The untold stories of John Kiriakou - CIA Whistleblower

In this powerful conversation, John Kiriakou, former CIA officer and whistleblower, shares his personal journey, the price of speaking the truth, government secrecy, freedom, and the lessons he learned after exposing the CIA’s torture program.

A thought-provoking episode that challenges the way we think about courage, justice, and accountability.
 
Enjoy the full episode on our YouTube channel: The Farah Shammas Podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I started as an analyst and I was put on uh the Iraq desk in the Office of Leadership Analysis. So I was essentially Saddam Hussein's classified biographer. So I said, Kupra, I'm not working on Al-Qaeda. Was that for real? Or was that just for their benefit? He said, Oh, something terrible is gonna happen. And two months later it did.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Whose fault was it then?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, it was the greatest intelligence failure in American history. I was informed that we were going to start torturing in May of 2002. And I said, That's a slippery slope. It's wrong. And they said, Well, either you're in or you're out. And there were CIA officers, very senior CIA officers, who would go to the secret prisons to watch torture sessions just because they wanted to enjoy the torture session.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Did you ever think it would cost you your freedom? Were you ever worried about that?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Never thought it would. I spent 23 months in prison. People objected that I was not contrite. What's the difference between somebody who orders hit teams to go around the world and just murder people in cold blood versus the mafia guy who murders somebody who won't pay back the $100,000 that he borrowed? What's the difference? They're both killers. My boss, who I really, really liked and respected. Like you would never guess that he was in the CIA. You would look at him and say, Ambassador, right? He came up to me, he gave me a hug, and he said, Stay safe. And then he whispers in my ear, and kill them all.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Do you think Epstein was a spy?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yes. For the Israelis. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

John, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I can't believe you're in Cyprus. You just said first time since 1992. What a change.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

It's a different world, truly.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Don't recognize anything. And in fact, I took a lot of pictures in Nicosia when I was there in 1992 and don't recognize any of the places.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

You must do it before and after. It's gonna be hilarious. I know it's a big, big difference. Huge difference. Huge. We see it. I mean, Lemusol's completely transformed. It's a mini to buy now. But yeah, even some of the beautiful old buildings, they've been knocked down and lots of changes, but in a good way, because we need change and we need to grow and develop.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

So that's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah. Well, welcome, Cyprus. Welcome, San Rafael.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

So happy to have you here with us. It's a real, real treat. And um, so before we go into the into all of the amazing details that I think all the listeners can't wait to hear, I want to start with talking about your Greek heritage, like the obvious. Yeah. Because I do, you know, I do a lot on Instagram, always talking about it was a bit like my big fat Greek wedding. What is Greek and beautiful and wonderful in the world? And here you are, an American CIA who's originally Greek. So tell us a bit about your parents, your lineage, America.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

All four, excuse me. All four of my grandparents were from Rodos. Um my father's parents from the U.S. Rodhos. I do. I've been like 10 times.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

One of my best friends is from there.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Oh, I love it. My father's parents from Yalisos up north. Okay. And my mother's parents from Catavia. It's the farthest southern uh village on the island. And you know, it's funny, we were raised to believe we were always Rhodian. Going back, you know, till the beginning of time, always Rhodian. And so I did a I just happened to do a 23andMe test after I was invited to come to Cyprus to speak. When when uh Paul Lambis uh emailed me, he said, Hey, we want you to speak at this uh Cypriots of the Diaspora. And I said, Great, I'd love to count me in, but I'm not Cypriot. My family is Greek. He said, That's okay. Come and speak and it'll be fun. I happened to do a DNA test at the time you got Cypriot, anyway. 26% Cypriot.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

No way! I love that. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

I called a cousin of mine and I said, I said, it's 26% Cypriot, and it's all from Papu's side. Yeah. And he said, Yeah, he said, I told you that. I said, No, you said criti. You said originally we came from Kriti. And I said, that was crazy. I'd never heard that. He said, No, I said Kipro, not Crete, not Crete.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

So there it is. And there's a there's um a village in Rhodes called Arhangelos.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yes, it's heavily Cypriot.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

This very similar accent to the Cypriots.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I'll tell you a funny story about Argangelos. Um, I like it there, it's very nice. Uh when I was in college, my cousin was getting married in Warren, Ohio. I don't remember why I went with her, my mother, and my grandmother that day. I drove them all to the what do you call it, the wedding gown store, whatever they call it, the bridal bridal uh boutique. And there was a girl working there from Arcangelos. Her parents were from Arcangelos, and she was really good looking. And I said, uh, and we were talking and smiling and flirting. We were 20, I'm gonna say 21 or 22. Yeah, really young. And I said to my mother, I'm gonna ask her out. And my ya says, Oh no, you're not. She said, I don't interfere, but I'm putting my foot down on this. I said, Why? And she said, She's from from Argangelos. I said, So what? That's a that's a positive thing. She's Rhodian.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

She's Rhodian.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

And she says, people from Arcangelos have big heads and they lie and they care only about property.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

They have big heads, like oversized heads. And they're all liars. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I said, Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Well, in that and that's the case.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, I'm not gonna piss everybody off, so I never asked around.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Oh my goodness, the one that got away. If you're listening to this now, can you imagine like the lady somewhere going, What? What? That was him.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

And you know, the last time I was in Rhodes, it was last year. I stopped in Arcangulos with that same cousin, and uh, and we had lunch. And I said, It's fantastic here. Yeah, I missed the boat.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Oh my goodness, that is so funny. And you did, your first wife was Greek origin as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yeah, from from Hios.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

From Hios, right? Yeah, but also second generation, like in America.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

My parents were born in Hios.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yeah, so she was oh, so she's like yeah, first generation American. Wow. And you grew up, so you grew up in a very my big fat Greek wedding style, huh? With the Greeks.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

I had 27 first cousins on my mother's side.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah, it was big family. She was one of nine, and then everybody had kids.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

So and and you and you learned Greek? You were speaking Greek at home?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, but you know what though? When I went to college, uh, I wanted to take Greek. I went to George Washington University and wanted to take Greek, and they didn't offer Greek, they're only ancient Greek.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So I wanted to take Greek. They said, well, it's available at Georgetown University, and we had this consortium of DC universities, it was called. So I went up there and I met with the uh the professor who also happened to be the dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics, the Mithris Alatis. And um I said, I I want to I want to take Greek. He said, You can't. We already started a week earlier. You're gonna be too far behind. I said, No, but I I spoke Greek at home. He said, Okay, let's talk. So we start talking. And he says to me, Your Greek is terrible. And I said, What? Really? He said, You speak in this weird 1930s era Dodekenesian slang. And he said, When did your people come over?

