"NOT SILENCED" - The CIA and John Kiriakou - Stories Untold

0:00 It's the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, the director of the CIA, my boss, and me. And the president looks around, he says, "Well, now what do we do?" And then everybody turns and looks at me. We had put the kids to bed and we're watching TV. And she said, "I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to bed." I said, "I'm going to stay up and watch TV." I wasn't going to stay up and watch TV. I was going to go into the garage, start the car, and lay on the back seat. She said, "No, I really want you to come to bed." I like she could sense, "Well, I'm just approaching what the jamup is, and it's a white rover in the left lane. There's police tape around it, and there's blood just coating all the

0:45 windows inside." My boss runs in. He said, "Did you see the manifesto?" He said, "You're in it." And he goes, "You've got to go." Another car picked up my wife. Another car picked up my kids. take him to the airport. My wife says, "I want a divorce. I'm not doing this anymore." So, I went to the chief. I said, "I need 36 people, half FBI, half CIA, guns for everybody, ammunition for everybody, charges for the doors, night vision goggles, secure communications. I needed encrypted, like high-end NSA encrypted walkie-talkies, and I needed like several million dollars in cash." I'm telling you, 24 hours later, this unmarked 737 lands at the airport. It's freaking unbelievable. And

1:31 everybody gets off. [Music] My next guest is a retired undercover CIA officer who among dozens of other things played a significant role in Pakistan hunting down al-Qaeda. He would later become a whistleblower for the 9/11 torture program which subsequently landed him in prison, albeit under questionable charges. He's an eight-time author, a fellow whiskey sipper. You can find his uncensored stories now on Unified TV, which I'll link below. It may come as no surprise that he's an amazing storyteller. He'll keep you at the edge of your seat at every second.

2:18 But within those stories, you'll also recognize the commonality between he and us common folk. The most significant aspect of this guest is that he is genuinely a great person, and I'm so honored to have stolen a few hours of his time for this cast. So without further ado, please help me in welcoming my new friend to the tecast, Mr. John Kuryaku. We're finding some commonality in people like yourself who have extraordinary stories and experiences and kind of bringing it around to where somebody normally wouldn't tune in to hear someone um especially somebody who has even some a controversial career, right? But, you know, with a whistleblowing aside, just, you know, the the CIA automatically gets kind of a

3:05 wrap with some people. But, but the idea is again just to kind of humanize people and make everyone realize how much alike we are really, even if we're if we're working in opportunity. Yeah, I'm very happy to do it. Well, I appreciate it. And I I'm I won't go all the way back and necessarily sit on the early years, but I I would like to get a little backstory about your childhood, what your interests were and and what your original goals were because, you know, getting into the CIA, like what what does that trajectory look like? You want to be an astronaut and change your mind or, you know, I I told my dad when I was nine that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up, really. And they thought that was kind of funny. And I remember that Christmas they bought me a set of

3:50 walkie-talkies, right? And my brother and I would go all around the neighborhood, you know, spying on the neighbors or whatever. They had the little Morse code thing on the side. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. They had a little Morse code thing on the side. Yeah. That's exactly right. That's awesome. You know, cheap. Like it said, it would say on the box, it's got a, you know, one mile range. It had like a 100 foot range, right? But it was fun. We played with those for ages. And then and then my grandparents like, "Oh, you should be a dentist or a doctor or something." And then when I was 16, I told my dad, I remember where I was. We were we were driving past Frasier's Pond on Old Plank Road. And it was time to start thinking about colleges and what college I wanted to go to. And I said, um, he said, "You don't still want to be

4:37 a spy, do you?" And I said, "I do. I want to be a spy, but dad, I want to be a spy in the Middle East. And he's like, "Oh my god." Wow. And at the time, how intense was that of of proclamation? I mean, compared to I meant it. And I'll tell you why I meant it. Because when I was 15, uh, the Iranians raided the American embassy and took our diplomats hostage. And I was obsessed with this thing. Uh ABC News created Night Line just to give us an update every single night on what happened that day. That's why Night Line was created was to give us the the daily update on the hostage crisis. And so I would stay up late at night just to see the day's developments in in uh in Iran.

5:23 And then uh an army recruiter came to school. This is going to sound silly, but he he came to the school high school. high school, Newcastle High School, Newcastle, Pennsylvania. And he said, "If anybody comes down just for a conversation, you don't have to promise anything. Just come for a conversation. I'll give you a pair of tube socks." Uhhuh. So, I said to my dad off-handedly, I said, "Oh, I'm going to go talk to the army recruiter on on Saturday." He said, "Why?" I said, "They're they're giving out free socks. I'm just going to go for the conversation." And my dad, my dad was a very gentle, very sweet man. And he said to me, "If you go down there on Saturday, you and I are going to have a serious problem, boy." And he never

6:11 spoke to me like that. So, I skipped it. But then I started looking for for universities that had very specifically programs, majors in Middle Eastern studies. Now, there are a bunch of them. In 1981, there weren't. It was Brigham Young, which I had zero desire to go to. It was Ruters, which was all right. I was thinking about that, and George Washington University. And then I got I only applied to GW. I didn't apply anywhere else. And then he said, "We don't we don't have the money to send you to a school like that." I still remember what it was. It was $4,600 a year. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? Yeah. And my parents didn't have $4,600 a year. I said, "I'll take out loans." He said, "I have a better idea. go to the

6:58 University of Pittsburgh and you can get a degree in Soviet studies. I said, "But I don't care about Soviet studies." I don't have any interest in Russia or the Soviet Union or learning Russian. And it was a problem for us, but I ended up going to GW, took out a ton of loans and uh and got my degree in Middle Eastern studies. I love that. And especially at a time where the Soviet Union was the thing. It was the thing. All right. my very first day at the CIA, we had a series of briefings, right? The director of the CIA comes and welcome to the CIA and he's there for, you know, a minute and uh the the head of personnel and the head of this and the head of that. Well, the head of security came and one of the

7:43 important things that he said that day, like very declaratory, the gravest challenge facing the United States today is the threat of Soviet communism. And I was like, I said to myself, do you not watch the news? There is no such thing as Soviet communism anymore. I mean, the Soviet Union held on for another 11 months. Mhm. But seriously, old man, Soviet communism is the threat that we're facing. Well, they were still the other superpower at the time. So, yeah. Yeah. This was this was right before the the Russian economy fell apart. So, if you were an old-timer at the CIA, okay, I I get that you you think the Soviets are a threat. And what else? What else?

