Billions of dollars are spent [music]

spying on Americans, whether it's NSA or

CIA or the FBI. And to make matters

worse, we know that the CIA can take

control remotely of a car's computer

system in order to crash the car, take

it off a bridge, or take control of your

smart TV and turn a speaker into a

microphone,

>> even though the TV is off and broadcast

back to the CIA. [music]

>> Can they do that with devices?

>> Absolutely. And I'll tell you how we

know. There was a CIA software engineer

who was disgruntled and he [music]

downloaded tens of thousands of

documents classified above top secret

and instead of going to the Russians or

the Chinese, he went to Wikileaks and

they became the Vault 7 documents. So

our whole lives are out there

potentially [music] for someone to use

against us and every country has these

capabilities. Listen, I spent 15 years

in the CIA. I love this country, but one

of the most important things in my life

is the issue of [music] ethics, which is

why I blew the whistle on the CIA's

torture program. Because my superiors

kept repeating that torture worked, but

besides being illegal, immoral,

unethical, it just wasn't true. And I

would let them send me to prison again

because it was the right thing to do. I

mean, we know that they were

experimenting on American citizens and

spreading diseases in American cities.

>> This is the stuff of movies.

>> It is. And because you've been in this

world that [music] the average person

really has no idea about, I have to ask

you, who do you think is the real

adversary of the West, what are you most

concerned about in the world at the

moment? And what about everything that's

going on with Trump in Venezuela and

Greenland? And then, do you think

Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?

>> Yes.

>> Who do you think he was working for?

[music]

>> The Israelis.

>> Why?

Listen, my my team gave me a script that

they asked me to read, but I'm just

going to ask you um in the nicest way I

possibly can. Thank you first and

foremost for choosing to subscribe to

this channel. It is um it's been one of

the most incredible crazy years of my

life. I never could have imagined. I had

so many dreams in my life, but this was

not one of them. And the very fact that

these conversations have resonated with

you and you've given me so much feedback

is something I will always be

appreciative of. And I almost carry away

a sort of burden of uh responsibility to

pay you back. And the favor I would like

to ask from you today is to subscribe to

the channel if you um would be so

obliged. It's completely free to do

that. Roughly about 47% of you that

listen to this channel frequently

currently don't subscribe to this

channel. So if you're one of those

people, please come and join us. Hit the

subscribe button. It's the single free

thing you can do to make this channel

better. And every subscriber sort of

pays into this show and allows us to do

things bigger and better and to push

ourselves even more. And I will not let

you down if you hit the subscribe

button. I promise you. And if I do,

please do unsubscribe, but I promise I

won't. Thank you.

>> [music]

>> John Kuryoku, the world knows your name.

Why? [laughter]

[gasps]

Why does the world know your name?

>> I can give you two answers.

One, I'm proud to say that I blew the

whistle on the CIA's torture program in

a nationally televised interview with

ABC News. The second reason is

I blew the whistle a long time ago and

just in the past 18 months, I seem to

have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm

sweet spot and all of a sudden my

message is getting out there. And you

went to prison for blowing the whistle.

>> I did and I would do it again tomorrow.

I really would. You know, I was I was

giving an interview to the BBC the day

after I got out of prison. They were the

first uh outlet to ask for an interview.

And so I gladly gave it to them. And the

interviewer said

kind of perturbedly,

"You're not showing any remorse or

contrition." And I said, "No, I'm not

remorseful. I'm not contrite. I would do

it again. I would let them send me to

prison again because it was the right

thing to do."

>> And you were a spy in the CIA.

>> Yeah. I was quite an accomplished spy in

the CIA. I spent 15 years in the CIA.

The first half of my career was in

analysis and uh and I got bored,

frankly. And so I made an unusual at the

time change to counterterrorism

operations. And then I was the chief of

CIA counterterrorism operations in

Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks.

>> And if I'd never heard about the CIA

before and I had never heard about your

role in the CIA before and I was a

16-year-old,

>> right?

>> How would you explain to me what you did

there? What your role was and what the

CIA is?

>> Sure. The CIA is an intelligence service

whose job it is at its most basic level

to recruit spies to steal secrets and to

analyze those secrets so that the

policymakers can make the best informed

policy. After 9/11, we were expecting an

attack, to use Osama bin Laden's words,

that would dwarf 911.

And so my job was to infiltrate al-Qaeda

by recruiting members of al-Qaeda

to tell us when and where that next

attack was going to come so that we

could disrupt it. We could

kill or capture the leadership and

destroy the organization.

>> And give me a range of the things that

you did during your time in the CIA just

for a very topline range of the types of

things you worked on. Oh, sure. Um, as

an analyst, it was actually quite

straightforward. Uh, we would write for

the president, the vice president, the

secretaries of state and defense, and

the national security adviser.

>> And who were the presidents during this

that time?

>> Uh, when I started, it was George HW

Bush, the father, and then it was Bill

Clinton, then George W. Bush. There are

several different publications. There's

the president's daily brief, which is

the most important. I covered Iraq the

entire time that I was in analysis from

well before most Americans had ever

heard of Iraq. I was told actually that

it was a training account because

nothing ever happened there. Nothing

ever changed. And then

Iraq invaded Kuwait. The next day I got

to the office early. I was 25

years old, 26 years old. And uh my boss

said, "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. And so we got in a car, went

to the White House. We're ushered into

the Oval Office. It's the president, the

vice president, the national security

adviser, the director of the CIA, my

boss, and me. And then we all sit down.

The president tells us, "Sit down." We

sit down and the president says,"Well,

now what do we do?" And everybody turns

and looks at me and it took me a second

and I said, "Uh, yes." I said, "Mr.

President, as you know, Iraqi troops

crossed the border at 2:00 this morning.

They the royal family has uh has run

away to uh Saudi Arabia. They've named a

new occupation governor, etc., etc. Do

we know who that is?" I said, "Yes,

sir." I gave him the name and I said,

"Actually, he uh he's the co-founder of

the Popular Front for the Liberation of

Palestine." The vice president shouts,

"Jesus Christ." And then the president

says, "Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you.

We'll take it from here." And I remember

saying to myself, "My friends would

never believe in a thousand years what I

was doing right now. They wouldn't even

believe me if I told them." That's what

an analyst does. When I switched to

operations again, the the job was very

straightforward. It was to recruit spies

to steal secrets. But then if you're

involved in counterterrorism operations,

there are a lot of extras that you have

to be trained in. So you go through the

normal spy training. This is how you

ingratiate yourself. It's something

called the asset acquisition cycle.

Spot, assess, develop, recruit. I meet

you at a cocktail party. You seem like a

nice guy. I introduce myself.

I ask, "Uh, so what do you do for a

living?" Well, if you tell me you manage

a shoe store, I'm going to say, "Well,

it was very nice meeting you." And I'm

going to go on to the next guy. But if

you tell me you work at the port, you

work in the Ministry of Defense, you

work in the Chinese embassy,

I'm going to invite you to lunch. I've

spotted you. I've assessed you. And my

assessment is I'd like to get to know

you. Then I begin to develop you. I'll

give you an example. I was in Pakistan.