SPEAKER_02 7:43

I said, Well, that's when they came out over.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

1931. My my parent, my father's parents, 1934, my my mother's. And he said, and you're probably from what, Rhodes? And I said, Yes. He said, You're gonna have to start at the beginner class.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And I said, Okay. And since I knew, you know, the alphabet and the basic words, I I was okay. And so I studied there for three years. And then when I went to the CIA, um I just continued taking Greek at church on my own and then was assigned later to Greece while I was with the CIA.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yeah. But you learn Arabic.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah, I learned Arabic.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Oh my goodness. I mean, I'm I'm half Lebanese and Arabic is massive. My Greek is much better than my Arabic.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

At the end of it, I said to my instructor, I feel like you owe me a master's degree because I didn't work this hard in graduate school.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

No, yeah, really. It's tough. It's really tough. So how did you learn Arabic? Because you studied Middle Eastern studies.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

I studied Middle Eastern studies in school, but didn't but Arabic wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

It was more like the history and culture.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Okay. In fact, it was a new thing. There wasn't a language party.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Well, no, it was a new program. I uh I actually went to the dean as a sophomore, and I said And why?

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Why did you choose that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Oh, I was always fascinated by the Middle East.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Oh, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, when I was a sophomore in high school, the Iranians took uh the American embassy and took our diplomats hostage, and I was fascinated. So I went to the dean um at GW and I said, uh I was one of only four Middle Eastern studies majors, and I said, with all due respect, you've got a Middle Eastern studies program with no Arabic, no oil economics, and no religion. What kind of program is it?

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yeah, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

He he was not nice about it. Don't tell me how to run my program.

unknown 9:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Well, now here it is, you know, 40 years later. Is it 40?

unknown 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, actually, 40. 40. And um and they have Arabic and they have Islam and they have I actually I actually took Islam on my own through the consortium again. And then my senior year, they brought Sayyid Hussein Nasser, the father of uh Vali Nasser, to GW. So I studied under him.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

And um and uh oil economics, finally, they have a whole program, but it took them decades.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Yeah, because it's you know that I mean I had also when I was studying cross-cultural, I don't know what they called it, cross-cultural studies, part of my hospitality and tourism degree. But it's so important. I know my grandfather, so we're Greek Orthodox Christians, but my grandfather was originally from Homs in Syria, and he was taught Arabic by learning to recite and memorize the Quran. And when he got older and he was in business, and and the Americans were moving over to, they were in the Middle East a lot, and he got um started a construction company, and it's a whole story. But one of the things that um apparently they attributed to his success was he could sit at a table with Muslims and he would know more of the Quran than they did, and he would start reciting things to them, and they would go, Wow, and he really bridged that gap and was like, We're all the same, we can all learn together.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

And uh my grandfather, my grandfather dropped out of school in the third grade to work in the fields, one of 19 children. Wow, and uh and sometimes we would be sitting at the table and he would start speaking Turkish, and we were like Babu. And he's like, We had to learn these languages. Yes, and then he would speak Italian.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Imagine.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

It was the craziest thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

And what a gift. Yeah, languages is such a gift. So what happened that made you join the CIA? How did this turn around? You said you were fascinated as a younger. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Well, you know, because I was from an immigrant family, I was raised with the idea that the United States was so good to us we had to pay back somehow. And so I only considered public service. I never considered going to be a very important thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Isn't it amazing how immigrants often appreciate the country so much more than the people who were born into it?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

They really, really do. And I mean, look at the Greek community in the United States. It's the it's the best educated and second wealthiest immigrant community in America.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Is it? What's the first?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

The Jews.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Oh well. I just had to hear that come out of your mouth. I was gonna say it, but yeah. And the third?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Uh the Indians.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

So I only considered public service.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

And there's public service, you know, there's working in, you know, electricity or something like that, and then there's CIA. It's a big gap.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Well, I was thinking more of State Department, Foreign Service, maybe Capitol Hill. And then my advisor in graduate school turned out to be a CIA officer undercover as an advisor.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

No way.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

And um and he spotted me and thought that I would be.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

So why was he there undercover in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

To to spot to find students.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, students.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Amazing. What was anyone else hired from your friends? No, just you. Wow, that's amazing. So how does the hiring process work? Well, it's different now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

They changed it in 1993. Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Very, very much less sexy.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

You just go to www.ca.gov and click apply.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Okay. So it's But before they would be outscouted.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Oh, yeah, outlooking. Yeah, before the internet and computers were in widespread use. So Yeah, before 9-11, there were 250 applicants for every position. After 9-11, and this has held steady, there are about 2,500 applicants for every one open position. So it's very, very competitive. And you have to get through AI and the computer screen.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

People are patriotic. They're patriotic.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah. Or patriotic. I'm not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

You're not going to apply the CIA if you hate the CIA. No. You're not going to apply the CIA if you hate the government.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

But it could also be the movies, the the perceived glamour.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah, but I like old Western movies. Doesn't mean I want to be a cowboy.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So then you started working in the CIA and then your career progressed. Tell us about your, yeah. Because I know you were stationed in Athens and different places. Obviously, you learn Arabic.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Well, I started as an analyst. Um, I was hired as an analyst, and I was put on uh the Iraq desk in the Office of Leadership Analysis. So I was essentially Saddam Hussein's classified biographer. We worked with a team of uh psychologists and psychiatrists to analyze the personalities of foreign leaders to look for weaknesses that we could exploit.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Oh my goodness. Tell us about that. Well I was tell us about Saddam Hussein.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

What's your take on we always we always compared Saddam to a mob boss? You know, people people grossly over overuse the word crazy. Oh, he's crazy. The Ayatollah is crazy. Saddam's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Crazy is just different.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

