Trust us, former CIA spy and counter-terrorism chief John Kiriakou’s life is far more fascinating than the majority of what's on Netflix. And even if you don’t immediately recognize his name, you are definitely aware of his impact.
For 15 years John worked in the highest levels of US intelligence and government, advising war-time Presidents, military leaders, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and even serving as a CIA spy in field operations overseas. After 9/11, he personally led the first successful counter-terrorism raid in Pakistan to capture the highest ranking Al Queda official to date.
Shortly thereafter however, John Kiriakou gained international scrutiny as a CIA whistle-blower, intentionally confirming to a global audience via ABC News that the US was violating our own stated ethical beliefs, and international law, by illegally torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay through water-boarding. This principled stand led John’s former employer to charge him with espionage, and forced him to serve two years in prison even as the truth of illegal US water-boarding became common knowledge and independently confirmed.
From being a CIA spy, to a middle east expert, author, speaker, film consultant, and even a prisonor battling the very national-security behemoth he once loyally served, John Kiriakou has led one of the more amazing lives imaginable, and his knowledge on fascinating and complex topics is as deep as it is rare.
Please join us in this conversation as former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou gives us invaluable insight into the way the national-security apparatus operates, accesses the current middle east flashpoints, and tells some great stories in between. And then, make sure to check out John’s excellent daily news podcast “Political Misfits” for a non-partisan take on domestic and geo-politics by signing up for his substack here:
John’s Substack “Loud and Clear with John Kiriakou”
This is a link to his radio show:
Here's where you can buy all his books here:
And please remember to share this episode with a friend. Thanks for listening!
Trust us, former CIA spy and counter-terrorism chief John Kiriakou’s life is far more fascinating than the majority of what's on Netflix. And even if you don’t immediately recognize his name, you are definitely aware of his impact.
For 15 years John worked in the highest levels of US intelligence and government, advising war-time Presidents, military leaders, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and even serving as a CIA spy in field operations overseas. After 9/11, he personally led the first successful counter-terrorism raid in Pakistan to capture the highest ranking Al Queda official to date.
Shortly thereafter however, John Kiriakou gained international scrutiny as a CIA whistle-blower, intentionally confirming to a global audience via ABC News that the US was violating our own stated ethical beliefs, and international law, by illegally torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay through water-boarding. This principled stand led John’s former employer to charge him with espionage, and forced him to serve two years in prison even as the truth of illegal US water-boarding became common knowledge and independently confirmed.
From being a CIA spy, to a middle east expert, author, speaker, film consultant, and even a prisonor battling the very national-security behemoth he once loyally served, John Kiriakou has led one of the more amazing lives imaginable, and his knowledge on fascinating and complex topics is as deep as it is rare.
Please join us in this conversation as former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou gives us invaluable insight into the way the national-security apparatus operates, accesses the current middle east flashpoints, and tells some great stories in between. And then, make sure to check out John’s excellent daily news podcast “Political Misfits” for a non-partisan take on domestic and geo-politics by signing up for his substack here:
John’s Substack “Loud and Clear with John Kiriakou”
This is a link to his radio show:
Here's where you can buy all his books here:
And please remember to share this episode with a friend. Thanks for listening!
John Kiriakou: Iraq invades Kuwait. I get into the office around 7:00 AM As soon as I walk in, my boss says, don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House. Now. I was 25 years old. We get in a car, we go to the White House, they usher us in to the freaking Oval Office. Here's the president, the vice President, the National Security Advisor, the director of the CIA.
John Kiriakou: My boss and me and we sit down. I'm a nervous wreck. So the president says, this was George HW Bush. He says, well, now what do we do? And everybody turns and looks at me.
James Duncan: Welcome back to the Independent Riot, everyone. Not right, not left. just trying to be real. And we have got the perfect guest to fulfill that promise for you today. He's probably one of the most credentialed and fascinating guests that we've had the luxury to talk to so far on the independent riot.
James Duncan: If you don't immediately recognize his name, you're definitely going to recognize his impact on the world stage because John Kiriakou was a CIA Spy, he worked at the CIA for 15 years, part of that time as an analyst, then moved into operations rose up to being counter terrorism chief in Pakistan post 9 11 and actually personally led the raid that caught the number three ranking Al Qaeda Abu Zubaydah, that was the biggest terrorist catch post 9 11.
James Duncan: Shortly after that, though, John had a principled stand against the waterboarding torture techniques that were being used against detainees in Guantanamo Bay and other black sites and became a whistleblower against the [00:02:00] CIA. Bringing the full weight of the Obama administration and CIA director John Brennan down on his head, forcing him to serve a two year prison sentence.
James Duncan: So, John has lived a life that has included being a Middle East expert, a valued advisor to wartime sitting presidents and generals and senators to a CIA spy, a counterterrorism chief, a whistleblower, and a prison inmate. And If that wasn't enough, he's also been a consultant on many movies and films, talking to everyone from Oliver Stone to consulting for Sasha Baron Cohen on the Bruno movie.
James Duncan: It's a fascinating, amazing resume, and we're extremely lucky. To have john here for a little bit of time to give us insight into Some of the ways that the cia and the national security apparatus actually works. It's invaluable insight that Really only he and a few other people in the world can probably give to us So if you like the conversation with john today, I definitely encourage you to listen to other podcasts he's been on because it's all fascinating, but then most important, subscribe to his sub stack, which will be linked in the show notes below.
