lay down the
rock.
I'm not being followed.
And then I go to start mysurveillance detection route to
the place where I'm going toleave the chalk mark.
So I had chosen an undergroundparking garage in Tyson's Corner
(51:39):
, virginia.
Well, in the week or so what Iwas supposed to do was just take
a chalk and just make a mark onthe door leading from one level
to the stairwell, right, rightIn the week between when I
picked the site and when Iactually went there to make the
(52:00):
mark.
They had painted the doors Okay,no big deal.
The door was yellow when I went.
Now it's blue, okay, I don'tcare.
But they used glossy paint andthe chalk couldn't make a mark.
And I was just going like thisand the chalk is just falling
apart and it's just not adheringto the door, and so the agent
(52:24):
never knew that.
I left the drop and they werelike listen, you fail.
Not only did you fail, butsurveillance saw you going like
this on the door, like a crazyperson.
You would probably, had thisbeen in a hostile environment,
you probably would have beenarrested and expelled.
So that was such a valuablelesson for me.
(52:45):
I still remember it today, andI'm talking this was 30 years
ago, yeah, and I still thinkabout it.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Those are the things I guess you know.
There are probably multiplethings you encountered in your
career that they can't possiblycover in your training because
there was just so many variablesthat could happen and that's
where they rely on you to figureit out.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, I know you've got to go soon, so I've got one
last question for you.
Sure, to the best of yourknowledge and based on your
experience, what do you thinkthe current state of our
intelligence agencies is inrelationship to our adversaries,
(53:35):
and are we at any increaseddanger?
Or are things maybe even betterand we just don't know it?
Where are we?
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Well, keeping in mind that I left 20 years ago.
I think there are areas wherewe're better than everybody else
and I think there are otherareas where we're lagging On
technology.
We're cutting edge and we knowthat thanks to the Vault 7
revelations.
I mean, there is stuff thatjust blew my mind in the Vault 7
(54:04):
revelations I had no idea theCIA was involved in and they're
quite advanced.
In the Vault 7 revelations Ihad no idea the CIA was involved
in and they're quite advanced.
Working with NSA and DARPA andGCHQ and the Canadians, the
Australians, the New Zealanders,they've developed technologies
that we can't even fathom.
Where they're weak is in theirunderstanding of foreign
(54:27):
cultures and foreign languages,especially Chinese.
I would be absolutely shockedif the CIA had more than a half
a dozen case officers who spokepassable Chinese, really Mm-hmm,
just like on September 11th2001.
(54:49):
There were only like 16 of usin the entire CIA who spoke
Arabic.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
I mean that's inexcusable.
And how does that happen, john?
It can't.
I can't think that it's due toa lack of foresight.
Is there something?
The awareness is there, but itjust doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, yes, the awareness is there and it
doesn't happen.
Think of it this way you are aCIA manager and you've got these
guys doing operations workingfor you and you're told hey,
listen, this hotshot caseofficer who's doing all these
recruitments and getting awards,you're going to have to put him
(55:34):
in language school for 12months and then he's going to go
overseas and you're not goingto see him for three more years.
Well, what manager wants togive up his good people so they
could go sit in a classroom for12 months?
And so they say, ah, we'regoing to make an exception,
you're going to go overseaswithout the language.
Well, that might maybe work foryou.
(55:54):
It probably won't, but it could.
But then the agency losesbecause it doesn't have enough
people speaking these languages.
Right after September 11th, theymade a real effort to bring in
new people who spoke and I stillremember the languages.
They didn't want to trainpeople.
They wanted you to come intothe agency with Arabic, Farsi,
(56:18):
dari, pashto, urdu, sindhi,punjabi, uzbek, tajik, Korean,
chinese and Russian.
If you could speak any of thoselanguages, you went to the very
front of the line.
But here we are still with ashortage of hard language
(56:43):
speakers.
And what do you do?
Speaker 1 (56:46):
And I'm guessing Chinese is maybe one of the
tougher ones to learn,absolutely.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Absolutely.
They don't want people wholearned Spanish, french and
German in high school.
That doesn't help anybody.
And if you want to focus on youknow counter-narcotics or
something, then go work for theDEA with your Spanish.
Nobody cares, they want thosetough languages.
Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yeah, finally have the kind of changes that you had
hoped would be implemented as aresult of your coming forward
as a whistleblower?
Have they happened on a levelthat you had hoped they would?
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yes and no.
Yes in that there is no tortureprogram anymore.
I'm proud to say that I had anintegral role in that.
I'm proud of it.
John McCain said so on.
The appeared before the SenateIntelligence Committee in her
nomination hearing.
She admitted finally that thetorture program was a mistake.
(57:53):
So yes, in that respect Right.
On the other hand, as recentlyas three weeks ago, a batch of
new hires was given a slideshowwith my picture on one of the
slides and it said underneaththe insider threat.
So CIA computers now are usingAI to predict if and when an
(58:23):
employee might be thinking aboutbecoming a whistleblower.
So they can nip that in the bud.
And there is a reward systemfor CIA employees to rat out
their coworkers if they think acoworker might be thinking about
blowing the whistle on waste,fraud, abuse or illegality.
So one step forward and twoback.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yeah, the implication there your, your picture and
inside threat to me if I were anew trainee there, I would take
that partially as areinforcement of this is you
don't do this ever, yeah, andand that's, that's a conflicting
(59:06):
message.
I would would think that'sright.
Yeah, that is exactly right.
Listen, maybe someday you willbe willing to come back and do
this again, because I've got somany things I would like to talk
to you about.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
My pleasure.
That would be fantastic.
Listen.
Thank you so much.
I know you've got to go.
Thanks for the invitation.
We'll do this again sometime.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you sir.
Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast.
I'm your host, Jack Hopkins.
Now, before I introduce today'sguest, I want to ask you a
favor.
Don't worry, it's not a hugefavor.