I got a tip that uh that al-Qaeda, a

group of mid-level al-Qaeda fighters was

meeting every single day in a coffee

shop at 10:00 in the morning. My Arabic

was absolutely flawless at the time. And

so I had a bushy beard that I grew for

operational reasons.

>> Can I hear some of your Arabic?

>> Yeah. Uh,

it's nice to meet you. Or

Alhamdulillah.

Uh, so I uh I bought an Arabic newspaper

and I went to the coffee shop and I just

sat there and sure enough at 10:00 the

four of them came in. One of them looked

at me and I looked at him and that was

it. We made eye contact. I did that for

a week.

The second week I was there drinking my

coffee, sitting with my Arabic

newspaper, and the one who had looked at

me the week before, he nodded. So I

nodded back. That was it. No

communication otherwise. The third week,

I'm a regular now. He recognizes me.

So he says to me, I said, "May peace be

upon you." And I say, "And upon you

peace." One day he came in alone and I

said, "Please have a seat. Sit with me.

No sense in you sitting alone and me

sitting alone." So he sat down. We

started talking. And um I asked him how

long he had been in Pakistan. He said,

"Oh, I've been here for 5 years. I was

in Afghanistan. I was making jihad

against the Americans." And I said, "Oh,

that must have been hell on earth." He

said, "Oh." He said that the bombing of

Tora Bora was hideous. That was the word

that he used. It was hideous. And I

said, "And what about your family? How's

your family?" He said, "My wife and and

son and daughter are in Cairo. I've

never met my son." He was born just

after I left to make jihad. I said, "I'm

so sorry." And he said, "Yes, I'm I'm

lonely and I I want to go home." And we

continued this relationship.

And finally, I said to him, "Let me take

you to dinner. let's get out of the

coffee shop. The truth was I didn't want

one of his friends to walk in and see

us. So, we went to a restaurant for

dinner and I said, "Listen,

there's something that I haven't been

truthful with you about.

I'm not Lebanese."

And I said, "Actually, I'm American.

Are you okay with that?"

And he says, "I think so." I said,

'Well, actually,

I'm a CIA officer.

And he says, ' Okay.' So, he didn't run

screaming from the room or pull a gun or

anything. And he said,

"Why do you want me? Why do you want to

talk to me?" I said, "Actually, you have

access to something that I want." It was

very specific. And I told him what it

was. And he says, "And what will you do

for me?" And I said, "Anything your

heart desires."

And he said, "I want to go home."

I said, "I can do that." And

>> you wanted information presumably.

>> I wanted information, very specific

information,

>> which you can't share.

>> No. I'll go right back to prison. So,

uh, [laughter]

so um, we got him a passport. I bought

him a first class ticket and I took him

to the airport, gave him some cash to

get himself started again. And I said,

"Before you go, I have to ask you, why

did you agree to give me this

information? I mean, presumably I'm the

enemy." And he said, "I've been here 5

years, and you're the first person who

ever asked me about my family."

So I said, "Best of luck. Never saw him

again.

That's the job.

>> I have to ask you,

>> take me on the journey of you being a

young man

>> in West Pennsylvania,

>> right?

>> To becoming a spy. What happened?

Because I'll be I'll be honest. You

know, I don't really know what my

perception of spies is, but it's not

you.

>> That's good.

>> That's good. See, because I kind of work

under the radar. M so that's really

interesting is I [laughter] there's

there's so many um once you learn about

spies as a podcast like so if you go

back a couple of years and someone had

told me about spies I wouldn't have

believed them I wouldn't have believed

that these things actually happened

>> you know you hear about people going

undercover

>> and going to other countries and getting

secrets and and all of these things

>> and it's not until you meet the people

that said

yes that's me I used to do that that

you're sort you have this paradigm shift

in your mind and you go, "Oh my god,

what else might be going on?"

>> Right?

>> Because I lived in this world probably

up until the age of, I don't know, 30

years old where I kind of just assume

things are what they are

>> like as I see them. And then, you know,

you start to discover that there's

layers of secrecy. Nations are against

each other. They're doing all of these

covert operations. And even like as a

podcaster now, I have moments where I go

like, "How do I know that you're not

you're not here to steal secrets from

me?"

>> Right? So, you know what's funny? When I

had Andre Bustamante on the show, the

comment sections are always the same.

They're always like, "Once a CIA spy,

always a CIA spy."

>> I hate when people say that. It's so

intellectually lazy.

>> But I just I do wonder and I go, "Okay,

here's a super conspiracy theory. What

if the CIA have made spies do really

well in the YouTube algorithm so that

all of us as long form podcasters invite

them on and then they

>> You know what? I would agree with that.

I would have agreed with that a year ago

because Andrew Bamante has really made a

handsome living out of selling his

experience and he's on every podcast.

>> Yeah.

>> But I am the most anti-CIA former CIA

person that's out there.

>> But wouldn't that be the perfect CIA

agent?

>> I mean, if if I weren't constantly

criticizing the CIA as a as a an

organization that's just out of control.

Do you think the CIA are have a strategy

for podcasters and for podcasting?

>> I think yes, now they do. It took them a

little while to to get current, but just

like they over time developed a strategy

with Hollywood,

sure they're developing a strategy with

podcasters. You know, it was only in the

last 10 years that the CIA opened a

branch within the Office of Public

Affairs whose job it is solely to liers

with Hollywood studios. The FBI's been

doing this since the since the 40s. And

the goal is that everything that comes

out of Hollywood should be pro-CIA.

And you know, we end up with with Zero

Dark 30 and you know, the recruit and

the CIA, Argo, the CIA is always the

hero in these movies. If you were still

at the CIA now and your job was to in

infiltrate and

uh use creators or podcasters as an

asset for the CIA's objectives, how

might you design that plan? If we were

just hypothesizing,

you would have to have

a goal

that would be specific enough that you

could actually track the progress to it.

So, you can't just say, "Well, I'm going

to pay this podcaster x amount of money,

and we're going to we're going to we're

going to do something with the algorithm

to make him vastly popular among

men, you know, 18 to 30, let's say.

There's got to be more to it than that.

It has to be a message. You've got to be

able to get a specific, well-honed

message out there. And the message can

be anything.

It could be, you know, love the CIA,

we're the good guys. It could be support

the overthrow of the Iranian government.

It could be, you know, any criticism of

Benjamin Netanyahu is anti-semitism.

It could be anything you want it to be.

You just have to make sure that it's

repeated enough. See, this was the

danger with the torture program. This is

one of the very important reasons that I

went public when I did because my

colleagues, my superiors at the CIA kept

repeating this lie over and over and

over again that torture worked and that

torture got us information that saved

American lives. And that was just simply

not true. It was a lie. Besides being

illegal, immoral, unethical, it just

wasn't true. And so I decided before we

go down this road anymore, I'm going to

go public.

>> So can you take me back then? We got a

little bit sidetracked there, but

>> Sure.

>> John, how did you come to be a CIA spy?