James Duncan: So you can get his articles and listen to his daily domestic and geopolitical talk show that he's got every day called political misfits that if you're looking for a daily. Unbiased, independent thinking briefing of the world events of world events. That's the show to listen to political misfits that'll be linked in the show notes as well.
James Duncan: And now without further ado, let's get [00:04:00] into and a conversation I'm extremely excited for with the author, speaker, spy turned. Whistleblower turned inmate turned journalist. The amazing storyteller, John. John, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Your life is one of the most fascinating lives I've heard of that.
James Duncan: The independent riots been kind of going down more and more of a rabbit hole of. Military industrial complex history of the CIA, national security apparatus, all that kind of stuff. So I wanted to get your more, your, your experience and insight on that. However, then once I started to actually listen to your interviews, Mike.
James Duncan: God, you have got some fascinating stories there. I started to make notes of things to to ask you about, and it just got ridiculous. It was like everything from Al Qaeda raids to how rendition teams work, planes full of guns and money consulting with Sasha Baron Cohen on Bruno. What happened to Abu Zubaydah's eyeball?
James Duncan: How we almost invaded Iran. My favorite, mackerel as a currency in prison. It's, we aren't going to cover all of that, although yeah, I would love to, to hear, but maybe for people that are not familiar with your working career story at the CIA and what happened, could you kind of give the, the overview of that real quick?
John Kiriakou: Yeah, I spent 15 years in the CIA. The first half of my career was in analysis, specifically on Iraq served overseas as an analyst and then got bored. After seven years and made a very unusual switch to counterterrorism operations, I, I spoke [00:06:00] Arabic and and Greek. And so I did my first operational overseas tour in Athens, working against Arab terrorist groups and and domestic Greek communist.
John Kiriakou: Terrorists went back to headquarters, 9 11 hit, and then I became the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. After 9 11, I left the CIA in 2014 and briefly went into the private sector for four years. Then I went into the Senate foreign relations committee as the chief investigator.
John Kiriakou: In the interim, in late 2007, I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program, which I believed was patently illegal. And and the Obama administration came down hard on me. I fought them off as long as I could, but I ended up doing 23 months in prison. I would do every day of it again, if I had to do it over again.
John Kiriakou: And you know, it's funny. I always thought I would end up, you know, spending my whole career at the CIA or the Foreign Service or Capitol Hill. Instead, I'm in journalism, I'm an activist, and It's funny to me that it's the CIA and the Justice Department's determination to go after me that's kind of made me famous.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. I've written eight books and got my own TV show and every day I do a radio show. It's all worked out nicely. And it fascinates
James Duncan: me the how that must have been for you going from being a career CIA working at the CIA agent. And then determining on principle, as well as I believe, weren't you a little bit concerned that you were going to be a scapegoat that prompted you to actually on ABC News in front of the entire country, state what was going on and [00:08:00] implicate the CIA and the president is knowing, yeah, the balls that that takes has got to, like, I mean, that's a, that's amazing.
John Kiriakou: It was either balls or it was rocks in my head. Even , I'm not
James Duncan: sure which one. Well, I was gonna ask for more clarity. Like what does that your mindset like be you make up your mind to do it. I understand fairly quickly when a, b, C news contacted you, but like, are you not sleeping the entire night before you go on a, b, c news?
James Duncan: Do you know what you're about to do? Or is it kinda. More. It just kind of develops in the moment. Do you realize the ramifications? I guess
John Kiriakou: I didn't realize the ramifications And the reason I didn't realize the ramifications it is that is that pretty much everything I said was already out there Which is why I was not prosecuted in the beginning.
John Kiriakou: Okay, I determined that I had not revealed any classified information It's because the International Committee of the Red Cross Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had all issued reports I was saying exactly what I had said, that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.
John Kiriakou: S. government policy, and the policy likely had been approved by the president. I confirmed all those three things. And so I wasn't saying anything new, but what I didn't fully appreciate at the time was that I was the first current or former CIA officer to confirm all of those allegations. Right. Okay.
John Kiriakou: But nobody had ever said. Yeah, those allegations are true
James Duncan: in that in it's in and of itself was illegal or what they claim was, that's what
John Kiriakou: the Obama administration, the Bush administration elected to not prosecute me because they said that it, that it was not classified. It was out there. Okay. The Obama administration went back, reopened the case against me.
John Kiriakou: Wow. [00:10:00] Prosecuted me. Yeah. Now
James Duncan: that's another thing. I'm kind of under the big umbrella of trying to get a more cause I think a lot of people hear these stories, but because CIA, the military national security, it's all obviously a lot of it's murky how it works by design. But then also, yeah, it's just extremely complex.
James Duncan: So, like, for me, I wonder, like, is that, did they reopen it because of a specific person or a couple of people, or was it, so it was, like, it comes down to personal dislike,
John Kiriakou: or? Welcome to Washington. Okay. So after my arrest in 2012, my attorneys received 15, 000 pages of classified discovery. In those 15, 000 pages, we found a series of, of memos.
John Kiriakou: It was a memo from John Brennan, who later became the CIA director at the time was the deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism. John and I went back to the eighties, right? We were Never friendly. Brennan wrote a memo to Eric Holder, the attorney general saying, charge him with espionage.
John Kiriakou: Holder wrote back and said, my people don't think he committed espionage. And Brennan wrote back and said, charge him anyway and make him defend himself. They charged me. three counts of espionage for that ABC News interview and a subsequent interview I did with the New York Times. And what they did, it's an old, it's an old prosecutor's trick.