One of my episodes has almost60,000 views, but I've got just
(00:21):
6,300 subscribers, and what thatmeans is a lot of people who
are watching my podcast episodesaren't subscribed.
Why does that matter?
In short, the greater mysubscriber numbers, the more
likely it is that I can get andfeature even more guests on my
(00:45):
podcast, guests that you want tohear from, and that's good for
you and it's good for me as well.
So if you haven't already,please like and subscribe, and I
thank you in advance.
Now let's get to today's guestfor today's episode.
Today's guest is John Kiriakou.
(01:06):
John is an American author,journalist and former CIA
intelligence officer.
He was jailed for what the CIAcalled exposing the
interrogation techniques of theCentral Intelligence Agency.
Much of the world, however, hada different view.
Much of the world, however, hada different view.
John Kiriakou was awhistleblower on the torture
(01:28):
program the CIA had been runningand that Gina Haspel later
testified to Congress hadexisted.
Gina Haspel was the seventhdirector of the CIA.
Now John was an intelligenceanalyst and operations officer
for the CIA's CounterterrorismCenter, senior investigator for
(01:49):
the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee and a consultant for
ABC News.
He was the first US governmentofficial to confirm, in December
(02:09):
of 2007, that waterboarding wasused to interrogate al Al Qaeda
prisoners, which he describedas torture.
Look, you are in for a treat.
I just finished this episodeand I already can't wait to get
him back on again, so, withoutfurther ado, let's dive right in
to this episode with thefascinating and intriguing John
Kiriakou.
All right, John, listen, I'vegot to tell you I've probably
(02:34):
learned as much about worldhistory from you as anyone else.
You know, in so many of thequestions that you answer, I've
always just been blown away atyour grasp of world history, and
instead of answering somethingwithin the context of, say, the
(02:54):
last five to ten years, you'reable to go way back, and I find
that most of the time when youprovide that additional context
oh, okay, well, this all looksdifferent then within this Right
right, yeah, good point.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Hey, may I tell you a quick story on that very issue.
Sure, I had just returned fromthe Middle East.
This was like 1996.
And I was assigned to mentor abrand new junior analyst, really
, really smart young woman.
She had just graduated from theUniversity of Virginia and she
was covering the United ArabEmirates.
(03:35):
And nothing ever happens in theUAE.
We're close friends with theUAE.
It was just someplace where shecould learn you know the
writing style and such.
Well, sure enough, iran invadedan island off the coast of
Sharjah, which is one of theseven emirates of the United
Arab Emirates.
It's actually two islands.
(03:57):
It's called Greater TunbT-U-N-B, and Lesser Tunb.
So Iran had Greater Tunb,sharjah had lesser Tunb and the
Iranians took it.
And this island is, like youknow, a mile by two miles.
Nobody lives on it or anything.
And I said to her justoffhandedly we're just chatting.
(04:19):
And I said the UAE government'snever going to do anything to
get that island back, they'rejust going to concede it to the
Iranians.
And she said why?
Why would they do that?
And I said because the islandis owned by Sharjah and they
don't give a shit about Sharjahbecause it's a minor emirate.
(04:39):
And I said look, foreign policyis run by Abu Dhabi and
business policy is run by Dubai,and in Dubai much of what they
trade is with Iran.
So why upset the apple cartover a little tiny island that
only has a couple of goats on it?
So the Sharjahs are just goingto be shit out of luck.
(05:02):
She goes into the boss's officeand she comes back out and she
sits down and she says I justresigned and I'm like what, why
did you do that?
And she said I realized that,no matter how much I like the
job, I'll never know as muchabout it as you do.
I said that is ridiculous.
I said I have a degree inMiddle Eastern studies.
(05:23):
You'll pick it all up.
You're really smart.
And she said no, I justrealized this just isn't for me.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's wild, and so my question then is I'm guessing
you were always kind of ahistory buff, yeah always and a
Middle East buff.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
When I was 15, the Iranians raided the American
embassy and took our peoplehostage and I was just
fascinated, glued to it, and youmight remember that that led to
the creation of Nightline right.
So Nightline on ABC was meantto give us the daily update on
(06:00):
the situation with the hostages.
I didn't know that, yeah, andthen, when there were no updates
to give, it became a nighttimenews program and then lasted for
decades.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Wow, how much did that benefit you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
As someone in the CIA , I can only imagine immensely,
yeah immensely is the word, butI was very fortunate, though,
jack, in that I knew when I was15 what I wanted to do.
When I was nine, I told myparents I wanted to be a spy.
When I grew up and when I was15, I had decided that I wanted
(06:39):
to be a spy in the Middle Eastwhen I grew up, and so I looked
for universities that hadspecific programs in Middle
Eastern studies.
At the time, there were onlythree.
There was Brigham Young, andthey did it just to teach their
would-be missionaries Arabic.
There was Rutgers in New Jersey,and I just didn't want to go to
(07:01):
school in Newark and um andGeorge Washington university,
which was literally one blockfrom the white house.
That's where the action is, andso I went to GW.
I was one of only threestudents enrolled in the in the
Middle Eastern studies programthere, but worth every single
minute, and I was able tospecialize.
(07:23):
That became um, that becamesomething that the CIA was
looking for in in the late 1980s, and I got lucky.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So you showed up with what you needed.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I was ready to go.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you know, I've got to tell you
something that I've multipletimes when watching you on other
podcasts and I've heard youtalk about this some but any
time you go a differentdirection than maybe what I'm
(07:58):
thinking not in terms ofpredicting what you're going to
say, but in terms of like beingon the same page as me and you
go a different direction.
The thing I'm always aware ofis that because I like you so
much, my ears, I'm payingattention and I'm, you know, I
(08:23):
don't go into that defensivemode.
Is that something aboutyourself that you recognized
early on that you could getpeople to warm up to you quickly
?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
No, frankly, really no.
In fact.
It's funny that you bring thisup because I was on the job I'm
going to say like six weeks.