>> When I was 9 years old, I told my

parents that I wanted to be a spy when I

grew up. it came time to apply for

college and I only applied at one

university, George Washington University

in Washington because it was two blocks

from the White House and it was one of

only three schools in America that

offered a Middle Eastern studies

program. I was one of only four people

in that brand new Middle Eastern studies

program. I stayed for a master's degree

in legislative affairs with a focus on

foreign policy analysis. I was taking a

class in that program called the

psychology of leadership. It was taught

by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr.

Gerald Post and he gave us an assignment

one uh one day where we had to shadow

our bosses. We had to just follow our

bosses for a week.

>> Your bosses?

>> Yeah. I worked at a labor union called

the United Food and Commercial Workers

Union. And so we were just supposed to

follow our boss around for a week and

then write a psychological profile. I

used dozens of, you know, footnotes from

psychological, you know, psychology

texts. And I ended up saying that he was

a sociopath with psychopathic and

possibly violent tendencies. And, you

know, I had these citations.

I passed the paper in. Dr. Post gives it

back to me a week later, gave me an A,

and then he wrote, "Please see me after

class." So I went up to him after the

class and I said, "Dr. Post, you wanted

to see me." He says, "Come to my

office." So we went down there. He

closed the door and he says, "Listen,

I'm not really a professor here. I'm a

CIA officer undercover as a professor

here, and I'm looking for people who

would fit into the CIA's culture. I

think you would fit into the CIA's

culture. Would you like to be a spy?"

And I said, "Yes,

I would." He picked up the phone and

called the number and he said, "Bob,

this is Jerry. I've got a good one for

you. Do you have some time?" And he

said, "Sure." He writes an address on a

scrap of paper. And he says, "Be at this

address in 20 minutes." It was only one

subway stop away. So I jumped on the

metro. I went to Rosland, Virginia, just

across the river. I had to buzz to be

led in. And a woman opens the door. She

says, "Are you here for Bob?" And I

said, "Yes." She says, "Come on in."

I'm sitting there for a moment and then

this like 6 foot6, 350 lb giant barrels

out of his office and he says, "John

Bob, how the hell are you? I want you to

be at the George Washington University

Medical School Saturday morning at 8:00.

We've got some tests for you." I said,

"Okay." And then we shook hands and I

left. So, Saturday morning, I went to

the GW Medical School auditorium. There

were like, I don't know, 200 people

there and they hand us a test. My wife

picked me up. She said, "How did you

do?" I said, "I have no idea."

>> Does your wife at this point know that

you were applying for the CIA?

>> Yes. And that was going to be pretty

much the extent of what she ended up

knowing cuz once I got in,

>> but you were allowed to tell her.

>> I was not allowed to tell her. No. So,

you told her anyway?

>> Yeah. When I first applied, they said,

"Listen, don't tell anybody because you

may go undercover. You may go under deep

cover, and we can't have people out

there who know that you're a CIA

officer."

>> Presumably, the CIA are smart enough to

be able to check if you've told her.

>> Yeah. And they ask you on the polygraph,

"Did you tell her?" Really?

>> And I said, "Yeah, I told her. She's my

wife. What am I going to do?" You know,

but it got to the point where I'd get

home from a day where, you know, I broke

into some guy's house and and planted a

camera on a bug and I'd get home and

she'd say, "How was your day?" I'd say,

"Great. What'd you do?" Not a darn

thing. And then my phone would ring at,

you know, midnight and a guy would say,

"The rain in Spain falls mainly in the

plane." And I'd say, "Uh, Marzy Oats and

Dozy Oats and Little Lambs Ivy." And

that means meet me at the yacht club

parking lot in three hours.

And then I'd leave. She's she would say,

"Where where are you going? It's

midnight. I got to work." So I'd leave.

I'd do my meeting. I'd come home 6:00 in

the morning just in time to shower and

shave and get dressed to go to work. And

she would say, "What was her name?"

And I I remember this one terrible time.

That's what she said to me. What was her

name? The truth is, I had been sitting

in a garbage dumpster waiting for a guy

to drive by down the alley and throw a

bag of documents in. And I stunk of

garbage and I said to her, "Do I

seriously smell to you like I've been

with a woman?"

Seriously.

So, we ended up getting a divorce.

[laughter]

[gasps]

>> So, you do the assessment presumably.

you get in and then you do training.

>> He He called me like two weeks later,

Bob did, and he said, "You blew the

doors off those tests." I said, "Oh,

great. Okay." So, a month later, they

summoned me to headquarters,

and uh I was interviewed by the Office

of Neareastern Operations, the Office of

Near Eastern Analysis, and the Office of

Leadership Analysis. I was offered the

analysis job on the Iraq desk. And what

is the sum total of the training you

were given in the variety of different

roles that you had? Like how do they

train?

>> Good question. That's a good question

and the answer is vastly different

depending on where you start your

career.

>> So because I started mine in analysis,

the immediate training was in mastering

the CIA's writing style. So the most

important product that the CIA writes

every day is the PDB, the president's

daily brief,

>> and it tells the president what

>> what you think he needs to know.

>> Okay?

>> So for example, when the Iraqis began

moving to the to the Kuwaiti border,

we had this big debate. Are they going

to are they going to cross the border?

Yes or no? So I said, "Listen, why don't

I call the American defense attaches in

Baghdad and I'll just ask him to drive

down there and look and tell us what he

sees?" He drives down there, drives

back, he calls me, and he says,

"Literally, the entire Iraqi military is

on its way to the Kuwaiti border." So we

wrote a thing for the president saying

Iraq is going to invade Kuwait and it's

probably going to happen in the next 48

hours. And when when did the president

see that particular briefing?

>> At 7:00 a.m. the next morning.

>> Okay. And is there ever situations where

the president would get it? In the

middle of the night.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> And be told in the middle of the night

that

>> Yes. There there are these levels of

immediacy.

There's routine which is like who cares?

And then there is um priority which

means ah I'll get to it sometime today.

Then there's immediate which means you

should probably read it first.

But then there's flash,

which means, "Oh my god, something

terrible just happened. You should

probably wake the president." And then

there's critic, which means they're

coming over the embassy walls. We're at

war. Wake up the president. Scramble the

jets.

>> 911.

>> 911.

>> That's a critic.

[snorts]

[clears throat]

>> So going back to this question of your

training.

>> Yeah. What is it that the

CIA teach you about human nature and how

to use human nature to your advantage

that could be transferable to other

disciplines in life like business or

well this is going to sound not very

nice but it's it's real life it's

everyday life especially in in business

the CIA actively seeks to hire people

who have what they call sociopathic

tendencies.

Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no

conscience. They'll just blow right

through a polygraph exam, but they're

impossible to corral. They're impossible

to to, you know, keep

under rain. Uh, and it's because they're

not able, their brains won't allow them

to feel regret or remorse. Now, in

business, most CEOs are sociopaths.

Most, not all, but most. Especially in

big companies, because they claw their

way to the top, usually on the backs of

the people around them. They don't feel

bad screwing the next guy to get that

next promotion.

The CIA wants people like that because

those are the people who are going to

break into a foreign embassy. A normal

person would not advocate breaking into

a foreign embassy. It's sovereign

territory of a foreign country. I would

I'd be glad to do it.

>> Why?