8:30 Did you have siblings or anything? A brother and a sister. Brother and a sister. And both parents stayed married. and for your childhood and all that, right? So, my dad had a uh my parents were both elementary school educators, but my dad had a PhD in music and um we were very musical in our family and he but he wanted us to be musical but not go into music. That's a smart musician cuz we'd starve, right? My brother went into music. You'd never get into GW. No, you wouldn't get into GW. But my brother went into music and has become one of the most important music producers in Hollywood. really made tens of millions of dollars and seven number one hits and Yeah, he really How fantastic is that? And my sister went into uh investments.

9:17 Oh, well, one of the big investment houses. Yeah. So, you That's the diversest family I've ever heard, if that's even a word. That's crazy. Do you play any instruments or were you made to learn how to do that? Yeah, I took piano lessons for 12 years. classical piano and uh and then I played clarinet and my dad had a Greek band for 50 years and so that's how my brother and I put ourselves through college was playing weddings and baptisms and you know wild festivals and stuff and Greek specifically that was there like a niche in there oh yeah okay oh yeah in fact a book came out recently like two years ago called Greek the history of Greek music in America America. And I was

10:03 like, "Oh, what an interesting niche book." And I picked it up and there's a picture of my dad in there. Really? And he cuz he he immigrated from Greece. No, it was my grandparents immigrated. Yeah. From Greece. 19. My dad's family 1931, my mom's 1934, then my dad was born in 34, and my mom in 40. So they were they were brand new arrivals. Interesting. So do you still play at all? Have any interest? I I don't. I regret that I don't. it. Pick it up. Like a serious regret that I have. Pick it back up. Yeah. It'll be like nothing. You'll have it all up here. You just will have to teach yourself how to Yeah. That muscle memory has to come back. Hey, if you're like me and you are frustrated sometimes about ways that you can make a positive impact, I can tell you that one of the simplest things that you can do that goes such a long way is to like and

10:50 subscribe to this channel and share some of these videos that you're enjoying. It brings other people into the middle regardless of their perspective to start engaging into that productive conversation that we all need. Thanks in advance. So when you got to the point where you were decided you're going to the CIA and that was an interesting story too because you kind of ended up still getting recruited. Yeah. Even though that was your goal. I had no idea that you had actually earmarked that as a career and then someone still approached you. Had had you mentioned that to someone before? No. It was just happen stance. Yeah. You know, I was thinking, h maybe I'll apply to the CIA, maybe the foreign service, and I ended up getting a master's degree in legislative affairs, thinking maybe I could meld the two and end up on Capitol

11:36 Hill or something. And then uh and then in graduate school, I was kind of spotted. And uh and so what this leads me to, what do they look for? I know you've I've heard you mention before that they look for sociopathic tendencies but not sociopaths, right? So I would love to know first of all, is there really a line and how wide and gray is that line and where do you think you fit into that that realm? What what are your sociopathic tendencies? I suppose I can answer that question best by giving you an anecdote. Okay. So when I was going through the process, um I was in a room with three men and a

12:24 woman, other applicants, and the the tester, the instructor gave us this scenario, and he said, "Let's say you're serving overseas and you get a cable from headquarters and they want you to get the latest numbers on the Indonesian economy, right? So they tell you to target the Indonesian economic officer in the country that you're serving in and um and you start to develop him. You make contact, you take him to lunch, you hit it off, you take him to dinner, your wives become friends, you barbecues together, and he becomes your best friend, right? So everything's going great. But you realize in this process,

13:11 he's not recruitable. he just does not have an exploitable issue that you can use to get your hook in. What what do you do? So this guy raises his hand and he says, "Well, you you double down and you do it, you know, for another 6 months and you buy him gifts and whatever." And uh and the the woman raises her hand and she said, "Uh maybe you work it through the wives. Maybe maybe your wife can convince his wife to, you know, get the information." And I'm looking around like, "What?" So I raised my hand. I said, "You break into the embassy and you steal it." The guy goes, "That's exactly what you do." That's a sociopathic tendency. A normal person would not default to, "I'm going to break into a foreign embassy.

13:57 I'm going to steal their documents." It's not taking no for an answer essentially. Yeah. Like that's a mission and you're going to accomplish it somehow. You're exactly right. That's the mission. They didn't say, "Oh, um, you know, give this a try and if it works, that's great, and if it doesn't, well, that's okay. You tried your best." No, no, no, no. That's not how it works. They said, "Get the documents." So, you go get the documents. That's a sociopathic tendency. Now, the problem is that the sociopath will give you the same answer, but the sociopath will have no conscience. And so we'll blow right through a polygraph exam. Somebody with a sociopathic tendency will do it because it's the

14:42 right thing to do because we're the good guys, but does experience regret or remorse and will react and respond on a polygraph exam. So that's how that's the measurable is the polygraph. It's the polygraph. They can tell the emotional value that that's triggered by doing actions like that. That's exactly what they'll what they'll mark what they'll register. So the polygraph, you know, in terms of being the best way to describe the poly polygraph is as a tool, right? The polygraph only measures physiological changes. That's it. It's not a lie detector test, right? So, if you if you are asked you're hooked up to a

15:29 polygraph and and the polygrapher says, "Have you ever stolen anything worth more than $20?" Hey, don't think, "Oh, man. If I did that, I would feel so guilty. Wow, I remember when I thought about stealing something worth more than No, you're going to react to that. Your fingertips are going to sweat. Your heart is going to start to race. and they're going to say, "Oh, you fail." So, if he asks you, "Have you ever stolen anything more than $20?" You say, "No," and move on to the next question. Unless you have. Unless you have, in which case, they say, "Look, we're not looking for perfect people. We're looking for honest people. So, just answer the question truthfully." The thing is, what they want you to

16:15 do is trip yourself up by answering honestly. I'll give you an another example, right? I worked with a guy who was a fantastic operations officer, but he came to operations from polygraphy. He had been there 20 years, just got bored, wanted to do something different. He said to me one time that he had had people over the course of 20 years admit to literally every crime that you can imagine, usually because they thought that's what the CIA wanted to hear. Like he had a guy he had a guy admit to committing a murder outside of Syracuse, New York because he's like, "Yeah, I want to do black ops wet work." Uh, you know, oh my gosh. Yeah, that's not cool. And my