John Kiriakou: They waited until I went bankrupt. And then they came back and said, we'll drop all the charges if you plead guilty to a lesser charge. So what are you going to do? I already owed my lawyers 1. 1 million. Wow. Yeah. That I'll never be able to repay. I still got your 880, 000. Yeah. So what do you do? I had five kids.
John Kiriakou: [00:12:00] You take a deal to make the thing go away.
James Duncan: So is there in that situation, obviously like you, it is a average American like I would assume or hope there would be somebody That you could, somebody could rally to your side to basically stem that or, but there's just not when it gets to be when somebody that powerful is pissed off at you.
James Duncan: Yeah, because everybody just, I was going to ask, did your former colleagues, people that you were friendly with at the CIA, did they basically just kind of stop answering your phone calls or?
John Kiriakou: That's a good question. Several of them. More than several rallied behind me. A handful of former bosses of mine could not have been any more generous, any more helpful, sending checks for my lawyers, helping to take care of my kids.
John Kiriakou: Really great job leads for, you know, for my wife and me really, really great. One retired deputy director of the CIA. It sent me an email the day, the day of my arrest. And he said, he said, you've chosen a difficult road. I only wish that I had had the guts to do it myself. Wow. And I saved it as a, as a souvenir to remind myself, you know, on those down days that I did the right thing.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. And the truth is, you know, you work with people for 15 years, they know who you are in, in, in their hearts rather. And the ones that you were close to are going to remain close to you. And the ones who didn't like or respect you are going to, are going to walk. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that doesn't have to be you.
John Kiriakou: Specific to the CIA, that, that just happens in life. Yeah. So there were, there were no surprises. Let me put it that way. Okay. [00:14:00] Yeah. I knew who I could count on and who I couldn't.
James Duncan: Yeah. I can't even imagine that the, the difficulty. Yeah. I mean, that just seems surreal, both from a the, the shakeup of your personal life, career, everything, but then also because it's on such a.
James Duncan: national or even global stage that with the implications then also of having to fight or be concerned like that, it, the legal problems are going to get worse if you do the wrong thing. So glad you made it through it. And yeah, came out better on the other end. Yeah, right. What so now I've got kind of some dumb questions again in the the umbrella of how the CIA and national security state works basically.
James Duncan: So dumb that I would just like to ask you some questions like how many people work at the CIA?
John Kiriakou: Ah, that's classified actually. Okay.
James Duncan: Yeah. No wonder I can't find it. Security secret. Okay. Can you give any, is it like thousand, like 10? Well I'll preface it with this is where I was kind of started wondering is there was something that was released I think about a year or two years ago about Nash about security clearances in the U S and the number was around 4 million.
James Duncan: I think. And then it obviously, as you go up, I don't completely understand how that works, but the, the top is most level of security. I think it got down to like a million or something. That still seems like a hell of a lot of people that are involved. Yeah. Okay. But
John Kiriakou: most of those, a majority of those people are contractors.
John Kiriakou: Okay. They're, they're private. They're, they're employees of private companies that do. Classified business. Mostly with the Pentagon. Okay.
James Duncan: And yeah, I was actually going to ask about that as well. Like, I mean, [00:16:00] how, so obviously that's massive. Is there any any ballpark anyone has of an idea of how many of those private contracting
John Kiriakou: firms there are?
John Kiriakou: Yeah. The Washington post did a piece. I'm going to say it was a series of pieces, let's say three or four years ago. Okay. In which they said there was something like 2, 200 that were, that were permitted by the government to what's called hold or maintain security clearances. For example, if If you work for yourself, you're a sole contractor, right?
John Kiriakou: And you get a classified contract or you're awarded somehow a classified contract. You have to have some sort of an association with a company that can hold that security clearance, hold the clearance. They have to have a security officer who's cleared. They have to have a vault space where you can have a classified conversation.
John Kiriakou: Okay. There are different. There are different provisos that have to be met before you can actually. Okay.
James Duncan: And that sort of leads into my next question on, and you might not be able to answer this of the mechanics of the way this works is, all right, I'm trying to visualize working at the CIA without knowing, do you picture in a huge building you know, lots of hundreds of people working in maybe thousands Is it so do you know, as a person, an analyst or a operations person working at the CIA full time, do you know, or is there anyone that knows everything that's going on?
John Kiriakou: Very few people. You can count them on three hands. Wow. So, [00:18:00] you know, the, the idea of the need to know. Yeah. Very, very important. I don't care how high your clearances are. If you don't have a specific need to know about an operation, you're not going to know. Okay. It wasn't until the end of my career when I was the, the deputy director's executive assistant that I finally had access to everything that the CIA was doing.
John Kiriakou: And I'll tell you something crazy. There was one. Specific compartment. I was read into six or eight compartments above top secret. That were, that were very closely held, extraordinarily sensitive operations around the world. And there was a development one day in one of these compartments, I was briefing the deputy director for operations.
John Kiriakou: And all of the associate deputy directors, operations, intelligence, science and technology administration, counterintelligence, counterterrorism. Right. And the staff. And as soon as I started the briefing, I said, there's a fascinating cable in from the place. And that's all. Those were the only words I got out of my mouth.
John Kiriakou: And the ADDO, the associate deputy director for operations stopped me and said, wait a minute. Not everybody in the room has cleared for that for the deputy directors of the CIA. Yeah, and they weren't cleared for the information
James Duncan: so in I actually remember because I was listening to you telling the story in detail of capturing Abu Zubaydah and You it did surprise me towards the end of that story when he was being taken out by the rendition team You mentioned that that [00:20:00] you weren't even as the person who caught him You weren't even allowed to know where he was going.