>> Because we're the good guys.

>> So, do you have sociopathic tendencies?

>> Absolutely.

>> And what are your sociopathic

tendencies?

>> My sociopathic tendency was to operate

in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas.

Specifically, that's what it was. I'm

really curious about what we can learn

about human nature from someone whose

job was to meet strangers and to get

them to basically sometimes to turn

against their own country.

>> Like I'm really interested in and I

think I think it's informative because

so many of us, you know, when we think

about what good leadership is or what

good sales man or womanship is,

>> um, it seems like there's transferables.

I guess for some people it's family. I

guess for some people it's something

else. that that that hook that you're

talking about, that thing that gets

them.

>> And the [clears throat] word that they

use at the CIA for the hook is a

vulnerability. And it's not really a

vulnerability in every case. Now,

95%

studies have been done about this

internally at the CIA. 95% of the people

who agree to become spies for us do it

for the money. Right? It's it's a simple

cash transaction. You give me money,

I'll give you secrets. 95%.

>> So you telling me that you think human

motivation is 95% driven by money?

>> Yes.

>> Really?

>> Yes. The rest was love and family,

um, ideology,

revenge, and excitement.

You're going to get a handful of people

who are hooked on James Bond movies, and

they will do it. I mean, you're going to

pay them anyway, but they will do it

just for the adrenaline rush.

>> It's interesting because when I look at

this list of things and I compare it to

business,

it I would say it's slightly different

from my experience of hiring people,

specifically of hiring people.

>> I tend to think that, you know, you

could one would ask themselves like why

would someone leave a company right now

like, I don't know, Open AI and go work

at a startup. They're going to get paid

way more at OpenAI. You've got these

this equity and these grants, but people

are on mass doing that. And even when I

think about the early days of Google,

people left the big conglomerates that

would pay them more. And they went and

worked for Larry and Sergey um getting

paid way less, right? but to be involved

in something small, scrappy, exciting,

>> and and so I and this is what what I

think about when I sit, you know,

probably I've had thousands of people in

my life now across my businesses, and

money is a factor, but it doesn't tend

to be the biggest factor. Mhm.

>> It tends to be, in my experience,

there's a particular hero's journey in

their mind that they want to be seen

through. They want to complete.

>> Uhhuh.

>> You know, there's a particular way that

they see themselves and they want to

fulfill that.

>> Oh, I could get that. I I work with a

with a very very tiny startup right now

called Ivy Cyber and uh it focuses on

privacy software. You know, things like,

you know, scrambling your data so it

can't be intercepted. that that sort of

thing. And

I've participated in a couple of pitches

to uh to angel investors

and they all say exactly the same thing

that you did.

>> And this is why I was confused when I

heard that money was 95%.

Because I I just think

especially in the work that I don't

know, especially in the work that you

do, I would assume

>> but look at it this way. I think this

would explain the discrepancy.

um you're comparing people who are

making a life

>> versus people who are betraying their

country.

>> True. And what's [snorts] interesting as

well is in those examples that you've

given, money is actually a proxy to be

able to take care of my family.

>> Mhm.

>> And to be able to, you know, fulfill my

ideology and maybe to get excitement and

revenge. Do you know what I'm saying? So

even that guy that wanted the plane

ticket so he could fly home. Yeah. He

could he could have the money could have

got him home if you just given him

>> the reason why he wanted to go home was

because his family

>> his family that was it.

>> What's the extent of the things that the

CIA can get as a incentive for someone

to turn against their nation to give

secrets?

>> Quite literally anything you can

imagine.

>> Even if it's against the law.

>> Well, they're not going to get like

drugs or you know child prostitutes or

no not stuff like that. What if someone

said, "I want you to

um [snorts]

get me a a green card."

>> Oh, yeah, sure.

>> What if they said,

>> "If the information is good enough, not

a problem."

>> What if they said, "I want you to I've

got this tax bill. I want you to make

the tax bill go away."

>> Okay. Give me Give me the plans to that

Russian tank. We'll make it happen.

>> What if it was an American? Would they

speak to the IRS here and just get rid

of it?

>> Oh, if it was an American citizen, you

mean? Yeah.

>> Uh, no.

>> But why?

>> No.

We normally don't recruit American

citizens. By law, the CIA can't operate

domestically. Although they have offices

all over the country. Those offices are

generally to to debrief business

leaders, seauite officers who travel to

denied areas. For example, if if you

take a trip to North Korea, let's say,

I'm going to call you and I'm going to

say, "You don't know me, but I'm from

the CIA and I understand you just went

to North Korea and I was wondering if I

could come over to your office for an

hour and just ask you about your trip."

99.99%

are going to say yes because they're

patriots. So, I go to your office, I

give you my business card, and we just

chat about, you know, your impressions

of the place and that kind of thing.

>> Just to close off on this point, are

there any skills that the CIA taught you

or trained you in that you think are

transferable for business that we

haven't talked about?

>> They they trained us also in lying and

lie detection. That was actually quite

important. You know, you at the CIA,

you're you're a trained liar. And this

is why the divorce rate is so high. It's

the highest divorce rate of any uh

entity in in the US government. It's

it's upwards of 80%.

>> Trained to lie. How do they train you to

lie?

>> Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. Um I work

for an import export company.

>> But do they teach you the art of lying?

>> Oh yeah.

>> And what is the art?

>> You know, it's it's hard to like it's

hard to pin down. You just sort of have

to have it. You have to have that

ability. But the hard part is you have

to keep the lies straight. I'll give you

another example. I've never told this

story before.

I was asked by headquarters. I was

overseas in the Middle East and I was

asked by headquarters to target one

specific officer of this foreign

country.

>> Target?

>> Yeah. Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never

met. I'm John. So nice to meet you.

>> Let me take you to lunch.

he had access to to information that we

really needed. Uh so they told me to

accidentally bump into him. So I

surveiled him for a week and he was

single and on Saturday morning he went

to a coffee shop. So I go into the

coffee shop and I'm looking at him and

he's looking at me and I said, "I know

you, Ministry of Foreign Affairs." He

said, "Yes. Do I know you?" I said, "I

am John from the American Embassy." "Oh,

nice to nice to see you." I said, 'Hey,

good to see you, too. You live in the

area? Yes, I do. I said, 'Oh, so do I. I

didn't. I lived like across town. Oh,

fancy meeting you here at this coffee

shop. I come here all the time. Do you?

Yeah, he says. I come here all the time.

Why don't you have a seat? He says. So,

I sit down. At the end of the

conversation, I go back to the embassy

and I read a cable and I said, he's gay.

I'm 100% sure he's gay. So, then we

started this conversation, headquarters

and I, how can we use that to our

benefit?

>> Did he have a wife?

>> No. He was single,

>> which was unusual at his age.

>> How did you know he was gay?

>> Oh, I I just It was a vibe. [laughter]

>> Okay.

>> So,

headquarters says,

"We want you to pretend that you're

gay." I said, "Oh, come on, you guys.

No, we really need the information. You

got to pretend that you're gay." I said,

"Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle

Sam."