17:00 buddy's like pressing the emergency button under the table so that the cops can come in and turn this guy over to the FBI. But my example is this. He was polygraphing a CIA employee, a custodian. Even the janitors get polygraphed. Okay? Right? because they're susceptible to recruitment. They have access. Exactly. So he said the guy just blows right through this thing. No problems at all. This is like his third or fourth polygraph. And all the guy does is, you know, mow the lawn and sweep the floors, whatever. So at the end of it, my friend says, "So is there anything major that you might have done that we haven't that we haven't covered? murder, bank robbery,

17:47 beastiality. The guy goes, "What was that last one?" No. And my buddy goes, "I knew I had him." He goes, "Oh, beastiality. It's actually quite common. Uh, it's when you have sex with an animal. Lots of people do it." He says, "No big deal." Yeah. And the guy goes, "I might have done that couple three times." And my friend's like, he said his heart was racing. Like this is the first beastiality admission he had ever had. So he goes, "Um, okay. That's cool. Under what circumstances might you have done beastiality?" And he says, "Well, sometimes when I fight with my wife, I get back at her by going out to the barn

18:32 and buggering her horse." He goes, "Okay. All right. And when was the last time you might have done that? And you know, he gave a date. They escorted him out of the building. They took his badge, you know, the whole the whole thing. But that is what the polygraph is meant for. He wasn't hooked up to the polygraph at that point. He had blown right through the polygraph. It's to get you to admit to something because once you admit to it, they can throw you out of the building and tell you never to come back. And do they what are the standards there? They have typical law enforcement standards. You couldn't have committed certain crimes within 5, 10, 20 years, whatever. It's all the same type of stuff. And it and it changes too. Like when I when I first applied, you couldn't have done drugs

19:18 ever. Ever. Like youthful experimentation, nothing. Not even weed. Nothing. And now it's you can't have done drugs in the last nine months. Yeah. And since weed is weed in today's context, they don't even ask about it anymore. M back when I got hired, you couldn't be gay and you couldn't even be like not sure if you were gay or not gay or by or whatever. Like, thank you. We'll we'll send you a letter. Thank you. Get out. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's all changed. Yeah. I'm sure it's I mean over generations. I mean it used to have to be a male certain height and everything else too. and and from an Eastern university, you know, now the place is full of Mormons because and the same at

20:03 the FBI because Mormons lead very straight lives for the most part, right? Polygraphs are no problem. And they speak the craziest languages because they go on their missions after high school and they'll go to, you know, Tajikistan or, you know, Bellarus or whatever and they learn these really difficult languages that the CIA then doesn't have to spend a year or two years and $500,000 teaching them how to speak. Do you think that it's advantageous to have squeaky clean people come in and do enforcement and operations? I do not. And so what what do you if it were up to you, how would you adjust any of those requirements? I mean, they're all kind of constantly being messed with anyway.

20:51 They are. They are. And I think you have to I I think the agency has to adopt local customs. For example, there were a lot of us who have served in Yemen over the years. Okay, Yemen's tough. It it's it's ugly and poor and society is rough and violent and everybody's armed and culturally they chew got every day. Got q a t got is a shrub. It's about waist high shrub and they pick the leaves and they stuff the leaves in their cheeks so that old men will have one cheek that hangs lower than the rest of their face right from 60 70 years of chewing gut.

21:37 Now chewing gut it's disgusting. Uh but it's it's like a very mild what can I compare like like the cocoa leaf, right? So it's like drinking a pot of coffee makes your heart race. Yeah. But it's a cultural thing. So every day at 3:00, everybody in the country is chewing gut. Every male in the country is chewing gut. It's unsemly for women to chew it. Well, gut is a is a, you know, it's listed on the DEA, you know, schedule, right? Schedule one drug. You go to prison for 20 years for chewing cot. But if you're a CIA officer trying to recruit this Yemeni tribal leader and he invites you to the gotchu, you're going to go chew. Right.

22:23 Right. So the CIA had to say, "Well, okay, if you're an operations officer and yeah, you got to chew gut. Go ahead and chew the gut." They need to do more of that. They need to they need to attract more people who are willing to push the the bounds without lapsing into illegality here in the United States. And let me explain that, right? Yeah. I still believe that for the most part, we are the good guys, right? 99% of the people at the CIA are good, patriotic, smart Americans who want nothing more than to serve the country. You have 1% that are psychopaths or just out killing

23:10 people for the thrill of killing people, but that's a separate conversation and that's a percentage of any given group. Once it gets size, then Yeah. Absolutely right. So the squeaky clean people are going to have trouble adjusting to a life of breaking the law. Your job as a as an ops officer is to go overseas and break the law. Sometimes lots of laws. I mean already you're committing espionage from the moment you land in the country. You're committing espionage because at the very least you're conspiring to violate the national security laws of that country. That's what you're you've been hired to do because of who you are. Just because of who you are. You're undercover, which is, you know, a lie. You're living a

23:55 lie, which is also espionage. And in many cases, you're trying to convince people to commit treason. Now, treason in most countries, not most, in many countries is a death penalty charge. And your job is to get them to do that, to risk death because they love you so much. I mentioned that Indonesian uh you know that fake Indonesian diplomat. Well, you want to convince somebody that you are their best friend, right? Their best friend. And you do all these different things together and you vacation together and your wives are friends and your kids are friends and then you say, "Buddy, you know how I feel about you. I think you're great and you're my best friend and we have such a

24:40 good time together. Do you mind giving me a a peek at the plans for that new Russian tank? I'd really appreciate it. It would mean a lot to me. And you know, my boss is such a dick. It would really help me out at work. Just, you know, let me just maybe I'll just take a a screenshot of the plans for the new Russian tank. Could you do do that for me? It'll only take a minute. That's a that's a cold call almost, right? I mean, at some point you got to just spill the beans, right? Is that how it works? At some point, at some point you do have to spill the beans. In almost every recruitment pitch, it's called breaking cover. You have to be honest with the guy. You have to say, "Look, I and this breaks my heart because I haven't been honest with you,