So this is February, earlyFebruary of 1990.
And my boss, I was an analyst.
Most analysts are strongintroverts and I'm a strong
(08:59):
extrovert.
But my boss said to me you wouldbe a good operations officer.
And I said me, why would I be agood operations officer?
And he said people like to bearound you.
Yeah, and I just thought, okay,that's kind of odd, but all
right.
Well, the longer that I was inanalysis, the more I realized
(09:23):
that it wasn't really as great afit for me as I thought it was
going to be, because Iconsidered myself kind of an
intellectual, you know, I hadbachelor's and master's degrees,
I had multiple foreignlanguages, I was well traveled,
um, I would go to all of the uhthe uh events around town that
(09:43):
the think tanks were sponsoring.
And he's like no, you're kindof a fish out of water, you
should think about operations.
And it wasn't until, you know,seven and a half years had
passed and I got bored withanalysis that I decided to give
operations a try.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and did you find almost immediately, maybe
when you compared yourself toyour colleagues or other people
on that side of the CIA, that,wow, I'm good at this.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh, you know what?
One of my station chiefs andthis was in a big, active, major
station pulled me aside and hesaid over the course of my
30-year career, he said I hadfive recruitments and I remember
every single one of them.
(10:41):
He said you've been here twoyears and you have five
recruitments.
And I said, yeah, you know, ascrazy as it sounds, I kind of
have a knack for this, yeah.
And he said whatever you'redoing, just keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I would assume that gives you a level of confidence
going into an operation onceyou've kind of built that
foundation of trust of yourability to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, it became a joke.
You know we would have theseclassified staff meetings in the
embassies.
It's called a bubble.
It's called a bubble what it is.
It's a tempested, secure roomwhere you can speak freely.
There's a double wall.
(11:36):
Music is pumped in between thewalls, and you know you can't
intercept anything there, kindof like a skiff.
It's like a skiff, but a miniyeah, that's a good way to say
it.
It's a mini skiff.
So, um, my immediate boss, uh,had this, had this thing that he
did whenever somebody made arecruitment he would
congratulate them in the staffmeeting and then toss them a
(11:58):
snickers bar.
That was your award for, formaking a recruitment.
You got a snickers bar and andthere was.
You know, sometimes it takes youa month, sometimes it takes you
a year to recruit somebody, andit just so happened that I
recruited three people in oneweek, and not that, you know, I
(12:20):
did all the work that one week.
It took me a year, a year and aquarter to get up to that point
and it just so happened thatthey all came to a head that one
week.
So he said, you know, I'd liketo congratulate Kiriakou for
recruiting, you know, mkGrasshopper, and he tosses me a
(12:42):
Snickers bar and everybody youknow, congratulations.
I'd like to congratulateKiriakou for recruiting MK
Orange.
And people are like, okay, andKiriakou gets a third one for
recruiting so-and-so.
And one of the other guys islike, dude, stop.
(13:03):
And I said I, it was just oneof those weeks.
Sure you're making us all lookbad and we're not going to get
promoted.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I think I'm sorry that's wild, you know I I've
never heard you asked thisquestion that I know of, and
that's not to say I've watched.
There may be some out there.
I haven't seen when you areworking in the Middle East.
How relevant is your personalskin tone?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
That's a good question.
And no, I haven't been askedthat.
I found, especially when I wasyounger and I didn't have this
gray hair and it was muchthicker than it is.
I fit in almost everywhere Iwent and my Arabic was so good
at the time.
People would ask me are youLebanese?
(13:57):
Because you kind of speak witha Yemeni accent, but you're too
tall to be Yemeni accent.
But you're too tall to beYemeni.
So the ability to fit in helpedme immensely.
And I'll tell you one thing itwas so funny I was invited to a
Rotary Club meeting in Abu Dhabiand the ambassador was there,
(14:23):
the deputy chief of mission andthe political officer all legit
State Department people.
So they're all sitting at thesame table and I decide to sit
with the Arabs.
Right, I don't want to sit withthe guys that I work with all
day long, sure.
So I'm sitting with the Arabsand one of these Arabs says to
me look at this, look at thistable over here, and he points
(14:45):
at the ambassador, the deputyambassador and the political
officer.
He says CIA.
And I said yeah, how can youtell?
He said the CIA guys always sittogether.
And I said Mohammed, that'sexactly why I'm sitting with you
.
Well, by the end of the year Ihad recruited Mohammed.
He's like holy shit.
(15:05):
I would never have guessed it.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Wow, yeah and, and you know what's always
fascinating to me about thosetypes of things we always think
of.
The ceia most people I wouldassume is based on a lot of
hollywood, right, right and andit's not Right, and I've got
(15:28):
some questions for you aboutthat.
That's one little thing thatyou would think.
Those guys made that mistake.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I know right.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right, right, yeah, that's me.
But was that something that,prior to him saying that, that
you'd kind of noticed too thatyou know I guess you had,
because you said you know whowants to sit with the people you
work?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
with all day.
Yeah and yeah.
But you know my station chiefs.
From my very first stationchief he said he said, well, he
said something that I lateradded to, when I was training,
you know, young officers.
He said that when you go to anevent, you must come back with a
fistful of business cards,otherwise why go to the event to
(16:17):
have free, you know, horsd'oeuvres?
Seriously Sure.
And and then later on in mycareer there, there was an
officer that I worked with.
We were in the same branch andshe was just not cut out for
this job.
She was really smart.
She had gotten a bachelor'sdegree at the University of
Michigan and a master's degreefrom Yale.
(16:38):
But smarts doesn't alwaystranslate into being a good CIA
officer.
Right, you have to bemanipulative, you have to be
able to think quickly on the fly.
So she was doing heroperational meetings and then
she would go back and they would.
They would ask her.
So what did you learn?
She's like he didn't reallyhave anything to say.
(17:00):
Well then you've got toterminate the contract, right,
tell them look, this isn'tworking out, thanks for your
time.