None of them are crazy. None of them. Just because we don't like their policies or we disagree with their style of leadership doesn't mean they're crazy. With Saddam, he was extraordinarily quick to use violence. And we compared his leadership style to the leadership style of a mob boss. If you spoke out against him, he would cut your tongue out and nail it to the front door of your house. And that way nobody in the neighborhood was going to speak out against him. If you were a problem or or he thought you might become a problem politically in the future, he would either kill you or exile you. If you were, for example, a popular general, let's say you had uh commanded successful troops against the Iranians, you're not gonna get promoted. You're gonna be made ambassador to the Philippines. So you're so far away you can't possibly challenge him. There's a famous video, it's it's freely available on YouTube, from the day that Saddam took power. He's at a he's in a small theater on stage, and all the generals who had helped him come to power that day are sitting there in the audience. Dozens of them. And he says, he's sitting on the stage, he's smoking a cigar, and his brother Barzan Takredi is down there standing amongst the generals. And Saddam says, We uncovered a plot, a plot against the revolution, and it's among the generals, and there's you know, rumbling. And then he says, General Muhammad, you've been caught. And General Muhammad stands up and he says, Mr. President, I'm innocent. I I uh support you, I love you. Barzan grabs him, takes him out, and you hear a gunshot in the background, and he does it to a second general and a third general and a fourth general. Finally, he names the next guy and he jumps up and to try to save himself, says, Yes, I confess, I did it, I did it. Well, there was never any plot. They killed him. Killed about a dozen of them that day, and it so frightened all the rest, it so cowed them that nobody dared to challenge Saddam.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

That's when people say it's crazy. I mean, this is not crazy, but it's not crazy. It's ruthless, it's ruthless.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

But it's not crazy.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

It's just so different from anything that we're brought up to believe what is right, what is correct, what is the norm in the world.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

It's like the colloquial use of the term nervous breakdown. But there's no such thing as a nervous breakdown, right? That's not a medical term, it's not a psychiatric term. It's just a term that we've come up with, that the media have come up with that we attribute to people who, you know, ha are in some kind of a mental health.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yeah, psychosis or yeah, mental health.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Yeah. Wow. That's yeah. Again, we go back to that's crazy. Um, so you were studying um and and looking after that side, and then you were moved to Athens.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Well, years later.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Years later. So what happened?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

So I was an analyst for seven and a half years. I served overseas in Bahrain as an analyst, um, served in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

And you were undercover whenever you were serving.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Well, you have to be. You can't just go to the airport and say, I'm with the CIA. So um I switched to operations.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

And he loved it. He loved what you were doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Oh, I loved it. Yeah. So I switched to operations in 1997, went through the operations training, and then went to Greece as a counter-terrorism officer. Spent two years there, back to headquarters for a year. Almost a year. Is that right? No, almost two years, year and a half, and then uh went to Pakistan as the head of counterterrorism operations.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

And how did you find it? Because we all watch the movies and but you know, we don't know. How how do you find it living that double life? Like No problem. How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Because but you know what though, we all live double lives.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

We all have we go to work, we smile, we and then we go home.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Sure. Now, if you're just some guy I'm sitting next to on a plane and you ask me.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

But you're you're you're going to work and you're playing someone that's not you, let's say. I might have parts of it.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

What makes you think it's not me?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Yeah, that's what I'm asking. That's what I'm asking.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

No, but you're saying it's two different lives. And I'm saying, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

It's not.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

No.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

No.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

No, it's not two different lives.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Okay. If you explain that. Explain that further. I mean, for all of us, because we're not in this, the listeners, myself, we're not in this world. So this is something so alien to us. So let us into your world. Describe it.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

If you're just some guy I'm sitting next to on a plane and you ask what I do for a living, I'm gonna tell you a lie. And I'm gonna the lie is gonna sound sound so boring that you're not gonna ask me a follow-up question.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

I'm gonna say I'm involved in training in trade negotiations. And you're gonna say, Oh, that sounds so interesting. And you're lying, and it doesn't, and you're not gonna ask me a follow-up. That's it. So it's not really so much a double life like the movies.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

And then but then when you're on the ground Tell us about it. This is such a different world. So okay, you're on the ground and you're going about your your daily life pretending that you're in trading.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

No, no, no, no, no. No. No, that's called that's called a throwaway cover.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

That's just something that I just say just to get you to shut up.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Um there are different kinds of cover. Uh there's what's called integrated cover, in which case I would work a normal eight-hour day doing a cover job, and then at night I would go out and do my CIA job. I was never under integrated cover.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Um I was under Well no, I I shouldn't say what I was under. I was under the kind of cover that I was a CIA officer all day.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

And I was working with that country's intelligence service. So I was known to them as John the CIA officer. And so I would go over to whatever the intelligence service was, the Greeks, the, you know, this one, that one, the other one, and trade information. We would do operations jointly. Yeah, just go about my business.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Amazing. Okay, so let's go through now. We're we're still getting to the part. You went moved to Athens?

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Right. So I moved to Athens in nineteen ninety-eight. And um my job there, well, when I originally applied for it, it was to work against uh the Greek terrorist group uh 17 November, Revolutionary Organization 17 November, and there was another one called the Popular Revolutionary Struggle, ELA. And um as well as the Abu Nidal organization, the Libyans, the PFLP, the PFLPGC, the DFLP, whatever groups happened to pop up, Islamic Jihad, they they didn't have very much of a presence. Whatever groups there were that meant harm to Americans, that was the job. Once I got there, 90% of it was 17 November. I didn't expect it to be 90%. But but it it was. The Arabs, I mean, by then we've got the immediate aftermath of the Oslo Accords and everybody's getting along. I didn't have to worry about the Arabs. The Libyans, you know, changed their policy, they weren't making trouble anymore. It was all about 17 November.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

So interesting. And then you stayed in Athens for a couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Uh-huh. Two years.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

And then was it a dangerous time then?

SPEAKER_00 23:20

The most dangerous time in my career.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Really?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah, I was in far more danger in Athens than I was in Pakistan.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Which I think people wouldn't put that together.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Most people don't know that in that period from the mid-1970s until 2002, the U.S. spent more money on security in Athens than we spent in Beirut. It was far more dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

It's unbelievable. And me coming from Beirut, like I know that that was, you know, a crazy place. And we used to get to Athens and feel safe and, you know, more. Okay, it wasn't, we didn't have the European Union then, but it was, you know, we felt like it was Europe and more civilized.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

But you had this group that not only had nobody ever been caught, nobody had ever been identified. So is it the guy you're sitting next to? Is it the guy in traffic? Is it the guy on the motorcycle weaving through traffic and coming up alongside you? You just didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

That's amazing. Okay, and off to Athens.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I went back to headquarters in August of 2000 and almost immediately turned around and went back to the United Arab Emirates. I was there until I was I was assigned to something called the 17 November Task Force. But because of my Arabic, I was constantly on loan to other groups. And so I spent much of that time in Abu Dhabi, did some work in Beirut, and um, and then 9-11 hit. And then everybody changed. Everything changed. Everybody was volunteering to go.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Tell us about 9-11.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

