# CIA Whistleblower Speaks Out "This is how the US & Iran war will end"

An episode of [Straight Talk with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1572546872), 25 Mar 2026, 1 h 06 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/1c4759f0-81fc-4f35-85d1-b305004fc1e8/0d0ad9fd-f3cf-4ff3-85b7-b418001db501/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=573776d2-4dbd-4f2f-a825-b305004fc1ef

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and the only intelligence official to blow the whistle on America’s torture program and ultimately pay the price with prison time. In this revealing conversation, Kiriakou takes us inside the world of spy recruitment, from spotting targets at diplomatic parties to the devastating personal costs of intelligence work. He explains how a childhood fascination with the Middle East led to a 15-year CIA career, his role in capturing high-value Al-Qaeda targets after 9/11, and the moral reckoning that changed everything. We also explore his analysis of current geopolitical tensions, from Iran’s nuclear program to the growing risks of escalation in the Middle East. We also spoke about: • How the CIA recruits spies using the "spot, assess, develop, recruit" cycle • The personal cost of counterterrorism work — losing his marriage after being targeted by Greek terrorists • Leading the capture of Abu Zubaydah and witnessing the birth of America's torture programme • Why he became the sole CIA officer to publicly oppose enhanced interrogation techniques • His 23-month prison sentence for revealing torture to the American public • Analysis of current Middle East tensions and the intelligence behind Iran policy • Media manipulation and finding reliable sources in an age of disinformation You can subscribe to the free Mentored newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/e7C8akgj. Join my exclusive Mentored+ community: https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: John Kiriaku, welcome to straight Talk, mate.
[0:03] Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, very happy to be with you.
[0:05] Speaker 1: It's a mad time at the moment, like geopolitically across
[0:08] Speaker 1: the world, so it's actually very timely have an opportunity
[0:10] Speaker 1: to speak to someone like you. Thank you very much,
[0:12] Speaker 1: appreciate it.
[0:13] Speaker 2: My plan.
[0:13] Speaker 1: I've been following your stuff for a long time, a
[0:17] Speaker 1: huge fan, like we love what you do than you
[0:20] Speaker 1: in factors. You got Greek surname. That helps, by the way,
[0:23] Speaker 1: I know, right, we got to stick together, someone called
[0:26] Speaker 1: Boris and someone talking to someone called Kiriaka cool. Okay,
[0:30] Speaker 1: So maybe you could just John, you could just give
[0:33] Speaker 1: me a little bit of a background on you as
[0:35] Speaker 1: because because our audience you're in Australia in particular, loves
[0:38] Speaker 1: to know how you grew up, you know what, with
[0:40] Speaker 1: the influencers in your life, particularly as a kid, your mom,
[0:43] Speaker 1: your dad, your grandfather, your grandmother, your your regionally area,
[0:47] Speaker 1: where'd you grow up? Give me a little bit of
[0:48] Speaker 1: a background on you. Sure.
[0:50] Speaker 2: I was born and raised in western Pennsylvania in a
[0:54] Speaker 2: very rural, tiny town in Amish Country north of Pittsburgh
[0:59] Speaker 2: by one hour. Really, my biggest influences in my life
[1:04] Speaker 2: were my dad and my grandfather, my father's father. My
[1:09] Speaker 2: entire family emigrated to the United States from Greece from
[1:12] Speaker 2: the island of Rhodes, all four of the grandparents in
[1:16] Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one on my dad's side, nineteen thirty four
[1:19] Speaker 2: on my mother's side. The week after I turned eighteen,
[1:22] Speaker 2: I went to Washington, d C. Went to school at
[1:24] Speaker 2: George Washington University. I I earned a bachelor's degree in
[1:30] Speaker 2: Middle Eastern Studies, and I stayed for a master's degree
[1:33] Speaker 2: in Legislative affairs with a focus on American foreign policy analysis.
[1:38] Speaker 2: My graduate school advisor, it turned out, was undercover as
[1:43] Speaker 2: a graduate school advisor. He was a CIA officer looking
[1:47] Speaker 2: for people who might fit into the CIA's culture. He
[1:52] Speaker 2: believed that I would fit into the CIA's culture, and
[1:54] Speaker 2: he recruited me into the CIA. I spent fifteen years there.
[1:59] Speaker 2: The first half of my career was in analysis, specifically
[2:03] Speaker 2: on Iraq, and then the second half of my career
[2:06] Speaker 2: was in counter terrorism operations. I served many tours overseas
[2:11] Speaker 2: in counter terrorism. I was the chief of CIA counter
[2:14] Speaker 2: terrorism operations in Pakistan just after the nine to eleven attacks,
[2:19] Speaker 2: and that's where things sort of begin to turn. I'm
[2:23] Speaker 2: sorry to say that I was the only person who
[2:26] Speaker 2: objected to the CIA torture program. I did so internally,
[2:30] Speaker 2: which just fell on deaf ears. And then after I
[2:33] Speaker 2: left the CIA, I decided finally to go public in
[2:36] Speaker 2: a nationally televised interview, and I said that the CIA
[2:42] Speaker 2: was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official US government policy,
[2:47] Speaker 2: and that the policy had been personally approved by the President.
[2:51] Speaker 2: All hell broke loose, as you might imagine. But in
[2:55] Speaker 2: the meantime, I took a job as the chief investigator
[2:58] Speaker 2: on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, working for John Kerry.
[3:02] Speaker 2: After I left the Foreign Relations Committee, the government fell
[3:05] Speaker 2: on my head and I was arrested and charged with
[3:09] Speaker 2: five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for that interview
[3:13] Speaker 2: with ABC News in which I said that the CIA
[3:16] Speaker 2: was torturing its prisoners. To make a long story short,
[3:20] Speaker 2: I was facing forty five years in prison. They offered
[3:23] Speaker 2: me twenty three months if I would just take a plea.
[3:28] Speaker 2: I turned down the plea, much to the consternation of
[3:31] Speaker 2: my attorneys, who then told me that they would resign
[3:35] Speaker 2: as my attorneys if I didn't take the plea because
[3:38] Speaker 2: I was realistically, they said, facing twelve to eighteen years,
[3:42] Speaker 2: take the twenty three months and make it go away.
[3:44] Speaker 2: And so I did. And you know, the funny thing,
[3:47] Speaker 2: Mark is that I was at the CIA a long time,
[3:51] Speaker 2: and I would have assumed that they knew me, and
[3:55] Speaker 2: if they thought that prison would silence me, they didn't
[3:59] Speaker 2: know me at all. So I did my twenty three months,
[4:03] Speaker 2: and I've been a vocal critic of the CIA and
[4:06] Speaker 2: of torture and of human rights abuses ever since.
[4:10] Speaker 1: That's pretty crazy story. So if I got back to
[4:13] Speaker 1: a period when you decided to go to university and
[4:16] Speaker 1: study Middle Eastern studies, that I'd probably been out there
[4:22] Speaker 1: back then.
[4:22] Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you something that's more out there. When
[4:24] Speaker 2: I was nine years old, my father took me to
[4:28] Speaker 2: an auction and he bought a box of junk. I
[4:32] Speaker 2: still remember he paid fifty cents for it. It was
[4:34] Speaker 2: just a box of just junk that was left over.
[4:37] Speaker 2: But that junk happened to include a short wave radio
[4:41] Speaker 2: and it opened up an entire new world for me.
[4:45] Speaker 2: And I told my parents when I was nine years
[4:48] Speaker 2: old that I wanted to be a spy.
[4:49] Speaker 1: When I grew up Wow.
[4:51] Speaker 2: And they thought that was cute and they bought They
[4:53] Speaker 2: bought me a set of walkie talkies that year for Christmas.
[4:56] Speaker 2: And then when I was sixteen, I told them I
[4:59] Speaker 2: want wanted to be a spy in the Middle East.
[5:02] Speaker 2: And my father said, come on, is still with the
[5:06] Speaker 2: spy with the spy thing. Can't you be a dentist
[5:09] Speaker 2: or something? And I said, Dad, I'm serious, I want
[5:12] Speaker 2: to be a spy in the Middle East. And so
[5:16] Speaker 2: I became a spy in the Middle East, and I
[5:19] Speaker 2: loved every minute of it. I learned to speak fluent Arabic,
[5:22] Speaker 2: I immersed myself in the culture, the history, the poetry,
[5:26] Speaker 2: and the literature and succeeded there.
[5:30] Speaker 1: But what was driving you to do Middle East? I mean,
[5:32] Speaker 1: did you feel as though they were doing the wrong
[5:35] Speaker 1: thing and it was something you needed to spy on
[5:37] Speaker 1: for your country or was it more or was it
[5:40] Speaker 1: more trending at the time, I mean, what was the
[5:43] Speaker 1: deal there? Like, I can't imagine why.
[5:45] Speaker 2: It was decidedly trending? The Iranian the Shah of Iran
[5:50] Speaker 2: had been overthrown, the Iatolas had come into power, and
[5:54] Speaker 2: they took the American embassy and then held fifty five
[5:58] Speaker 2: American diplomats hostage for four hundred and forty four days,
[6:01] Speaker 2: and I was obsessed with this hostage crisis and wanted
[6:06] Speaker 2: to learn as much about the Middle East as I could.
[6:10] Speaker 2: I can't tell you why I was more interested in
[6:14] Speaker 2: the Arab side of things than the Iranian but Arab
[6:17] Speaker 2: culture just has always fascinated me. And even when I
[6:23] Speaker 2: was in college, I went backpacking one summer with my girlfriend.
[6:27] Speaker 2: We spent three months, and she wanted to go to
[6:30] Speaker 2: London and Paris and Rome, and we did all that,
[6:32] Speaker 2: but then we also went to you know, Istanbul and
[6:36] Speaker 2: Jerusalem and Cairo at my insistence, and I was hooked.