James Duncan: No, I
John Kiriakou: didn't need to know. My job was to catch him and turn him over. And that was it. Yeah, wow. And they, they stuck to that. Just like the guy on the rendition team who stopped me that night. He said, John, and I said, who are you? He had a black mask on. I said, who are you? He lifted up his mask and he was my last boss.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. And and I said where are you taking him? And he said, Oh dude, I'm sorry. You don't have a need to know. And I said, yeah, that's cool. And he said, well, who is the guy? And I said, Oh man, I'm sorry. You don't have a need to know. Wow. My job was to catch him. Yeah. Turn him over. His job was to take him from point A to point B.
John Kiriakou: It didn't matter what his name was. Wow. Yeah.
James Duncan: So what, well, that seems to be, it would be need to know who you're transporting to me, but like, so who determines what that, or is it just like, if you were to tell him, then you might be subject to some sort of internal review that determined you did the wrong thing.
James Duncan: Yeah. There would
John Kiriakou: be an internal sanction. I would be investigated by the office of security. I'd probably be called in before a performance board. Okay. You know, you might, you might be denied promotion for a year or two years for a violation like that. And what
James Duncan: is and again, stupid question, but when I people who use the term you're read into a program, is that literally just somebody signing off on something or is it a much bigger?
John Kiriakou: Okay. Bigger than that. So I'll give you an example. On my first day as the, as the the ADDO's executive assistant I walked into the office that morning and I said, so what are we doing? And he says, you know what? I can't tell you. You have to go up to the sixth floor. And I knew what office he meant.
John Kiriakou: You have to go up to the sixth floor and you have to [00:22:00] be read in first and then come back and we'll talk about it. So I go up to the sixth floor and they had six separate secrecy agreements laid out on a desk. And I had to go through each secrecy agreement and promise. To take everything I learned to the grave, never talk about it unless it's specifically declassified.
John Kiriakou: And most of it has been. And then I signed six times each one of the secrecy agreements. And I said, okay, so, so what's up? And then he said, well, number one, we're going to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Number two, we're going to, number three, we're going to do that. Number four. Yeah. So I went back to the office and I said to my boss, I go, we're going to invade Iraq.
John Kiriakou: And he said, I know it's crazy, but. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to invade Iraq. Wow.
James Duncan: So is it difficult or do you just develop sort of a extra sense in your brain and communicating, I guess, maybe you're even practice that as a CIA field operative, operative that of what you can say and what you can't.
James Duncan: Does it sort of get to be second nature where you're not constantly always okay? Well,
John Kiriakou: that's a good question. It does, but it can take years to get to that point. Yeah. Over the course of those years where you're learning. What you can say and what you can't say even internally, you get slapped down a couple of times.
John Kiriakou: Ha! And you, you kind of learn the hard way. I was giving a briefing once. I'd been on the job, I'm gonna say three years, and I was giving a briefing and And I mentioned a location. Now, everybody in the briefing is cleared, right? It's an internal briefing, but I mentioned a location. And during the break, one of the senior officers came up to me and she said, you should never have mentioned that location.
John Kiriakou: They didn't have a need to know the location. And she said, it's a security violation. And I said, my [00:24:00] God, I'm sorry. It never even occurred to me that the location would be, I mean, everybody's cleared. And she said, She said, I know that you just got here. I was in my three year probationary period. She said, I know you just got here.
John Kiriakou: I know you didn't do it on purpose, so I won't report you to security. But I, I mean, here we are 30 years later, still remember all the details of that slap down.
James Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that seems like it, at first it would almost be overwhelming of like you would be too paranoid that you're going to say the wrong thing.
James Duncan: Yeah.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're, you're polygraphed before you get hired after three years and then every five years for the rest of your career. And so it's going to come up in the polygraph. Yeah, forgotten about it. They're going to ask you. An open question. Have you ever exposed, classified information to any person not entitled to receive it, and you have to go back and like, yeah.
John Kiriakou: You know what? In a briefing with the Israelis, I may have said this, or I, I accidentally mentioned to the Brits when I was in a liaison meeting. You know, all this stuff floods back and so you have to try to get through it.
James Duncan: What, was that a big change going from an analyst, obviously the, the jobs you're tasked with are entirely different, but from analyst operations, was that like a.
James Duncan: Like a completely different skillset training that you had to go in through forever. No
John Kiriakou: comparison. Okay. As an analyst, you know, I want, in the beginning I only thought about being an analyst. I kind of considered myself a kind of an intellectual. I was working on my PhD in international affairs. I had a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies and a master's in policy analysis and analysts sort of sit in a cubicle every day.
John Kiriakou: And think the big [00:26:00] thoughts and write the president's daily brief and write policy papers for the president and the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor. And you know, you're the substantive expert on whatever your issue happens to be. And mine was Iraq before, during, and after the first Gulf War.
John Kiriakou: And, you know, it's great. Sometimes you find yourself in a position like August 2nd, 1990, one of the most important days of my life. Iraq invades Kuwait. I get into the office around 7 a. m. As soon as I walk in, my boss says, Don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House. Now, I was 25 years old.
John Kiriakou: We get in a car. We go to the White House. They usher us in to the friggin Oval Office. There's the President, the Vice President. The national security advisor, the director of the CIA, my boss and me, and we sit down. I'm a nervous wreck. And I remember looking around and thinking, my friends would not believe what I was doing right now.
John Kiriakou: So the president says, this was George HW Bush. He says, well, now what do we do? And everybody turns and looks at me. Wow. Yeah. It was that, it was that crazy. Yeah. It was that crazy. Dick Cheney was the one that sort of led the meeting, which was also crazy. He was the one who, at the time Cheney was what was Cheney?