Here's $1,000 going awaypresent.
So I said to her one time my ownpersonal rule is, if you go to
an operational meeting and youcome back and you don't have at
(17:23):
least two intelligence reportsto write, you have failed.
The agent didn't fail.
It's not his fault that youdidn't ask the right questions,
you have failed.
And then the station chiefcalled me into her office and
she said I know what yourworkload is, but can you go with
this officer to her nextoperational meeting?
(17:44):
But can you go with thisofficer to her next operational
meeting and you do the meetingand you teach her how to elicit
the information because she'sfailing?
And I said sure.
So we went to the meeting andhad a nice conversation about
two hours.
And you know, we order someroom service and there's coffee
(18:04):
and we're we're laughing andtalking and it's more of just a
friendly conversation than it isanything else.
And then at the end of the twohours the guy got up and we
shook hands and he walked outand she goes you see what I mean
.
He just doesn't say anythingimportant.
And I said I got fourintelligence reports out of that
conversation.
(18:25):
And she said how?
And I said let's go over it.
So I said he said this.
And then he said B, and then hesaid C, and then he said D.
He's talking aboutproliferation.
He's talking about a shipmentof chemicals that's going to the
port of Rotterdam.
He's talking.
She goes what do I know aboutchemicals?
(18:45):
I said he told us what thechemical was.
I don't know about chemicalseither, but maybe it's a cocaine
precursor, maybe it's achemical weapons precursor.
What do I know?
You put it in an intelligencereport and you let the analysts
figure it out.
She's like I never thought ofit that way.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So I wrote out.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I read up the reports , yeah.
Yeah, and then she was okay.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And is that something in your experience?
For the most part, you'veeither got it or you don't.
You don't.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, that's exactly right, and you know, one of the
things that I learned relativelyearly on in my career was when
people come into the CIA alreadyhaving PhDs, they almost always
fail.
Interesting you're a PhD,you've just finished writing a
(19:44):
300-page dissertation and youare the world's leading expert
on this issue.
That's so narrow that literallynobody else in the world gives
a shit about it, but you thinkyou're so smart because you have
a PhD.
Okay, well, the presidentdoesn't give a shit about your
opinion on such and such anissue.
The president wants the entirething boiled down to half a page
(20:07):
with three bullet points.
So if you can't adapt to theCIA's writing style and tell the
president only what heabsolutely needs to know in
order to form the most cogentpolicy, then you're failing and
you probably should go intojournalism or academia, not
(20:30):
intelligence.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, interesting.
I knew a guy when I was a kidback in the 70s and I had the
privilege of growing up around a.
There were a bunch of World WarII vets still around.
Wow, oh, that's very cool, youknow, yeah, really.
World War II vets still around,oh, that's very cool, you know.
Yeah, really.
And interestingly enough, therewas part of me that had an
awareness even at that age ofhow significant this opportunity
(20:57):
was.
And there was a guy I don'tthink he went to school beyond
eighth grade, right A World WarII vet, went to school beyond
eighth grade, right A World WarII vet, and he could take a
fairly complex subject andcondense it down into two or
three sentences.
That would give you enough ofthe foundation of it that you
(21:21):
understood it, enough to want topursue more knowledge.
Not everyone can do that, youknow I had much smarter people,
educationally and IQ wise.
Talk to me about the same thing.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You know, I remember during my analytic stint in that
first seven and a half years,something happened in Kuwait and
I had to write something thatused to be called a snowflake
(22:09):
news of the day, and that's apage.
And then pages two, three andfour are.
Each page has two issues andeach issue gets two paragraphs,
fact and analysis.
Okay, so here's the breakingnews on page one, pages two,
three and four, that's six moreshort stories.
And then at the very back ofthe book is sort of the
long-term big-picture things.
(22:30):
You're allowed to go two pageson those, but then at the very,
very end is something called apage of snowflakes.
They no longer do this.
George HW Bush absolutely lovedthe snowflakes because they
were directly to the point of astory, a story that wasn't
important enough to put at thefront of the briefing.
So there were hard and fastrules about snowflakes.
(22:52):
They had to be three separatethoughts interrupted by ellipses
, dot, dot, dot.
And they could not be more than36 words.
So you'd say Queen of Englanddied today.
Dot, dot dot.
Prince Charles expected to takethe throne by noon tomorrow.
(23:17):
Dot, dot, dot.
There will be no change inBritish foreign policy toward
the United States.
That's a snowflake.
Okay, so one of the leaders thatI was covering in the Middle
East had what is colloquiallyknown as a nervous breakdown.
There is no such medicalcondition as a nervous breakdown
(23:37):
.
It's just a word that we alluse, right, or a term.
So I went to him and I said,hey, I wrote a flake for the
president because he knows thisleader very well.
They're on the phone all thetime.
And here it is.
It was like 30 words Kingso-and-so had a nervous
(23:58):
breakdown.
And I put parentheses, notparentheses, quotation marks
around nervous breakdown,because I knew he would object
to the term because it's not amedical term.
And he's like, yeah, you have tocoordinate with all the other
analysts who who cover the sameissues so that there's agreement
where you know the entireintelligence community agrees
(24:21):
that this, this is the situation.
So he's like, yeah, I can't, uh, I can't, agree with this.
I'm going to have to make acouple of changes.
I said, yeah, make whateverchanges you want, You're the
psychiatrist to have to make acouple of changes.
I said, yeah, make whateverchanges you want, you're the
psychiatrist.
He was a psychiatrist with bothan MD and a PhD in psychology.
So he sends it back to me and ithas 56 words, and I said, larry
(24:42):
, we can't, we can't send thisto the president, it has 56
words.
He said, yeah, but I need 56words to explain the situation.
And I said we can't send it.
They will not send it to thepresident.
I mean, you and I can write5,000 words, they're not going
to send it to the president.
36 words.
