John, in the 1960s, the CIA spent $20
million surgically implanting
microphones inside of live cats.
They sewed antennas through their spines
and out their tails. The first cat was
sent on a mission outside the Russian
embassy in Washington DC.
>> Mhm.
>> What happened next?
>> Next, they experimented by putting
microphones and cameras on pigeons and
tried to train them to land on the
window sills of the Soviet embassy in
Washington. Those experiments failed. I
mean, they were able to get the pigeons
and the cats to go over to the Soviet
compound, but they couldn't pick
anything up that was meaningful.
>> Did you know the first cat got hit by a
bus?
>> No. That's just perfect.
>> Have you ever thought that an animal was
spying on you?
>> An animal? No. But I did go to a
demonstration in 201
18 in Washington where there seemed to
be an inordinate number of dragon flies
around the speakers. And then when I got
up to the deis the stage, I realized
that they were drones. Little teeny tiny
drones. I thought that was just
scandalous.
>> When was this?
>> This was 2018.
>> Dragonfly drones. They're that small.
>> Yeah, they're big enough only to hold a
microphone. That's it. But I mean, it's
a public speaking event.
You can just listen. You don't need to
fly a dragonfly drone up to the podium.
>> There's no secret taking place. And I
wondered if it was like a training
exercise.
>> That's really fascinating. Have you ever
inserted a microphone inside of an
animal or used
I was very conventional in that respect.
I only uh broke into houses to to plant
bugs three or four times over the course
of my career. And it was always very
conventional, you know, in an ashtray
under a flower pot, something like that,
not in an animal.
>> That's fascinating. Uh
yeah, I for people who are unfamiliar
with your story, so you spent 14 years
at the CIA. That's right. Uh you helped
capture some of the most dangerous
terrorists alive. Then a single
interview on TV in 2007, ended your
career, your marriage, and sent you to
federal prison. What exactly did you say
that made you go to prison?
>> I said, what did I say that made me go
to prison? Well, it depends on your
point of view. M
>> what I said
that started the whole slow motion
chain of dominoes falling was that the
CIA was torturing its prisoners. That
torture was official US government
policy and that the policy had been
personally approved by the president
himself.
What they ended up getting me on was
something much more innocuous.
So, they charged me with five felonies,
including three counts of espionage. The
espionage charges all came from that
interview and a subsequent interview
that I did with the New York Times. But
what they got me on was in the summer of
20 of 2008,
um, a journalist wrote to me and said,
"I'm writing a book on the Abu Omar
rendition." And Abu Omar was a cleric in
Milan, Italy that the CIA kidnapped and
sent to Egypt to undergo torture.
Can you introduce me to any of these 12
people so I can interview them for my
book? I said, I don't know any of these
people. And then he wrote me back and
said, "What about these people?" And I
said, "I don't know these people.
Kidnapping was not my thing at the
agency. I didn't work with the
kidnappers."
And uh I said, 'You clearly know this
issue better than I do. All I know is
what I've read in the Washington Post.
And then he said, 'What about the guy
that you mention on page 10 and whatever
of your book? Um I think his name is
John. And I said, "Oh, you're talking
about John Doe. I don't know what ever
happened to him. He's probably retired
and living in Virginia somewhere." And
that's where they got me. I confirmed
the last name of that former colleague
and that's what they hung me on.
>> Right. And how long were you sent to
prison? 23 months. I was sentenced to 30
months. I did 23 months. And how many
people actually involved in the torture
program? Like the creation of it and
acting out specific torture, covering up
the program were sent to prison.
>> Exactly zero. I was the only person in
any way associated with the torture
program who went to prison and I was the
one who blew the whistle on it. Can you
give me an example of someone who is
directly known to have done something?
Is there any example of that? Like
something that's been declassified that
someone did but they weren't held
responsible at the highest levels? Yes.
The people who conceived of the torture,
who approved of the torture, who planned
the torture. So, so James Mitchell and
Bruce Jessen are probably the most
infamous. They were two contract
psychologists that were brought into the
CIA to actually create the torture
program. And then after we captured Abu
Zuba in Pakistan and sent him to this
the first secret prison, they were the
ones that went out to the secret prison
and actually tortured him. And what they
ended up getting
was $108 million of the taxpayers money
for their program that they created.
I know it's like bizarro world. I find
that really fascinating. Uh there's not
a lot to say about it, but
I think an interesting way to ask you
about some of this stuff is
now that people know you were once an
enemy of the CIA for exposing such a
dark secret uh and are a person who
values truth,
what does going to prison teach you
about how the world actually works?
>> Oh, wow. That's a good question and a
very difficult one to answer. I learned
so much in prison. I learned that really
our entire system is broken. You know
what? I'm going to throw a uh statistic
at you just to try to put it into
context. The United States has 5% of the
world's population. Okay? We have 25% of
the world's prison population.
worse than China, Russia, Iran. We lock
up everybody. Congress
creates
500 new felonies every decade. 50 new
felonies every year that are, you know,
these are new laws that are passed where
something that was legal a year ago is
suddenly illegal. And I'll give you an
example. I've written about this a
couple of times. There was a woman
working for Noah, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration in
Hawaii. She was a GS12 mid-level nobody.
Honolulu is very expensive to live in.
So to make some extra money, she and a
business partner bought a boat and they
would take tourists out on the weekends
to go whale watching. So they're out
there whale watching one day and they
come up on a pod of orcas and the orcas
are feeding on a seal carcass. So,
everybody runs over to the side of the
boat. They're taking pictures and video.
Somebody whistles at the whale
to I don't know, keep it near the
surface. I don't know. Nobody knows.
Couple of weeks later,
FBI, she answers the door.
Do you uh you have this boat? Yes. You
take the boat out with tourists? Yes.
Did you uh see some orcas a couple of
weeks ago? Yes. Did you whistle at the
whale? She said, "No, somebody did, but
you know what? I I videotape everything
and I sell the DVDs to the tourists."
So, she gives the FBI the DVD. Couple of
weeks later, they raid her apartment.
They take every DVD. They take her
computer. They take her phone. They
seize the boat. And after an
investigation, they charge her with one
felony count of interfering with the
feeding of a wild animal, which is a
violation of the Endangered Species Act.
She fought this thing for years. They
ended up knocking it down to a
misdemeanor. She took a plea to make it
go away, but she lost her job. She lost
her pension. She lost her boat. She lost
her friendship with her business
partner. She lost literally everything.
Is society better off because she was
prosecuted? Are we safer as a people
because she was prosecuted? This kind of
thing happens all the time. You know,
there's this joke that everybody in
prison is innocent. Well, you know what?