[6:42] Speaker 1: Had that end up with that girlfriend?
[6:44] Speaker 2: You know, we're still Facebook friends, but I will admit
[6:47] Speaker 2: to you that she's the one who got away.
[6:49] Speaker 1: So, John, was it more of a curiosity from your
[6:52] Speaker 1: point of view? Were you insanely curious about what's going
[6:55] Speaker 1: to the Middle East? A culture, what drives them to
[6:58] Speaker 1: be that way?
[6:59] Speaker 2: All?
[6:59] Speaker 1: Were you doing for country? No, in other words, for
[7:01] Speaker 1: your nation. Did you feel as though I have a
[7:04] Speaker 1: duty to understand the region and protect my country? Which
[7:08] Speaker 1: was it?
[7:09] Speaker 2: That's a good question. It was kind of a combination
[7:11] Speaker 2: of the two. On the one hand, Yeah, I was
[7:16] Speaker 2: so fascinated by the whole place, Like, for example, even
[7:19] Speaker 2: as a teenager, I wanted to know how these little
[7:23] Speaker 2: royal families in these little tiny countries got to be
[7:28] Speaker 2: royal families, and why was for example, the Kuwaiti family
[7:32] Speaker 2: a ruling family and not a royal family, and all
[7:34] Speaker 2: the others were royal families, And why were some emirs
[7:38] Speaker 2: and sheikhs and the others were princes and kings. And
[7:41] Speaker 2: I loved it. What made the job easy easier was
[7:45] Speaker 2: that the United States has always had very close relations
[7:49] Speaker 2: with these countries, and so we were always seen as
[7:54] Speaker 2: the good guy, and you know, relations were close, and
[7:59] Speaker 2: we weren't targeting these countries for recruitment because you know,
[8:04] Speaker 2: our intelligence leads on relationships were close enough that they
[8:06] Speaker 2: were giving everything to us anyway. So when I was
[8:09] Speaker 2: working there, it was Iranians that I wanted to go after,
[8:13] Speaker 2: or Iraqis that I was going after, or Syrians or
[8:16] Speaker 2: Russians in Chinese for that matter. It wasn't we didn't
[8:20] Speaker 2: have this. We didn't have the kind of relationship with
[8:24] Speaker 2: these different countries that would have caused any kind of
[8:27] Speaker 2: friction or difficulty, and it made life very very easy
[8:30] Speaker 2: for me there.
[8:31] Speaker 1: So, like you op posted to Bahrain, for example, and
[8:35] Speaker 1: you're with the American embassy, but you know, with the
[8:38] Speaker 1: CII what I know, we see the movies, et cetera.
[8:42] Speaker 1: But what are you actually doing when you're sitting in there?
[8:45] Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I don't want you to give anyway
[8:46] Speaker 1: any state secrets, but what's your process? Are you're trying
[8:50] Speaker 1: to recruit somebody to give you information about what's going
[8:53] Speaker 1: on in the region, or you you know, interrupting the
[8:56] Speaker 1: telephone lines, or what are you doing? What happens DYE today?
[9:02] Speaker 2: Generally, Well, I'll answer you in two ways. I worked
[9:06] Speaker 2: for a deputy director at the CIA. I was his
[9:09] Speaker 2: assistant my last headquarters position, and he had a mantra
[9:13] Speaker 2: that he used to repeat every single day that the
[9:16] Speaker 2: job of the CIA is to recruit spies to steal secrets,
[9:21] Speaker 2: and then to analyze those secrets so that the president
[9:25] Speaker 2: can make the best informed policy. That was the bottom line.
[9:29] Speaker 2: The tech and the fancy stuff that's all layered on
[9:33] Speaker 2: top of it, but the bottom line is we recruit
[9:35] Speaker 2: spies to steal secrets and then when you're in the field, actually,
[9:42] Speaker 2: in the act of recruiting a spy to steal a secret.
[9:45] Speaker 2: There's a process there that we called the asset acquisition cycle.
[9:49] Speaker 2: It was spot, assess, develop, recruit. So you and I
[9:54] Speaker 2: are at a diplomatic cocktail party. I go up and
[9:57] Speaker 2: introduce myself, just like I'm going to introduce myself to
[10:01] Speaker 2: the other fifty people in the party. But you happen
[10:05] Speaker 2: to be from North Korea or China, or Russia or Cuba.
[10:12] Speaker 2: So you I'd like to get to know, and I'm
[10:15] Speaker 2: going to invite you to lunch. So I'm assessing your
[10:21] Speaker 2: ability to have information that I would find useful, and
[10:27] Speaker 2: then I begin developing you. That's the fun part, actually,
[10:30] Speaker 2: and that's the longest part of this, where we're going
[10:34] Speaker 2: to start with lunch, and then in a year's time
[10:38] Speaker 2: or six months or twenty four months, or however long
[10:41] Speaker 2: it takes me, I'm going to make you my best friend.
[10:46] Speaker 2: I'm going to spend a ridiculous amount of money on you.
[10:51] Speaker 2: We're going to vacation together, our wives are going to
[10:55] Speaker 2: be friends, our children are going to play together, and eventually,
[11:00] Speaker 2: when the time feels right in my gut, I'm going
[11:04] Speaker 2: to ask you to commit espionage for me, treason maybe
[11:08] Speaker 2: in some cases, and you're going to do it. Maybe
[11:12] Speaker 2: because you think I'm great and you love me and
[11:15] Speaker 2: you love this friendship we've developed. Maybe it's for the money.
[11:18] Speaker 2: Maybe it's because you've been passed over for promotion and
[11:21] Speaker 2: you want to get revenge against your boss. Maybe it's
[11:24] Speaker 2: because you just love the United States, because you love
[11:27] Speaker 2: these Hollywood movies and you want a piece of it.
[11:30] Speaker 2: Or maybe you're an adrenaline junkie and you just love
[11:34] Speaker 2: the excitement of the clandestinity. But for one reason or another,
[11:39] Speaker 2: you're gonna say yes to that pitch.
[11:41] Speaker 1: Does the SAI the organization profile these individuals for you.
[11:46] Speaker 1: They say, Ok, John, you're going to a cocktail party tonight.
[11:50] Speaker 1: There's a dude there from Cereal Career. Wherever the case
[11:53] Speaker 1: may be, We've already profiled this individual. He fits, he
[11:56] Speaker 1: fits in the profile some of these categories. Or are
[11:59] Speaker 1: you just randomly walking the room and sort of saying,
[12:02] Speaker 1: you know, I'll make fifty people leathers fifty people long
[12:05] Speaker 1: in a profile seeks target myself.
[12:07] Speaker 2: Nine times out of ten, you just go in cold
[12:10] Speaker 2: and you have a pocket full of business cards and
[12:12] Speaker 2: you just hand them out to everybody. Once in a while.
[12:15] Speaker 2: I can count twice in my career where headquarters set
[12:20] Speaker 2: me a cable and saying, there's this party at such
[12:25] Speaker 2: and such an embassy. We heard the North Koreans are
[12:28] Speaker 2: going to be there or the Russians are going to
[12:31] Speaker 2: be there, and so I say, okay, and then I
[12:35] Speaker 2: make sure that I go and I you know, in
[12:39] Speaker 2: one case, I actually did surveillance on the North Korean
[12:42] Speaker 2: for several days before the party, and I noticed that
[12:46] Speaker 2: he was literally going fishing every day after work so
[12:51] Speaker 2: that he could eat. Wow, And I thought, okay, well
[12:55] Speaker 2: if he doesn't, if he doesn't run screaming from the room,
[12:58] Speaker 2: I'm going to take him to a nice restaurant. I'm
[13:01] Speaker 2: sorry to say that he ran screaming from the room,
[13:04] Speaker 2: but not literally figuratively, so that went nowhere. But usually
[13:10] Speaker 2: you just go work the room. Hey how are you. Hey,
[13:13] Speaker 2: I'm John Kiriaku from the American Embassy, So nice to
[13:15] Speaker 2: see you. Oh what do you do for a living? Oh,
[13:17] Speaker 2: you work at the port. That sounds fascinating. What do
[13:20] Speaker 2: you do at the port? You know, whatever it is,
[13:24] Speaker 2: it's fascinating and I want to hear more about it.
[13:26] Speaker 1: So you've got to be good on the chat. I
[13:28] Speaker 1: mean you've got to be borid, something naturally you good at,
[13:30] Speaker 1: Like well, you always got a good on the chat. Yes,
[13:32] Speaker 1: you know the sweet spots. You know with the sweet spots.
[13:36] Speaker 1: You know from their reactions you must have been Were
[13:38] Speaker 1: you trying to say, he's a bodily reaction that is
[13:42] Speaker 1: actually in your fiver and he's a bodily reaction which
[13:43] Speaker 1: is against your fiver? You know, body language type of stuff.
[13:46] Speaker 1: I mean, do you get into all that sort of
[13:48] Speaker 1: secret techniques?
[13:49] Speaker 2: Sure? Sure. There is an enormous staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists,
[13:56] Speaker 2: and anthropologists at the CIA, enormous staff and so you're
[14:01] Speaker 2: well trained in what to look for and then what
[14:05] Speaker 2: to do once you've spotted what we call a vulnerability. Now,
[14:09] Speaker 2: a vulnerability doesn't necessarily have to be negative. Maybe your
[14:14] Speaker 2: vulnerability is you really really love your kids, and in
[14:19] Speaker 2: your country, whatever country you happen to be from, your
[14:22] Speaker 2: kids don't really have the kind of educational and economic
[14:27] Speaker 2: opportunities that they might have in the United States. So
[14:30] Speaker 2: if you want your kid to go to Harvard, done, Wow,
[14:35] Speaker 2: we can put your son or daughter in any university
[14:39] Speaker 2: in America, and if you give me two hours in
[14:42] Speaker 2: your code room, I'll pay for it, wow, said Naked. Yeah.