And so it actually had to go upthrough the chain of command
(25:05):
and they just went back to myoriginal thing with the
quotation marks around itFascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
It's interesting, and I'm thinking probably not at
all for the same reasons.
But when I write my newslettersand it's, it's nothing I was
ever taught.
Obviously no english teacherwould ever teach you this.
I rarely use commas.
Where I would have a comma, Iput dot, dot, dot dot Because in
my mind and I've had somefeedback from subscribers a
(25:39):
comma doesn't necessarily dotranslate into doing what it's
supposed to do, which is kind ofcreate that separation.
But dot dot dot forces you todo it because the distance your
eyes have to track a distancebefore they pick up again, so it
(26:00):
almost forces the reader into apause.
So, um, yeah, that's justfascinating that that's how you
had to write those snowflakesyou know.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
getting back to the issue of the phds, they just
could not adapt to that kind ofwriting style.
They could not adapt to notputting in their own thoughts
about whatever happened to behappening around the world.
It's like nobody at the WhiteHouse gives a shit about your
(26:29):
thoughts.
Just lay out the facts.
You can put your thoughts atthe very end.
And of all the PhDs I met whocame into the CIA with the PhD,
only one actually made it as acareer.
The other ones just ended upwalking out ended up walking out
(26:55):
.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
I'm sure you there's a good chance you would agree
that you met more operativeswithout the educational
background who were betterpsychologists than some of the
PhDs.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Oh my God.
You know it's funny when, whenyou're going into operations,
you have to take an enormousbattery of psychological exams
because they want to make surethat you have the right
personality to do something likethis and they want to make sure
that you are able to operate,sometimes under extreme pressure
.
Extreme pressure because notjust while you're doing the job,
(27:26):
but you're doing the job whilesomebody else is trying to shoot
you.
Somebody else is trying toshoot you, you know, and it's no
wonder, everybody has PTSD.
But I was very taken when I gotmy psychological exams back.
I tested right smack in thecenter of this bell curve in
(28:00):
terms of personality type, but Itested much smarter than the
average operations officer and Ikind of made a joke about it
with the hiring officer and hesaid you know you make a joke,
but seriously, these tests tellme you're going to be successful
because you already know theissues.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
we just needed to make sure that your personality
could handle the pressure and Icould and assuming you were a
good student in high school,yeah, I was pretty much come
natural to you in terms of youdidn't run into things where
you're like oh my God, I can'tdo this.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I'll tell you what trig and chemistry tripped me up
, but I didn't really care abouttrigonometry and chemistry.
I wanted to be a spy, sure, andmy intent was to be a spy, and
so that's really all I focusedon or cared about.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, Shift gears here for a minute.
It's perhaps one of the thingsyou are most known for, but I
don't think I've ever heardanybody ask you this specific
question going to become awhistleblower?
Was there a?
(29:15):
Was there?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, and I and I wish I could tell you it's
because you know on principle Istood up and I decided it was
nothing like that.
Brian Ross called me from ABCNews in early December 2007.
And he said that he had asource who said that I had
(29:39):
tortured Abu Zubaydah.
I said that was absolutelyuntrue.
I was the only person who waskind to Abu Zubaydah.
I said I've never laid a handon Abu Zubaydah or on any
prisoner ever.
And he said well, you'rewelcome to come on the show and
defend yourself.
I said, yeah, I'll think aboutit.
(29:59):
But then that week two thingshappened.
President Bush gave this isGeorge W Bush gave a press
conference in which he lookedright in the camera and he said
we do not torture like that.
And I happened to be sittingwith my wife, who is also a
senior CIA officer, and I saidhe is a bald-faced liar, he is
(30:20):
looking the American people inthe eye and he's just lying to
us.
And then that Friday he waswalking from the South Portico
of the White House to thehelicopter to fly to Camp David
and a reporter shouted aquestion about torture and he
stopped and he turned and hesaid well, if there is torture,
(30:41):
it's because of a rogue CIAofficer.
And I said to my wife BrianRoss's source is at the White
House and they're going to tryto pin this torture program on
me.
I was opposed to it from 2007.
I mean, I'm sorry, from 2002.
This was 2007.
But I had kept my mouth shut,thinking somebody is going to
(31:03):
come out and say something Right.
But nobody did.
And it was that moment whenBush stopped and said rogue CIA
officer.
That I decided I'm going public.
And I decided in the daysbetween my call to Brian Ross
and the day of the interviewthat, no matter what he asked me
(31:24):
, I was going to tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
And it goes without saying, you were fully aware of
potential consequences, I assume.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
You know I actually wasn't and in my own defense
I'll tell you why I wasn't.
It is a felony in the UnitedStates.
It's actually in the US Code.
It is a felony to classify acriminal act.
Right?
You can't classify a program ifthe program is a violation of
(31:58):
US law.
Torture was clearly illegal.
We have laws going back to 1946saying that exactly those
methods that we were using wereoutlawed.
And I thought those methodsthat we were using were outlawed
and I thought going public isnot revealing classified
information because it's illegalto classify a torture program.
(32:19):
The FBI investigated me for afull year, from December of 2007
to December of 2008, and thenwrote a letter to my attorney
saying that they were decliningto prosecute me because it was
illegal to classify a crime.
But then, a month later, whenBarack Obama became president,
(32:39):
john Brennan convinced EricHolder to secretly reopen the
case against me and then theyhad me.
Wow, it was ugly.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
When Did you have any colleagues who were surprise
supporters and backers when thisall went down?
Were there any people who youwould have never guessed in a
million years that they'll?
They'll put their reputation onthe line to to back me?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, there was one in particular.
He was a retired deputydirector of the CIA.
I had worked for him at thevery start of my career and I'll
tell you he was a mean SOB.
But he and I went to the middleEast once together.
I went as his you know hatholder.
He was I'm not exaggeratingwhen I tell you he was eight
(33:40):
grades above me, that's howsenior he was.