I found that a lot of people actually
are innocent. The thing is, and I'll
recount
an important conversation that I had
with my attorneys, I was given a best
and final offer from the Justice
Department. 30 months, I do 23.
And I had until noon of the next day to
decide. My wife and I stayed up all
night long discussing this. All night
long. And at 6:00 a.m. I emailed the
attorneys. I had 11 attorneys.
Attorneys that the Washington Post
called legal titans the best attorneys
money could buy and I said, "We've been
up all night. We've been talking about
this. We decided to turn it down. I'm
going to trial. I didn't do anything
wrong. I'm going to go to trial. As soon
as I get in front of a jury, they're
going to see how ridiculous this is."
The attorneys come straight to the
house. They get there 7:00 in the
morning.
The oldest Plato Cacheras, a legendary
figure in law in Washington,
gets right in my face and he says, "You
stupid son of a [ __ ] Take the deal."
And I said, "You're the one who told me
not to take the deal." He says, "I only
said that to keep your spirits up."
The second one, total southern
gentleman. He said, "If you were my own
brother, I would beg you to take this
deal." I had five kids at home.
I didn't want to go to prison. The third
one, the one that I liked and respected
the most, pulls me aside and kind of
angrily says to me, "You know what your
problem is? Your problem is you think
this is about justice, and it's not
about justice. It's about mitigating
damage. Take the deal.
So I asked, if I don't take the deal and
I'm convicted, what am I realistically
looking at? And they said, 12 to 18
years, take the deal.
What am I going to do? Like I say, I
have five kids at home. So I took the
deal. One of them said to me before I
made the final decision, "This can be a
blip in your life or it can be the
defining event in your life. Make it the
blip." So, I did. I took it. When you
think about the reason so many people
are incarcerated,
would you say it's mostly
incarceration as an excuse for something
that wasn't a crime? uh or would you say
it's that the people who do the
incarcerations have incentive structures
to do as many as possible?
>> Oh, we we have a robust private prison
system in the United States. The the
biggest company is Geo Solutions
and they build and manage prisons all
across America. They're doing all of the
immigration prisons right now. And so
they have an incentive to make sure that
every single bed is occupied. If there
aren't people in those beds serving long
sentences, they don't get paid. And once
those people are in beds, they maximize
their profits by cutting medication
and food.
on my very first full day in prison. I
got to prison on a Thursday at 11:00.
Friday was my first full day. And one of
the guys across the hall from me said,
"Friday, fish day." And I said, "Oh,
okay. I like fish." And one of the
Italians stopped me and he said, "You're
not going to want to eat this fish. We
call it sewer trout." And I said, "Oh,
okay."
So, I go down to the chow hall and
behind the the chow line where they're
just slapping food onto your tray, there
are these boxes stacked up and they're
clearly marked and out in public and it
says Alaskan cod, product of China, so
it's not Alaskan cod. And underneath it
says feed use only, not for human
consumption.
And they're just slopping it onto every
tray. And that became the norm. You only
have a handful of choices of what to
drink. Water, coffee, or Kool-Aid. And
the coffee is just brown water. So most
everybody drinks Kool-Aid.
Well, one day everybody's drinking
Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid.
And there's a dead rat in the Kool-Aid.
And God knows how long it was in there.
One time we got a an all hands email
from the warden. There was this internal
prison email system, core links,
and the warden says,
"So sorry, but a few weeks ago on
Wednesday taco night, we accidentally
fed you dog food. It's not our fault. It
was mismarked at the meat plant." So,
the dog food was marked ground beef and
the ground beef was marked dog food. Uh,
the company has been fined whatever it
was, $15,000, $19,000, whatever it was.
Um, so sorry. I wrote about it at the
time and I said, "The shame wasn't even
that we were fed dog food. The shame was
that we didn't even realize it was dog
food because it tasted exactly like the
ground beef that they fed us every day."
If you had to give me one sentence or
phrase to describe how people in power
make sure they stay in power, what would
be that one phrase?
I you know what I would call it?
Official corruption.
Corruption that may not be illegal but
is still corrupt where this is the
system that we've given ourselves. All
right. So imagine you need relationship
advice and you ask your friend who
hasn't been on a date since co and has
three matches on his dating apps even
after paying for premium. Like why would
you do that? There's a reason you
wouldn't ask that guy to handle your
love life. Just like there's a reason
Morgan and Morgan is America's largest
injury law firm. Not all law firms are
the same. Hire the wrong one and you
might be beat before you even start.
Morgan and Morgan has been fighting for
the people for over 35 years. They've
recovered over $30 billion for their
clients. And hiring them is like hiring
your own army to go into battle for you.
They've got more than a thousand lawyers
and a 100 offices nationwide. If you're
injured by someone else's negligence,
you deserve to be paid and their fee is
free unless you win. So, if you're ever
injured, you can check out Morgan
andorggan. For more information, you can
go to forthepeople.com/jackneil
and see if you have a case. Again,
that's forthepeople.com/jackneil.
But anyway, guys, back to the podcast.
It was finalized with the Supreme
Court's U decision in Citizens United,
the Citizens United case, which found
that corporations are people,
right? So corporations can give
literally unlimited amounts of money to
political campaigns,
right? Individuals can give up to, I
think it's 4,000 in the primary, 4,000
in the general, but corporations can
give unlimited amounts of money. People
can give unlimited amounts of money to
political action committees. So all you
do is you just fill out the paperwork
and you set up a pack. It only takes but
15 minutes. And so
look at this race, this Thomas Massie
race the other day. This is for a
position that pays $180,000 a year. And
the two sides spent $35 million
for one seat that pays $180,000.
That's corrupt as far as I'm concerned.
And it was almost entirely outside
money.
>> What do you think they were buying? Oh,
they were buying
I'm going to take a lot of heat for
this. They were buying a seat for Apac.
That's really what it comes down to.
Apac
Apac spent
millions and millions of dollars just on
that one seat because Thomas Massie does
not support Israel's political agenda.
>> Yeah.
And we see this actually all over the
country. If you are not 100% pro-Israel,
they'll primary you and they'll try to
replace you with somebody that is 100%
pro-Israel. It's something like 90% 88%
of members of Congress have taken money
from Apac because it's better just take
the money, just vote pro-Israel so you
don't have to worry about reelection. I
want to ask you something that you've
said that really struck me was the
selection process for people in
intelligence. And I know we'll talk
about that, but why do you think you
were selected for the CIA?
A CIA psychiatrist once told me that the
CIA actively seeks to hire people who
have sociopathic tendencies, not
sociopaths, because sociopaths have no
conscience. And while they can blow
right through a polygraph exam, they are
impossible to control.