[14:49] Speaker 2: Nine times out of ten. This is strictly a financial agreement.
[14:53] Speaker 2: You give me money, I'm sorry. You give me information,
[14:56] Speaker 2: I give you money. It's as simple as that.
[14:58] Speaker 1: Can you talk to me about when you a postage
[15:00] Speaker 1: Athens in Greece and what you're doing there?
[15:02] Speaker 2: Sure, that was very specifically a counter terrorism position. There
[15:06] Speaker 2: were several groups. You know, It's funny. When I first
[15:09] Speaker 2: saw the position was open, it said this was for
[15:12] Speaker 2: a counter terrorism operations officer working against two Greek groups,
[15:17] Speaker 2: one called Revolutionary Organization seventeen November, the other called Popular
[15:22] Speaker 2: Revolutionary Struggle, but also working against Arab groups, most specifically
[15:27] Speaker 2: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP
[15:31] Speaker 2: General Command and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
[15:35] Speaker 2: as well as the Abu Nidal organization and the Libyans.
[15:39] Speaker 2: They said that the successful candidate will have either Greek
[15:43] Speaker 2: or Arabic language fluency. As it turned out, I was
[15:47] Speaker 2: the only person in the CIA that was fluent in
[15:50] Speaker 2: both Greek and Arabic, and so I got the job.
[15:55] Speaker 2: It was just about then that communist Arab terrorism went away.
[16:03] Speaker 2: It just the PFLP and the DFLP and Abudi Dal.
[16:07] Speaker 2: They don't exist anymore. These were old men. They retired,
[16:11] Speaker 2: they moved to Damascus and they lived happily ever after.
[16:14] Speaker 2: The Greeks were out killing people all the time. They
[16:18] Speaker 2: killed the British Defense attache when I was there. They
[16:21] Speaker 2: had previously killed the American CIA station chief, two American
[16:26] Speaker 2: defense attaches, the Turkish ambassador, the Turkish Deputy Ambassador, the
[16:30] Speaker 2: Greek Minister of Finance, the Minister of Communications, the head
[16:34] Speaker 2: of the Central Bank. This was a terrible, terrible group.
[16:37] Speaker 1: Wow.
[16:38] Speaker 2: And so my job was to work with the Greek
[16:41] Speaker 2: National Intelligence Service and the Greek National Police to try
[16:45] Speaker 2: to infiltrate these two groups and to destroy them from
[16:48] Speaker 2: the inside.
[16:49] Speaker 1: And what happened.
[16:50] Speaker 2: We stirred up a hornets nest and they murdered my
[16:55] Speaker 2: next door neighbor, the British Defense attatche, Stephen Saunders. I
[16:59] Speaker 2: liked Stephen very much. Stephen had a huge personality. We
[17:06] Speaker 2: used to joke that he was a media whore because
[17:08] Speaker 2: he just as soon as he saw a camera, he
[17:10] Speaker 2: would run right in front of it and say, would
[17:13] Speaker 2: anybody like an interview? I'm the British defense attache and
[17:17] Speaker 2: we would all laugh. One night, we were at a
[17:20] Speaker 2: party at the French Defense at Tache's house and I
[17:23] Speaker 2: had just gotten a new car that day that the
[17:26] Speaker 2: CIA had bought me. It was a level four armored
[17:29] Speaker 2: BMW five forty. It was the first five forty in Greece,
[17:34] Speaker 2: to the point where we couldn't even ensure it. We
[17:36] Speaker 2: had to insure it through a company in Germany because
[17:39] Speaker 2: I needed a big engine to carry all that armor.
[17:41] Speaker 2: And Stephen was making fun of me. We were standing.
[17:44] Speaker 2: It was Stephen, the French, the American at Tache and me,
[17:48] Speaker 2: and Stephen was making fun of me in a friendly way,
[17:51] Speaker 2: and he said, you Americans, you're so paranoid about security.
[17:56] Speaker 2: He says, this is an EU country, it's a NATO
[17:59] Speaker 2: cun tree. What are you so afraid of? And everybody chuckled,
[18:04] Speaker 2: and I said, you Brits live in a dream world
[18:08] Speaker 2: if you think that because they have pretty beaches and
[18:11] Speaker 2: palm trees, that they're not going to kill you if
[18:14] Speaker 2: they have the chance. Believe me, if they have the chance,
[18:17] Speaker 2: they're going to kill you. And then they killed him
[18:21] Speaker 2: as an assassination. They assassinated him in broad daylight on
[18:25] Speaker 2: the main road from our neighborhood to the British and
[18:29] Speaker 2: American embassies in April of two thousand. I was about
[18:34] Speaker 2: a quarter of a mile behind him when they killed him.
[18:39] Speaker 2: A taxi driver pulled him out of the car and
[18:43] Speaker 2: rushed him to a hospital. He died twenty minutes after
[18:46] Speaker 2: they got there seventeen November. Usually would drop a manifesto
[18:51] Speaker 2: at the sight of the hit. Sometimes they would put
[18:55] Speaker 2: it in a garbage can and call a leftist newspaper
[18:57] Speaker 2: and tell them where to find it. Rarely they would
[19:00] Speaker 2: mail it to the newspaper. They didn't leave a manifesto
[19:02] Speaker 2: when they killed Stephen. And so four months passed and
[19:07] Speaker 2: I went into work one day, like I did you
[19:10] Speaker 2: know every day? And my boss runs into my office
[19:13] Speaker 2: and he said, did you see the manifesto? I said,
[19:15] Speaker 2: what manifesto? He said, the Saunders manifesto. I said, they
[19:20] Speaker 2: didn't drop a manifesto. He said, no, they dropped it today.
[19:23] Speaker 2: Have you seen it? And I said no. He said,
[19:27] Speaker 2: they talk about you. And I said me, that's not possible.
[19:31] Speaker 2: I said, I've I've been so careful with my security.
[19:35] Speaker 2: I'm more careful than anybody I know. He shows me
[19:38] Speaker 2: the manifesto. It says in Greek eva meto megalo cartoskopos.
[19:41] Speaker 2: We saw the big spy, it says, but we we
[19:46] Speaker 2: knew he was armed, and he was driving an armored car,
[19:49] Speaker 2: and so we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence
[19:52] Speaker 2: on the war criminals. Saunders whoa, And my boss said
[19:56] Speaker 2: you have to go yeah, I said, go where? He said,
[19:59] Speaker 2: you have to go home, like right now. I said,
[20:02] Speaker 2: I just took my kids to school. I can't just
[20:05] Speaker 2: go home now. He said, we'll pick up your kids,
[20:08] Speaker 2: we'll pick up your wife. You have to go now.
[20:11] Speaker 2: I went to the airport in an armored car. They
[20:15] Speaker 2: had an armored car pick up my two sons. And
[20:17] Speaker 2: my sons were little, they were like six and three,
[20:20] Speaker 2: and they picked up my wife. We got to the
[20:23] Speaker 2: airport and I said to her, I am so sorry,
[20:26] Speaker 2: and she said, I want a divorce. I'm not doing
[20:29] Speaker 2: this anymore.
[20:30] Speaker 1: Wow.
[20:30] Speaker 2: So we flew to New York. She flew to Cleveland.
[20:34] Speaker 2: I flew to Washington and started working against seventeen November.
[20:38] Speaker 2: From headquarters. They lasted another like eighteen months one of
[20:44] Speaker 2: the bomb makers was carrying a bomb to put under
[20:48] Speaker 2: the car of a Greek shipping magnet, and the bomb
[20:52] Speaker 2: went off and it blew his hands off, and it
[20:54] Speaker 2: blew his right eye out, and as he was bleeding
[20:57] Speaker 2: to death, he confessed to a police that he was
[21:01] Speaker 2: seventeen November. He gave the names of all of his
[21:04] Speaker 2: comrades and the location of their weapons cash, and then
[21:08] Speaker 2: the cop saved his life. And so the entire group
[21:12] Speaker 2: was destroyed in April of two thousand and two, and
[21:16] Speaker 2: most of them are still in prison. A couple of
[21:18] Speaker 2: them have done their time and have gotten out, but
[21:21] Speaker 2: the founder, the lead assassin, and the two lead bomb makers,
[21:27] Speaker 2: three lead bomb makers are doing sentences of one seven
[21:32] Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five years.
[21:34] Speaker 1: You with a target, in actual fact, did you ever
[21:37] Speaker 1: think to yourself? Is this worth it? I mean, is
[21:39] Speaker 1: my country worth it?
[21:40] Speaker 2: Oh?
[21:41] Speaker 1: Is my curiosity worth it? At that point? At that
[21:43] Speaker 1: point did you think that?
[21:45] Speaker 2: Yes? I did, And my solution, in my deluded state,
[21:51] Speaker 2: was to then divorce her and marry a CIA officer.
[21:54] Speaker 1: So that's what I did, And not long after this,
[21:57] Speaker 1: we have none to eleven and of course no one
[22:00] Speaker 1: of them was tragic, but bigger news and probably anything
[22:05] Speaker 1: we've had in the last fifty years. And then you
[22:09] Speaker 1: got posted to where'd you get posted from?
[22:12] Speaker 2: There? Pakistan as the chief of CIA counter terrorism Operations. Wow,
[22:17] Speaker 2: it was the biggest job I ever had in my life.
[22:19] Speaker 1: That's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big job. Yeah.
[22:22] Speaker 1: Where about some Pakistan.
[22:23] Speaker 2: Primarily in Islamabad, but wherever we needed to do the raid.