25:26 but because we're so close, you're like my brother. I have to be honest with you. And I have to tell you, I'm actually in the CIA. I hope that I hope you're cool with that." And by then most of them have figured it out, sensed it. Like where are you getting all this money? Number one, we have practically unlimited budgets at the CIA. I I recruited a guy once. He told me I have I have to think of how to word this so that I don't don't get yourself backed up in this. He told me that he absolutely loved the skyline of this city that we were serving in. He's like, "This is the most beautiful city in the world. The skyline, it just takes my breath away." So, I was like, "Oh, me,

26:12 too. I love the skyline. It's amazing." And I got us a helicopter tour of the skyline. He would have thought I'd given him a pot of gold or something like nobody had ever done anything like that for him. Yeah. And then in a conversation one time, he said that um his dad when he was a little kid, his dad taught him how to fish. And so, you know, wherever he was, he would go to a river or stream. And yeah, do you ever do deep sea fishing for marlin? And I plunked down five grand and took him out on a Saturday and he caught a freaking marlin with a sword out, you know, 6 feet long. He cried when he caught that marlin. He was so happy. Where am I getting all this money? I mean, American diplomats are paid better than most, but but there's a limit. But there's a

26:58 limit. Yeah. We gotten we had a big kurfuffle with with an ally back in the '90s. It took us more than a decade to recover from it because a first tour officer took out a diplomat from that country from their foreign ministry to lunch and ordered a $2,000 bottle of wine. And the guy immediately reported it to their version of the FBI. Next thing you know, everybody's getting expelled and you just overstepped, right? You just went too far right off the bat. $2,000 bottle of wine. Yeah. It's almost like grafted. In these other countries, you give them, you have to know how much to give them to get where you're going. Or it's too much, then something else is up, right? In Greece, they call it the fake laki, which means a little envelope. Now, that little envelope can have€10 in it or 100. You

27:46 don't want to put 20,000 in it. That can come later depending on what you do for me. But yeah, you have to be aware of where you are, what stage you're on in in the relationship. And how do you figure out where to start? Is that just assimilating into I mean, how do you take time to assimilate in the culture? What kind of training do you get or giving it to? That's a great question. You get some training, not a ton. Most of the training is in language and you're expected to be, you know, you went to college, you probably went to graduate school, you probably traveled to a couple dozen countries before you joined the CIA because you love travel, you love international affairs. So, they trust that you aren't going to be an idiot. So, let's say I I lived in, you

28:35 know, Pakistan. Um, what what I'm going to do to start is invite people to lunch. It's totally, you know, normal and non-threatening. So, we go to lunch and lunch is going to cost me five or 10 bucks. I'm not going to throw all kinds of money at you right off the bat, but I had a friend who um well, let me let me back up and say that the the the crown jewel of any operations officer's career is to recruit a penetration of a foreign intelligence service, right? We all want to do it. Yeah. You get a medal, you get a photo op with the director, you get promoted, everybody wants to do it. I had a a guy a friend

29:22 who um told me a story one time. He was friendly with this guy in this foreign intelligence service and it was a poor country but you can't be so crude as to just pitch the guy, you know. Mhm. So they went to do a joint operation together and our guy was authorized to cold pitch a foreign terrorist. So he brought this gym bag with 50 grand in it. And he said they're sitting in the car right before they get out to go knock on the terrorist door and he opens up the gym bag and he goes, "Look at this." He lifts the 50 grand. You know, it's in wads of, you know, the things 10,000. He goes, "Look at

30:10 this. My headquarters has authorized me to give this [ __ ] $50,000. 50,000 of the taxpayers dollars. This makes me so angry. I could be giving this to good people, good guys, but they want they want me to give it to the terrorist. And he said, "The guy is just like this looking at the money." Never looked at him, just was looking at the money. And he's like, "This makes me so angry. But our problem is we have so much money. We just don't know what to do with it. They go, they make the cold pitch, the guy tells him to screw off, they grab him, they cuff him, take him away. He wouldn't take the money. But the next

30:57 day, the liazison officer calls and says, "Hey, uh, can we meet for dinner and not tell anybody?" Brilliant. Mhm. So that's but that's less that's a that's the sest cold pitch I've ever heard cuz that's exactly what it was. essentially pitching to the guy with him, right? Sure. He knew exactly what he was doing. Yes. Uhhuh. Yeah. So cold pitching is a would be typically a terrible idea. Terrible idea other than in negligent circumstances. Yeah. Most people go through their entire careers and never do a cold pitch because they they don't work. Yeah. For the most part. Unless they're just so incentivized by the money. Mhm. But but that's possible though too that you can since you can get so much money you could pay them a significant amount and

31:43 give them asylum somewhere or whatever. Is that you could set them up that way? You you want to not raise the asylum issue just because they're more valuable working in place. See, if it's if it becomes so dangerous that they have to be resettled, then of course yes, you can talk about asylum or resettlement in whatever country you want to go to. Mhm. Um, and you don't have to take money. You can have the money, you know, deposited in an account in any country you want. You can have it in diamonds. You can have it in gold. You can have it in Bitcoin. You can do whatever you want. It makes no difference how you receive it. You just agree to receive it. Yeah. Um, and during your So, you

32:29 started actually as not as an operations person, so an analyst. And I assume that was still fulfilling or did you go into operations because you got bored you aspired to go do something else? I I got bored. I started in in analysis which was a lot of fun in the beginning. I my very first day at the agency at the lunch break we we met our new bosses and my boss said uh so we're putting you on Iraq and Kuwait. And I said, ' Okay, all right, that that's cool. And he said, 'Well, listen. We're putting you on your rock and quit because nothing ever happens there. It's the same cabinet since

33:14 1968, right? Sometimes we go days without receiving a single cable. But, and this is exactly what he said to me, but you learn the trade craft, you learn the writing style, and in a year you can transfer onto something more interesting like Romania. Yes. And I said, "Okay." And you knocked on wood super hard. And eight months later, just as I got to a point where I really knew what I was doing, Iraq invaded Kuwait. One of the old-timers came up to me the night before. We had predicted a month before Iraq was going to invade Kuwait. So, there was this, we were arguing