People who have sociopathic tendencies
do have a conscience. They do react in a
polygraph, but they're willing to work
in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas.
And as an example,
um, when I was going through the
interview process,
there were two other men and a woman in
my little group and the instructor said,
"Let's say you're a CIA officer
undercover overseas. You get a cable
from headquarters saying, "We really,
really need the latest Indonesian
economic figures." You call the
Indonesian economic officer. You invite
him to lunch. You have a great time. You
invite him to lunch again. You have an
even better time. You take him to
dinner. You get together with your wives
over dinner. The kids begin playing
together. The wives become friends. But
6 months into this, you realize this
guy's not recruitable. He doesn't have
any vulnerabilities that you can latch
on to. So what do you do? Because
headquarters really needs those numbers.
So, one guy raises his hand and he says,
"You double down and you work on him
another six months and and maybe
something will come up." And the woman
raises her hand and she says, "Um, maybe
you work it through the wives. Maybe
your wife can convince his wife to
convince him to give you the numbers."
And I'm like, "What?" I raised my hand.
I said, "You break into the Indonesian
embassy and you steal it." And he says,
"That's exactly what you do. you break
into the Indonesian embassy and you
steal it. A normal person rather isn't
going to break into a foreign embassy
and steal classified documents. I would,
but that's what a sociopathic tendency
is. So I think that was one thing that
they saw. The other thing that they saw
that was very specific was that I was a
good writer.
And um when I was in graduate school, my
grad school adviser was a CIA officer
undercover as a grad school adviser. He
really liked my writing style and so he
kind of plucked me out of the crowd and
put me in the system and the next thing
I knew I was at the CIA.
>> How do you think you write that is so
interesting?
>> Well, it's different now. wildly
different now, but at the time
my writing style was very punchy and
concise and directly to the point. And
that's really what they wanted the CIA.
I My boss told me one time when I first
got hired, he says, "Listen, the
president doesn't give a [ __ ] about your
opinion on an issue. He wants to know
the facts and then he wants to know
exactly what the facts mean and then
he'll make his own opinion."
So, I cut to the chase. Now, my writing
style is completely different.
>> That's a fascinating one. I've I've been
shocked uh listening to some of your
interviews at
>> how solid your memory is of being able
to recount certain events in specific
details.
>> I have a very sharp memory.
>> But I I want to ask you on the
sociopathic tendencies portion. I've
heard some people discuss this idea that
maybe some colleges, universities,
intelligence agencies select people not
based on sociopathic tendencies, but
maybe some form of like dissociative
personality disorder. Have you heard of
this?
>> No. That would scare me.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, you know, it's possible that there
could be something to that. The CIA is
part of the MK Ultra program.
in the 60s uh up until about 1975
they did MK ultra related experiments at
universities all around the country.
There were a lot of universities in
California where they did these kind of
experiments and there are rumors that
for example Charles Manson may have been
part of these experiments. Sirhan Sirhan
may have been a part of these
experiments. We don't know because when
Senator Church told the CIA director do
not destroy the documents, he went back
to headquarters and ordered all the
documents to be destroyed. They
destroyed about 85% of them. So, we only
know a little bit of what MK Ultra
actually did.
>> On that one specifically, uh,
did you ever meet someone you suspected
had been MK Ultra?
>> No, but I met I have met a lot of people
who believe they had been MK Ultra.
Yeah. You This is one thing that the CIA
actually counts on. There are a lot of
crazy people out there. When I first got
out of prison, virtually the first
bit of work that I did was I got hired
by the American Psychological
Association, the APA,
to go to Brooklyn, Massachusetts, and it
was like a an offsite. It was me and 12
psychologists and we were supposed to
come up with a new set of protocols by
which APA member psychologists could
conduct uh custodial interrogations.
We went to lunch one day and I said,
"Guys," I was the only one who's not a
psychologist. I said, "Guys, I have a
question for you. A serious question." I
said,"Not a single day goes by that I
don't get emails from people who say
that the CIA planted a chip in their
brain or the CIA's communicating them
with them through a filling in their
tooth or the CIA's beaming waves at
their head. I get that a lot." And a
couple of them started to to laugh. And
I said, "Why is that so funny?"
And one of them said, "This is the most
common entrylevel mental illness that we
diagnose. Often times when people feel
overwhelmed in life, their brains need
to blame somebody or blame something and
they default to the to the thing, the
entity that is the easiest to blame.
That's a secret organization, one that
they don't understand."
And we all know what the CIA is. We've
all heard stories about what the CIA
does. So, a lot of people just default
to the idea that the CIA is somehow
interfering in their lives. It's very
common. They're not dangerous. They're
just going through something right now.
That's why you get so many emails. But
then I got an email from a woman. She
was the wife of a foreign ambassador in
the United States. and she said she
wanted to hire me because she believed
she was under electronic surveillance.
Well, I wrote this book called The CIA
Insiders Guide to Surveillance and
Surveillance Detection. I was a
surveillance instructor at the CIA. I
said, "Okay, great. This is what I'll
charge you. Let's meet and we'll figure
out if you're under surveillance."
I had a bunch of equipment that I had
bought online to detect, you know,
different waves and and different
transmissions and stuff like that.
So I met with her at the Tyson's
Galleria Mall in suburban Virginia and
totally normal like 65year-old woman and
she was adamant that she was under
surveillance and I said okay
I wasn't under surveillance coming here
and I don't notice anybody around us
that wasn't here when we arrived and we
just pick the place by random. So why
don't you start walking home? I'm gonna
follow you from a discrete distance and
I'll be able to do counter surveillance
and see if you're being followed. So, I
let her get pretty far ahead of me. And
she wasn't being followed. So, I go up
to her apartment and knock on the door.
I open the door and literally the entire
apartment floor,
walls, ceiling is covered in aluminum
foil.
And I go, "What is this?" I knew exactly
what it was. And she's like, "It's to
reflect the waves."
And I was like, "Fuck, she's insane."
And then she would call me in the middle
of the night and say, "They're beaming
the waves at me. My brain feels like
it's going to explode." I'm like, "Those
aren't waves. Those are your neighbors.
Put Christmas lights on their balcony.
It's just Christmas lights. They're
spying on me. They don't care about you.
They're not spying on you." In good
conscience, I couldn't take her money.