So, I call him and I said, "Hey, I have

two tickets to this show and I was

hoping maybe you'd be free. Maybe we'll

grab some sushi afterwards."

He said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So, we go

to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it.

And we go for sushi afterwards.

And then we go out again and he says,

"Why don't you come over to my place

some night and I'll I'll make dinner." I

said, "Great." So, I go over to his

place. made a lovely dinner and then I

thought, well, I have to invite him to

my place. So, I told my wife, you're

going to have to like get out. So, she

left. I made dinner. I removed all the

pictures of us together. And we had just

gotten married. So, we had like our

wedding picture up and everything.

At the dinner,

he leaned in to kiss me and I

instinctively backed off and he said,

"Oh my god, I'm sorry. I thought you're

gay." And I said, "Oh, no. I I am gay.

I'm I'm I'm not into hairy guys.

And he's like, "Oh,

okay." I said, "I'm sorry. I think

you're great, but I'm I'm not feeling

it."

>> You didn't kiss him?

>> No. [laughter]

So, we remained friends and in the end,

he gave me the information because we

were friends. And then he he opened up.

He's like, "I can't tell anybody I'm

gay. They suspect I am." and they passed

me over for promotion. And my boss asked

me, "Is there something in your personal

life that you're not telling me? He

knows I'm gay." I said, "Listen, your

culture is backwards. Don't tell them

you're gay. Just say that you've just

never met the right woman." And

inshallah, the right woman is coming,

you know, in your life at some point.

And I actually Googled him a couple of

years ago, and he did become an

ambassador finally.

>> And he's still working in that country

now.

>> Mhm. Does [clears throat] that kind of

stuff happen a lot in the CIA where you

have to take one for the team?

>> Yes.

>> Have you ever taken one for the team?

>> No. You

>> I'm not sure you're telling the truth.

>> Well, I it came close.

>> When did it come close?

>> So, I was overseas. I was a brand new

operations officer

and there was a woman in this foreign

intelligence service who was the ugliest

woman I've ever seen in my life.

like you want to avert your eyes like

she came off the side of Notradam.

She was a, you know, a stone gargoyle

with a giant mole right here with a

giant hair coming out of it. That kind

of ugly.

So,

so I took her to lunch and she was very

nice. And then I thought I did something

kind of gutsy by C CIA standards because

it was early on in our relationship. I

invited her to go to lunch on a

Saturday. Now, as a rule, the people in

this country were not allowed to

socialize with us privately. It had to

be like their whole office, you know, or

several of them together. So, I asked

her just to meet me privately for lunch

on Saturday. Don't tell anybody.

>> So, she was someone from the Middle

East.

>> Yes. And she agreed. And I was like, "Oh

my god, she said yes." And I ran back to

the office. I was like, she said yes to

a lunch on Saturday alone. And my boss

says, "Okay, here's what I want you to

do. I want you to [ __ ] her." And I said,

"What?" I said, "Have you ever seen

her?" And he said, "I know, but we're

the good guys and you're going to have

to take one for the team." And I go, "Oh

my god." I said, I go,

"Okay, I'll do it." And he says, "No,

you're not going to [ __ ] We don't do

that." I said, "I don't know. Oh, I just

started this. I've never been an

operations guy before. How am I supposed

to know? He said, "Come on." He said,

"Just develop her like a normal person.

You don't have to [ __ ] her." I said, "Oh

my god, you almost gave me a heart

attack."

>> But they they might not be mad if you

did.

>> So long as I reported it and I got the

recruitment out of him.

>> It wasn't illegal to act, you know,

sleep with assets.

>> Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with

assets. It has happened to a couple

people I know and um they end up being

pulled back to the United States. You

have to sit in the penalty box if you do

that. You're not supposed to do that.

But yeah, it happens sometime.

>> So sextortion isn't a real thing.

>> It can be. We don't.

[sighs] When I first got hired, one of

the old-timers told me the story of

about an ayatollah that they were trying

to recruit. And they set this ayatollah

up with a prostitute. And it was he had

sex with this prostitute in a room where

they had cameras everywhere. And so they

bumped him afterwards. They bumped into

him and said, "Hey, we have all these

pictures." And they laid out the

pictures of him, you know, butt naked

with this prostitute. And he said,

"Yeah,

give me that one, an 8 by10. Give me two

5x7s of that one. How about some wallet

size for this?" He's like, "Get out of

here." and he said, "You know, after

that, we just stop doing that. It

doesn't work. When you recruit somebody,

you really do need the relationship to

be based on mutual trust,

>> not coercion or pressure.

>> Threatening somebody, it's it's not

going to result in a productive

relationship. The Russians do it, the

Israelis do it, but most intelligence

services around the world don't."

because you've been in this world,

what is it that you know about the

nature of the reality that we all live

in that the average person really has no

idea about?

>> Do you know what I mean?

>> Yeah.

>> Because, you know, going back to what I

said earlier, 3 years ago, before I

started doing all this podcast stuff and

started interviewing people that had

been involved in spy work and the CIA

and all this, I was kind of like naive

to the way that the world worked. I

thought I thought if I have a password

on my device, my device is secure. And I

thought that you know,

>> right? All these kind of just simple

things, but what is it that you know

about the nature of reality that most

people don't?

>> Well, I I guess it's a couple of things.

You know, John Kennedy called the CIA

the best and the brightest,

and we're not. We're just average

people,

and we're not as smart as we think we

are. We're not as worldly as we think we

are. We've pretty much missed every

major global development since 1947.

From the, you know, the rise of the

Berlin Wall to the fall of the Berlin

Wall to the fall of the Soviet Union to

the Suez crisis and the Iran hostage

crisis and 9/11 and everything else. We

missed it.

We're really good at day-to-day, you

know, updates for the president. We're

really good at recruiting minor hangers

on around terrorist groups, but the the

big picture items were just not good at

it. Number one. Number two,

until 9/11, it was against the law, like

in stone, to spy on Americans.

And now billions of dollars are spent

spying on Americans. Whether it's NSA or

CIA or FBI or intelligence community

contractors,

nothing is secret. Nothing. And to make

matters worse,

let's say maybe you did do something

that law enforcement might be interested

in. They don't need a warrant anymore.

They don't need to go to a judge and

say, "Well, we have reason to believe,

you know, blah, blah, blah." All they

have to do is just buy your metadata

because it's for sale. Just go to the go

to the carrier. Just buy it. They don't

need a judge's order to do that. It's

all out there. We've made all we've made

ourselves vulnerable. All of our lives

are out there, whether it's on Facebook

or X or Insta or whatever.

If they really want to get you, they're

going to get you. Which reminds me of a

book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate.

He's a professor of law at Harvard and

it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he

argues in this book that we are so

overcriminalized,

so overregulated in this country that

the average American on the average day

going about his or her normal business

commits three felonies

every day.

You may not mean to, but you do. Every

day. So if they decide they want you,

they don't like your politics, they can

get your metadata, they can go through

that metadata, find crimes that they can

charge you with and ruin your life. And

there's nothing you can do to protect

yourself.

>> To some extent, they did that to you.

>> Yeah, they did. They did that to me

>> because you spoke out about a torture

program

>> that [clears throat] was happening in

the CIA.