[22:29] Speaker 2: We went and did the raid. I saw the four
[22:31] Speaker 2: corners of Pakistan and everything in between, and there were
[22:35] Speaker 2: a lot of moving parts at the time. You know,
[22:38] Speaker 2: it wasn't just us operating in a bubble and trying
[22:42] Speaker 2: to you know, destroy al Qaeda. At the same time,
[22:46] Speaker 2: the White House is working with the CIA to come
[22:49] Speaker 2: up with what became a torture program, a rendition program,
[22:53] Speaker 2: an archipelago of secret prisons all around the world, and
[22:58] Speaker 2: none of us had any idea that this was happening.
[23:00] Speaker 2: The first inkling that I got that something was up
[23:05] Speaker 2: was when the Pakistanis came to me one day. We
[23:08] Speaker 2: had had several weeks, several very successful weeks of counter
[23:13] Speaker 2: terrorism raids where we're just breaking down the door of
[23:16] Speaker 2: al Qaeda safe houses with battering rams and just grabbing everybody.
[23:20] Speaker 2: And the Packs came to me one day and said, listen,
[23:23] Speaker 2: the jail is full. You've got to do something with
[23:26] Speaker 2: all these guys. We can't just hold these guys indefinitely.
[23:30] Speaker 2: So I called CIA headquarters, the Counterterrorism Center, and I said,
[23:34] Speaker 2: the Packs came to me and said that the jail
[23:36] Speaker 2: is full. We were keeping everybody in the Rawal Pindi
[23:39] Speaker 2: jail outside of Islama Bud. They said, the jail's literally full,
[23:42] Speaker 2: and they want these guys out. What do you want
[23:44] Speaker 2: me to do with them? And they said, we want
[23:47] Speaker 2: you to put them on a C twelve cargo plane,
[23:51] Speaker 2: a transport plane and send them to Guantanamo. And I
[23:54] Speaker 2: said Guantanamo Cuba and they said yes. I said, why
[24:00] Speaker 2: in the world would we send them to Cuba And
[24:03] Speaker 2: they said, and I thought this was a great idea.
[24:06] Speaker 2: We're going to keep them in Cuba for two or
[24:09] Speaker 2: three weeks until we can figure out which federal district
[24:12] Speaker 2: court to charge them with. The idea was that we
[24:15] Speaker 2: would charge all of them with terrorism or conspiracy or
[24:19] Speaker 2: providing material support for terrorism, and we would charge them
[24:22] Speaker 2: in Washington, New York, or Pennsylvania. Because that's where the
[24:28] Speaker 2: fourth plane went down. I said, that's a great idea.
[24:32] Speaker 2: Loaded everybody onto a series of C twelves, flew them
[24:36] Speaker 2: to Guantanamo. We put seven hundred and seventy people there
[24:39] Speaker 2: at one point. But then someone in Vice President Dick
[24:45] Speaker 2: Cheney's office observed, you know, they don't really have any
[24:50] Speaker 2: rights in Guantanamo. It's ours, we control it, but it's
[24:55] Speaker 2: not American territory, so they don't have any US legal
[24:59] Speaker 2: rights heights. Why don't we just keep them there forever?
[25:04] Speaker 2: And then that became the policy.
[25:06] Speaker 1: I presume that maybe you can help me out here,
[25:08] Speaker 1: but as a result of not have any ruts and
[25:11] Speaker 1: it's not being on US oil, you can pretty much
[25:14] Speaker 1: do to them whatever you want to do in order
[25:16] Speaker 1: to find out what a vision need to find out.
[25:18] Speaker 2: And that's where the big split came for me. I
[25:22] Speaker 2: did not yet know that there was a formal torture program.
[25:26] Speaker 2: I learned that in May of two thousand and two.
[25:29] Speaker 2: Torture actually began on August the second, two thousand and two.
[25:33] Speaker 2: But I remember saying to my boss, this is illegal.
[25:42] Speaker 2: This is clearly a violation of the Geneva Convention, and
[25:45] Speaker 2: it's a violation of US law as well. We shouldn't
[25:48] Speaker 2: be doing this, and he said, listen to me, because
[25:51] Speaker 2: I'm only going to say it once. He said, this
[25:54] Speaker 2: has already been worked out at a pay grade far
[25:58] Speaker 2: above yours or mine. We're not here to make these decisions.
[26:02] Speaker 2: We're here to do as we're told. And that didn't
[26:08] Speaker 2: sit right with me, so I went back to headquarters.
[26:11] Speaker 2: At the end of my tour in Pakistan May of
[26:16] Speaker 2: two thousand and two, I was in the sandwich line
[26:20] Speaker 2: in the CIA cafeteria and one of the senior officers
[26:24] Speaker 2: from the counter Terrorism Center came up to me, very
[26:26] Speaker 2: casually and said, oh, hey, I'm so glad I ran
[26:30] Speaker 2: into you. I meant to ask you, do you want
[26:32] Speaker 2: to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
[26:37] Speaker 2: I had never heard that term before, and I said
[26:40] Speaker 2: enhanced interrogation. I said what does that mean? And he said,
[26:45] Speaker 2: we're going to start getting rough with these guys. I said, well,
[26:49] Speaker 2: what does that mean? And then he described these ten techniques,
[26:54] Speaker 2: everything from a smack across the face to waterboarding and
[26:58] Speaker 2: sleep deprivation and freezing freezing. They called it the cold cell.
[27:04] Speaker 2: I can describe it in a moment. I said, that
[27:06] Speaker 2: sounds like a torture program. He said, it's not torture.
[27:10] Speaker 2: The President approved it, and the Justice Department said we
[27:13] Speaker 2: can do it. And I said, ah, give me an hour.
[27:15] Speaker 2: I need to think about this. I walked out of
[27:18] Speaker 2: the cafeteria. I went up to the seventh floor of
[27:20] Speaker 2: the CIA, that's the executive floor, and I asked a
[27:24] Speaker 2: very very senior official for whom I had worked in
[27:28] Speaker 2: the Middle East ten years earlier, for some advice. I
[27:31] Speaker 2: knocked on his door. No appointment, and I said, listen.
[27:34] Speaker 2: I was just approached and asked if I wanted to
[27:36] Speaker 2: be trained in these enhanced interrogation techniques, what do you
[27:39] Speaker 2: think of that? And he said, first of all, let's
[27:43] Speaker 2: call a spade a spade. They can use whatever euphemism
[27:46] Speaker 2: they want. This is a torture program, and tortures a
[27:50] Speaker 2: slippery slope. And you know how these guys are. Some
[27:53] Speaker 2: of them are cowboys, and somebody's going to kill a prisoner,
[27:56] Speaker 2: and then there's going to be a congressional investigation and
[27:59] Speaker 2: then a Justice Department investigation, and somebody's going to go
[28:02] Speaker 2: to prison. Do you want to go to prison? And
[28:04] Speaker 2: I said no, I don't want to go to prison.
[28:06] Speaker 2: As it turned out, I was the only person who
[28:08] Speaker 2: went to prison. But I went back downstairs and I said,
[28:11] Speaker 2: this is a torture program. I have a moral and
[28:15] Speaker 2: ethical problem with it. I think it's illegal, and I
[28:18] Speaker 2: don't want to have anything to do with it. And
[28:21] Speaker 2: so they cut me out, which was fine. I preferred
[28:25] Speaker 2: to not know anything. I preferred to not be read
[28:29] Speaker 2: into the program. But then, on the strength of my
[28:33] Speaker 2: work in Pakistan, I was promoted and I was named
[28:36] Speaker 2: the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director. And in
[28:41] Speaker 2: that position, I had access to literally everything that the
[28:45] Speaker 2: CIA was doing around the world. And it was on
[28:48] Speaker 2: August second that we began torturing Abu Zubeta, who was
[28:52] Speaker 2: the first high value prisoner that we had. I led
[28:56] Speaker 2: his capture in feis a Labad, Pakistan in March March
[29:00] Speaker 2: twenty eighth, and.
[29:01] Speaker 1: He was shot. He got shot prior to that, prior
[29:03] Speaker 1: to his interrogation.
[29:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was standing on a coffee table
[29:08] Speaker 2: in the safe house with sixty people arrayed in front
[29:11] Speaker 2: of me, and I said, listen, the orders are to
[29:15] Speaker 2: take them alive, do not shoot them. And of course
[29:21] Speaker 2: as soon as the proverbial shit hits the fan, a
[29:25] Speaker 2: Pakistani policeman just opens fire and shoots him three times
[29:29] Speaker 2: with an AK forty seven and the thigh, the groin
[29:32] Speaker 2: and the stomach, and yeah, the rest is history, and your.
[29:37] Speaker 1: Objection to him being interrogated. Where did it end up
[29:41] Speaker 1: with you? Where did it end up putting you?
[29:43] Speaker 2: Well? In the immediate term, I was passed over for promotion,
[29:47] Speaker 2: which was kind of funny to me because I had
[29:50] Speaker 2: just captured with these two hands the number three in
[29:52] Speaker 2: al Qaeda, and in my promotion panel, the chief of
[29:57] Speaker 2: counter Terrorism said exact words, I had displayed a shocking
[30:01] Speaker 2: lack of commitment to counter terrorism. Whoa well. The deputy
[30:06] Speaker 2: director then promoted me just with the stroke of his pen,
[30:09] Speaker 2: so no big deal. But then a friend of mine
[30:13] Speaker 2: at the agency who happened to be he happened to
[30:15] Speaker 2: be a lot of things. We go to the same church,
[30:18] Speaker 2: we were in the same men's group. He happens to
[30:20] Speaker 2: be a psychiatrist, and he happens to also be a
[30:23] Speaker 2: brigadier general in the US Army. He's a CIA psychiatrist.