And I told her, I said, "Listen, I can
refer you to a couple people who are
experts at this sort of thing." She was
furious, wanted no part of it, and ended
up leaving the country. But then I had a
former CIA colleague tell me,
"Somebody's beaming waves at me." And
I'm like, "Dude, not you, too." And he
said, "I'm serious, man." He said, 'I
went for an MRI and it shows a traumatic
brain injury and all of a sudden I'm
nauseous and I'm dizzy. Next thing you
know, it's called Havana syndrome. And I
was like, I've known this guy for 35
years. And if he says he's got Havana
syndrome, he's got Havana syndrome. It's
a real thing. I had a colleague at the
time, we we were doing a radio show
together and he's making fun of it and
it's caused by crickets or we're doing
it to ourselves or whatever. And I'm
like, I know these people. These are
serious people and they're showing
traumatic brain injuries and MRIs.
There's something to it. Whether it's
the Russians or the Chinese or us, I
have no idea. But that is real. So her
concerns would be valid if she was a
different person perhaps.
>> Yeah. And you know what? One of the
psychologists, one of the CIA
psychologists said something to me that
has really stuck with me. He said,
"Always ask them if the waves follow
them when they travel."
Because the equipment that the Pentagon
has developed, which has to be nearly
identical to what the Chinese, the
Israelis, the Russians, and others use,
it's not portable.
And so if they say no, you know, when I
go to my sister's house, I feel better.
Uh, that might be something. If they say
everywhere I go, they follow me and
they're beaming the waves. No, that's a
mental illness.
>> Mhm. Have you ever given someone DMT as
a CIA spy?
>> No. No. Um,
one of my colleagues did, got arrested
for it, spent six and a half years in
prison for it.
>> Why would someone do that? He was a sick
sob.
And it's funny, I was like the last one
to see that he was truly sick. It was
the women in the office who used to say,
"There's something wrong with that guy."
And I was like, "He's getting promoted
pretty quickly." They're like, "No,
something's up." Next thing you know,
he's under arrest. It's on the front
page of the post. And that's exactly
what he was doing. Have you ever heard
any stories of
friends or maybe people in other
countries giving
people ketamine to spy on them?
No, never from inside the CIA. Outside
the CIA, people talk about ketamine a
lot. You know, the CIA experimented with
drugs from roughly 1952 until 1975.
I get a lot a lot of people who say MK
Ultra never ended. They just changed the
name. Okay, if you have evidence of
that, lay it out. Let's blow the whistle
on it and we'll get the FBI involved and
get people arrested. Otherwise, shut the
[ __ ] up
because there's not enough time in the
day to chase these, you know, these
silly rumors,
>> right?
>> Ketamine is something that keeps popping
up. I will say that the that the CIA
spent a lot of time and a lot of money
experimenting with LSD.
Um, but that that seems to have gone
away around 1975. When I was there, I
started in January of 1990.
I never ever heard anything about any
drugs. There there was some talk about
about uh truth serum
but um that was used during the Vietnam
War against uh prisoners
>> and during the course of my career I
never encountered it. Before we get into
some of the other uh past projects I
want to ask
something about you. Can you tell me two
truths and one lie?
two truths and one lie about my career.
>> Just anything about
>> anything. Um
at one time I was a licensed pilot.
I was the
fencing champion of Bahrain
and uh let me think of something else I
can say.
I got into a terrible, terrible fight
with Alec Baldwin and the last thing we
said to each other was, "Fuck you."
>> Kayla, do you have a guess?
>> I'm going to ask the person
the uh licensed pilots.
>> Do you want me to say
>> what was it? Yeah.
>> I was not the fencing champion of
Bahrain. I took fencing lessons in
Bahrain. Damn,
>> not the most realistic because you uh
the pronunciation.
>> Okay, that's interesting.
>> [ __ ] Alec Baldwin and I hate each
other.
>> Wait, so you actually got in a fight
with
>> Oh, yeah. He's a total [ __ ]
>> Tell me about that.
>> When I got out of prison, a buddy of
mine who's an Academy Award-winning
writer
um said that he wanted to do an off
Broadway play based on my case. and he
said, "Alec Baldwin and I have been
looking for something to do together for
years."
And um
and uh he said, "Let's get together for
lunch, the three of us in New York." I
said, "Great." I take the train up to
New York, go to this little place on the
west side. And um and my friend says,
"Tell him the story about this. Tell him
the story about that. Tell him the story
this story from Kuwait from your book.
Tell So I'm telling him stories. He's
just sitting there looking at me,
listening to the stories. And finally, I
said, "Listen, if you have any
questions, I'm happy to answer them."
And he goes, "I think you're full of
shit." I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "I
think you made all this [ __ ] up. I think
you're full of shit." I said, "I'm a lot
of things, but I'm not a liar."
And I said, "If you think I'm a liar,
then [ __ ] you." And he goes, "Fuck you."
I said, "Fuck you." And I got up and I
walked out. And my friend's like, "No,
no, wait, guys. No, wait. Stop. Stop. I
was so mad I walked all the way back to
the train station.
So then
I don't know 6, 8, 10 months passed,
whatever it is, and my friend and I had
come up with this idea for a show and we
had a bunch of pitch meetings set up.
So, I flew out to LA and we pitched it
to Fox and they said, "Nah, you know,
it's kind of interesting, but it's not
really for us and maybe if you had
somebody important attached to it, you
know, it might be a little bit more
palatable."
So, we go back to Soho House. He was a
member of Soho House. And he said to me,
"You know what we need? We need to
attach an A-list star." And I said,
"Don't even say it." and he said he's an
A-list star.
I said, 'All right. So we go into this
little breakout room and he calls him,
he puts him on speaker and he said, 'Ale
I'm here with Kiryaku and he goes,
"What's that [ __ ] one?" And I said,
"Yeah, nice to talk to you again, too,
Alec." And he says, "Well, John's got an
idea." So I gave him my idea. And he
goes, "Actually, that's that's a good
idea. You can attach me." So, we attach
him. The next meeting was at AMC and we
he he came uh into the meeting on Zoom
and they were like, "Wow, that's a cool
idea. We'll take it." I said, "Great."
They said, "Have your attorneys call
business affairs and we'll get this
thing squared away." Great.
Well, like weeks pass and I haven't
heard anything from business affairs.
So, I called my attorney and I said,
"Hey, have you heard anything from AMC
Business Affairs?" He said, ' Geez, I
forgot all about that. Let me call over
there. He calls over and um
and they said, 'Oh, uh we walked away
from that project. And he's like, why?
Oh, Alec Baldwin dropped out and he he
went to do uh some project at HBO. He
played the CIA director or something
like that.
So, I called him and I was like, you
know what? I said, [ __ ] you, Baldwin. I
said, 'You didn't even have the CO to
call and say, "I'm going to drop out."
Just like that, he goes, "Fuck you." And
he hangs up on me, and we never spoke
again. You know, a few months ago, I
realized something terrifying. I was
spending more time managing this podcast
than actually filming with guests,
answering, responding to emails, moving
data, video files around, and rewriting
the same documents over and over. And
meanwhile, everyone online is screaming
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in a way, it kind of already is if you
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Again, that is zap ie.com/jack.