John Kiriakou: He was Secretary of
James Duncan: Defense.
John Kiriakou: Secretary of Defense. He's the one that sort of led the questioning. And it was just. It was one of the most bizarre, like defining events of my career. Now that's a once in a career kind of thing. And when you go into operations, it's [00:28:00] like, it's an entirely different world.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. Whether it's, you know, recruiting spies to steal secrets, which is kind of the basis of, of operations or running covert operations or, or actions or planting bugs or. Videos or liaising with foreign intelligence services or counterterrorism operations, or the most sensitive operations of them all, which are counterintelligence operations.
John Kiriakou: And then within each of those categories, everything is compartmentalized.
James Duncan: And you might not be able to answer this is are there different specialists in each of those categories like within operations or do you do all of that? As an operation.
John Kiriakou: Oh, no, no. There are definitely specialists. Okay. The guy, for example, he was the unlikeliest operations officer.
John Kiriakou: He was kind of a nerd and and you know, an intellectual and he had gone to MIT and. And I'm like, what, what are you doing here? Like, why aren't you a professor somewhere or something? I turned out he was a nuclear scientist. You know, when you're trying to infiltrate, let's say, the North Korean nuclear program, you need people who can talk the talk.
John Kiriakou: I want to know what to say. I'll give you an example. In training, we were doing a training exercise. And these training exercises were absolutely real life, right? In fact, I remember going into the field for the first time and being shocked at how real life was exactly like the training. It was remarkable.
John Kiriakou: So I'm in this training exercise and I'm supposed to be. At a diplomatic cocktail party overseas. So, you know, we're wearing suits, and we're at a restaurant. We had rented this private, you know, back room, and [00:30:00] everybody's got a cocktail, and waiters are walking around with hors d'oeuvres and stuff. It's the real deal.
John Kiriakou: And I walk up to this woman, I say, Hello, how are you? Fine, how are you? I said, I'm, I'm you know, John Kiriakou from the American Embassy. I think that we, we called our country The Republic of Victoria or some, we made up some, some name of some country. So I said, how about you? What do you do for a living?
John Kiriakou: Oh, I work at the port. I said, oh, that's nice. I'm thinking, what do I care about this woman? She's not interesting to me. Oh, what do you do at the port? Oh, I, I process this paperwork. Oh, okay. That's interesting. It's actually not, but I'm trying to be nice. Yeah. And then she, she says something about, Oh, I, I almost missed the party because I had to work late.
John Kiriakou: There's a shipment of trichloromethyl ethylene that, that, you know, didn't have the proper paperwork. Okay. Well, what the fuck do I know? I don't know what that is. Yeah. I was like, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And I walked over to the next guy and my instructors went nuts. They were like, don't you know what that is?
John Kiriakou: I said, no, that's the precursor chemical for, you know, cocaine or fentanyl or, well, how am I supposed to know that I have a degree in Middle Eastern studies. Yeah. I don't know what the chemical makeup of cocaine is, but we, so we need these experts who can, who can. Talk in these kinds of details. My boss one time, I, I was going after a target overseas and things were going really well.
John Kiriakou: And so I said to the guy, listen, I'd like to introduce you to my boss. We'd like to make a formal relationship. I'm going to have an offer for you that I think is going to make you very happy. Cause he knew who he was dealing with and he knew it was going to be some money on the back end of it. So I flew him to another, to a third country and my boss flew out from Washington and we took a little break during the debriefing [00:32:00] and and he said to me, have you ever been to Broadway?
John Kiriakou: The, the target did the, the agent did and I said, yeah, I've, I've been to Broadway a couple of times. I saw, you know, I took a, I took my girlfriend to see the lion King once and I saw rent and stomp and this and that. And he was like, Oh, I saw the King mutiny court martial. I said, Oh my gosh, I saw the King mutiny court martial in London's West End.
John Kiriakou: And when it was done, I met Charlton Heston on the street. And we talked about that and laughed. And then he said something about about this. What the heck was it? Oh, it was It was a European soccer league, but not the, the premier league. It was, and I said, Oh, I have a cousin who was on this team, but nothing like us.
John Kiriakou: And he, I used to go to the games and blah, blah, blah. And we did this for 30, 40, 50 minutes. And afterwards, my boss pulled me aside and he said, that's why you're good at this. And I said, what? He said, I didn't know what you were talking about. I've never been to Broadway. I don't follow soccer, any attention to any of that stuff, but I can tell.
John Kiriakou: That the agent likes you, he likes around you. I said, no,
James Duncan: no,
John Kiriakou: thanks. I said, I have a lot of interests. A lot of stuff makes me happy. Yeah.
James Duncan: So is that so like, do you have teams typically? Like where, like almost like mission impossible
John Kiriakou: type, where you're the. It's actually quite competitive. Okay. You know, you might go into the office one day and somebody you sit next to says, what are you working on?
John Kiriakou: None of your damn business. What I'm working on. Huh? Cause I don't want you stealing my target. I met a guy at a party last night and I'm taking him to lunch and you better not take him to lunch. Wow. Yeah. Cause
James Duncan: that's what it is. Yeah. So it's almost like a, I mean, I've had sales jobs that were sort of like that where you, [00:34:00] yeah,
John Kiriakou: journalists are the same way.
John Kiriakou: You know, they jealously guard what they're working on and never reveal their sources.
James Duncan: Interesting. Yeah. Okay.