[30:28] Speaker 2: He came up to me and he said, hey, buddy,
[30:30] Speaker 2: I got to tell you. You know they call you
[30:32] Speaker 2: the human rights guy behind your back and I said, yeah,
[30:36] Speaker 2: I know, I've heard that. And he said, you know
[30:39] Speaker 2: that's not a compliment. And I said, Steve, I'm on
[30:43] Speaker 2: the right side of this, they're not. I said, I'm
[30:47] Speaker 2: not going to change my point of view just because
[30:50] Speaker 2: they say something behind my back. And I kept that
[30:54] Speaker 2: up for another couple of years. I did another tour
[30:59] Speaker 2: and then sided, listen, I have five children. I need
[31:02] Speaker 2: to put them through college. I have to start making
[31:04] Speaker 2: some real money. So I resigned from the CIA, went
[31:08] Speaker 2: into the private sector and in the private sector, and
[31:12] Speaker 2: this is changed the course of the rest of my life.
[31:16] Speaker 2: I got a call from Brian Ross, a very prominent
[31:20] Speaker 2: journalist with ABC News in the United States, a seven
[31:24] Speaker 2: time Emmy Award winner, and he said that he had
[31:28] Speaker 2: a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zebta.
[31:31] Speaker 2: I said that was absolutely untrue. I was the only
[31:35] Speaker 2: person who was kind to Abu Zubeta. And he said, well,
[31:39] Speaker 2: you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself.
[31:41] Speaker 2: I had no idea that was a reporter's trick because
[31:44] Speaker 2: I had never spoken to a reporter before. And so
[31:50] Speaker 2: I said I'd think about it. Well. That was on
[31:53] Speaker 2: a Monday. On Wednesday, President Bush gave a press conference
[31:58] Speaker 2: and one of the reporters there asked him about these
[32:02] Speaker 2: rumors that the CIA was torturing prisoners, and he looked
[32:05] Speaker 2: right in the camera and he said, we do not torture.
[32:10] Speaker 2: And I said to my wife, who was a senior
[32:12] Speaker 2: CIA officer, I said, he's a bald faced liar. He's
[32:17] Speaker 2: looking the American people right in the eye and he's
[32:19] Speaker 2: just lying to us. Two days later was Friday. The
[32:25] Speaker 2: President leaves the White House from the South portico, the
[32:28] Speaker 2: back door of the White House, and he's walking to
[32:31] Speaker 2: the presidential helicopter to go to Camp David for the weekend,
[32:35] Speaker 2: and a reporter shouts a question about torture and the CIA,
[32:39] Speaker 2: and he stops and he turns and he says, well,
[32:43] Speaker 2: if there is torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer.
[32:48] Speaker 2: And I said to my wife, Brian Ross's sources at
[32:51] Speaker 2: the White House, and they're going to pin this on me.
[32:56] Speaker 2: So I called Brian Ross and I said, I'll give
[32:58] Speaker 2: you your interview. And I decided that no matter what
[33:02] Speaker 2: he asked, I was simply going to tell the truth,
[33:06] Speaker 2: and I'm proud to say I brought down torture in
[33:12] Speaker 2: the United States. John McCain, God bless his soul. I
[33:19] Speaker 2: probably disagreed with John McCain on ninety nine percent of
[33:22] Speaker 2: the issues, but he became my champion in the US Senate,
[33:28] Speaker 2: and he wrote what became the McCain Feinstein Amendment banning torture.
[33:36] Speaker 2: And then while I was at prison, I was incarcerated,
[33:42] Speaker 2: he not only spoke on the floor of the Senate
[33:45] Speaker 2: urging the President to pardon me and release me, but
[33:49] Speaker 2: he gave a speech on the floor of the Senate
[33:51] Speaker 2: saying that the country owed me a debt of gratitude
[33:56] Speaker 2: because without my revelations, the American people would not have
[33:59] Speaker 2: had any idea what the CIA was doing in their name,
[34:03] Speaker 2: the carrying out this abomination. And so I did my
[34:09] Speaker 2: twenty three months. I came out and I'll tell you
[34:12] Speaker 2: one funny thing I was on this British show. The
[34:14] Speaker 2: first interview I gave I gave when I got out
[34:16] Speaker 2: on the BBC. What's it called cross Talk Crossfire, I
[34:20] Speaker 2: forget the name of it. It's very popular.
[34:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know the show, I've done it, but
[34:24] Speaker 1: I know the show the guy there's one guy who
[34:26] Speaker 1: asked the questions.
[34:27] Speaker 2: One guy who asks the questions, and he comes out swinging.
[34:31] Speaker 2: So he asked me a couple of very provocative, very
[34:34] Speaker 2: mean spirited questions, and I answered them just like I'm
[34:37] Speaker 2: speaking to you now. And finally he grew a little frustrated,
[34:41] Speaker 2: and he said, you know you are not showing any
[34:44] Speaker 2: contrition at all. You have not apologized for your crime.
[34:48] Speaker 2: You haven't said anything about about having revealed this classified information.
[34:53] Speaker 2: And I said contrition. I'm not contrite. I'm not apologizing.
[34:59] Speaker 2: I would do it again today if I had the opportunity.
[35:02] Speaker 2: I said, I'm not afraid of these people. I took
[35:05] Speaker 2: their best shut and I came out stronger on the
[35:09] Speaker 2: other end, and I said again the same thing that
[35:11] Speaker 2: I said earlier. I said, I am on the right
[35:14] Speaker 2: side of history, and they are not. When their obituaries
[35:18] Speaker 2: are written, the obituaries are going to say that there
[35:21] Speaker 2: were war criminals.
[35:23] Speaker 1: It's a very interesting mindset, John, Like, I just wonder
[35:26] Speaker 1: that you know the the process for governments and organizations,
[35:32] Speaker 1: for example, like the CIA and others, to carry out
[35:36] Speaker 1: torture in order to get information or data would be
[35:41] Speaker 1: probably justified on they would say, justified on the basis
[35:44] Speaker 1: that we are condemning one person to pain and torture
[35:49] Speaker 1: in order to protect a whole lot of people. Then
[35:51] Speaker 1: on the flip side of it, some of like John Kiriaku,
[35:55] Speaker 1: is saying, I will not compromise my personal principles in
[36:00] Speaker 1: order to reach that achievement. How is this? Did you
[36:05] Speaker 1: ever go through a process where you had to try
[36:07] Speaker 1: to reconcile those two completely opposite processes? You know, one
[36:13] Speaker 1: is for country, I'll do whatever it takes for me
[36:16] Speaker 1: to protect my country and the people in it. Versus no,
[36:20] Speaker 1: I will not cross a line when it comes to
[36:23] Speaker 1: my principle is relative to an individual being tortured, for example,
[36:27] Speaker 1: because that's just wrong. How did you ever see a
[36:30] Speaker 1: reconciliation of that?
[36:31] Speaker 2: Is that?
[36:32] Speaker 1: Will we ever have a reconciliation of those two principles?
[36:34] Speaker 2: You know what I didn't. I did not struggle with that.
[36:37] Speaker 2: I'm glad that you brought it up, because I think
[36:39] Speaker 2: this is a very important point. I did not have
[36:42] Speaker 2: that internal struggle because it has been proven time and
[36:47] Speaker 2: time again, after years and years of research, that torture
[36:53] Speaker 2: simply doesn't work. Now, there was a real reason why
[36:58] Speaker 2: we were torturing, and that was really I understand that
[37:02] Speaker 2: I disagree with it, but I understand, But don't torture
[37:06] Speaker 2: and then pretend that you're doing it because there's a
[37:09] Speaker 2: ticking time bomb somewhere and you're trying to prevent the
[37:12] Speaker 2: next attack. You're not trying to prevent the next attack.
[37:16] Speaker 2: Nine to eleven was the greatest intelligence failure in American history,
[37:21] Speaker 2: far worse than the attack on Pearl Harbor in nineteen
[37:24] Speaker 2: forty one, and it was because the CIA was asleep
[37:27] Speaker 2: at the switch. The deaths of three thousand Americans in
[37:32] Speaker 2: one day was on us because we didn't do our jobs.
[37:37] Speaker 2: So I get that these guys wanted revenge. That doesn't
[37:40] Speaker 2: make it right. But then to pretend that you have
[37:44] Speaker 2: to do these torture techniques because well, the next attack
[37:49] Speaker 2: could be worse and we need to disrupt the next attack.
[37:53] Speaker 2: Come on, We're not stupid. And so I never bought it,
[37:57] Speaker 2: never never bought it.
[37:59] Speaker 1: Do you mind if I just tell me, if I
[38:01] Speaker 1: asking questions that are inappropriate of you given your past,
[38:04] Speaker 1: and you know you're you know you've got to look
[38:06] Speaker 1: after your family. But if we could just move to
[38:09] Speaker 1: Iran at the moment, and what's going on with Iran,
[38:12] Speaker 1: and you know, Trump's view on it, and also Israel's
[38:18] Speaker 1: view on it, and probably the view of some other countries,
[38:20] Speaker 1: but not the majority, it seems, particularly when it comes
[38:23] Speaker 1: to NATO type countries and Australia for that matter, What
[38:27] Speaker 1: do you think of what's going on there? Because the
[38:29] Speaker 1: question is becomes was Iran a proper nuclear threat relative
[38:36] Speaker 1: to what you know, your equivalent what is now spies
[38:41] Speaker 1: and what the intelligence community was finding out about Iran.
[38:45] Speaker 1: Do you have any views on this?