But anyway, guys, back to the podcast. I
don't mean to be insensitive, but how's
he doing? I understand that he's doing
better. I'll tell you when he got
arrested, my friend called, our friend
called me and he said, "You know, it
would probably mean a lot to Alec if you
called him and just kind of walk him
through this." And I said, "Fuck him. I
I don't care." I said, "He killed that
woman. Somebody's got to pay for this.
Even if it was an accident, the buck has
to stop somewhere." I said, "No, I I'm
not calling him."
That's fascinating, man. Um,
I'm
Yeah. I mean, for the record, I don't
consider you to be a liar, but that's
just because that's that's solely just
an energy thing, you know? It's like you
can see people talk online all day, but
when you meet them in person, it's a
totally different experience.
>> I completely agree. Until 1995, the CIA
paid people to spy using their minds
with Project Stargate.
>> Correct.
>> One operator claimed to have done over
400 psychic missions. Did you ever sit
in a Stargate briefing? Never sat in a
Stargate briefing, but did participate
in a
in a
long session where the subject was under
hypnosis.
Stargate was weird to me. And that was
managed through the office of medical
services.
I only worked with MS and it wasn't even
the physicians so much as it was the
psychologists
when we needed to use the psychologists
operationally to help us get the most
that we could out of a source.
The Stargate stuff was just so
out there.
To tell you the truth, I remember saying
to a guy, "I don't have time for this. I
I need to hear it from the from the
source's mouth. I I I can't sit in a
room where some guy's going into a
trance, you know, looking off into
space, and then tells me something that
he probably just made up. So, I never I
never worked with it." Hypnosis was
different. That was I I've never seen
anything like it before.
It It was It was the real deal. Have you
been hypnotized?
>> I've never been hypnotized.
>> Yeah. I I'd like to
>> I've been hypnotized a few times. Yeah.
>> Yeah. What What did you know that you
were under hypnosis when you were under?
>> That's a really good question. Uh
a couple times. Yeah, I'd say. So, not
every time. Yeah. Some people have a
really masterful
skill when it comes to hypnosis, I would
say. Would you say that's the case?
>> I never saw anything like it before in
my life. I flew out to Europe with
a psychologist from the CIA and a guy
who was a psychiatrist and a hypnotist
and he was president of the like
American Society of Hypnotists or some
such thing.
We had a walk-in
in a different country. And a walk-in is
somebody who literally walks into an
American embassy and says, "I have
information. I want to see a CIA
officer.
95 times out of a hundred, and I mean
that literally, there have been studies
done. They're crazy people just walking
off the street and they want to yell cuz
the chip in their tooth is telling them
to, you know, kill the prime minister or
whatever. And um you say, "Okay, I'm so
sorry to hear that." And you write it up
and say it's a crazy person. Send it in
just so it's on on the system in the
system. So we had this guy come in and
he says, "I think I witnessed the
aftermath of an assassination."
And the assassination was like a major
front page like global
assassination.
So we were like, "Okay." We turn him
over to the FBI. The FBI says, "He's a
nut. We're not interested."
But then he said something to me that I
thought, "How could he possibly know
that?" And what he said was that he was
driving down the highway and decided he
had to take a leak. So he pulls off some
exit and the only thing at this exit is
a church and it's just a little teeny
tiny chapel.
He goes behind the chapel and there's a
big banyan tree, you know, with a giant
trunk, right? So he's behind the banyan
tree taking a leak and this van pulls up
and two motorcycles pull up.
The van pulls a ramp down and they drive
the motorcycles into the back of the van
and the two guys on the motorcycles get
out. The guy who was driving the van
says, "Is he still alive?" And one of
the motorcyclist says, "He has to be
dead by now. It'll be on the news."
Well, that was the day of like an hour
after this major assassination.
That was it. He didn't say, you know, I
heard them say, I did it and my name is,
you know, something nutty like that.
>> So,
we flew him to this other country. We
flew out there and met him. And I asked
him, "What do you want from us?" Cuz
clearly he's not doing this out of the
goodness of his heart, right? And he
says, "My wife has breast cancer. I
can't afford treatment. She's going to
die. I want her to have cancer treatment
in the United States." I said, "Done."
So,
another case officer and I flew out with
the psychologist and the psychiatrist
and um the guy didn't speak any English,
so we translated and we turned all the
lights off in the room. He's sitting in
a chair like this. The psychiatrist is
sitting right behind him and we're
translating. You know, we told him, "Put
your hand up in the air and he goes like
this and we're going to count backwards
to 10 from 10 and when we get to zero,
you're going to be out." And he's like,
"Okay, soon as we get to zero," his hand
goes like this. But his arm stayed up in
the air
for 4 and a half hours. I never saw
anything like it. So, I'm asking him,
"Can you see the license plate on the
van?" And he's he's like this. He goes,
"Yes." And I said, "Can you tell me what
the letters are?" And he goes
and like reads off the letters like he's
squinting to look at the plate.
I give the numbers to my colleague. He
runs into the adjoining room, calls
headquarters, they call the station, the
station calls liaison, liaison calls
back, they says, they say it's a stolen
plate. I couldn't believe it. It was a
stolen plate. So
after 4 and a half hours, we count back
from 10 again. His hand is like this and
we get to zero and his hand drops down
and he opens its eyes and he says, "What
happened?" And then he goes and just
vomits all over himself and then runs to
the bathroom. And the psychiatrist said,
"I've read about this in the literature,
but I've never actually seen it happen."
And I said, "Do you believe what he
said?" And he said, "I believe that he
believes what he said."
So, it didn't bring us any close to the
killers, but in the end, we all came to
the conclusion that he was telling the
truth. The whole case fell apart later
where
he got back in touch with us. He
triggered this emergency meeting. I met
him at this crazy place outside of town
and um and he said he had been
kidnapped,
but he happened to have a a little
recorder in his pocket and he recorded
the kidnapping.
And I'm like, "Oh my god, that sounds
kind of nuts, but okay, let me have it."
So he gives me the recording
and it's him and he goes, "Wait, what
are you doing?" And then it's also him
saying, "I am kidnapping you. I am the
minister of interior and I am involved
with a terrorist group." And I'm like,
"Are you kidding me?" So afterwards, I
was like, "Listen, you know, you had me
for a minute. I believed you, but this
>> and this is the same guy from the
initial case."
>> Yeah. I said, "I'm offended by this."
And he says, "Well, you guys weren't
making any progress."