>> Yeah. John Brennan wrote a letter to

Eric Holder and said, "Charge him with

espionage

and Holder wrote back." Eric Holder was

the attorney general. Holder wrote back

and said, "My people don't think he

committed espionage." And John Brennan

wrote back to Holder and said, "Charge

him anyway and make him defend himself."

So they arrested me, charged me with

five felonies, including three counts of

espionage. Espionage can be a death

penalty case. Charged me with espionage.

They waited until I went bankrupt 10

months later with $2 million in legal

fees and then they dropped the espionage

charges and they said, "We can read the

espionage charges or you can take a plea

to this lesser charge."

What are you going to do?

Roll the dice knowing that the

government wins 98.2% of its cases

according to ProPublica

or do you just take the deal and make it

go away? And that's what I did. And you

got roughly two years in jail.

>> Yeah. I uh ended up doing 23 months.

>> Mhm.

>> And for anyone that doesn't know, this

was because at some point in your

career, you spoke out about torture

programs that were happening in

Guantanamo Bay and and elsewhere.

>> Yeah. And at secret prisons that the CIA

had set up around the world, right?

>> And going back up to the top of my

question here, I I'm really trying to

speak to Jane Dave who's listening to

this right now. Sure. They have a normal

life. Yep.

>> They're not really aware that spies

exist and the extent of the work they

do. They kind of assume that everything

they see and people they interact with

are normal and they think their devices

and everything else is secure. What

message do you have for them? A word of

warning or caution about the reality?

>> Yeah, that's a good question. Elliot

Spitzer, the former um governor of New

York, when he was attorney general of

New York, he said,

"Don't nod when you can motion.

Don't speak when you can nod, and don't

ever put anything in a text message."

At the CIA on our very first day, they

told us not to ever say or do anything

that we would be ashamed to see on the

front page of the Washington Post. I

took that seriously. The truth of the

matter is because of technology the way

it is today, our whole lives are out

there potentially for someone to see,

for someone to use against us.

So be careful what you say, be careful

what you write. even ingest because it

can be taken out of context to target

you.

>> And what about digital security? You

talked about the fact that it's possible

for these these forces and not just the

US, but other countries to be able to

hack and crack your devices and see

anything on your devices. I think we all

go around assuming that our devices are

secure.

>> They're not secure at all. At all. It's

not just, you know, NSA, CIA, FBI that

you have to worry about. It's the

British, the French, the Germans, the

Canadians, the Australians, the New

Zealanders,

the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis,

the Iranians.

I mean, everybody has these

capabilities. Everybody.

So, you've got to be very, very careful.

>> Capabilities to do what?

>> To intercept communications.

>> I've heard you say that they can hack

car systems. They could so they could

theoretically hack into my car.

>> Yes, we know that from uh Wikileaks.

There was something in 2017 called the

Vault 7 revelations. there was a a CIA

software engineer who was disgruntled

and instead of going to the Russians or

the Chinese,

he went to Wikileaks and he downloaded

thousands, tens of thousands of pages of

documents classified above top secret

and they became what Wikileaks called

the Vault 7 documents. So they included

things like the CIA for example will

hack into let's say the Iranian Ministry

of Interior computer system but they'll

leave little electronic clues all

written in cerillic.

>> Cerillic as well.

>> The cerillic is the is the alphabet the

Russian alphabet. Okay. Yep.

uh or they can take control of your

smart TV remotely and they can make the

speaker turn into a a microphone. So

even though the TV is off,

it can still hear everything that's

being said in the room and broadcast

back to the CIA.

>> Can they do that with devices? Do they

>> Oh, they could do that. When I first got

hired, they were able to do that.

>> So they could be doing that right now

with my

>> Oh, totally. My opinion.

>> Absolutely. Yes, that's old technology.

And then the thing about the car, this

was revoly. They can take control again

remotely of a car's computer system in

order to

well, I mean, in order to to kill you,

>> crash the car.

>> Crash the car. Take it off a bridge.

Take it into a tree. Sure.

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>> I've heard you talk about sleeper agents

before.

>> Yes.

>> What is the What is a sleeper agent?

Yeah, the Russians are very good with

sleeper agents. We Americans don't have

no no other country that we know of uses

sleeper agents. A sleeper agent is

someone who is taken virtually from

birth and trained to be of another

nationality. For example, let's say

you're born in Russia

and from the age of, you know, two, they

take you from your family with your

family's acquiescence and they take you

to an Americanstyle town that they've

built out in the hinterland in Russia.

And they teach you to speak English with

an American accent. You watch American

TV shows. You watch American movies. You

eat American food. You get an American

style education.

So, I have no idea that you're not

American. You speak English just like I

do. You know, all the same, you know,

social references that I make. You

follow the Philadelphia Eagles, you

know, or or the, you know, San Francisco

49ers or whatever.

and then they send you to the United

States on a on a fake with a fake ID.

What they'll do is they'll go through I

was born in 1964. So, they'll go through

death records from 1964 and they'll look

for for deaths where the person was only

a day or two old

and they'll take that name and the birth

date and they'll get a social security

card with the birth date and then

they'll use the social security card to

get you a passport, an American

passport. So, you come here on your

American passport, everything's legit.

Now, your name is, you know, Bob Smith,

which was really that baby's name that

died. and you get a job, let's say, as a

travel agent,

and you may work as a travel agent for

20 years

and never hear from them,

but then they'll activate you and

they'll say, "We want you to go take

care of this target over here.

>> Kill him."

>> Yeah. Or, "We want you to get a job at

the defense department and give us

everything that you that you can steal."

Whatever. There's a woman in my

neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper

about a year ago. She was an elementary

school teacher and they grabbed her and

they ended up trading her back to the

Russians for two Americans. So, they're

they're out there. I I interviewed a a

sleeper, a former sleeper on my own

podcast a couple of weeks ago. He was

from the East German Intelligence

Service and he was raised as an American

and sent to New York.

He got a job, I forget, doing what, like

restaurant supply company or something

like that. And he got married and he had

a daughter. and he told me, "As soon as

I looked at her face the day she was

born, I realized this life wasn't for me

anymore."

So they

sent him an activation. What they do is

they'll send you a radio message and he

didn't respond to it. And [snorts] he

told me he was on the subway one day.

He's just standing there holding the

strap and this guy came up to him and

the guy grabs the strap next to him and

whispers in his ear, "If you don't

report back, I have to kill you."

And so he ran straight to the FBI field

office in New York and he said, "I'm an

East German sleeper and I want to turn

myself in." And he became a prolific

source for the FBI.

>> So he was

taken as a young person.

>> Yes. What was his story?

>> Yeah. Taken as a young person, sent to

Russia to become American.

>> They set him up with this phony

identity.

>> And then after he had gone through all

the training, he came over here young.

He was like 20 or 22. And uh and did

this for 25 years.

And then he said as soon as his daughter

was born, he was like, "Wow, this is

what life is for, not being a sleeper."