So I went as his hat holder andhis his note taker, and we went
to a country that I had coveredvery closely and he was
impressed with the depth ofknowledge that I had in this
(34:03):
country and its politics.
So he liked me.
Even though he was a mean sonof a gun, he liked me.
I mean, we could hear him in hisoffice like screaming, swearing
at people.
I heard him fire a guy one time, just screaming like a crazy
person.
And then he announced he wasgoing to take two months off as
a sabbatical.
Well, you can't, you can't dothat.
(34:24):
But this is what they weretelling me two months off as a
sabbatical.
And then I heard through thegrapevine that he was actually
taken two months off to donate akidney to his sister.
His sister was dying.
So I emailed him from my privateaccount to his private account.
I said what a wonderful thing.
You know heal quickly.
You're a role model.
(34:44):
God bless you for what you'redoing for your sister.
Well, that that just aced itfor the rest of my career.
So when I blew the whistle heemailed me.
He had just retired.
And he emailed me the next dayand he said you have chosen a
difficult path, but I'm gladsomebody did.
I only wish I had had the gutsto do it myself and I saved that
(35:14):
email as a souvenir that Iwasn't crazy, I wasn't a traitor
, I had done the right thing.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah, yeah, and I guess it goes without saying
that you had people who youmight have thought would be
supportive, who ran the otherway.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Oh listen, I had relatives who ran away from me.
Yeah, Relatives.
You really get to understandwho your friends are truly, who
they truly are, when somethinglike this happens.
How?
Speaker 1 (35:46):
have you stayed, not just then, but even now?
How have you stayed connectedto your own North Star, so to
speak, with this dualityexisting?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I'm going to answer that question by telling you an
anecdote that I give at collegesand universities.
When I speak there, I alwaysuse this example because I've
always thought it was sopowerful.
So I say let's say you are aCIA operations officer and you
(36:22):
have recruited a bona fideterrorist Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,
ISIS bad guy, yeah, and you meetwith him once a month at a
hotel in the Middle East andthis guy has given you
actionable intelligence that youhave used to save the lives of
Americans, yeah.
(36:43):
So you fly out to meet with himand at the start of the meeting
he says to you you know what?
I've given you everything thatyou've wanted.
And today you're going to dosomething for me.
You're going to go out andyou're going to get me a
prostitute, or I'm not talkingto you ever again.
So I ask give me a show ofhands, how many of you will get
(37:05):
him the prostitute?
And usually about 80% put theirhands up and I say, yeah, you
would give him the prostitute.
It's unseemly, it's dirty, it'sgross, but this is the job that
we've chosen.
So you're going to go out, youget him the prostitute.
What if he asks you for a childprostitute?
What do you do and people willkind of look around discreetly
(37:31):
and then, like 10%, willgingerly put their hand up.
And I say absolutely not, notunder any circumstances.
But see, here's the rub.
There's no rule.
Remember, your job overseas isto break the law.
Your job is to get somebody tocommit treason or espionage, for
(37:57):
you Headquarters isn't going tocare if you go out looking for
a child prostitute.
But listen, some things reallyare black and white, right or
wrong.
And getting a man a childprostitute is just wrong.
So you have to go into this jobwith your own moral compass.
(38:18):
You have to go in with your ownset of personal ethics, because
they're not going to teach itto you.
There are no ethics classes atthe CIA there are no ethics
classes at the cia.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, I and to.
To rephrase a little bit whatyou said about this, your job is
to break the law.
I.
Part of that could be construedby some people in the cia, as
my job is to be as unethical andimmoral as is required to, and
you will bump up against lots ofofficers who've taken that
position.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
So without your own solid setof values and your own north
(39:02):
star, so to use that um, you cango off the path really quick,
I'm assuming.
Oh, yeah, yeah, most definitely, you really can.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Over the years, too, you read in the papers about oh
so-and-so, a CIA officer wasarrested and charged with rape,
or charged with embezzlement, orcharged with this or charged
with that, because they reallybelieve that they're the good
guys under any circumstances andthey can get away with anything
they want to get away with.
(39:32):
They don't have that moralcompass, they're just in it for
themselves.
They're in it for their owngratification, whether it's sex
or money or fancy watches orwhatever.
And they get caught.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Which leads to a question leads to a question
I've.
This is a question I've reallybeen wanting to ask Is there a
gray area between sociopathy anda good CIA?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Oh, most definitely, Most definitely.
I've said this many times inpodcasts, but I think it bears
repeating.
The CIA actively seeks to hirepeople who have sociopathic
tendencies, not sociopaths,because sociopaths have no
conscience and they'reimpossible to control and they
just blow right through thepolygraph exam.
(40:26):
You don't want people who haveno conscience.
Somebody with a sociopathictendency does have a conscience,
does react in the polygraph,but because we're supposed to be
the good guys, is willing towork in legal, moral and ethical
gray areas, right.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Interesting.
I will relate a personal story.
When I first showed up at theNaval Special Warfare Center for
BUDS and I was not a SEAL I hada spinal injury and was med
dropped early on, so I make thatclear, I was not a SEAL and
we're running in formation oneday and one of my class leaders
(41:10):
went on to work, I think, on ajoint terrorism task force for
the Obama administration.
Jeffrey Eggers was his name andyou know.
So you've got a couple of guyswho usually are academy guys,
who are your.
You know the class officers.
And we're running in formationone day and I don't know who
(41:33):
initiated the cadence, but thecadence was throw the candy in
the courtyard, watch thechildren gather around, lock and
load your MP5, blow thoselittle s**t down.
Now let me tell you what wenton in my head at that point.
(41:57):
I've always been prettyself-aware and I realized this
group, we're not like otherpeople, most other people, not
that.
I thought, oh yeah, shootingkids, that's cool.
(42:20):
It wasn't that.
But it was that I sang thecadence and that none of us
looked at each other like thatwas strange.
And I thought you know, I cameinto this knowing what the job
is, and so have, bothconsciously and unconsciously,
(42:46):
accepted that role, that duty.