34:00 amongst ourselves. Yeah, it's going to happen. No, it's not going to happen. Yeah, they're just going to take this little sliver of sand cuz there's oil there. Um, so we ended up one of us, I don't even remember who it was, said, "Why don't we just send a cable to the defense atache in Baghdad and ask him just to drive down there and tell us what he's seeing?" So, we sent a cable. Hey, could you do us a favor? Just drive down to the border and just tell us what what you're seeing down there. He drives down, drives back, writes us a cable, and says, "Literally, the entire Iraqi military is driving to Kuwait." Which was a big military. Yeah. You don't use your And it was one of the biggest in the Middle East. Yeah. You don't send your entire military to take

34:47 a sliver. No. So, we wrote a paper on June the 30th, 1990 saying Iraq was going to invade Kuwait. And then the night before the invasion, we were like, "Yeah, it's going to happen tonight. Tonight's the night." Really? It got that refined information. And one of the old-timers came up to me and said, "I don't think you fully appreciate the import of what's happening right now." I thought I did, but I didn't. He said, "It's not at all unusual for the countries that we cover to go to war, but it's highly unusual for the countries we cover to go to war with us." And that's what this is. And the next day, I got up early cuz I knew it was going to happen. And sure

35:33 enough, turn on the radio, 6:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., whatever it was, Iraq invaded Kuwait, took the entire country. They're killing everybody. So, I get to the office before 7. It was early and my boss said, "Uh, don't take your jacket off. We're going to the White House." I had never been to the White House before except as a tourist. Yeah. So, car picks us up. We go to the White House. This Marine escorts us into the Oval Office. Mind you, I'm 25 years old. It's awesome. It's the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, the director of the CIA, my boss, and me. So, we're standing there and then like there are very specific there's a very

36:20 specific seating arrangement in something like this. I'm sure you'd walk in and just wait to be told. Right. That's exactly what I did. I just stood there and I didn't say a word and I waited to be told. So, my boss and I were put on the couch. Um the president and the vice president sat in these two nice wing back chairs and then the national security adviser and the CIA director were in like slightly less comfortable chairs and the president looks around. He says, "Well, now what do we do?" And then everybody turns and looks at me and I'm looking at the president like and I didn't say anything. It took me a second and I said, "Well, well, Mr. president. Iraqi forces crossed the border at 2:00

37:05 a.m., you know, our time, and they uh announced the overthrow of the Kuwaiti government, and they installed a new u uh puppet regime headed by Dr. Ahmed Katib. We know a lot about Ahmed Katib. Uh he finished medical school at the American University of Beirut and his college roommate was George Habash. together they formed the uh popular front for the liberation of Palestine. And the vice president goes, "Jesus Christ like that." And the president's like, "So what do we do?" Well, it wasn't my position to tell anybody what to do. But later that afternoon, something that has

37:51 become famous happened. Margaret Thatcher called him and she said something that really dictated American policy. She said famously, "Now's not the time to go wobbly, George." And so the next thing you know, we sent 565,000 troops and six carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf and we liberated Kuwait. Then that kind of made me a star. Yeah. You were the guy. I was the guy. And so it was great for a few years. I decided it was time to move on. Um I applied for a state department position in Bahrain, also in the Middle East, covering Iraq. Um I went to Arabic language school for a year. My Arabic

38:39 was absolutely perfect. And I was the ambassador's translator for the next two years. Wow. Yeah, it was great. And um and then I came back thinking, "Okay, now it's going to be something really great." And they put me back on rock again. So I did that for another like year and a half. And it was clear to me that Bill Clinton was not serious about doing anything. It was like, "You better not cross this line or we're going to put more sanctions." And then he crosses the line and we put more sanctions. then well you better not cross this new line you know and I'm like come on I got to get out of here so I decided to do something completely different and I made a highly unusual switch into

39:25 counterterrorism operations which how was how difficult was that I mean that's like you said it's atypical to it was very atypical yeah it's still atypical but when I applied for the job I was very honest I said I speak fluent Greek and fluent Arabic, but I don't have any experience in operations at all. And the guy who was the hiring authority said, "Well, it's a lot cheaper and a lot easier to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic." That's smart. Mhm. So, because I was already considered mid-career, I didn't have to start at the beginning what what they call CIA 101, like for a

40:10 new hire. This is what the CIA does. This is what this office does. This is what that office does. I had already been in for eight years orientation or whatever. Yeah. I didn't need any of that stuff. So, I went straight into the ops training. And the ops training was the ops training was more fun than I've ever had in my life doing anything. It was they had they had courses with names like crash and bang, right? You just learn how to crash cars through roadblocks and you should see my knee actually because of crash and bang. It's a wreck. I had to have knee replacement because of crash and bang. Really? Yeah. Cuz they don't give you nice cars to crash. They give you [ __ ] cars to crash. Of course. Where your seat becomes detached and your

40:56 knees slam into the dashboard and you break your leg. Oh my god. Yeah. Well, and you're not going to be driving fancy vehicles anyway when you actually need to use it either. That's right. So, that's probably why they do it. That's right. So, you learn counterterrorist driving, then they fly you out into the desert in Nevada, and you do advanced counterterrorist driving, and then you do weapons uh certifications, weeks and weeks and weeks on weapons, different weapons. Um, so you get certified and then you do uh well depending on what your specialization is. Mine was counterterrorism, so mine was more intense. Then you do airborne. You're jumping out of planes. And uh there's a bomb course. You have to learn to build a bomb. Learn how to diffuse a

41:43 bomb. Then you learn how to make like four different kinds of bombs so you can recognize them. Yeah. And much to my surprise, that actually came in handy one time. So, uh, after that, then you learn at the actual spy craft, how to recruit spies to steal secrets. Okay. So, that's your UC training. Yeah. That's So, how much of that was super valuable versus leveraging your own kind of personal intuition? Oh, on my on my first trip back to headquarters after after going overseas in an ops capacity, I ran into one of my trainers in the cafeteria and I told them I had just made my very first um recruitment. In fact, I I put

42:30 in an email and I sent it to everybody in my class. We all did that, our first recruitment. And I said, "The crazy thing is that it was exactly like it was in training." It was almost like a joke. Amazing. It went exactly like they told us it was going to go. But the thing is by the you're developing the source and then by the by the time you're ready to break cover and formally recruit him, he knows what's going on. He's not a [ __ ] He knows that this is not you're not a normal diplomat. You don't have too many people that come from nowhere and all of a sudden fall in love with you in a few months. That's right. You know, I remember Bill Clinton