Do you think the average person

listening to this conversation right now

is interacting in their life at this

exact moment in time with someone who is

involved in espionage, spying, the CIA

or some international

equivalent? Probably not

because

they're mostly focused. Foreign

intelligence officers are going to be

spread out all over America. If if if a

listener of this podcast is working in a

defense company, a defense contractor

anywhere in America, then my answer is

yes. Yes, you're probably encountering

espionage of some sort or somebody

committing espionage, whether it's

Russian, Chinese, or Israeli. They're

the three biggest ones that go after us.

um in Washington.

I mean, foreign spies there there could

be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I

remember my first wife um she was

teaching ballet at a small private

school and one of the uh the students

there, they were all like four, five,

and six years old. One of the students

there, her father was a Belgian

diplomat. And so we would sit and talk

and oh, aren't the kids talented? And

oh, this is so much fun. They look so

cute in their little tutus. And then I

went to work one day and as I was

walking in, he was walking in and I

said, "Oh, come on, Peter." And he's

like, "You know, I thought you were a

spy." And I said, "I actually didn't

think you were a spy." He was just going

for a liaison meeting.

We had a good chuckle about it. And I

said, "Listen, don't tell anybody."

Right. Right. Right. Right. Sorry.

So, I'm trying to figure out how many

how many spies do you think there are in

the United States? If you think about

>> foreign spies,

>> foreign spies, domestic spies, people

that are basically undercover,

>> including Americans, you mean?

>> Including Americans.

>> The number of CIA employees is

classified. The number of CIA employees

undercover is actually even more highly

classified. I can give you a guesstimate

>> but also you know Russia, China.

>> Yeah. 50 to 60,000 altogether.

>> 50 to 60,000 in the United States.

>> Mhm.

>> So by a couple of degrees of separation

if you know 100 people.

>> Yeah. You're probably going to know one.

>> Sure.

>> You said there's probably about 50,000

in the United States. So, I've just done

some quick math on my notepad here,

which means that in order to know one,

you'd need to meet 6,600 people.

>> Okay.

>> Because the US population is roughly 330

million people.

>> That's right.

>> And I and then I did some other maths

and did some research and I asked um the

question I was trying to figure out is

how many people does the average person

meet a year?

>> And it's roughly about 3 to 10,000

people. So theoretically,

>> so the chances are good

>> every year

statistically,

according to my napkin math, you're

meeting one of these undercover

[laughter]

spies.

One a year.

>> There it is.

>> Now, that number I gave you is I'm

lumping like all CIA people and all

foreign intelligence officers in the

United States.

>> Interesting. But again, if you work for

an American defense company, Northrup,

Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, any of

them, your chances of encountering a

foreign intelligence officer are even

money.

>> Can't you, as a spy with the United

States, ask the United States to give

you loads of money? Like, can't you say,

"You really want me to go do that? Can I

have a million dollars?"

>> Because you're giving you're potentially

giving away a lot of money to other

>> Oh my god. giving away like unlimited

amounts of money

>> cuz your budget when you were a spy. How

much was it

>> after 911? It was unlimited.

>> What does that mean? It means you can

basically give away as much money as you

need to.

>> If I approach somebody and he says I can

give you

this terrorist. I want 10 million. I'm

like done.

>> What was the most you ever gave in?

>> 10 million.

>> You gave someone 10 million for what?

>> Abu Zabeda.

>> Who's Abu Zabeda? We believed that Abu

Zuba was the number three in al-Qaeda.

He wasn't the number three, but he was a

very bad guy. I led the raids that

captured Abu Zuba in Pakistan, Fisalabad

Pakistan in March of 2002.

And um

the State Department had a $10 million

reward. We ended up giving the 10

million to the Pakistani intelligence

service. It wasn't

>> a person

>> a person. It was just really great

analysis that led us to him. But there

were others in the so-called war on

terror

who

got more than 10 million and got it like

within 24 hours.

>> Individuals.

>> Individuals.

>> How much?

>> One got 25 million.

>> Just a person.

>> Uh-huh. And the thing is, you know,

there's a lot of danger there. If you're

a if you're a, you know, a shepherd or a

tea boy and you make $40 a month and all

of a sudden you have $25 million,

something's up.

>> And what was the 25 million for?

>> It was for a very high ranking

foreign terrorist who was brought to

justice. I I can't I can't say because

it was never

publicly disclosed. But what we would

have to do in a a situation like that is

we would have to tell the the source,

you can't live here anymore. Pick a

country and that's going to be home from

now on. And then we go to that country

and say, hey, can you do us a solid?

We've got this guy who, you know, he

really came through and [clears throat]

he's not going to be a burden on your

economy

>> cuz he's got $25 million.

>> Which country did he pick?

>> Oh, I can't I can't tell you that.

>> He wanted He wanted to stay in the

region. He He wasn't willing to move to

the United States, for example,

>> cuz we're happy to take him. You're

welcome to come to the United States.

He's like, absolutely not.

>> You went to Dubai.

>> I would.

>> Yeah. [laughter] With the tax code.

Interesting.

H

I think I'm I think I'm Yeah, you can

tell my bias from the questions that I

ask about the things that fascinate me

about espionage and spies is just it's

the un their understanding of human

nature and what motivates us and the

psychology of humans that you can learn

from um spies and the nature

[clears throat] of human beings I guess.

>> Right. And also, I guess the other thing

that really fascinates me is just

I've had so many mind mind-blowing

moments where I've learned just how

fragile the reality that I believe is.

Like I thought things were secure and I

thought they were as they are, but

>> right,

>> it just doesn't appear to be that way.

There appears to be lots of secrets.

>> And you know, conspiracy theorists get a

hard time, but actually the more I've

done this as a job, the more I go, hm,

conspiracy theorists are right more than

I expected. See, and that's an important

point.

I [sighs]

I hate conspiracy theories that run a

muck, but you know, the the the a former

CIA director is the one who came up with

the term conspiracy theory.

>> And it was it was a way for the CIA to

discredit people by making them sound

like crazy people when in fact there was

such a thing called MK Ultra. There was

such a thing called, you know, operation

grasshopper or or MK Chickwit or, you

know, the CIA did crazy crazy stuff from

roughly 1952 to 1975.

For example, they um experimented with a

a virus

that they

that they released in San Francisco.

They waited for an unusually foggy, like

heavily foggy day. They released it into

the atmosphere just to see if it would

make people sick. And 11 people went to

the emergency room with this rare upper

respiratory infection. And then they

were like, you know, high fives. Yeah,

it works. And then they they started

experimenting with LSD. LSD was a big

thing at the CIA in the early days. We

were convinced. See, and this this is

this is where counter intelligence is

important.

The Chinese

told us in like 1951

that the Russians were using LSD to try

to engineer it to be used as a mind

control drug.

That wasn't true. That was

disinformation. The truth was the

Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese

did.

So they tried to throw us off the off

the scent by blaming the Russians.

We panicked and by 1952 we started this

program called MK Ultra which began by

using LSD

um experimentally.

What the CIA did was they they started

by dosing their own employees without

telling them.

Um, several committed suicide. One

jumped out of a hotel window

>> with the hope that

>> yeah, we'll just see what happens. See

what they say. See how it feels, you

know, see if we can control them. See if

we can plant memories that didn't

actually happen. And then they decided,

no, it's not a good idea to dose our own

people. Let's just dose strangers out in

public. So they went to San Francisco.