[38:46] Speaker 2: I do. They're not going to be popular with the
[38:51] Speaker 2: current occupant of the White House, but this was a
[38:55] Speaker 2: war of choice, and it was a war that we
[39:00] Speaker 2: chose to participate in after being browbeaten by Benjamin Attanyahu
[39:05] Speaker 2: and his extremest right wing government. You know, it was
[39:09] Speaker 2: my experience at the CIA where literally every Israeli Prime
[39:15] Speaker 2: minister since the nineteen eighties would come to Washington, which
[39:19] Speaker 2: they do all the time, and no matter who happened
[39:22] Speaker 2: to be in the White House, they would say, please
[39:24] Speaker 2: bomb Iran, Please bomb Iran, Please bomb Iran. And every
[39:28] Speaker 2: president would say, We're not going to do that until
[39:31] Speaker 2: this president Now, the CIA published two, not one, two
[39:38] Speaker 2: national intelligence estimates, which are the highest level sense of
[39:44] Speaker 2: the intelligence community publication that exists, saying that Iran did
[39:51] Speaker 2: not have a nuclear weapons program. Not only that, but
[39:54] Speaker 2: Ayatola Kamanai had issued a fatwa back in the eighties
[39:58] Speaker 2: forbidding the creation of a nuclear weapons program. They were
[40:02] Speaker 2: certainly enriching uranium, but not up to anything near weapons
[40:08] Speaker 2: grade levels. I understand, I get it that Iran is
[40:13] Speaker 2: this existential threat to the Israelis. But Israeli national interests
[40:18] Speaker 2: don't necessarily coincide with American national interests, and I want
[40:23] Speaker 2: my government to represent American national interests. If the Israelis
[40:28] Speaker 2: have a problem with Iran, that's for the Israelis to
[40:31] Speaker 2: deal with. But the intelligence was very clear that Iran
[40:35] Speaker 2: did not have a nuclear weapons program. Okay, just for
[40:38] Speaker 2: the benefit of the doubt, let's pretend that they did
[40:41] Speaker 2: have a nuclear weapons program. President Trump said in October
[40:47] Speaker 2: that the US Air Force had obliterated it with a
[40:52] Speaker 2: thirty thousand pound bunker buster bomb, a moab, the mother
[40:57] Speaker 2: of all bombs. We had obliterated it, and then like magic,
[41:05] Speaker 2: four weeks ago. There's six weeks away from building a
[41:08] Speaker 2: bomb again, Well, they were six weeks away from building
[41:10] Speaker 2: a bomb in nineteen eighty six and still there was
[41:13] Speaker 2: no bomb. So I think it's high time that we
[41:16] Speaker 2: start acting in the best interests of the United States
[41:20] Speaker 2: rather than in the best interests of Israel. And frankly,
[41:23] Speaker 2: I don't think attacking Iran was in the best interests
[41:25] Speaker 2: of Israel either.
[41:27] Speaker 1: I mean, no, I have no idea. But do you
[41:28] Speaker 1: really take the view, will really believe that Benjaminetta, who
[41:33] Speaker 1: has the ability to manipulate Donald Trump? I mean, I
[41:38] Speaker 1: know Trump many months or twice, but I don't I
[41:41] Speaker 1: don't understand whether he could be manipulated.
[41:43] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I believe that very strongly. Not because Trump
[41:47] Speaker 2: is weak. I don't think Trump is weak. I think
[41:49] Speaker 2: he's actually very strong. But because of the construct of
[41:55] Speaker 2: the American political system. You know, politics run on money,
[41:59] Speaker 2: and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee APAK is incredibly
[42:05] Speaker 2: well funded, and they will run candidates against you if
[42:10] Speaker 2: you are not one hundred percent pro Israel, and five
[42:16] Speaker 2: times out of six at least in the in the
[42:18] Speaker 2: last election, they would win those races. And so would
[42:22] Speaker 2: you rather take would you rather take one hundred and
[42:25] Speaker 2: fifty million dollars for your campaign from wealthy donors and
[42:30] Speaker 2: toe the Israeli line, or do you want to risk
[42:33] Speaker 2: having them run a candidate against you and then not
[42:36] Speaker 2: winning re election. Most American politicians fall into line. You know,
[42:41] Speaker 2: these ideas finally came to a head during the presidency
[42:46] Speaker 2: of someone who could be pressured by Benjamin Antonia, who
[42:50] Speaker 2: where previous presidents couldn't, and now we're in this war.
[42:53] Speaker 1: Doesn't within the USA organization, which must have unbelievably vast assets,
[43:01] Speaker 1: don't all those things, all those the doctor and information
[43:04] Speaker 1: from those assets filter up the line to the president
[43:08] Speaker 1: and or he's most senior advisers say hey, hey, pres
[43:12] Speaker 1: we're gonna make a mistake here. Let's be careful. I mean,
[43:15] Speaker 1: how does that work? I mean, how do those two
[43:17] Speaker 1: things sort of interact.
[43:19] Speaker 2: I'll give you two answers. The first one, the easy one.
[43:22] Speaker 2: Is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal asked President
[43:25] Speaker 2: Trump two weeks ago, who is your closest advisor on
[43:29] Speaker 2: these politico military issues? And his answer was, I don't
[43:34] Speaker 2: have an advisor. I just trust my gut. That is very,
[43:39] Speaker 2: very dangerous. You need a team of rivals. You need
[43:42] Speaker 2: the best and the brightest. You need to surround yourself
[43:45] Speaker 2: with the smartest thinkers on these issues, and he hasn't
[43:49] Speaker 2: done that. That's answer number one. Answer number two is,
[43:54] Speaker 2: over the course of decades, the CIA has been demonstrably
[43:59] Speaker 2: weak in developing human intelligence inside Iran. It's what we
[44:04] Speaker 2: call a denied area, where we can't just walk out
[44:09] Speaker 2: of the American embassy in Tehran and you know, target
[44:13] Speaker 2: some Iranian government official for recruitment, because there is no
[44:16] Speaker 2: American embassy in Iran and there hasn't been since nineteen
[44:18] Speaker 2: seventy nine, and so we rely on liaison services, which
[44:25] Speaker 2: really means Mosad. Now, if there's one thing Mosad's really
[44:30] Speaker 2: really great at, it's targeting intelligence because they'll recruit every
[44:35] Speaker 2: Afghan refugee in the country and give them ten dollars
[44:38] Speaker 2: a month to just tell them where the generals live,
[44:42] Speaker 2: where the nuclear scientists live, so they know where to
[44:45] Speaker 2: target the cruise missiles. On the other hand, the intelligence
[44:52] Speaker 2: that they get on the day to day operation of
[44:56] Speaker 2: the Iranian government, on the policies of the Iranian government
[45:04] Speaker 2: largely come from Iranian Jews who live in the West,
[45:09] Speaker 2: or from the Mujahadina Hulk the MEK, which until the
[45:13] Speaker 2: Obama administration was was a terrorist group listed on the
[45:17] Speaker 2: State Department's list of International Terrorist Groups, which had murdered
[45:23] Speaker 2: an American ambassador in Tehran in the seventies and attempted
[45:26] Speaker 2: to murder an American general in the seventies. But now
[45:29] Speaker 2: we're friends with them because they hate the Iranians and
[45:32] Speaker 2: they're taking Israeli funding. Well, the Majaidina e Hulk has
[45:37] Speaker 2: a vested interest in the United States going to war
[45:40] Speaker 2: in Iran because they want to lead Iran. And so
[45:45] Speaker 2: you know, we got ourselves into this with bad intelligence
[45:48] Speaker 2: and bad policy and no exit strategy. One final point,
[45:54] Speaker 2: the president, it was my experience at the CIA that
[45:59] Speaker 2: the people who most wanted to stay out of war
[46:05] Speaker 2: were the members of the Joint chiefs of Staff at
[46:08] Speaker 2: the Pentagon. Those people who have seen war are the
[46:13] Speaker 2: least likely to want to go fight it again. And
[46:16] Speaker 2: so what President Tump Trump did over the last year
[46:19] Speaker 2: was he fired all the generals on the on the
[46:22] Speaker 2: Joint chiefs of Staff and replaced them with his own
[46:25] Speaker 2: hand picked people who were perfectly happy to accept Israeli
[46:29] Speaker 2: intelligence and go to war in Iran.
[46:32] Speaker 1: So like now now we've got a big problem. I mean, yeah,
[46:34] Speaker 1: we're feeling it here Australia, of course, because report eighty
[46:37] Speaker 1: percent of our petrol and oil and etcetera. You guys
[46:42] Speaker 1: are a lot more self sustaining. But how do we
[46:45] Speaker 1: say the end of this? I mean, what's his why out?
[46:48] Speaker 2: I'm going to give you two answers. My own personal
[46:50] Speaker 2: answer is, having watched President Trump all these years, I
[46:55] Speaker 2: think that we're going to wake up one morning and
[46:57] Speaker 2: we're going to see a posting on truth so in
[47:00] Speaker 2: which he just announces that we won. The War's over,
[47:04] Speaker 2: we won. I'm bringing the troops home. We're going to
[47:08] Speaker 2: have a big military parade on Constitution Avenue. Congratulations to
[47:13] Speaker 2: our victorious heroes in the military. Thank you for your
[47:17] Speaker 2: attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, President of the
[47:21] Speaker 2: United States. I really believe that he's just going to
[47:23] Speaker 2: declare victory and come home. But I was at a
[47:26] Speaker 2: dinner last week with several professors, full professors who are
[47:34] Speaker 2: also part time advisors paid advisors to the Pentagon leadership,
[47:41] Speaker 2: and they are genuinely concerned that the Israelis are going
[47:46] Speaker 2: to use a nuclear weapon. Whoa that you know that
[47:50] Speaker 2: the Iranians the Iranians have proven to be far tougher
[47:54] Speaker 2: than anybody expected, anybody who's you know, blind, deaf and
[47:58] Speaker 2: dumb anyway, And they really believed that the Iranian government
[48:04] Speaker 2: was a house of cards, where as soon as we
[48:06] Speaker 2: fired the first rocket, the whole thing would collapse. These
[48:10] Speaker 2: democrats would rise up and everybody would live happily ever after.