What a terrible day.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I mean, I th I everyone in the world will remember where they were on 9-11.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Everyone in the world. I had a meeting scheduled that morning for 9 o'clock with Condaleza Rice. She was the national security advisor at the time. I was going with the director of the Counterterrorism Center, Kofer Black, later Ambassador Kofer Black. And um I walked over to Kofer's office to tell him that the car was ready to take us to the White House. And when I got there, when I got to his office, I was across the hall. So I got to his office. And these were the days before you could watch TV on a computer. So his secretary had a very small TV on her desk, and she had it on, and one of the towers of the World Trade Center was burning. I said, What happened to the World Trade Center? And she said, A plane flew into it. And I said, You know what? That happened once before. In 1930, a plane flew into the Empire State Building, but it was really foggy and rainy. It's so crystal clear today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And just as I said the words, the second plane flew in. And she turned around and she said to me, Did you see that or did I imagine it? I ran back to the office and I said, Guys, we're under attack. Two planes just uh hit both towers of the World Trade Center. We all ran back up to Kofer's office. There were TVs hanging from the ceiling. One was, you know, BBC, CNN, Canal Plus, the Russians, the Chinese. And all of them were on, and all of them were showing the World Trade Center. And must have been 150 of us gathered there. And finally, somebody behind me shouted, Will somebody please lead? And then Kofer, it was like slapping him in the face. He said, Yes, you go to the director's office and tell him this. You go to security. You go to operations. And we just stood there and watched, you know, watched the towers burn, and then the Pentagon was hit. And then somebody said there's still a plane in the air. The vice president ordered that jets be scrambled to shoot it down. The passengers brought it down before it could be shot. And um and then Kofer stood on his desk or on the secretary's desk and uh and said, Today we're at war. All of us are going to have to fight. Not all of us are going to come home. If you want to leave now, no one will think less of you. And nobody budged. Finally, the CIA has its own internal police force called the SPOS, the Special Protective Officers. And a SPO had already come in and said, Everybody evacuate. Nobody budged. Came back in 45 minutes later. He said, if you don't evacuate, you'll be arrested. So we started evacuating. It took me two hours just to get out of my parking space. And then I lived.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

It's not really evacuating, is it? I mean.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I mean, it's the place isn't designed for tens of thousands of people to all leave at exactly the same time. So I lived exactly 10 kilometers from headquarters. I got five kilometers home, five kilometers toward home, and I had to uh abandon my car on the side of the highway. It was like World War Z, like nothing could move. So I walked the five kilometers, and I saw when I when I got to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, where I would make a right to go home, I saw the deputy national security advisor coming across the bridge and he had no shoes. And I remember thinking, you're supposed to be protecting us. You're supposed to be commanding the response to this. And you ran away with no shoes? Like, how did how did this happen? So I got to my apartment. My girlfriend, who later became my wife, she was also a senior CIA officer. She met me there about an hour later. We went to the roof of my building. We watched the Pentagon burn for a little while. And then I said, we should give blood or something. So we went, we went back downstairs. We tried to donate blood, but the line was 24 hours long. And then finally I said, This is ridiculous. We need to get back to work. So I walked the five kilometers back to my car, drove across the grassy median, and then went back to headquarters, and I stayed there for the next four days. I just slept under my desk. Everybody did that.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

And you know, America had never seen anything like it. You know, it's not like Europe where you know there's memories of wars or, you know, America's recent history.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Almost double the number of deaths compared to Pearl Harbor, which had been the worst attack in American history. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

And what's your take on 9-11, if you can say it's very straightforward.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Al Qaeda did it. They told us they were going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Because there's a lot of conspiracy theories.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Fuck the conspiracy theories. Whether it was the Jews or the Saudis or the Bush family or the space aliens or the lizard people. I've heard it all.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Oh my god, I haven't heard the last two.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

I've heard it all, including the last two. And people tell me I'm an idiot and a fool. Al-Qaeda had been planning that attack since 1996. We watched them plan it. We listened to them plan it. We disrupted it a couple of times because they only had to be lucky once. We had to be right on every single time.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

So they kept on trying. And you had managed a few times, but that time you missed it.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

On July the 6th, I was entertaining a group of intelligence officers from the Middle East. And we did this literally every single day. You'd have a group come from whatever country, and you give them a full day of briefings, and then you exchange gifts, and then you take them for a photo up with the director, and then at night you take them to a very expensive restaurant, and then you do it again the next day with another group. So that day, July the 6th, I had this group from the Middle East. And I scheduled the full day of briefings for them. One of the briefings was on Al-Qaeda, and it was with a young, 25-year-old junior analyst, just come in and give us the basics on Al-Qaeda. And so instead of him coming, Ambassador Black came with the chief of operations for the Osama bin Laden group. And I was so surprised. I said, Oh, gentlemen, I stood up. I said, Gentlemen, this is Ambassador Kofer Black, the director of counterterrorism, and this is the director of operations. And Kofer sat down and said, he looked right at them and he said, something terrible is going to happen. We don't know exactly where or when, but it's going to be an attack on an unprecedented scale. He said, the chatter that we're picking up is camp commanders on the phone with their students and they're crying and saying, I'll see you in paradise. They're saying code words for a massive attack. The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities of honey. There's going to be a gigantic football match, a huge wedding. They're all code words for an attack. He said, I'm begging you, if you have any sources inside Al-Qaeda, please help us. And they just sat there. So at the end of the day, I sent them back to the hotel. I said, I'll I'll pick you up in three hours for dinner. And I went to his office to thank him for taking the time to do the briefing. The guy's in charge of counterterrorism for the entire world. So he's busy. So I said, Kophar, I'm not working on Al-Qaeda. Was that for real? Or was that just for their benefit? He said, Oh, something terrible is going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

And two months later it did.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

So who whose fault was it then?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Well, it was the greatest intelligence failure in American history. The CIA didn't do its job because we hadn't recruited any sources inside Al-Qaeda. The State Department didn't do its job because it gave visas to every one of those hijackers. The FBI didn't do its job because they knew that the hijackers were in the United States and didn't tell the CIA. Congress didn't do its job because it hadn't appropriated enough money for counterterrorism or allowed the CIA to hire enough people. Everybody failed. The predecessors of TSA didn't do their job because they let 19 terrorists on the planes with box cutters and they didn't catch a single one of them. So everybody failed.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Terrible.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

And it was one of the most heart-wrenching op-eds I had ever written. The guy was saying, My God, do you realize what you've done? Do you have any idea how many people are going to be killed now? We killed two million Muslims in the 20 years after 9-11 between Afghanistan, Iraq, and you know, associated operations Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan. Two million people that would be alive today. Like what did he think was gonna happen? I never understood the decision making.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

It's so, so, so sad. And when did you leave the CIA?