And so, as I went on throughlife and pursued the psychology
path, I was very aware that Iwas not a sociopath, of course,
but I'm very clear that I dohave sociopathic tendencies, or
(43:09):
I would have probably never havewanted to go there in the first
place.
Yeah, how many people show upthere knowing that about
themselves?
Almost none.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Really, I think that they don't even really consider
it.
In fact, I tell this one story,but I only realized its import
in retrospect.
So when I was being interviewedfor the job this is 1989, I'm
being interviewed for the joband there are like four other
(43:41):
men and one woman and we'regiven this scenario.
Let's say that you're servingoverseas and you get a cable
from headquarters and they wantsome figures on the Indonesian
economy.
Okay, so go out and collect it.
(44:03):
So you start targeting theIndonesian second secretary for
economic affairs at the embassyand you take him to lunch, you
hit it off, you take him todinner.
You have a great time.
You introduce your wives, yourwives get along.
You start going to day tripstogether, maybe you go for a
(44:24):
weekend together.
But after all this developmentyou come to the conclusion that
he's just not recruitable.
But headquarters needs thatdocument.
So what do you do?
So one guy raises his hand andhe says well, headquarters wants
the document.
So you have to double down andyou have to just keep doing what
you're doing until finally he'swilling to turn over the
(44:46):
document.
And then this woman raises herhand and she says well, maybe
you can get the wives moreengaged and maybe you can get
the document through the wife.
And I'm looking around asthey're answering, answering
their, their answers, and I'mlike I put my hand up and I said
you break into the embassy andyou steal it.
And he says that's exactly whatyou do you break into the
(45:07):
embassy and you steal it.
Well, that's a sociopathictendency.
A normal person wouldn'tadvocate breaking into a foreign
government's embassy andstealing documents.
But we're the good guys andthis is for the greater good and
you know, usa, usa.
But that's what a sociopathictendency is.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I didn't know that was a sociopathic tendency, it
just seemed like a logicalanswer to me Would you agree
that without good people whohave sociopathic tendencies we'd
be in trouble?
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yes, because then all you're left with is a criminal
organization.
That's a mob family you'redescribing, not an intelligence
service, sure.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Change the topic here again.
I know you've got a timelinetoday what are, to the extent
that you can and I realize thereare some things you just can't
talk about, but to the extentthat you can, what are?
I mean, it's a two-partquestion.
First, what is a surveillancemethod that, for its simplicity,
(46:18):
was surprisingly effective?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
that's a great question.
I was always partial to footsurveillance.
You know, when you're workingin a big city, a capital city,
you I was always partial to footsurveillance.
You know, when you're workingin a big city, a capital city,
usually traffic is terrible.
Anywhere in the world trafficis terrible.
So it's better to do it on foot, unless you're willing to drive
way out into the boondocks todo your meeting.
(46:45):
So one thing that was easy andvery effective was a technique
that the CIA callsstair-stepping.
So if you're looking at a mapand a stair-step is you go
straight one block, make a right, go one block, then make a left
one block, then a right oneblock, go one block, then make a
left one block, then a rightone block, left one block, right
(47:08):
one block, and so it looks likea staircase right.
But every time you go to crossthe street you look both ways to
cross the street, but you'rereally looking for surveillance,
gotcha, and so they don't knowwhere you're going and you're
(47:28):
making all these turns, butyou're acting very normally and
you're just looking to cross thestreet and then you cross the
street and then you make a leftand then you make a right and
then you make a left and make aright.
Spotting surveillance couldn'tbe any easier than that.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, that's fascinating and again, so simple
.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, very simple.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Doesn't cost anything .
Simple, yeah, very simple,doesn't cost anything.
Part two of that, then, iswhat's something that you were
taught or picked up regarding?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
surveillance, that was surprisingly ineffective.
In real time, that wassurprisingly ineffective.
Yeah, dead drops, really.
Yeah, I was bad at dead dropsfor a while.
It was the only thing intraining that I struggled with.
I mean, it sounds easy.
You just, you know, you put themessage, you know, underneath
(48:23):
the footbridge, or you put itunder a rock, or whatever.
I had a colleague who put oneinside a condom, because who's
going to touch a condom?
You know?
Sure, but they're far morecomplicated than just that.
So what you do for a dead dropis, first of all, you have to
identify a place that's suitablefor a dead drop.
(48:44):
But if you're in asophisticated country like the
United States or Russia or Chinaor Cuba or Israel or even
France or places like that thathave really sophisticated
intelligence services, justbeing able to identify a place
for a viable dead drop is very,very difficult.
Number one, number two let'ssay you have a place for a
(49:08):
viable dead drop.
You've got to do several things.
First, you do a two or threehour or, in the case of Russia
or China, an eight hoursurveillance detection route to
make sure you're not beingfollowed.
You go to the dead drop, youmake the drop, then you do a
surveillance detection routeeither back to your house or to
(49:29):
your office.
So you do two, three, five,eight hours to the drop and two
hours back.
That's a full day.
That's a full work day.
Just to drop a document orsomething.
Number two then you have to doa surveillance detection route
(49:56):
to a predetermined site to makea chalk mark so that you tip the
agent to know that there'ssomething waiting for him at the
dead drop.
So just to leave a singledocument or a piece of microfilm
or a microphone or a photographor whatever it is you're
dropping at the drop site.
You're talking about a 16-hourworkday.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Well, that's not practical.
Yeah, what's interesting aboutthat is a simple piece of chalk
being part of fairly Well, I'lltell you what In training this
really got me.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
This is the only time I was criticized in training.
So we're training in NorthernVirginia and I have a dead drop
site.
That's a little bit farther out.
In the boondocks I found a rock.
I had a fake rock that you canput a key in.
You know, people put them infront of their houses and it was
(50:56):
the same color, the same shapeas real rocks in the parking lot
of an office building way outin the Virginia suburbs.