John Kiriakou: In fact, when you're sitting with a group of guys, a group of, of case officers or operations officers. You'll never say, Oh, I'm going to meet with John Smith tonight. You're going to say, I'm going to meet with AB grasshopper to tonight, which would be his code name.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. I want them to know the, the names of your sources.
James Duncan: Wow. So, yeah, that, that's just fascinating. They're all cleared.
John Kiriakou: But then what happens if, you know, I sit next to you and I'm telling you, Oh, I'm, I'm going to recruit John Smith tonight. And then you run to the Russians and tell them, yeah, seriously, the Israelis or the Chinese.
John Kiriakou: Well,
James Duncan: that, that makes a lot more sense since then in the, cause I always wonder like how likely, well, not how likely, but how possible is it that you could have a foreign agent or something infiltrate the CI. It seems like it's way more possible than, from listening to some of your, your stories and what you're saying now, the thing that, like, strikes me is that I get wrong a lot of times as I kind of visualize thinking on these big global stages that there is somehow a more foolproof system that is almost beyond human failings of any individual to protect us and make things work.
James Duncan: But then whenever I listen to stories like your stories are fascinating or anyone else, it just always comes back to me. No, this is just a bunch of individuals.
John Kiriakou: Right. And wrong decisions and yeah. [00:36:00] Bunch of individuals who are human beings with human vulnerabilities. They teach us. In training to immediately identify a vulnerability in a person.
John Kiriakou: Now, a vulnerability could be obvious, like a person is in financial trouble. Okay. Or maybe you really, really love your wife and she has breast cancer. Okay. Do you want her to get treated in Romania or do you want her to get treated at the Mayo Clinic? Cause I can arrange the Mayo clinic for you.
James Duncan: Okay.
James Duncan: Interesting.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. Give me the plans to that new Russian tank.
James Duncan: Yeah. Right. And so if you are in the U S as somebody that is either high up in governmental power or potentially has valuable information like that or in another, like, are there just Are there just intelligence officers all over the place as far as trying to you know, turn our people versus, and the CIA sending people like I mean,
John Kiriakou: There are even advertisements on buses here in Washington DC advertising the the spy museum.
John Kiriakou: Okay. Saying, saying that there are 10, 000 foreign spies in Washington DC. Wow. At any given time. There are more spies in Washington than. In any other place in the world. Jeez.
James Duncan: So that, eh, that's just crazy. Then if you are somebody that has information of going out to like a bar or restaurant on the bus, you really can't trust anyone.
James Duncan: I mean, as I mean, not right away or even potentially, yeah.
John Kiriakou: I'll give you a real life example, a couple of years, well, four years ago now just a block from, from my radio studio, there's a popular restaurant and it's directly across the street from the white house. [00:38:00] Or well, across the street from the park.
John Kiriakou: That's across the street from the white house. And Ty Cobb, not the baseball player, but a distant relative who was one of the white house councils was having lunch there with another another attorney from the white house. And he was like, we're screwed. Trump is going to prison. Here's our strategy.
John Kiriakou: This is what we're going to do. Okay. And he just lays it out full voice in public, in this restaurant. Well, guess what? The restaurant is on the first floor of the office building that holds the New York Times. Wow. The New York times, Washington bureau chief was sitting at the next table and he wrote every word down and broke this blockbuster story on the front page of the New York times the next day.
John Kiriakou: Now that could just as easily have been a Russian KGB officer or an intelligence officer or an Israeli or a Brit or a French or a Cuban or any of the other 240 countries. That have intelligence officers in the United States. How
James Duncan: many people does do, does China potentially have over here? Like as far, many, many hundreds?
John Kiriakou: Okay. The Chinese are like the Israelis in that they're not just interested in recruiting people to report on political developments. Yeah. They're looking for hard sciences. You know AI, computer technology, mathematics chemistry, they're not, they don't so much care what's being said on the periphery of the white house so much as they care what's being said in the manufacturing centers of the military industrial complex or, or in Silicon Valley.
James Duncan: In his several episodes ago, I interviewed a guy named Jack Barsky. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He was a KGB agent that was actually one [00:40:00] of the, what they call the illegals that came over. I think he was here in the 80s and came over as a young man and basically lived over here. For a couple of decades as yeah, a Soviet agent.
James Duncan: And his story is just. Fascinating. Like the, like the, again, like even with the keeping the classified information straight, he had to live like an entire double life for, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's crazy imagining being that person. But then the fact that when you realize that those people are, especially in like somewhere like DC.
James Duncan: Pretty much all over the place. It just is, is fascinating is
John Kiriakou: the Americans. Yeah. So Joe Weisberg is the creator of that show. He and I worked together in the counterterrorism center and that's actually a fun story. Joe's a very good guy, lovely guy. And that job just was not for him. And he said to me one day, he said, Hey, I got to tell you, I resigned.
John Kiriakou: And I said, what? And he said, yeah, this job, it's just not for me. I'm just not good at getting people to commit treason. You know, it's not for me. I said, what are you going to do? And he said, well, I'm not married. I have no kids. He said, I'm going to go to Hollywood and find my fortune. And that was the last time I saw him.
John Kiriakou: So he moves to LA. He writes a book. It was a novel that the CIA heavily redacted because it was just too close to real life. It wasn't a commercial success, but it was brilliantly written, brilliantly written. And then after that he created the Americans. Became rich beyond his wildest dreams. Multiple Emmy winner.
John Kiriakou: He's a, he's a player in Hollywood. And the reason that that show was so [00:42:00] successful is because everything in it was true to life.