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Uh in uh March of 2004.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Okay. So it's quite a quite a while ago. And what made you leave?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

I was newly divorced. My my children were young. At the time, they were, let me think. They were nine and six. My ex-wife moved back to Ohio. And, you know, boys especially need their father at that age. And so I had a job offer from uh from Deloitte, uh, one of the big four professional services firms, and they said, we don't care where you're sitting, you know, when you're writing your reports, you can work from Starbucks. We don't care. So I took that job for funny, for exactly double what I was making at the CIA. And um, and I did that for the next four years.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

And so when when did you have that moment where you said if I stay silent, I can't live with myself? Like I I need to.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Well, you know, it came incrementally.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

So we started torturing Abu Zubeda in uh on August the second, 2002. And I thought this was wrong, wrong, wrong. And I said something internally. Um at my product at my uh promotion panel meeting, the new director of counterterrorism said that I had dis I had uh displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism because I wouldn't be trained in the torture techniques and I had objected to them internally. And then there's a Greek American guy, he's a brigadier general in the army, he's a psychiatrist, and we were working together in the counterterrorism center, good guy. And he said to me, Buddy, you know they call you the human rights guy behind your back. And I said, I know, I've heard it. He said, You know that's not a compliment, right? And I said, Steve, I am on the right side of this, and they are not. It's as simple as that.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Was that the first time you saw or you heard of torture, or was it something that you knew was going on but you hadn't been directly involved in?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Well, I was I was informed that we were going to start torturing in May of 2002. And I said, That's a slippery slope. It's wrong. And they said, Well, either you're in or you're out. I said, I'm out, but I think you're all making a terrible mistake. So then they started torturing them on August the second. And was it several types of torture or well, there were 10 techniques, um, but then there were others that were not approved by the Justice Department that they did anyway. You know, everything from a smack in the face to waterboarding and sleep deprivation and I I've seen a picture of um, I think it was in Korea, I think it must be quite a famous picture, of um different soldiers waterboarding someone I think from North Korea.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

And I think the part that I found most disturbing was that the soldiers were smiling while doing it.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Just like Abu Ghraib.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

And I think that's something that people end up, this, you know, sadistic.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah, there's a group thing.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Horrible side comes out, and people get this, I don't know, devilish, and I say that not in a nice way that you would for children, just horrible, mean, inhumane side that comes out that feels joy.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

And that must be really scary to see that in someone you know or someone you have thought you previously liked.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

It's terrible. I mean, these are people, these are people that I consider to be my friends.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Our kids socialize together, our wives socialized, and then all of a sudden they go to work and murder people or torture people, and then they go home at the end of the day and everything's normal.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

That's worrying. I mean, that's that's psychopathic behavior for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Yeah. That's what I consider it to be.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

That's when you say that person's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

In some form.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

So so when did when did you that okay, so you started seeing that and you weren't happy with it.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Well, and I assumed somebody was gonna say something. Somebody was gonna be so upset that they were gonna leak this to the media. And it never happened. And then in 2007, December.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

And the results that you wanted came or didn't come via this A technique. Of course not.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

It doesn't, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Yeah, it doesn't work. I know you've said that before over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

It doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

And so it wasn't leaked, and then in December of 2007, I got a call from a reporter at ABC News in New York, and he said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubeda. He said that was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubeda.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Maybe that maybe that source was there to make you speak. Maybe that was someone's way of getting it back to you. No?

SPEAKER_00 40:45

That's really that's that's a very nice way to analyze it. No.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

No. No. So so why would they have called you? Where did that leak come from?

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Because word had gotten out and they needed somebody to blame. They didn't want to go to prison. So blame the guy who was a thorn in their side from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Maybe they blamed you for the word getting out in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

No.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

No, all the same.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

No, uh, they blamed the Guantanamo defense attorneys.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Okay. Okay, so then the reporter called you.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

And uh I decided, to make a long story short, I decided to just tell the truth.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

No.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

And that's what I did. And then the investigation started. So the FBI investigated me from December of 2007 to December of 2008. And then they decided it's a long time. Oh no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

It's not. No. It didn't feel like a long time?

SPEAKER_00 41:45

No.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

No.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

I didn't I hadn't done anything wrong.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

You weren't worried at that stage? You weren't. You just stood by your principles, your morals, and said, this is the right thing to do. Okay, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

And then in December 2008, they dropped the investigation. They sent my attorneys a letter saying that they had found no evidence of a crime.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Done. Then a few weeks later, Barack Obama becomes president and he names John Brennan as the deputy national security advisor. Brennan then secretly asked the Justice Department to reopen the case against me. I had no idea. So they started.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

And again, why? Like why you? Why what happened there?

SPEAKER_00 42:30

They needed somebody to blame. So why not blame the one person who was the thorn in your side?

SPEAKER_01 42:40

That's what they did.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

But at the end of the day, they couldn't get you for torturing because you you didn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

No, they never charged me with torturing.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Exactly. So I mean they're blaming, but they're blaming, it's almost like a scapegoat for something else. We're talking about torture and these people who've done it, which is illegal.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

It wasn't illegal.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

It's it's not.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

That was the whole point. That was the whole point. I said it was illegal. I believed it was illegal. I still think it's illegal. Ethics are a separate issue.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

That doesn't come into the debate.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

So it wasn't illegal, although you said that there were certain ones that were okay, and they used others that were not okay. Those are illegal.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Well, that's illegal.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

But that's gonna be just sort of lost in the scrum.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

The U.S. has a law called the Federal Torture Act of 1946 that specifically outlaws exactly the tech the techniques that we used. Okay. In the uh 1960s, we ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Inhumane Treatment. We wrote it and ratified it. So these techniques are clearly illegal. But then you know, I'll add we Executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war in 1946. In 1968, an American soldier waterboarded a North Vietnamese prisoner and was sent to prison for 20 years for waterboarding. And then in 2002, the Justice Department said, well, no, it's not. It's not illegal. Well, of course it was illegal, but they said it wasn't, which then covered the torturers. The torturers could say, Well, the Justice Department said it was legal, so you can't prosecute us. We only followed orders, and the law said that we could do it.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

I just find it scary because this is it's war. Even in a prison, even I mean, these are all of course anti-terrorism.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

But you know what, though? It wasn't war. There was no congressional declaration of war against anybody.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

I just find it so frightening in war, in prisons, in how people can be so mean when you give them. They say give a man power and you'll see who he is. How I mean it's it's just absolutely insane when you think how someone can turn and treat another human being as if they're an animal and they get joy from it.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

That's what that's what for me scares me.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

And there were CIA officers, very senior CIA officers, who would go to the secret prisons to watch torture sessions just because they wanted to enjoy the torture session. Not because they had any anything to contribute to, you know, an intelligence operation.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I was done.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

I was ready to leave. The whole place changed on 9-11. I was ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Which is sad because you'd loved it so much. And you felt you were doing something good for your country.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

And I I I heard a quote that was it your um your senior that said um yeah, that you were one of the best that he'd had under under him and how well you were doing.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Um did you ever think it would cost you your freedom? Did were you ever worried about that?