43:16 came out to Greece when I was in Greece and um I was the notetaker in his meeting with the u the prime minister. The prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister. It's actually kind of a funny story. When a president comes to the country that you're serving in, everybody has to pitch in. Doesn't matter what agency you're working with, there's a ton of work and everybody has to pitch in. So the ambassador that I was working for at the time, Nick Burns, he went on to be ambassador to China and bunch of other different things. He just put all the jobs in a hat and you picked it out of the hat. So I got lucky and my job was to take notes in the president's meeting with the Greeks. So, it was the president, it was secretary of state Albbright, it was the national security adviser, um, uh, Sandy Burgerer and the

44:05 ambassador and me. And then for the Greeks, it was the prime minister, the defense minister, the foreign minister, and the Greek noteaker. So, the Greek notetaker was an intelligence officer. And we I was declared to the Greeks, so they knew I was an intelligence officer. So, we go in and and I smile at him and he winks at me like, "You too, huh? your flies. Yeah, right. So, we go in and Clinton, he was the sweetest guy in the world. He truly was. But he says, uh, to the to the Greeks, uh, can I offer you something to eat? There was a table off to the side that was just completely covered in food, like a buffet and juices and coffee and tea and water and all kinds of stuff. And he says, "May I

44:52 offer you something?" Uh, and the prime minister says, "No, no, no, thank you." The defense minister, "No, no, no. They none of them want anything." He goes around the room. He comes to me and he goes like this, "May I offer you something to eat?" And I said, "Oh, no, thank you, Mr. President. I'm fine." And he goes, "Oh, oh, are you with me?" And I said, "Yes, or I'm with you." And he said, "I'm sorry. I thought you were Greek." I said, "I kind of am, but I'm not really. I'm with you." Long story. Yeah. just just move on. So, I took the notes. There's kind of a funny postcript I've told a couple of times, but the meeting was stupid. The meeting was we love you and you love us and we

45:38 have really great relations and this is the birthplace of democracy and we have lots of Greek Americans in our country. And the Greek says, "And we love you, too, and we have lots of American companies here, and we would like to have more American companies here." And then they get up and they shake hands, and Clinton hugs them, and photo op. Yeah, it was a a ridiculous waste of time. It's a big pandering session. So, the Greeks get up and leave. Now, we're on the top floor of the Intercontinental Hotel. The presidential suite takes the whole floor. So Clinton and Burger walk out together. Albbright and the ambassador walk out together and then I walk out.

46:24 So again, my job is to keep my mouth shut and just stand there until somebody asks me to do something. So I'm just standing against the wall. I'm about 3 feet away from Clinton and uh and Burger. They finish their conversation and Burger drifts over to Albbright and Burns. So Clinton's just standing there and I'm standing there and I'm and we're looking at each other. So just then at the end of the hall, the elevator door opens and Hillary gets off with Chelsea and she's got this this puss on, right? This is right after the Lewinsky scandal, like months after, and she's got this look. So she walks right up to us and she just stands there. One thing about Bill Clinton, he hates silence. He's

47:12 always got to be joshing and joking and telling a story and getting people to laugh. And so we're just standing there like looking at each other and he says, "Boy, we sure had a good time at the Parthonon this morning, didn't we, Hill?" She's looking at him and she doesn't say anything. So he repeats himself. We sure had a good time at the Parthonon this morning, didn't we, Hill? And she goes, "Jesus Christ, Bill, it rained all day. I'll be in the room." And she walks away and I'm looking at him like, "You poor man." And he goes, "Let's get the [ __ ] out of here." So he and I walk to the elevator. There's some Secret Service guys down there, and they get on with us. And then we go down to the basement and there are

48:00 500 screaming women making up the Greek US women's business council roundt something screaming and he gave this like vintage Clinton speech and they're shouting we love you Bill you know I never saw anything like it in my life just recovered not not loving instantaneously. Yeah, which is probably why she's so bitter too because he can turn it off and on too elsewhere. I'll tell you another thing that I don't think I've ever told anybody publicly. Um, I have a friend who was one of the four top fundraisers for Clinton in '92 and Clinton named him an ambassador.

48:45 M so he came back after his ambassadorial stint and was was running finance helping to run finance for the 96 campaign and then in 97 the Monica Lewinsky thing broke and everybody close to Clinton got together behind his back and decided we've got to get him to resign. He needs to resign and Gore should become president. So, they asked Clinton to meet them at the Willard Hotel, just a block from the White House, and they're going to they're going to lay it on him. He's got to resign. Well, the man's not stupid. He knew exactly what they were doing. He has spies all over the Democratic party, right? So, they had met the night before

49:32 and they said, "We've got to be firm. We've got to be tough. The message has to be clear. He has to resign." So he gets Clinton gets to the to the meeting room and the way it was described to me was he starts off by saying I have let you down friends with a tear that rolls down his cheek and my friends like 5 minutes later were screaming we love you Bill we're with you Bill. They need to move him to operations. Yeah. And Gore's like what just happened? just got done. That's beautiful though. That's what a I mean, you have to be a master manipulator at that level. You can't be

50:17 president and not be a sociopath. Because then you're going to go back to the White House and order drone hits on 50 people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, part of that's being a dude, too. You just compartmentalize everything. Yes. And he certainly had to. He had to. There's some Secret Service guys that used to work Hillary too that had those similar stories from the other side, you know, that just crazy crazy. But I think that was the beginning of a time where we started to get more insight into personal lives of presidents, right? Because you know looking back to Kennedy or Roosevelt, that stuff was off limits, right? If it happened, nobody talked about it, right? And there was no obviously there was no media that could just immediately send it around the world in a click of a button. That's right. Do you remember the whole Gary

51:03 Hart thing? Oh yeah. Where you know reporters were following him and or they weren't following him yet. And he said, "I'm not doing anything. Go ahead and follow me." And they followed him to his girlfriend's house. Yeah. Where he spent the night and then came out wearing the same clothes and it was all over the newspapers and he had to drop out of the presidential race. Yeah. Yep. Know it's a different world now for sure. Sure is. But I don't know how I still don't know how you're going to get a politician that everybody truly likes to get through that process without thinking it's bullsh you're absolutely right. You know, I I've been in Washington a long time. I I came here the week after I turned 18 to go to college. And I've been here for the most part ever since except for, you know, serving overseas and then I kind of had