I said, "You can't just call me and say
that the Minister of Interior is the
leader of the terrorist group that we're
after,
>> right,
>> with your voice on the tape."
>> Just to clarify the story. So, you're
saying that this guy witnessed a major
assassination in person.
>> He witnessed the aftermath of the
assassination.
>> So, he witnessed that specific Okay.
>> He witnessed them hiding the the getaway
motorcycles. They they shot the guy on
motorcycles,
>> went up over the mountain
to the highway, got away, and then put
the motorcycles in the van and then did
whatever with them. To kind of close the
loop on the psychic question and ask
about this in general, because my
takeaway from what you just said is that
some people can be under hypnosis and do
things that they believe are true or
right, say things. That was the whole
Manurion candidate theory and that's
really that was the whole basis of MK
Ultra.
>> You know, it's funny the way MK Ultra
started. We had a source who said that
the Russians were doing the same kind of
thing that they were experimenting with
remote viewing and ESP and all this
stuff. That actually wasn't true. What
was true was that the Chinese were doing
it. We didn't have any sources in China
at the time and so we were like, "Oh my
god, we're behind the eight-ball." Mind
you, the CIA's just 5 years old at the
time and China had only been communist
for three years. So, we haven't quite
gotten our footing in China by 1952.
And so, we panicked and we were like,
"Oh my god, the Chinese are ahead of
us." Or, I'm sorry, the Russians are
ahead of us. We've got to catch up.
Let's make this thing called well we'll
call it MK ultra you know it's funny the
diagramraph MK just meant that it was a
um
scientific operation like you can have
QR MB a r a l whatever and each one
means something it means a country it
means a domestic operation it means you
know terrorism or proliferation or
whatever and then the
after the diagramraph The word is just
jinned up at random by a computer. So
they just picked out of a hat ultra. MK
being this experimentation thing and it
became MK Ultra.
Do you think anyone is actually psychic
personal?
>> My friends are going to laugh at me when
I say I think some people probably have
some sort of abilities that others don't
have.
Yeah, I'm not saying that I would hang
my hat on it or live my life based on
it. I had this friend who went to a
psychic once and she told him he was
going to live to 88. And he was he
started just jaywalking all over the
place because he was like, "No, I'm
going to live till I'm 88. I'm not going
to get hit." I said, "You may live like
as a quadripolgic until you're 88." He's
like, "I hadn't thought of that." Um,
but yeah, I think there are probably
some people who are more sensitive to
these kinds of things than others.
>> This is an interesting one. I talked
with Jen about this briefly, Professor
Jiang. Uh, oh yeah, great. I have great
respect for him. This is all public. Uh,
so the government once had a DARPA
program called Lifelog built to track
every email, every photo, every
location, every purchase a person made
all in one place. They killed it on
February 4th, 2004.
The next day, Mark Zuckerberg filed the
LLC for the Facebook Incorporated.
Scale 1 to 10, how much of a coincidence
is that? A one or two? Um,
you know, there are some people, I'm not
one of them, maybe you're not one of
them, who are constantly thinking about
how to monetize literally everything.
>> They also have very deep connections in
government. Well, we've known since Tom
Drake went public uh in 2002 that NSA is
intercepting every phone call, every
text message, every email. Okay, why not
go farther than that and intercept
everything else? If DARPA was doing it,
he knew DARPA was doing it because he
has contracts in government, sensitive
contracts, and he knows that they
dropped it. Why not pick it up and
figure out how to monetize it? I believe
that's what happened. Have you ever
worked for Facebook?
But
a guy that I worked with, my first job
at headquarters after I got back from
Athens,
guy had been chief of a gigantic
station. So he was well up there in the
senior intelligence service. He resigned
and uh we were like, "What? What do you
mean you resigned?" He's like, "You
guys," he goes, "This thing, this
Facebook thing," and I had like vaguely
heard of it. He said, 'They made me an
offer that was ridiculous
and then I never saw him again.
So there are a lot of senior CIA, FBI,
NSA people that went to Facebook and
Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn and
everywhere else.
>> Open AI recently.
>> Open AI. Will he
>> I don't know if you've ever heard of
Will Herd.
>> He was the former director of NSAI. No,
Will was I mentored Will at the CIA. He
was a junior uh case officer. Had a gift
for con for for convincing people to
commit espionage. A gift, fun guy, sweet
guy, really smart, funny.
He's half black, half white, decided to
resign from the CIA to run for Congress
in a Supreme Courtmandated
majority Hispanic district.
and he won three times.
The races were close, but I'll tell you,
Will and I disagreed, like had serious
disagreements on politics,
>> but the guy is as honest as the day is
long.
He ran for president for about a minute
and then dropped out in 20
well yeah 2024
and uh gave up his congressional seat to
run for president and ended up being on
the board of open AI.
So yeah he he authored
multiple cyber security bills uh in
Congress parts of which were classified.
So,
he keeps one foot in the game and one
foot in business. I'm not sure what he's
doing. I know he's making more money
than he can count. And uh I think is
also
indicative of or an example of
the two worlds coming together. Keep in
mind also that in the immediate
aftermath of 911, the CIA got a waiver
from Congress to open a venture capital
arm called INQEL.
Like how they're able to how this is
legal,
I have no idea. But their very first
investment, $1,500,000,
was to Palunteer.
And now Palunteer is a multibillion
dollar company. It's involved in cutting
edge technology almost all of which is
classified.
A lot of people got very rich going into
Palunteer and similar high-tech cyber
organizations. There's another company
called Abraas Corporation.
Braxus was formed in the 90s by a bunch
of guys that I used to work for and they
set it up as a tax pass through. They
didn't expect or intend to make any
money. They just wanted a place where
they could hang out and drink coffee and
smoke cigars and talk about what great
former CIA officers they were. And then
they started putting in for CIA
contracts. Since they're friends with
everybody who was making the contracting
decisions, they started getting um
contracts and the millions turned into
tens and then hundreds of millions and
then billions and now everybody's rich
beyond his wildest dreams.
>> On the Palunteer portion,
why does Palanteer scare you?
>> Because there's no oversight of it. We
don't really know what Palunteer does.
It's all secret. It's more than secret.
It's top secret. It's more than top
secret. It's top secret
compartmentalized.
So are the
>> top secret compartmentalized. Break that
down for me.
>> Yeah. So there are many levels above top
secret. They're they're compartments.
For example, when you join the CIA,
everybody gets a TSSCI TK gamma
clearance. So it's top secret,
special intelligence, which is NSA,
talent, keyhole, gamma. Those are three
compartments that everybody gets. So
let's say most everybody in the military
has a TSSEI,
top secret sensitive compartment in
information
>> or SI, special intelligence. So if NSA
just picks some phone call out of the
air, you're cleared to see it.