They

rented a safe house and they hired

prostitutes to go out on the street,

pick up John's, bring them back to the

safe house.

>> John's

>> John's people who hire prostitutes, men

who hire prostitutes,

dose the John's with uh LSD and just see

what happens.

But I mean these are like serious

crimes you're committing against people.

>> Just reading about it here. It says

under Operation Midnight Climax.

>> Interesting name. Operation Midnight

Climax. The CIA paid sex workers to lure

men to safe houses where agents drugged

them and then watched them through

oneway mirrors and recorded their

behavior.

>> Exactly.

>> They tried to erase their personality.

Nice, huh?

>> The goal was often to break and rebuild

the human mind. In 1973, the CIA

director ordered mass destruction of the

MK Ultra files, what we know comes from

accidentally surviving documents,

meaning this is a sanitized version.

>> That day, he testified before the church

committee. The church committee

specifically told him, "Do not destroy

any documents." He went back that

afternoon to the CIA and said, "Destroy

everything." Why?

>> Because it it was damning. They were

experimenting on American citizens. They

were they were experimenting by

spreading diseases in American cities.

And so

he was held in contempt of Congress. He

was fined like $150

and um about 15% of the documents were

overlooked and survived.

We'll never know exactly what happened

under MK Ultra.

As we sit here now, there's people on

the streets of Iran that are protesting

the leadership there. And the CI the CIA

are often associated with some of the

coups going back to the 1950s. Yes. And

other countries toppling elected leaders

to protect US interests.

>> Yes.

>> Do you think the CIA are involved in

Iran at the moment?

>> Probably. I think the Israelis are

heavily involved in Iran at the moment.

I'll tell you why. for a couple of

reasons, more than a couple. Number one,

in the so-called 12-day war that we saw

last year, the Israelis were absolutely

masterful in the way they went after the

Iranian leadership. What they did was

they

focused on recruiting Afghan refugees.

Iran was home to more than 2 million

Afghan refugees. And as essentially

illegal aliens, they could not avail

themselves of medical care,

the welfare system. They're starving,

right? They only eat if they can beg for

enough to to buy food. And so the

Israelis went to these people very

discreetly and said, "Hey, you know,

we'll give you $200 a month if you tell

us where the generals live. In which

apartments do the generals live? Where

do the nuclear scientists live?"

The Israelis killed the top 12 generals

across the entire Iranian military and

killed almost every Iranian nuclear

scientist because what they were able to

do was to recruit these Afghans to not

just tell them where they were living,

where the generals and the scientists

were living, but what their cell phone

numbers were. And so the Israelis were

able to geollocate the cell phones and

then that's where you fire the missile.

They killed all of them. And then after

the Iranians finally realized

it's the cell phones, they ordered that

no senior military officials and no

scientists could carry cell phones. But

it never dawned on them to tell the

bodyguards not to carry cell phones. And

so the Israelis started rocketing the

bodyguards and just killed everybody

else.

>> Have you ever killed anybody?

>> No, thank God. My children asked me

that. And I told them very proudly that

I have never taken any action that

resulted in the death of another human

being. There's one kind of half

exception.

And I think about this all the time.

In 1993,

I guess it was.

I was sitting in the morning meeting. I

told you earlier that every unit meets

every day at 9:00 and you just talk

about what happened in the country that

you cover overnight. Was in the morning

meeting and the secretary came in and

she said, "John, General Powell is on

the phone for you. Call him Powell." I

said, "General Powell? How does he know

who I am?" and she said, 'I don't know,

but he asked for you by name.

My boss is like,"Well, go answer the

phone." So, I went to my desk and I

said, 'Good morning, General Powell.

This is John Kiryaku. And he says,

"John, if the Iraqis were going to kill

the president, who would actually be in

charge of that operation?"

And I said, "Well, if you're talking

about the attempt to kill President

Bush, George HW Bush,

he had been visiting Kuwait." I said

Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi

intelligence services Basra station but

Basra station is headed by

um Sabra Abduliz Adori the director of

the Iraqi intelligence service he says

where does he sit I said Baghdad where

exactly in Baghdad I said if you hold on

a second I'll look up the address so I

looked it up I gave him the address he

says thank you and he hangs up the phone

I go back in the

They were like, "What did he want?" I

said, "He wanted to know about Sabradori

and the attempt to kill President Bush."

Like, "Okay."

Eight hours later, we fired 47 cruise

missiles into Iraqi intelligence service

headquarters. But by then, it was the

middle of the night in Baghdad and we

killed the janitor.

So the next day, I said to my boss, "I

killed that janitor." And he said, "I

knew you were gonna say that. You didn't

kill the janitor. You had no idea what

Pal was going to do with him with the

information.

I said, I know, but I still feel guilty

about it.

Other than that, thank God I never had

to do it. I'm not sure how I would sleep

at night.

>> Do the US still assassinate people by

the CIA?

>> Absolutely. Yes. When Barack Obama was

president, John Brennan uh in the first

term was the deputy national security

adviser for counterterrorism and he

started something called the Tuesday

morning kill list meeting. So it would

be Brennan, it would be the National

Security Council attorney, somebody from

the CIA uh general counsel's office and

a representative of the director of the

counterterrorism center. And every

Tuesday morning they would meet at the

White House, come up with a list of

people to kill that week. The teams

would fan out around the world, kill

their targets, and then go back and meet

next Tuesday morning.

>> And are these world leaders or are they

normal?

>> No, these are these are ground level

terrorists.

>> Okay. So, it could be

someone that appears to be a normal

civilian, but is doing something that

they don't like.

>> The law is pretty clear on this. it it's

supposed to be somebody who poses a

clear and present danger to the United

States, to an American citizen, or to an

American installation,

>> which can be quite a vague.

>> See, that's the thing. It sounds like

it's clear. It's actually not at all

clear. And when they get back from these

missions, we just have to take their

word for it.

Which um spy force around the world did

you think was the most

impressive?

>> Oh, the Israelis.

>> Really?

>> Yeah. The Israelis have no rules.

They'll kill anybody. Uh what was it 3

years ago? This uh this pager operation.

>> Oh, it was so fascinating.

>> Good lord. It was it was a work of

genius.

>> It is genius. It is.

>> It was totally illegal.

>> Totally illegal. But it was genius. The

the moving parts.

>> I I didn't believe it was real. I had to

like re I was like, there's no way that

this is real. This is the stuff of

movies.

>> It is.

>> For anyone that doesn't know, what was

the story?

>> Ah, yeah. Okay. So, the Israelis knew

that Hezbollah, the terrorist group

Hezbollah [clears throat] from Lebanon,

was communicating using pagers. They

didn't want to use cell phones cuz they

didn't want the Israelis to intercept

their phone calls. And they thought,

"Oh, pagers, th those are safe." So the

Israelis

bought a company in like Hungary, I

think it was, that made pagers

and they got Hezbollah to order the

pagers from this company.

They were able to insert explosives in

the pagers. And the pagers went to like