51:49 a two-year sbatical off to the side. um which we can get to later. Um but I've been in Washington for for what 43 years now. And back then Democrats and Republicans lived in the same group houses together up on Capitol Hill and they'd play poker on Fridays. They'd go to church on Sundays and you know, everybody was friends. And now they don't even speak to each other. They they plot against each other and they censure each other and impeach each other and like what happened? I don't know. It's rubbed off to the public too where the sentiment is the same way at every level. It really is the shame. And I'm I'm not seeing how we turn it around. I was going to ask you. Not unless there there becomes a viable

52:35 third party. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, but a third party meaning not a Republican or Dem Democrat or a a third party within one of those it parties. I I struggle with this. I say in my first book, I was a I was with was being the operative word. I was a third generation Democrat, right? My grandparents came here during the depression. to hear my grandfather tell it. Franklin Roosevelt was practically waiting there at Elvis Island to give him a passport and a job at the steel mill in Pittsburgh. And you know, we've been Americans ever since. We He had a framed picture of Roosevelt on the TV till the day he died. I have it in my den.

53:21 But I'm not a Democrat now, and I never will be a Democrat ever again. When I uh got out of prison in 2015, Gary Johnson, who also used to be a Republican, he was the governor of uh New Mexico, Gary was the Libertarian Party's candidate for president. And he asked me if I would campaign with him. And so I thought, you know what? I like these Libertarians. I like them. They're they're good people. And we have a lot of the same ideas that, you know, and I'm going to come right out and say it. Ronald Reagan was right when he said that government is the problem. It's not the solution to the problem. So I approach libertarianism from the left.

54:07 Others approach libertarianism from the right. But we meet at a certain point. Mhm. And so, you know, this year, for the first time in decades, more Americans have described themselves as independents than as Democrats or Republicans. There really is a need for a viable third party, whether it's one that already exists like the Libertarians or the Greens or whatever they're calling it now, the Unity Party or I forget what the name of it is now that Ross Perau started, the Reform Party. or one in the center, which I'm not really comfortable with because I think already we've got we've got a a right of center party and then we have a farther

54:54 right of center party. Right. Exactly. That's my view. And and more than likely, I think the the first step to getting there is having somebody drop from one of those primary parties into the middle. That is the key right there. Yeah. Somebody with the guts to say, "Look, this system we have isn't working." You know, I I have a a book coming out that tangentially talks about um politics of the of the 19th century. Around the time of the end of the Civil War, there were six different parties in Congress at the end of the Civil War. Six different parties. Solomon P. Chase, who had been one of Lincoln's um cabinet members, he was the Secretary of the Treasury, former governor of Ohio. He had been a Democrat. He had been a

55:41 Republican. He had been an anti-slavery Democrat. And then he joined three other parties after Lincoln was killed. Every time he would disagree with a policy of the party, he would just jump to another party. And that that was quite common back then. Was it better that way though? It seems like pad jumping might be just as problematic. You know, on the one hand, you raised an important point. On the one hand, it makes me think, no, it's better because you keep the honest people honest and you make sure that they're representative of what the American people want. On the other hand, look at look at countries like Italy or Israel that have, you know, a dozen parties represented where nobody can

56:26 ever get the majority. And so you have to look at Israel where when Benjamin Netanyahu has put together a government that includes in that includes in in in the most important ministerial levels, senior most ministerial levels, two men who have been convicted of hate crime felonies. What's up with that? Yeah. you know, so that's the bad thing about multiple Yeah. and there's probably no absolutes anyway, especially in politics. But the Greeks have a nice I'm biased uh because I'm Greek, but the Greeks have a system that works. They they had until like 10 years ago a multi-party parliamentary democracy and

57:13 so it was just impossible to get a majority and then you have to deal with the communists or the fascists or whatever and that's just not workable. So they passed this law that whatever party come you get proportional representation but whatever party comes in first gets an extra 50 seats in in the 300 seat parliament. All right. And it and it's worked. They've had socialist governments. They've had capitalist governments and it works and you end up with the majority and the leadership too. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, that's interesting. Well, all right. So, we get back to your operations now. operations. I I went on a tangent and I appreciate that. It's my fault. I do it all. It's actually No, it's wonderful because those were like some of my extra questions. Anyway, I'd

57:59 love to hear some of your philosophical solutions or whatever. So, I I love it. I appreciate it. Um, you had once you hit operations, you were you had some hits put out on you more than once. More than once. Um, do you have any stories you like to I think I've heard about the one in Pakistan. You had a double agent or something or you don't tell the same ones. Yeah, talk about talk about those and how did you handle those? I just got back from Greece two days ago. Um I I go frequently uh to speak and meet and I' I've become kind of famous in Greece uh for my whistleblowing. Mhm. Uh as you are here, sir. No, thank you. That's not all it's cracked up to be, I tell you. But in Greece, that was the first time I

58:46 ever had somebody try to kill me. And I didn't even realize that there was this operation underway, which I still shake my head over because I took my training very very seriously. I became a surveillance detection instructor at the CIA and and I didn't spot the surveillance. And so I'd been working against this group called Revolutionary Organization 17 November. They had killed 27 people including the CIA station chief, two US defense attaches, the Turkish ambassador, the Turkish deputy ambassador, the minister of finance, the minister of communication, the governor of the central bank, murderous, bloodthirsty

59:34 organization of the extreme communist left. They weren't associated with the communist party because the communists were far too, you know, right-wing for them. Okay. So, um, this was the group I was there to work against, and I didn't realize that they knew who I was and were working against me. So, in January of 2000, I had already been there for a year and a half, uh, a new British defense atache arrived. Uh, General, Brigadier General Steven Saunders. Steve was an awesome guy. Great sense of humor, great storyteller, just a good time Charlie, right? He was

1:00:21 at every party. He was a media [ __ ] He loved the He was on TV all the time. Ate it up. Yeah. At every he ate it up. Lovely wife, two little girls. We were at a dinner party. He lived next door to me. So, we're at a dinner party one night and I had just taken delivery of a fully armored BMW 540 that the CIA's counterterrorism center bought for me. Windows were this thick. Yeah. No exaggeration. Fully armored. Yeah. And it was a 540 because I needed a big engine to carry all that armor. We couldn't even insure this car because it was the first 540 in Greece. We had to insure it through a German company. So, we're at a dinner party that night and he's making fun of me jokingly and