If it is sensitive, it's going to be
talent keyhole. So the military guy's
not going to see it. You get to see it.
If it's gamma, somebody with a special
clearance gets to see it. So maybe I'll
see it, but you won't see it because
maybe
maybe it's an intercept of a phone call
from some world leader, right?
And then
as another example, when I got back from
Pakistan, I was promoted to be executive
assistant to the CIA's deputy director
for operations. And in that position you
see literally everything that is
happening around the world. I had um ts
sei si tk gamma and then I added six
more compartments on top of that. So, in
fact, there was one morning
I was briefing the deputy director, the
associate deputy director and all of the
associate deputy directors for
counterterrorism,
proliferation, counter intelligence,
budgets. So, I said, we have a very
important cable. It's part of my normal
morning briefing. We have a very
important cable in the such and such
compartment. And the deputy director
says, "Stop.
You and I are the only ones cleared for
that." And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm
so sorry." And he says, "Just give me
the hard copy." So I gave it to him. And
I said, "None of the associate deputy
directors for operations
are cleared for the compartment." And he
said, "No,
they don't have a need to know.
I want to ask so badly. What is the
degree that like someone like a Tulsi
Gabbard has? But
>> well, that's a great question. Tulsi
Gabbard is supposed to have everything
of everything. She's the director of
national intelligence. So, she's the
overall director of all 18
intelligence agencies in the US
government. Most countries have one or
two. We have 18.
>> But it's it's a four-year term, right?
>> No. So you can be in that position for
>> you can be so long as you serve at the
pleasure of the president is the
language that they use. So you can be
there for a day, you can be in there for
eight years or for 20 years if the
president decides you're doing a great
job.
>> The truth is
until very recently the DNI was really
in charge only of uh budgets. That's it.
And even then not really because
because most of the intelligence
agencies in government are agencies
within the Pentagon. NSA belongs to the
Pentagon, Army intelligence, Navy
intelligence, Marine Corps intelligence,
Air Force intelligence, Coast Guard
intelligence. They're all Pentagon.
So they're part of the Pentagon budget.
So the DNI is in charge of intelligence.
But no, actually no. The State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research reports to the State
Department. They sit in the State
Department. There's an assistant
secretary for intelligence and research.
So, the DNI doesn't even really control
that.
>> How often would you say Trump gets asked
something and someone says that's
classified?
>> I would really hope that that would
never happen.
I will tell you though
that there were times in my career where
something would happen. Not a lot of
times, two or three something would
happen and either the station chief or
the DDO deputy director for operations
would say, you know,
let's not put that in writing.
And so there was no written record of
it. I'll give you an example. I worked a
case where we recruited this guy. He was
incredibly dangerous.
Um, he was a career criminal, a heroin
addict,
but he did this really cool thing for
us. And so we paid him very handsomely.
And I said to him, "Don't spend all the
money in one place because it's going to
raise eyebrows and people are going to
think you're probably taking, you know,
CIA money." Mhm. He said, "I'm going to
use it to marry my girlfriend." I said,
"Oh, that's terrific. That's a great
idea. Congratulations."
Couple of weeks later,
I work my normal day. I get home. I turn
on the news. I see the guy on the news.
He's in cuffs. He just shot his
girlfriend's father.
It turned out
he went to ask the old man's permission
to marry his daughter. And the guy's
like, "I'm not marrying I'm not letting
my only daughter marry a a heroin
addicted career criminal." And the guy
just shot him in the face
and he got arrested.
I called the station chief and I I was
like, "Are you watching the news?" He's
like, "No." I said, 'AB Grasshopper. I'm
just making that up. There is no such
thing as AB Grasshopper. AB Grasshopper
just shot his girlfriend's father in the
face. He killed him. It's on the news.
He's like, "Oh my god, we have to inform
Congress." So I said, "Okay, I just got
home. I'm going to get back in the car
and go straight back to work." I get
back to work. He gets to work. And he's
like, "You know, on second thought,
let's not put that in writing." I said,
'Are you sure? Like, the rules are
pretty clear. You got a recruited asset
who's just committed a cold-blooded
murder. He's like, they they wouldn't
understand the nature of our
relationship with the guy.
I was like, you're the boss, so I didn't
put it in writing. I'd assume that's
rare, though. I would hope it's rare.
Like I say, it only happened to me one
or two times, and I had kind of a career
that was out there. Another program that
you've talked about quite extensively,
so I'll ask about it in a different way,
Project Mockingbird, the CIA paid
journalist,
news anchors, maybe to report on what
they wanted them to or change stories,
something along those lines. I can't
remember the exact details, but if you
had an unlimited budget and were running
Project Mockingbird right now, where
would you make sure you put that money?
Oh, overseas.
It should be patently illegal
to
propagandize the American people.
It was until Barack Obama changed his
mind in 2015.
Oh, so that's recent.
>> Oh, yeah. It's recent. You know, since
since 1975, we haven't been allowed to
we I say we like I'm still there. The
CIA has not been allowed to recruit
journalists,
American journalists.
So the Church Committee was appalled
that the CIA was was running this thing,
Project Mockingbird. And the Church
Committee made it illegal
to to do that to to recruit American
journalists.
It is perfectly legal. It is actually
encouraged
for you to recruit foreign journalists
with the idea being that you pay these
guys a handsome wage
and they're going to plant pro-American
stories
and also they're going to tell you what
has ended up on the cutting room floor
that might be important for, you know,
the CIA analysts or for an operation
that might be ongoing or whatever.
The first time the CIA ever did this was
in the Italian election of 1949. It was
the very first covert action operation.
The CIA spent $150,000
to bribe Italian journalists because the
Communist Party was ahead in the polls
and they bribed these journalists to
write articles that were in support of
the Conservative um Christian Democratic
Party and the Christian Democrats won by
a whisker. So the CIA essentially stole
the 1949 Italian elections.
The CIA then began recruiting
journalists all around the world.
Mockingbird was different in that it was
geared toward recruiting American
journalists. Well, it it was illegal to
propagandize the American people.
Americans weren't even allowed to listen
to the voice of America. I mean, you
could if you had a shortwave radio, you
could hear it, but it's propaganda. It's
pro-American propaganda. It's the
government's own radio voice
until 2015
in the National Defense Authorization
Act of 2016.
That was rescended and it was rescended
for the worst reason. Have you ever
heard of radio TV, Marty?