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Never thought it would.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

No.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

No. No. And I I took a lot of criticism when I got out of prison. I spent 23 months in prison. But when I got out, uh people objected that I was not contrite. And I said, I will never, ever apologize. Never. I'm right. They're wrong. The world is going to come around to my side of the of the story. And it has. So no, I I gave this interview to the BBC, what was it called? Uh Hard Talk. Famous BBC interview show. And it's famously um difficult. And finally, the interviewer said uh with great frustration, well, you've not apologized a single time since you got on this show. You've never apologized. I said, I will never apologize for anything. Never. They should be apologizing to the American people. And now here we are.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

What an interview as well, to get to where they want the conversation to go and direct.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

And he's so frustrated that I just wouldn't play along. And I said, no. And now my detractors are either dead or they're retired. And people have come around to my point of view.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

How does that feel knowing that people are? Vindicating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Must be. Yeah. So there was never a time you regretted telling the treaty. Stand by until now.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

100%.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Tell us about 23 months in prison. That's not a little amount of time. That's the way you've got five kids, you know, you're in prison.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

That was the hardest part. It was more groundhog day than anything else. It was just the same day repeating itself over and over and over for 23 months. So you read a lot, you exercise a lot. I wrote a book in long hand that ended up doing very well. Yeah. And just stand by your beliefs.

SPEAKER_02 48:21

What did prison teach you that was completely different to the CIA teachings? I mean, it's night and day experiences.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

You know, I dealt with psychopaths at the CIA and I dealt with different psychopaths in prison. Wasn't really very different. Some of them had high educations and others didn't. And found themselves, you know, on different sides of the law. What's the difference between somebody who orders hit teams to go around the world and just murder people in cold blood versus the mafia guy who murders somebody who won't pay back the $100,000 that he borrowed? What's the difference? They're both killers. A friend of mine posted something on Facebook the other day. He said his brother-in-law had just gotten out of prison and he had done 20 years for murder. So it was the first time that they had met. And he said, I can't believe I know a murderer. And I said, Try working at the CIA for 15 years. Try being the only guy in the room who's not a murderer. And then see what kind of post-traumatic stress disorder you have.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

That's insane. Do you think you have post-traumatic stress from it all?

SPEAKER_00 49:34

No. In fact, a therapist friend of mine said to me that he thought it was amazing that I did have.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Yeah. You've come out of it. Like you must have a very strong mindset.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Yeah. My divorce was my divorce took a far greater toll on me than prison ever did.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

That's amazing to hear that. They say actually, it's divorce, death, and moving house are the three most stressful things you can do in your life.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Uh huh. Yeah. With changing jobs just behind.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Imagine. So prison is under that. Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. So do you think that who who paid the bigger price for your decision to tell the truth? Do you think it was you or your family?

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Oh, definitely me. Definitely me.

unknown 50:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

That's an easy one.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

But your kids didn't see you, did they? They didn't have a daddy around for 23 months.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

23 months. They came, they came, you know, all the time to visit.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

But no, yeah, 23 months.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

How did they find that? How did you find it sitting in prison saying, you know, you're your babies, you know, how old they are.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

What are you gonna do? You're gonna dwell on it and sit there and say, oh, woe is me, my poor situation? No, of course not. You're gonna tough it out.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah. That's amazing. Wow, I think we can all learn a lot from that. Well, really, really inspirational. Um so um exposing the torture programs. Um do you think that fear can make good people do evil things, or do you think they've got the evil side in them?

SPEAKER_00 51:08

I think you have to have it in you, but there's a lot to be said about groupthink too. You know, you're in this group of people, you've all got through the shared trauma, and you've got to figure out a way to respond to the trauma. And somebody says we should get rough with these guys, and then everybody just nods. Yes, we should get rough with these guys. And then one thing leads to the next, to the next, to the next. Next thing you know, you have a torture program, you have a secret prison program, you have an international kidnapping program.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

And they feel like they're in a group, they're all in together, they're teaming up.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

And they've convinced themselves that they're the good guys and they're doing this for the country to make the country safe. And there's no roadblock. There's nothing to stop them.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

And they feel powerful. Yeah. And connect.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

When I was getting ready to leave for the airport to go to Pakistan, um, my boss, who I really, really liked and respected, very elegant man. Like you would never guess that he was in the CIA. You would look at him and say, Ambassador, right? He came up to me, he gave me a hug, and he said, Stay safe. And then he whispers in my ear, and kill them all. And I said, Really, John? We've gotten there already.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

But even he meant it.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Did anyone in the CIA secretly support you?

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Lots and lots of people supported me openly, quite openly. 77 of them signed a letter to the president asking him to pardon me. Um, but even the day after my arrest, I got a I got an email from the former deputy director of the CIA. And he said, You've chosen a difficult road. I'm glad somebody did. I just wish I had had the courage to do it myself.

SPEAKER_02 52:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

I saved it.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Wow, yeah. That's really incredible.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

It was things like that that kept me going.

SPEAKER_02 53:02

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you yeah, you needed a lot of it. So on that note of needing to, yeah, keep keep going, what was the loneliest moment in that whole experience?

SPEAKER_01 53:20

What was the loneliest moment?