James Duncan: Everything. It seemed very grounded and, and realistic. No, no. High tech gadgets or yeah, just, yeah.
John Kiriakou: It's all a battle of wits is what it comes down to. It's it, the gadget isn't going to win you, you know, the, the new agent or the, or the operation it's what you've got up here.
John Kiriakou: That's
James Duncan: going to, this is from that TV show, I read, I can't remember the main actor's name, but I do remember. Laughing a little bit at his disguises that he would wear you being in operations. Did you ever have to use disguises or really? Okay.
John Kiriakou: Yeah.
James Duncan: I got to imagine they're better, they're better quality than his.
John Kiriakou: Oh yeah. I can't, I can't really get into specifics, but there's one I was, I was chosen. I have to be very careful with this. They wanted to experiment with a disguise. Okay. And I happen to be friendly with one of the disguise experts. She said, Hey, listen, I want to fly out and we want to try this new disguise on.
John Kiriakou: I said, okay. She said, it's going to take a few days to, you know, get the measurements right. And okay. So my station chief says, yeah, come on, let's give it a try. So she flies out and it, it took days to fit this disguise. And then when it was done, it was so brilliant. I walked over to the station chief's office and I walked in and he just looked at me like he had no idea who I was.
John Kiriakou: And then I was like, Mike, he said, are you kidding me like that? And I said, it's great. Right? It's a great disguise. And he said, let's, let's pull one on the ambassador. The ambassador I was working for was a dick. He's the only ambassador I ever worked [00:44:00] for that I genuinely disliked and didn't respect. And so we walked in and the chief says Mr.
John Kiriakou: Ambassador, I wanted to introduce you to one of our experts in Washington from Washington. This is Dr. you know, so and so. And I said, how do you do Mr. Ambassador? And he's like, how do you do, please have a seat. And I sat down and I, we had a little chat, walked out. We didn't walk out. We walked to the door and I went like this and I pulled the thing off and he's like, I don't know how you guys live with yourselves.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. And it was like, yeah, this is,
James Duncan: Oh my God. Your life is so much more interesting than anyone's. I think, you know
John Kiriakou: what? It's the life of a young man. I'm, yeah, I'm in my late fifties now. And I, this is all 30 years ago. I couldn't do this stuff
James Duncan: anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would think you would have to have a, yeah, have to have a sort of that invincibility feeling about yourself to, to do it.
James Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I, you haven't realized you're mortal yet, right?
John Kiriakou: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
James Duncan: That's a man. Like I said, the, there is so much that I would love to hear you talk about. Since we're running kind of into the last little portion of what time you've got left though, if we can real quick, maybe switch.
James Duncan: Gears and kind of go into big picture. I just wanted to get your take on what's going on with the Middle East. But even bigger than that, like in 2024, how likely are you seeing at this point, a broader global war, potentially world war three. Or something breaking out with the U. S. involved. Is it, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put it, as far as, yeah, your knowledge on, is it?
James Duncan: Yeah. Incredibly dangerous times or [00:46:00]
John Kiriakou: yeah, we're, we're in perilous times. I would put it, I think at a six or a seven. Okay. To me, that's, that's pretty dangerous territory. And I think that there are several places where we should be particularly focused. First of all, I think that the Israelis are going to expand operations and that's going to be in Southern Lebanon.
John Kiriakou: Okay. I think that they're going to want once, once they have Gaza in hand, which I think is just a disaster for human rights, a disaster. And we can talk about that in a second, but I think once the Israelis complete the, I hate to use this horrible cold word, but the pacification of, of Gaza, I think they're going to turn.
John Kiriakou: Their attention to Hezbollah again. And I think that the Lebanese are worried about this. Remember, Hezbollah now is a legitimate political party in Lebanon. One of the, one of the governmental leaders in the Lebanese government. And so Hezbollah has a lot more to lose now than it did 20 years ago. So that's why we haven't seen.
John Kiriakou: Whole scale attacks across the border from Lebanon into Israel. There have been these pinprick rocket launches at, at Israeli bases and at a couple of the Israeli settlements up North. But I think it's going to be the Israelis that are going to be the aggressors there. So that's number one. Number two, where I see the U.
John Kiriakou: S. getting involved is with or against the Houthis in in Yemen. The Houthis are seriously playing with fire right now.
James Duncan: They're actually sending, like, drones and somehow already harassing our ships, right? Drones,
John Kiriakou: cruise missiles, and ballistic anti ship missiles. Okay. We're recording this on, on the 10th of January.
John Kiriakou: Yep. Yesterday, on the 9th. They launched 18 suicide drones, two anti ship cruise missiles, and one anti ship ballistic missile [00:48:00] at U. S. and British warships in the Red Sea. We knocked all of them out of the sky, right? None of them hit a target. But you can't poke the hornet's nest and not expect to be stung.
John Kiriakou: I understand what the Houthis are doing. And some people might say it's, it's kind of noble or heroic. They're trying to disrupt shipping so that it it adversely affects the Israeli economy. The problem is. That almost none of the ships they've attacked have anything to do with Israel. Yeah, right. You can't hijack a ship, pirate a ship on the high seas, force it into port in Aden and hold as hostage two dozen sailors from the Philippines, Bangladesh.
John Kiriakou: Malaysia, Vietnam, and say, Oh, we did it in solidarity with the Palestinian people. What? What are you talking about?
James Duncan: Yeah.
John Kiriakou: And then when the U. S. It's not just the U. S. There's six allied countries now that have warships in the Red Sea to protect shipping. And then you launch 18 suicide drones against the U.