[48:15] Speaker 2: And that hasn't happened. And not only has that not happened,
[48:19] Speaker 2: but the iron Dome hasn't been so iron after all.
[48:24] Speaker 2: Just this weekend, the Iranians were able to bomb Demona,
[48:27] Speaker 2: which is where the Israelis enrich their own uranium for
[48:32] Speaker 2: their own nuclear weapons, which apparently we can neither confirm
[48:36] Speaker 2: nor deny the existence of Israelis are being killed. We
[48:41] Speaker 2: have no idea how many, because it's now a crime
[48:44] Speaker 2: punishable by up to ten years in prison if you
[48:46] Speaker 2: reveal any bomb damage assessment information, including the number of
[48:52] Speaker 2: Israeli casualties. So how do we get out of this?
[48:57] Speaker 2: If we decide just to come home, where does that
[49:00] Speaker 2: leave the Israelis? It leaves the Israelis standing alone, and
[49:03] Speaker 2: they can't abide that. And so these professors believe that
[49:08] Speaker 2: there's this real danger of the Israelis finally using a
[49:12] Speaker 2: nuclear weapon.
[49:13] Speaker 1: I think what the professors are saying is that if
[49:16] Speaker 1: US pulls out, Israel can't be sort of standing there
[49:19] Speaker 1: naked in the region on its own, So it's got
[49:22] Speaker 1: to do something that sort of completes the mission, and
[49:25] Speaker 1: doing something that's quite devastating.
[49:27] Speaker 2: I think that's it right there.
[49:29] Speaker 1: There is some logic associated with that. I'm not saying
[49:32] Speaker 1: there's no ethics associated with it, but there's definitely some
[49:35] Speaker 1: logic associated with that process. What happened. I mean, you're
[49:40] Speaker 1: someone who's been living in this world for a long time.
[49:43] Speaker 1: You know when something seems far fetched or something you know,
[49:45] Speaker 1: maybe close to reality, does your heart skip a beat
[49:49] Speaker 1: when you hear something like that.
[49:51] Speaker 2: I was shocked when I heard it, To tell you
[49:53] Speaker 2: the truth, because I respect these guys. I've known them
[49:55] Speaker 2: for decades, and these are serious thinkers. But they were
[50:01] Speaker 2: adamant that nuclear weapons are the final taboo, and that
[50:07] Speaker 2: part of the Israeli calculation is if they break that taboo,
[50:12] Speaker 2: it'll free up other countries to use nuclear weapons, which
[50:16] Speaker 2: might not be a bad thing. And I said, how
[50:19] Speaker 2: is using a nuclear weapon not a bad thing? And
[50:22] Speaker 2: the response was fascinating. One of them said to me,
[50:27] Speaker 2: we're not talking about North Korea in this conversation. Do
[50:31] Speaker 2: you know why? Because North Korea has a nuclear weapon,
[50:34] Speaker 2: so nobody is going to mess with North Korea. The
[50:38] Speaker 2: only reason that the United States and Israel attacked Iran
[50:42] Speaker 2: is because they didn't yet have a nuclear weapon. If
[50:45] Speaker 2: they had, there would have been no war because that
[50:48] Speaker 2: would have been the deterrent.
[50:49] Speaker 1: Wow, that makes sense. Yeah, does that makes a lot
[50:52] Speaker 1: of sense another way. But the very reason why they
[50:56] Speaker 1: were justifying attacking Iran is because they thought they might
[50:59] Speaker 1: have nuclear capability, But in fact the opposite applies, because
[51:03] Speaker 1: they did not have capability. They were attacked exactly. But
[51:08] Speaker 1: what do you think this means for people like you know,
[51:11] Speaker 1: like Putin sitting back watching this, you know, Presidency sitting
[51:15] Speaker 1: back watching this. Countries who do have nuclear weapons. What
[51:18] Speaker 1: do you think that they might if if, for example,
[51:21] Speaker 1: Israel did drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear weapon
[51:25] Speaker 1: on Iran? What are those other countries going to think
[51:29] Speaker 1: to themselves, it's now Would they think to themselves it's
[51:32] Speaker 1: now okay to do the same.
[51:34] Speaker 2: Absolutely not, because at that point they've won that The
[51:40] Speaker 2: United States, the United States already is the only country
[51:43] Speaker 2: in the history of the planet to use a nuclear weapon,
[51:45] Speaker 2: and we've done it twice. If we did it a
[51:48] Speaker 2: third time, or allowed the Israelis to do it, I
[51:52] Speaker 2: mean that that's going to be the end of the
[51:54] Speaker 2: American Empire. It really would be. We have a satirical
[51:58] Speaker 2: people here in the United States called the UN in
[52:01] Speaker 2: very funny newspaper, and they had a headline last week
[52:07] Speaker 2: Chinee is happy to sit back and watch us destroy itself.
[52:12] Speaker 2: And that's really I think what we're seeing right now.
[52:15] Speaker 1: We have you. In our country, we have two groups
[52:19] Speaker 1: who are, let's say, the equivalent to with the organization
[52:22] Speaker 1: you work for CIA. One's called a z oh and
[52:24] Speaker 1: the other one's called Asis. And in our country they're
[52:28] Speaker 1: extraordinarily secretive. No one I've never met anyone who works
[52:31] Speaker 1: for him. We don't hear much about him. Every now
[52:33] Speaker 1: and then the head will come out and say, make
[52:35] Speaker 1: a few statements about terrorism in Australia or the the
[52:37] Speaker 1: you know, the bubbling up of terrorism in Australia. And
[52:40] Speaker 1: of course we had recently had a problem in Bondai,
[52:43] Speaker 1: which you would have heard about. What experience did you
[52:46] Speaker 1: ever have with our Australian intelligence community, if at any at.
[52:51] Speaker 2: All, almost none. Of course, Australia is a member of
[52:55] Speaker 2: five Eyes like the United States is, along with Canada,
[52:58] Speaker 2: the UK and New Zealand. You know, I never visited
[53:03] Speaker 2: Australia while I was with the CIA. Never came a
[53:06] Speaker 2: single time. I can count my meetings with Australian intelligence
[53:11] Speaker 2: officials on these two fingers over the course of a
[53:14] Speaker 2: fifteen year career. But you know, it was always my
[53:17] Speaker 2: understanding that the Australians were far more interested in China, yeah,
[53:21] Speaker 2: than they were in the area where I was, whether
[53:24] Speaker 2: it was you know, European it's quaint now, but European
[53:26] Speaker 2: communist terrorism or the Middle East. I just never really
[53:32] Speaker 2: encountered them.
[53:33] Speaker 1: But do you think that Australia needs to aim up
[53:37] Speaker 1: a bit more because you know, we get a lot
[53:39] Speaker 1: of criticism around the world, rightly or wrongly, to say
[53:43] Speaker 1: that we don't spend enough money on our defense. You know.
[53:48] Speaker 1: And by the way, you know this five percent of
[53:50] Speaker 1: GDP sort of formula, and that's floating around the world.
[53:53] Speaker 1: We spend nowhere near that. Yeah, we spent nowhere near
[53:55] Speaker 1: that in Australia. Do you have any advice for Australians
[53:59] Speaker 1: or we should be thinking about and Josebell government.
[54:04] Speaker 2: If I were in a position where my opinion actually
[54:08] Speaker 2: had some heft behind it, I would say ignore this
[54:15] Speaker 2: five percent number. It's economically untenable over the long term.
[54:21] Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. When President Trump was in his
[54:23] Speaker 2: first term, there was only one country in NATO besides
[54:27] Speaker 2: the United States that spent two percent of GDP on defense.
[54:31] Speaker 2: That was Greece because they're petrified of Turkey. Now we've
[54:36] Speaker 2: got this five percent number floating around here in the
[54:39] Speaker 2: United States. We have a thirty two trillion dollar trillion
[54:44] Speaker 2: with a t trillion dollar national debt. The Chinese own
[54:50] Speaker 2: a plurality of that debt, and so we just keep
[54:55] Speaker 2: selling the Chinese more long term government bonds. If they
[54:58] Speaker 2: really wanted to just come completely collapse the economy, they
[55:02] Speaker 2: would just sell sell the bonds and and for all
[55:06] Speaker 2: intents and purposes, the American economy would cease to exist.
[55:10] Speaker 2: So over the long term, I just think that no
[55:13] Speaker 2: country is able to keep this this up. Australia should
[55:17] Speaker 2: do what's right for Australia, regardless of of American political pressure.
[55:23] Speaker 2: And you know, Australia is also blessed like the United
[55:25] Speaker 2: States is with with oceans, and so we we have
[55:31] Speaker 2: oceans that help to protect us. Now listen, I'm not
[55:36] Speaker 2: I'm not a knaife. I understand that that you know,
[55:39] Speaker 2: China is a strategic threat, that North Korea might be
[55:42] Speaker 2: a strategic threat. That Australia is going to have to
[55:46] Speaker 2: work with Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and
[55:49] Speaker 2: Thailand and others to to you know, make the South
[55:53] Speaker 2: Pacific as as safe as possible. But it's not the
[55:57] Speaker 2: Chinese who have a history of hegemony in the region.
[56:02] Speaker 2: They just don't the Chinese, you know, except for Tibet
[56:06] Speaker 2: aside and a handful of little border skirmishes with the
[56:09] Speaker 2: Indians and the Vietnamese, the Chinese don't invade other countries.
[56:15] Speaker 2: The United States invades other countries.
[56:17] Speaker 1: What about Taiwan.
[56:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the Chinese really believe that Taiwan
[56:23] Speaker 2: will someday be reunited with the mainland. But I think
[56:28] Speaker 2: the Chinese are the Chinese have a very long view.