SPEAKER_00 53:23

I was walking around. I was I I was in prison in central Pennsylvania and it was very, very cold and snowy. I mean, snow past your knee. And so the yard, the track around the the yard was closed because there was just too much snow. So if you wanted to go outside in these ridiculous cold temperatures, um, you could walk around the basketball court. And I had been there just a couple of weeks, and I was walking with with a mafia, Don, the boss of a family, of one of the five families in New York. And he said to me, How much time do you have? And I said, 30 months. Feels like 30 years. I ended up with 23 months. I said, It feels like 30 years. And he stops. He said, Let me give you some advice. When somebody asks you how long you have, you tell them five years. Because if these guys hear that you have a sentence that's so short, they're gonna kick your ass. He said, There's a lot of jealousy, and there are a lot of guys here doing 10, 20, 50 years. So I said, okay. So I didn't tell anybody that I only had 23 months. Um then one day So if someone asked you, you just say five years.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Five years.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Five years. So one day, um, well, every day at four o'clock, they post uh they post a schedule called the call out list, and it'll have a prisoner's name and number, an office that you have to report to the next day, and the time. So it'll be like you have to go to the dentist or the doctor or personnel or whatever. It's just the list of appointments. And one day mine was on there and it said RD, uh, receiving and discharge. That's when you're going home. And one of the Nazis stopped me and he said, Why are you on the RD list for tomorrow? I said, How the heck am I supposed to know why I'm on the what do you think? I run the prison. That's how you have to respond.

SPEAKER_02 55:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

But I didn't tell anybody, I'm going home tomorrow.

unknown 55:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

Not a word. Except the Italians. The Italians knew they were my closest friends.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

Did you keep in touch with anyone?

SPEAKER_00 55:46

I keep in touch with most of them.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

Oh, really? That's so funny.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

You know, it's crazy. You you you see movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco, and then those guys are in your prison, like the actual guys, and they become your closest friends. I gained 35 pounds in uh what is 35 pounds? It's like uh 15 kilos in prison because you remember the scene in in Goodfellas where they're cooking and cutting the the potatoes or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

No, the uh garlic.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Yeah. That's how we ate every day. We had a crooked guard on payroll, and he would bring in the pork loin and the pasta and the marsala sauce, the white wine for the marsala sauce, and he would bring all this food, and we would cook and cook and cook, and I I gained 35 pounds. It was it was good. They were good guys. I'm still in touch with all of them.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

It's amazing, isn't it? So um I ask every everyone on um on on my podcast, usually on the other one, Hint Out Talk, for a favorite quote. Do you have a favorite quote?

SPEAKER_00 56:59

Yeah. The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. That's my favorite quote.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Martin Luther King.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

And since coming out, you've done so many things. You your life is full and busy.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

What's for the future?

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Well, about 10 weeks ago, after having told some of these same stories for the last 19 years, I went crazy on TikTok. I don't know why. It's just one of those things that where the algorithm just picks you up.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

So I've been signed by the largest talent agency in the world. And my ninth book comes out in July. And I'm gonna start my first ever novel. I'm working with a major Hollywood studio on a television series now. I have my own podcast. Um I'm in between podcasts, we're starting it in a couple of weeks. On YouTube, it's it's at real John Kiriaku. And uh yeah, things are good. It's almost that there aren't enough hours in the day.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

I love that. Well, you deserve it.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 58:15

Um, I couldn't uh see you and not not talk about the big maybe that's why I said TikTok's gone mad. So, I mean, the big topic of today, Epstein.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_00 58:27

They're all corrupt animals. You know? These rich, these rich and powerful, they're all corrupt animals. And the most sickening thing is that literally nobody will face justice. Nobody.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

No one. You don't think it will ever.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

There are statutes of limitations, and and this is not a partisan issue. Donald Trump didn't prosecute anybody, Joe Biden didn't prosecute anybody, Barack Obama didn't prosecute anybody. They're all in on it.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

All too powerful. I mean, it's sure. You know, now I think everyone in the world, even people who didn't believe in any conspiracy theories, I was one. Now I'm like, I believe anything's possible. I mean, the more we see, the more that comes out. It's just absolutely frightening.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

Yeah, I agree. Sickening.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

It's sickening and frightening.

SPEAKER_00 59:20

And you know, there might be something to these allegations that this Iran war started just to distract the American people from the Epstein files. The vote in Congress to release the Epstein files, to mandate release of the Epstein files, was 419 to 1 in the House of Representatives and 99 to nothing in the Senate.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

And they haven't done it.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Yeah, and the president said, What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna sue me?

SPEAKER_01 59:47

So we're all screwed.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

Do you think that'll ever come out?

SPEAKER_01 59:51

No.

SPEAKER_02 59:51

No.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

No.

SPEAKER_02 59:53

There's too many powerful people in the background.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 59:58

Do you think Epstein was a spy?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Yes. For the Israelis. I feel very strongly about that. Like we know from the release of the last tranche of documents that he was also at least trying to work for the CIA and the FBI, for MI5 and MI6, maybe for the Germans, and that he had actively sought a one-on-one meeting with Putin. We don't know why. But the Israelis, 100% yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:32

Right. I'm gonna, on that note, I'm going to my Instagram where I always ask people that they can ask anything, anything they want, um, before I go live. So oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. How long do we have? Okay. So Emma has asked, um, given the rise of social media and now the commonplace hacking leading to loss of data combined with a rising pessimism about democracy and a rising interest in autocracy and fascism, do the American people even care about their data and privacy today?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

No, they don't. I hate to say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

But no, they don't. That's a great question. So, you know, Congress made such a big deal a year ago about TikTok being somehow controlled by the Chinese. It's not, but somehow controlled by the Chinese, and we're gonna shut down TikTok or we're gonna force the sale of TikTok. First of all, they're collecting our metadata.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Who cares?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

Who cares if the let's say it is owned by the Chinese, which it's not. Who cares if the Chinese know that I lay in bed at night and I scroll through videos of, you know, cats or something like that? Yeah. Little kids cooking cooking uh meals, cats, whatever, police chases. Who cares? Secondly, what in the world makes TikTok's collection of metadata any different from Facebook or Instagram or X or anything else?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

Yeah. Well, I've always said that as well. People are always like, oh, the Finn. And I'm like, well, I'm quite open anyway. And I'm like, so what if someone, you know, I mean, I tell everyone I'm vegan anyway, so if they're saying that I'm scrolling vegan recipes, it's not that's not a shopping. Yeah, exactly. You know, or my birthday or my real age, I'm quite happy to share it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

The second part of that question, I think, is very important too. Americans do have an appetite for authoritarianism, and it scares the hell out of me. Yeah, it really does. It's not good, it weakens our democracy.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

Yeah, yeah. I think that's becoming more and more apparent with everything going on in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