John Kiriakou: S. Navy and you don't expect to be retaliated against. Are you out of your mind? And are the
James Duncan: Houthis actually representative of the Yemen government or are they kind of
John Kiriakou: the 64, 000 question? Okay. And now they control the government, the government. Okay. But the control that the Houthis have is largely just the city of Sanaa.
John Kiriakou: And Northern Yemen. Okay. Right. What used to be called Pidri the people's democratic Republic of Yemen or South Yemen. It's kind of a no man's land except for the city of Aden. Okay. The rest is just, there's an area called the Hadramout which is, it's funny. [00:50:00] Hadramout comes from two Arabic words, Khadr, which means vegetation and Mout, which means Dead or death because it's so dry there that desert, it doesn't even have animals, right?
John Kiriakou: Like desert foxes like you see in Sinai. There's yeah, nothing can live there. That area is controlled by Al Qaeda. Okay, it's all the country's all divided up into these warring factions, but the Houthis control more of it than anybody else does.
James Duncan: Okay. And what is the, what are the diplomatic ties then?
James Duncan: Obviously Hezbollah has strong ties to Iran. Okay. So, and that is basically the, the big concern about escalation, correct? Is
John Kiriakou: Iran. At five separate times over the last 20 years. Benjamin Netanyahu has approached four different American presidents and has asked us to bomb Iran. Yep. And every time we've said no.
John Kiriakou: We don't have a beef with the Iranians to the point where we're ready to start World War III. The Israelis are itching to bomb the Iranians. Now the Iranians have been smart enough To not attack Israel directly, they do it with proxies, just like they attack us through proxies. Qata'ib Hezbollah in in Iraq, for example.
John Kiriakou: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen. They don't attack us directly. If they were to attack us directly, we would have to retaliate and they don't want to risk it. Yeah. So it's the Israelis that I don't trust.
James Duncan: Didn't you mention in one story that when you were in actually as an analyst, I believe, or well, I can't remember the contact.
James Duncan: I think it was the first Gulf War that we are already like we were debating invading Iran.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. At that time? Yeah. That was the second, the [00:52:00] Iraq
James Duncan: war. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's, yeah. I mean, it's close.
John Kiriakou: Now that's not unusual. Every, every major military on earth has contingency plans to attack their enemies.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. And, and they're updated constantly as technologies change, as, as diplomatic relations change, as international alliances change. But yeah, we were, we were fully prepared in, in 2002 to invade Iran. Yes. And it,
James Duncan: is it as straightforward as if say Israel invades Lebanon attack? Hezbollah and then we get brought in to help defend or, or assist Israel with that effort.
James Duncan: You
John Kiriakou: told the Israelis you're on your own, if that happens.
James Duncan: Okay. Is it, is it basically a straight path from if Iran gets. Involved to then Russia, or is it,
John Kiriakou: is that, okay. That's one of the big unknowns. Okay. China's easier to answer. Simply do not have a history of foreign interventions. Yeah. You could point to a handful of military.
John Kiriakou: Interventions, Tibet being the obvious one, but they also fought a border skirmish in 1979 with the Vietnamese. They have fought several border skirmishes with the Indians, but just on the border, right? Yeah. And navies and armies to the other side of the planet, like we do to, to launch invasions. We do that.
John Kiriakou: So the Chinese are going to stay out of it. They don't want any part of that. The Russians have nothing to lose, frankly. We're trying to overthrow Putin. We're trying to emasculate the Russian military. The Russians may want to, you know, get it, get a jab in and they've got
James Duncan: very strong economic ties to Iran, right?
James Duncan: And
John Kiriakou: [00:54:00] very strong diplomatic and military ties to Syria. Oh, correct. Yeah. Hezbollah are joined at the hip as well.
James Duncan: Yeah. Wow. So I think I heard you on another show mentioned that you don't see that there being a huge risk of China. Invading Taiwan because you don't think it's like they don't gain much from doing that.
James Duncan: So you don't see, yeah, so the Middle East would probably be the by far the biggest potential risk area in the near future. Yeah, I think so.
John Kiriakou: I'll tell you, I think what makes what makes the situation over Taiwan so much more dangerous is that we involve ourselves. Yeah, we send carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait, for example, or the South China Sea, we're the ones that do military exercises with Taiwan or, you know, send high level delegations after promising that the Chinese that we won't, we're the ones that won't That have this policy where we think we're keeping the Chinese off balance and all it does is piss them off.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the, one of the things we're really bad at in this country, and we have been bad at this since the George W. Bush administration is that we just don't want to let the diplomats do their jobs saying in the CIA during George W. Bush that they had never seen an administration work so hard to not talk to our enemies.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. As, as we did during the Bush administration.
James Duncan: Well, John, I think it's getting real close to the, the time you gave us. So I don't want to overstep that. Do you want to, I mean, I'm going to put a link to all your books, to your sub stack and the radio show, political misfits. Is there anything that you would like to just kind of direct people to?
James Duncan: Oh,
John Kiriakou: thanks. I would appreciate it if they would check out my sub stack because I put [00:56:00] everything there. So it's all in the same place. Everything was easy to find. So yeah, my name, John Kiriakou.
James Duncan: Yep. And you are one of the most fascinating and knowledgeable people on all of these interesting subjects that I've ever ran across.
James Duncan: So I will definitely be paying attention. And if you ever want to come back on to tell any story, I would appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. Take care.
John Kiriakou: Bye bye. Thanks for listening to the Independent Riot Podcast, your home for free thinkers, independent believers and radicals questioning the status quo.
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