So perfect.
So you know I'll put themessage in there.
Just throw it in with the otherrocks and tell the agent you
know this is where it is.
(51:19):
So then I do the surveillancedetection route to lay down the
rock.
I'm not being followed.
And then I go to start mysurveillance detection route to
the place where I'm going toleave the chalk mark.
So I had chosen an undergroundparking garage in Tyson's Corner
(51:39):
, virginia.
Well, in the week or so what Iwas supposed to do was just take
a chalk and just make a mark onthe door leading from one level
to the stairwell, right, rightIn the week between when I
picked the site and when Iactually went there to make the
(52:00):
mark.
They had painted the doors Okay,no big deal.
The door was yellow when I went.
Now it's blue, okay, I don'tcare.
But they used glossy paint andthe chalk couldn't make a mark.
And I was just going like thisand the chalk is just falling
apart and it's just not adheringto the door, and so the agent
(52:24):
never knew that.
I left the drop and they werelike listen, you fail.
Not only did you fail, butsurveillance saw you going like
this on the door, like a crazyperson.
You would probably, had thisbeen in a hostile environment,
you probably would have beenarrested and expelled.
So that was such a valuablelesson for me.
(52:45):
I still remember it today, andI'm talking this was 30 years
ago, yeah, and I still thinkabout it.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Those are the things I guess you know.
There are probably multiplethings you encountered in your
career that they can't possiblycover in your training because
there was just so many variablesthat could happen and that's
where they rely on you to figureit out.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, I know you've got to go soon, so I've got one
last question for you.
Sure, to the best of yourknowledge and based on your
experience, what do you thinkthe current state of our
intelligence agencies is inrelationship to our adversaries,
(53:35):
and are we at any increaseddanger?
Or are things maybe even betterand we just don't know it?
Where are we?
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Well, keeping in mind that I left 20 years ago.
I think there are areas wherewe're better than everybody else
and I think there are otherareas where we're lagging On
technology.
We're cutting edge and we knowthat thanks to the Vault 7
revelations.
I mean, there is stuff thatjust blew my mind in the Vault 7
(54:04):
revelations I had no idea theCIA was involved in and they're
quite advanced.
In the Vault 7 revelations Ihad no idea the CIA was involved
in and they're quite advanced.
Working with NSA and DARPA andGCHQ and the Canadians, the
Australians, the New Zealanders,they've developed technologies
that we can't even fathom.
Where they're weak is in theirunderstanding of foreign
(54:27):
cultures and foreign languages,especially Chinese.
I would be absolutely shockedif the CIA had more than a half
a dozen case officers who spokepassable Chinese, really Mm-hmm,
just like on September 11th2001.
(54:49):
There were only like 16 of usin the entire CIA who spoke
Arabic.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
I mean that's inexcusable.
And how does that happen, john?
It can't.
I can't think that it's due toa lack of foresight.
Is there something?
The awareness is there, but itjust doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, yes, the awareness is there and it
doesn't happen.
Think of it this way you are aCIA manager and you've got these
guys doing operations workingfor you and you're told hey,
listen, this hotshot caseofficer who's doing all these
recruitments and getting awards,you're going to have to put him
(55:34):
in language school for 12months and then he's going to go
overseas and you're not goingto see him for three more years.
Well, what manager wants togive up his good people so they
could go sit in a classroom for12 months?
And so they say, ah, we'regoing to make an exception,
you're going to go overseaswithout the language.
Well, that might maybe work foryou.
(55:54):
It probably won't, but it could.
But then the agency losesbecause it doesn't have enough
people speaking these languages.
Right after September 11th, theymade a real effort to bring in
new people who spoke and I stillremember the languages.
They didn't want to trainpeople.
They wanted you to come intothe agency with Arabic, Farsi,
(56:18):
dari, pashto, urdu, sindhi,punjabi, uzbek, tajik, Korean,
chinese and Russian.
If you could speak any of thoselanguages, you went to the very
front of the line.
But here we are still with ashortage of hard language
(56:43):
speakers.
And what do you do?
Speaker 1 (56:46):
And I'm guessing Chinese is maybe one of the
tougher ones to learn,absolutely.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Absolutely.
They don't want people wholearned Spanish, french and
German in high school.
That doesn't help anybody.
And if you want to focus on youknow counter-narcotics or
something, then go work for theDEA with your Spanish.
Nobody cares, they want thosetough languages.
Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yeah, finally have the kind of changes that you had
hoped would be implemented as aresult of your coming forward
as a whistleblower?
Have they happened on a levelthat you had hoped they would?
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yes and no.
Yes in that there is no tortureprogram anymore.
I'm proud to say that I had anintegral role in that.
I'm proud of it.
John McCain said so on.
The appeared before the SenateIntelligence Committee in her
nomination hearing.
She admitted finally that thetorture program was a mistake.
(57:53):
So yes, in that respect Right.
On the other hand, as recentlyas three weeks ago, a batch of
new hires was given a slideshowwith my picture on one of the
slides and it said underneaththe insider threat.
So CIA computers now are usingAI to predict if and when an
(58:23):
employee might be thinking aboutbecoming a whistleblower.
So they can nip that in the bud.
And there is a reward systemfor CIA employees to rat out
their coworkers if they think acoworker might be thinking about
blowing the whistle on waste,fraud, abuse or illegality.
So one step forward and twoback.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yeah, the implication there your, your picture and
inside threat to me if I were anew trainee there, I would take
that partially as areinforcement of this is you
don't do this ever, yeah, andand that's, that's a conflicting
(59:06):
message.
I would would think that'sright.
Yeah, that is exactly right.
Listen, maybe someday you willbe willing to come back and do
this again, because I've got somany things I would like to talk
to you about.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
My pleasure.
That would be fantastic.
Listen.
Thank you so much.
I know you've got to go.
Thanks for the invitation.
We'll do this again sometime.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you sir.
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