So um, oh my goodness, another one, Jill. Everyone made really long questions for you. So, okay, okay, you have time, yeah? Let's see, what are we going for? Okay, we'll give it a couple more minutes. So um, so uh, what um gives you hope for a better future? How do you think we can move forward in a more positive direction and better balance, protecting people from bad actors via intrusion into their privacy? How would he like to see the CIA change? Is he more worried about the powers the CIA has or the power of the big tech companies?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Oh. Let me answer up to that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

I'm on record as saying I think the CIA should be dismantled. I really do.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:59

Wow, and that's a that's a body that he works for and you love and But it's not we can't trust the CIA to not spy on Americans, which it's forbidden by law from doing, and it does anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

And then again, it just says, what are you gonna do about it? Um we can't trust our congressional overseers, the elected officials who are on the oversight committees for the intelligence services. All they are are cheerleaders, they're not overseers. And so if they're not gonna protect our rights, then that means nobody is gonna protect our rights. And so we shouldn't have an organization that willfully violates our rights in the first place. But what gives me hope is that somebody like Ed Snowden would go public with these revelations. And even though he went public 13 years ago next month, and we have not seen changes, every two years when the Patriot Act comes back up for re-reauthorization or section 702 of the uh the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act comes up, a few more members of Congress switch sides and oppose it. So eventually we're going to get there and we're gonna get our civil liberties back. Eventually.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

Let's hope. Um oh my god, okay, I'll stop at that because this is from Jill and there's like 20 questions in one thing. Let's just see if we've got um. Thank you all so much, but I think we're done with that. Um anything you'd like to close on? Any any note that um, like for me personally, I'd I'd like to ask how how us is General public who were not involved in all of this, how how we can protect ourselves and how we can keep a positive.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

There are a couple of different ways. And we have to do all of them simultaneously. The most important, I think, is to is to force our elected officials to do what we want them to do. And that is to ensure that our rights are protected.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:23

And what they promise. Well they promise every time and then forget about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:26

And don't do it. And then we should throw them out until we find somebody who will protect our rights. But we also have to we have to speak and march and write and take to the streets when that's necessary and stand up for our rights. Because otherwise, so many people are being silent.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Yeah. Chucked out of social media. Everything is there. I mean, I think we've all had it. I've had it. Where just like I was thrown out of everything for a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

Because Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like your opinions on things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

I got suspended from Facebook. Listen to how stupid this is. I was dating a Brazilian diplomat. And she sent me a video of a zipline in br in Brazil. You start at the top of the mountain and you go like, you know, a kilometer on this thing. And I responded, crazy Brazilians. And I was suspended for hate speech against Brazilians.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

I mean, come on. We were just saying now at the beginning of this podcast how people use the word crazy, just like, even as a compliment.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:37

You know, it was like that's a bit crazy. It's out of the norm, out of my norm. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

On X, um Disney posted that they were bringing to Disney Plus a multi-part animated series on the life of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. I have 220 something thousand followers, and I wrote very disappointed that Disney Plus would dedicate resources to covering the life and times of a genocidal maniac. The next thing I know, I get an email from the German national police saying that they had just finished their investigation of my alleged hate crime against the Turkish people and they decided that I had not committed a crime. And I was like, fuck you. Germans and Turks both tried to trample my freedom of speech.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

I just can't believe how people are being cancelled, left, right, and centers, losing jobs, everything, just for voicing opinions. Yeah. They're not going out shooting anyone, they're not holding weapons, they're just sharing an opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

At my last podcast, I had a uh sound engineer, great guy, Robbie West. Love Robbie. He and I disagree on immigration. I'm a supporter of immigration. I'm from an immigrant family. It would be ironic.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:08

It would be ironic if you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:10

Exactly. And many of the members of my family went to the United States as what are called illegal immigrants. I hate that term.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:19

Undocumented immigrants is what I say. Robbie wants to just close the borders, seal them, and expel everybody who's not there with paperwork. Right? He's an absolutist. Okay, we disagree on that one issue. He's a great guy. I know his wife and his kids. They're lovely people. He mentioned off-handedly one time that he worked in a hospital in Kalispell, Montana. And somebody called every hospital in Kalispell, Montana until they found the one that he worked in, and they complained so vociferously that he was fired from his job. Like, was that really necessary? Does it make your life better? Yeah, that Robbie West doesn't have a job anymore because you don't like his position on immigration. That's how things have turned in the United States. It's all very angry.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:15

We're saying it all the time. I mean, so many actors out of work and they've been told you're never going to work again.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:21

Um it's and and and you will never know. Kevin Spacey was just here, just ate here at our restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:28

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

Oscar was.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:30

Always loved him.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

Yeah. And um, yeah, that's it. He was told that's it, you're out. While he was here, I mean I was meeting him and he was having to go off and talk to Netflix because they still they sued him for the loss of revenue after buying him. I mean, it's it's really, it's I I find it really scary. I really do. I'll see. I'm quite happy that I'm in my little rock in Cyprus. Yes. Dealing with hotels and hospitality.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Um You know, I've actually reached out to him a couple of times to ask him to come on my podcast, Kevin Spacey.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

I'll I'll put you in touch with his manager. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:06

I think I had been emailing the wrong people.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Because I think he's been wronged.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:11

I think so.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:12

Yeah, we all do things in life that we regret. Everybody's doing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:15

Everyone has done things.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:16

But then the solution is to ruin the guy so he never works again. Yeah. Come on now.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

Yeah. He lost his house, he lost everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:22

He did, he lost his house, it went to auction.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:24

Yeah. Lost everything, yeah. Yeah. He was uh staying in the UK in an Airbnb under the code name.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:33

Yeah.

unknown 1:11:34

Madness.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:36

My dear, thank you so much. I will let you get on with your day. I know that you're going to the Cypress Diaspora Forum for Lambeast organizing that. It's been fantastic to have you at San Rafael. Thank you so much. I hope you come back many, many more times.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:48

It's a great place and it's gigantic.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:50

Thank you. It is big, isn't it? When people come, they're like, you run this? And I'm like, yeah, it's huge. The gardens, the restaurants. But I love it. I definitely get my steps in working here in this environment. It's like constant. Excellent. Worth it. I know. We're blessed, aren't we? When we love what we do. That's right. That's the point in life to love what you do, and then it never feels like work.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

You know, even at the CIA, I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:17

I couldn't wait to see what I'd missed during the night.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:20

Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:22

Well, enjoy Cyprus.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:25

And um, always welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:26

Good to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:27

Thank you.