1:01:07 he says, "You Americans, you're so paranoid about security." He goes, "This is an EU country. It's a NATO country. What are you so worried about?" Haha. Everybody laughs. Mhm. And I said, "You Brits, you live in a dream world. If you think because they have palm trees and pretty beaches that they're not going to kill you if they have the opportunity, if they have the chance, they're going to kill you." Mhm. We all laughed again. Two weeks later, I made a mistake that I made only once that day I slept through my alarm. I would get up early every day because every day I would take a different route

1:01:53 to work, a route that made no sense. Right. Right. Figuring your six always. It's just a a habit though. It it becomes a part of you. You don't even I mean, you just do it cuz you're you do it. You you're trained to do it. It's natural. So, this isn't going to be a mistake of complacency because you were actually even doing what you're trained to do still. But I'm going to be late to work. That was what I was worried about. Like, dog gone it. All right, I'm not going to do the surveillance detection route today. I'm just going to get on the main road and just go straight to the embassy. Now, I lived in a northern suburb of Athens called Guys. So, if was on literally the same road as the embassy called Gicas Boulevard,

1:02:40 which becomes [Music] um Sophia's Queen Sophia Boulevard. Okay. Okay. No turns. You just get on straight 10 miles. Exactly 10 miles. You know how dangerous that is? There are jersey barriers most of the way down. So, once you're on, you're on. You're committed. You can't get off. No escaping. There's no escape. Yeah. No. Jay turned into the same lane of traffic. Nope. So, I get on and I'm thinking I'm taking a real risk doing this. But I've got a gun. I have a nine on my waist. I have a 38 on my ankle. And god forbid if it all turns to [ __ ] I have a I have a buck knife in my back pocket. So, I get on KCS and it's

1:03:25 gridlock like Cairo. Nice. Right. And I'm like, "God on it. I'm never going to make it to work. I'm inching my way down the mountain." And like I say, it's exactly 10 miles. So I then did something else that I never did. I turned the radio on. They they told us in training, don't ever play the radio cuz it's distracting. You've got to constantly be scanning your side view mirrors. Make sure that you're alert. And we were taught to talk out loud to ourselves. like um guy in blue jeans uh red t-shirt so that you can remember later. I saw a guy in blue jeans with a red t-shirt. I'm seeing him again. That's the same guy. Just kind of narrating your scene as you go. That's exactly what you do just to keep it all

1:04:11 fresh because if you say it out loud, you're more likely to retain it. Sure. So I turn on the radio and the the announcer comes on and he says, "Avoid GCS boulevard. There was a traffic incident at Filo." Filth is about four miles into it. And I was like, "Fuck, I got four miles of this." Too late. Yeah. Yeah. It's too late. I'm committed. So I'm inching my way down. Half hour passes. He says, "Avoid GCS Boulevard. There was a criminal incident at Filith and I remember thinking criminal incident. Never heard them say that before. Weird time to use. Wonder what that could be. Another half hour passes and he says avoid Kicas

1:04:59 Boulevard. There was a terrorist attack at Filith. Well, I'm just approaching what the jamup is and it's a white rover in the left lane. There's police tape around it and there's blood just coating all the windows inside and I look at the license plate and I was like, "Oh my god." Now it Athens was so dangerous for Americans that we did not have diplomatic license plates. You see diplomatic plates all around Washington and New York. They're red, white, and blue and they're unusual. We didn't have those plates in Athens. Those are targets. They're targets. Yeah. But the Greeks in their infinite wisdom gave everybody in the American

1:05:44 embassy license plates that began with the letters YHB. And the rover I see is YBH. And I said, "Oh my god, they killed some innocent Greek thinking it was one of us." And then I said, "No, the British embassy has YBH and Steven Saunders drives a white rover." No way. So I called the station chief and I said, "Hey, I'm stuck on geese and I think Steve Saunders was just assassinated." He said, "What are you seeing?" So I I told him and he said, "Okay, get into the office as fast as you can." He called the British embassy and said, "One of my officers is on the road and thinks that Steven Saunders was

1:06:31 murdered." And the the woman like her brain didn't comprehend what he said. And she says, "I'm sorry. Steven's not in yet this morning." And he said, "No, you're not listening to me. We think Steven was just assassinated." Oh. They start calling the hospitals. Sure enough, he's at the hospital that's immediately next door to the British Embassy. He died 45 minutes later. So that was April the 20th. Usually what 17 November would do is they would drop a manifesto at the site of the hit. Not always. Sometimes they would put it in a garbage can and then they would call a leftist newspaper and tell them where to find it.

1:07:17 This day they didn't. I mean, yeah, it was just an we knew it was them. We knew it was them for a couple of reasons. Um, first of all, it was their MMO. Two guys on a motorcycle. Secondly, we learned later that the passenger on the motorcycle shot Stephen with an anti-tank round and it blew his right hand completely off. And the testimony later was when he shot him, Steven lifted up the stump and looked at it like, "What just happened to me?" And then he turned and looked at the shooter and they shot him three times in the chest with what was called the Welch 45. called the Welch 45 because Dick Welch was their first victim. He was our station chief and

1:08:03 they used the Welch 45 in every hit after that. So he bled to death. A taxi driver pulled him out of the car and rushed him to the hospital. That's how he got to the hospital. But the car was it was just soaked in blood and he didn't have a chance. Anyway, we set out to, you know, double down on our efforts to find 17 November. We began working with the British. We were told to open our files to them. Then fast forward to August the 16th. I get into the office, totally normal day. My boss runs in. He said,

1:08:49 "Did you see the manifesto?" And I said, "There was no manifesto." He said, 'N no, it came out today.' I said, 'N no, I didn't see the manifesto. He said, 'You're in it.' I said, 'What do you mean I'm in it? And he shows it to me in Greek. It said mealascopos, we saw the big spy, but we knew that he was driving an armored car and he was armed. So, we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders. And he goes, "You've got to go." I said, "Where?" He goes, "Home. you've got to go home right now. I said, I just took my kids to school. I can't go home. He goes, we'll get your kids and your wife. You take a car to the airport. So, one

1:09:34 of the drivers put me in an armored car, drove me to the airport, another car picked up my wife, another car picked up my kids, take them to the airport. My wife says, "I want a divorce. I'm not doing this anymore."

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