[56:31] Speaker 2: It's a five thousand year old civilization. I think that
[56:34] Speaker 2: they are willing to willing to look at this like
[56:40] Speaker 2: the Hong Kong model rather than you know, the invasion
[56:45] Speaker 2: and occupation model. It just doesn't make sense for them
[56:48] Speaker 2: to do.
[56:49] Speaker 1: It's interesting that when you look at the various news
[56:52] Speaker 1: media's not so much here in Australia, our local ones,
[56:56] Speaker 1: but you know we also watch you know, San Anne Fox,
[57:00] Speaker 1: blah blah, all the rest of them, at least I
[57:01] Speaker 1: do here in Australia. We tend to get hyped up
[57:07] Speaker 1: by media, and media tends to lead us down a path.
[57:11] Speaker 1: It's like it's their agenda. It's not a real agenda.
[57:14] Speaker 1: It's their agenda. They want us to believe that, and
[57:16] Speaker 1: it's nearly like they know who does believe that. Therefore
[57:19] Speaker 1: they feed us more and more. It's nearly like they're
[57:21] Speaker 1: doing data. They're nearly profiling us like you used to
[57:24] Speaker 1: profile your potential recruits. They're profiling us as potential recruits
[57:29] Speaker 1: to watch their show, and they want to retain us,
[57:31] Speaker 1: so they keep feeding us the same stuff over and
[57:33] Speaker 1: over again, and every now and then I've got to
[57:35] Speaker 1: give myself an uppercut and say, Mark, what are you doing?
[57:38] Speaker 1: Turn the channel, watch the other side, watch the other view,
[57:41] Speaker 1: and then the other view. Though, by the way, is
[57:43] Speaker 1: the opposite view. But it's just filling me up with
[57:45] Speaker 1: the opposite views. It's not giving me both sides of
[57:47] Speaker 1: the both sides of the argument. Are we being led
[57:49] Speaker 1: down a garden path by our media outlets today? Because
[57:52] Speaker 1: it seems to be more divided than I've ever seen
[57:54] Speaker 1: before as politics is. Are we being led down the
[57:57] Speaker 1: garden path by our media?
[57:58] Speaker 2: I think we are. I struggle with the same things.
[58:01] Speaker 2: Mark It's people ask me all the time, where do
[58:06] Speaker 2: you get your news? And the answer and I hate
[58:08] Speaker 2: to say it, but is I get it everywhere? Because
[58:11] Speaker 2: you can't trust just one or even two or even
[58:15] Speaker 2: five outlets. You have to get it from everywhere and
[58:19] Speaker 2: then immerse yourself in the information to the point where
[58:22] Speaker 2: you can make an educated analytic conclusion. So I start
[58:28] Speaker 2: off with the Washington Post, the New York Times, the
[58:31] Speaker 2: La Times, the Times of London, and Wall Street Journal,
[58:34] Speaker 2: my hometown paper, just for the sports. And then I
[58:38] Speaker 2: go to Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, then Al Jazeera.
[58:44] Speaker 2: I do a couple of the smaller Middle Eastern outlets,
[58:47] Speaker 2: But your hours every day just immersing yourself in the news,
[58:52] Speaker 2: hoping to get bits and pieces. I do the Jerusalem
[58:55] Speaker 2: Post and Haaretz every morning. I have subscriptions to both.
[58:59] Speaker 2: You can't trust anyone outlet. You have to trust in
[59:04] Speaker 2: yourself and then trust in your ability to make that
[59:06] Speaker 2: analysis makes sense in your own position.
[59:13] Speaker 1: But most of us don't have that analyst training like
[59:16] Speaker 1: you do, and probably maybe we don't have time, and
[59:19] Speaker 1: we probably can't speak the languages of some of these outlets.
[59:23] Speaker 1: And therefore, which is why, by the way, I got
[59:26] Speaker 1: quite excited when we have the opportunity to interview you,
[59:29] Speaker 1: because you bring to the table not only your analytical views,
[59:34] Speaker 1: but you're also being bringing strong views with experience sitting
[59:38] Speaker 1: behind it and give us us here in Australia at
[59:41] Speaker 1: least perspective about someone who's been in the scrum in
[59:45] Speaker 1: the scramble like you literally have been in there and
[59:48] Speaker 1: come out the other end still life. That's really important
[59:51] Speaker 1: to Australian audience. And you know, we've got a big
[59:54] Speaker 1: audience who love listening to this, but most of us struggle. Yeah,
[1:00:00] Speaker 1: do you think that for the future we perhaps should
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: stop listening to media outlets and just maybe take no
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: view and just live our lives and just assume everything's
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: going to be okay, or is that dangerous because we're
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: then handing ourselves over to our politicians and or the system,
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: which you know, you know how it can work against you.
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: That then then it's it's it's a problem. It's a
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: bit of a quandary. I don't know which way to go.
[1:00:28] Speaker 1: What would you.
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: Say, it is a quandary. What I what I've done
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: for a few years now is I've I've begun following
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: people I respect on Twitter x and relying on them
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: to give me the news that they think is important.
[1:00:48] Speaker 2: So I'm getting the whole mainstream view from the mainstream outlets.
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: But then I know, for example, that Alexander mccuriz at
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: the Duran knows everything that's happening in Ukraine, for example,
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: or that Max Blumenthal at the Grey Zone knows everything
[1:01:08] Speaker 2: that's happening in Iran. Right now, I have some friends
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: who cover Latin America and I trust them. I know
[1:01:15] Speaker 2: how honest they are and what great analysts they are.
[1:01:17] Speaker 2: So maybe maybe one of the things that you can do,
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: or that any anybody can do, is to identify people
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: who really are seeking the truth without a political agenda
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: and follow them.
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: So maybe you could just mention those times again so
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: we talked about X. Give me someone who you would
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: look at in relation to say Middle East.
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: Oh, Max, Max Blumenthal or Aaron Mattey, m ate, they're
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: both terrific writers and analysts, just excellent. Gideon Levy at
[1:01:51] Speaker 2: Haretz in Israel is one of the clearest thinkers on
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: these issues that I've ever encountered, and is not afraid
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: of his own government. He just wants the truth of
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: a story. He's fantastic. I do follow Al Jazera just
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: because I know so many of them met Ol Jazeera
[1:02:13] Speaker 2: and you can't rely on them for news about the
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: golf because they're owned by the government of cutter But
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: on the Arab Israeli dispute, they're terrific.
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: It's interesting. I've been watching a good friend of mine
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: who I walk with every weekend. He's an older gentleman,
[1:02:29] Speaker 1: and he and I were talking about this on the
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: weekend and both of us concluded that we no longer
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: just watch Fox. We also now turn to CNN, and
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: we no longer just watch CNN, We now go to
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: ol Jazeerra. Yeah, I just want to go back to
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: one point. They just go right back. John Kiriaku absolutely
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: besotted with what was going in the Middle East. Young
[1:02:51] Speaker 1: young want to be a spy, got the opportunity to
[1:02:53] Speaker 1: do that, was not only curious, but wanted to try
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: and solve things through. Being a great analyst has some
[1:03:01] Speaker 1: great outcomes when you were young, enthusiastic, curious, energetic, and
[1:03:08] Speaker 1: at that stage not let's call it not poisoned or
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: tormented by what was actually going on. In ethical sense,
[1:03:16] Speaker 1: what do you how do you feel reckoned? How do
[1:03:18] Speaker 1: you reconcile the John Kireko today with that particular person.
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: I've changed dramatically in the intervening years, not just because
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: I'm so much older and more worldly, more mature, but
[1:03:31] Speaker 2: my core, my core beliefs about my own government have changed.
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: You know. I used to think that it was just
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: so easy, so clear. There are good guys and bad guys,
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: and we're the good guys, and that's just not Life
[1:03:50] Speaker 2: is not that clear cut. It's not that simple. And
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: I've also come around on the idea of foreign interventions.
[1:03:59] Speaker 2: I made my bones at the CIA with the Iraqi
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and I went into Kuwait
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: City with Marines on liberation Day, February seventeenth, nineteen ninety one.
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: It was formative for me. But then you know, when
[1:04:14] Speaker 2: we attacked Iraq in two thousand and three, that's when
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: I really began my transformation. That was a war of choice.
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: We all knew that the Iraqi government had literally nothing
[1:04:29] Speaker 2: to do with nine to eleven, literally nothing that was
[1:04:31] Speaker 2: a lie that was being fed to the American people.
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: We knew that the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction.
[1:04:37] Speaker 2: I sat in on the meetings where the analysts were
[1:04:40] Speaker 2: practically killing each other. The Department of Energy said, yes,
[1:04:44] Speaker 2: there are there are weapons of mass destruction chemical weapons,
[1:04:47] Speaker 2: and the CIA said, no, there are none. There were none.
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: We knew there were none, and so I began to
[1:04:53] Speaker 2: change my point of view in two thousand and two.
[1:04:56] Speaker 2: It really changed by two thousand and three, and now
[1:05:02] Speaker 2: I can't even think of a righteous war that's taking
[1:05:05] Speaker 2: place anywhere in the world right now.
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: Wow, this has been an amazing conversation. And I want
[1:05:12] Speaker 1: to say to you, look, CALLISTULLI, thank you very much.
[1:05:16] Speaker 1: Who Kali Tiki s sna and pieces pieces. Basically, I
[1:05:23] Speaker 1: said good luck to you, and you know I want
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: you to I wish him many years. In other words,
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: you know, the best for him for the future. And
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: I appreciate your I really appreciate your honest seeing you,
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: your straightforwardness and uh and I dare say our audience
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: is going to love this.
[1:05:38] Speaker 2: But thanks very much, thank you so much, Thanks for
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: the opportunity. It's great to meet you.

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