So, in the 70s, the um what became known
as the broadcasting board of governors
created a radio and TV station, Radio
Marty and TV Marty, to beam
anti-communist
propaganda at Cuba. So, Radio Marty
was broadcast from a plane. I actually
went up in the plane at in 2011 when I
was with the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. and they just fly back and
forth in international airspace between
Florida and Cuba and they broadcast
Radio Marti. Radio Marti is mostly
baseball games in Spanish. The Cubans
love baseball even more than we do and
so they everybody tunes into the
baseball game. Sometimes the Cuban
government will jam the frequency
um but most people listen to it just for
the sports coverage.
TV martye
is almost always jammed. You can watch
it in the waiting room at the American
embassy when you're waiting for your
visa and it's, you know, Miami Cubans
yelling about communism and silly stuff
like that. So, nobody watches it.
Well, in the early as
um it was picked up by the Dish Network
and the way the Dish Network broadcasts,
there's this little tiny sliver right
along the coast of southwestern Florida
where if your dish is like just right,
you can pick it up, but it's illegal to
propagandize the American people. And so
the Obama administration said, "You know
what? rather than make the Dish Network
change their frequency or whatever,
let's just make it legal to propagandize
Americans. And so in the National
Defense Authorization Act of 2016, they
make it legal to propagandize Americans.
And so now you're if you're on that
little strip of coast of southwestern
Florida, you can watch TV Marti. Not
that anybody would want to, but it also
gives the government the right to
essentially recruit American journalists
again. And I'll give you another
example. I have a friend who is an
absolutely fantastic investigative
journalist, Jason Leupold. He's now at
Bloomberg.
Jason is the king of the Freedom of
Information Act. He was once called by
the Pentagon spokesman during the Bush
administration. He was called a foyer
terrorist because he has filed more
Freedom of Information Act requests than
any other person on earth.
So he told me, he's actually the guy who
broke the Hillary Clinton email story,
right? So he told me that he was bored
one week between Christmas and New
Year's. And he has this masterful way of
doing this. The Freedom of Information
Act says that when you file the request,
the government has 60 days to respond.
Okay, I filed a request in 2015. I'm
still waiting for the response. They
never respond. So on day 61, you have to
file a lawsuit against them
and they always lose and they always
have to pay your legal fees, but nobody
thinks to do it and people are too busy.
I'm too busy and I don't really care at
the end of the day. It was about one guy
who was a science fiction writer. So
anyway, Jason has an attorney on staff,
not staff, on on retainer. And every
time he files a foyer request on day 61,
they sue they sue the CIA every time. So
he said he's bored one Christmas and he
files a Freedom of Information Act
request for all communications
between the CIA and all reporters over
the previous year.
Day 61, he sues.
He wins. The judge orders the CIA to
release the information and to pay his
legal fees, which is the way it always
is. And he says he got back this
mountain of emails between the CIA's
Office of Public Affairs and journalists
from all around the world. He said there
were a couple that were especially
interesting.
>> What year was this? This was 2011
12.
He said one of them was an exchange
between the CIA and Kendallian of NBC
News. Kendallian is the chief national
security correspondent for NBC News and
MS Now.
Kendallian was writing articles and
sending them to the CIA for clearance
before sending them to his own editor.
So the CIA could say, "Yeah, take that
line out. You might want to change this
paragraph. Don't say that. Say this
instead. That's propaganda.
They're propagandizing the American
people. I don't want to know what the
CIA's official line is. I want the
news."
The other thing he found was there was
this young, hungry, independent
journalist who actually had stumbled
onto a real story. and he wrote up the
story. He sent it to the CIA. Please
comment. I'm going to post it, you know,
the next day. And they wrote back and
they said, "So help us, God. If you
publish this, you will never be invited
to the CIA Christmas party ever again.
And we will never give you any
background information." And so he
killed his own story.
So you don't need to recruit American
journalists anymore. They do it for
free.
Some of them do it just because they
want to be, you know, insiders with the
guys. Some do it because they're afraid.
So, you don't need to recruit him
anymore. That's an interesting one. I
guess I don't know why I'm even thinking
about defending the original position of
it, but just the only thing that would
make sense to me is if the foreign
people are trying to get our journalist,
then we might as well try to get our
journalists, too, to kind of balance
that out. Like did do you think that's
fair or
>> see that would be an FBI program
>> that
>> right that's that's what's strange to me
is the overlay of those
>> CIA is forbidden from operating
domestically unless it's overt certainly
the CIA has offices all around the
country uh it's called national
resources division but their job is
let's say you're the CEO of a company
and you go to China and you're
negotiating with these Chinese
government people the CIA is going to
call you and say, "Hey, Jack, we know
you went to China recently. Do you mind
if we come by the office and ask you a
couple of questions about these Chinese
people you were dealing with? You know,
tell us about their personalities or do
you know anything about their
backgrounds?" And because you're a
patriotic American, you say, "Of course,
come on over." And then they go and they
write everything down. That's overt.
There's nothing secret about that. Um,
but otherwise, they're not allowed to
operate on on American soil.
>> That's up to the FBI.
Maybe I haven't been looking for it, but
I feel like I haven't seen
as much about the FBI as I have the CIA.
No, you're right. What's with that?
Yeah, it's funny. I think because so
much of what the CIA does is secret,
people's imaginations kind of start
working and
they're more likely to go down a rabbit
hole on the CIA than the FBI. I think
that's what it is. People are always
intrigued by what they're not supposed
to know and so they want to get to the
bottom of things.
>> Which do you think is the more
interesting rabbit hole
>> within the CIA?
>> The just between the CIA and the FBI
>> counter intelligence. Definitely.
Definitely.
Both the CIA and the FBI have gigantic
counter intelligence
organizations. in the CIA it's the well
now it's
is well at the time that that I was
there it was called the uh counter
intelligence center CIC
its job is to find moles inside the CIA
it's the most highly classified work
that's done period
the
FBI has what's called the National
Security Division
and and their job is also to look for
moles.
And there are there are more people in
government working for foreign
governments than than you might think.
It wasn't just Alder James and Robert
Hansen, two traders working for the
Russians, both of whom were the chief of
counter inelligence for Russian
operations. By the way, the Chinese are
all over us. You know, the mayor of
Arcadia was just arrested for being an
unregistered agent of the Chinese
government and planting pro-Chinese
propaganda in Arcadia's newspaper.
What's up with that?
Um, another one is all these Chinese PhD
students that are getting degrees in in
the hard sciences here and then they
say, "Oh, we love it so much here. We're
going to get green cards. We're going to
get American citizenship. We're going to
apply for jobs at DARPA.
Come on.
Come on. They do it all the time.
They pay extra for the universities. So,
>> they pay full price.
>> Yeah, there's some incentive for that.
>> Oh, yes, there is. You said Epstein was
likely an asset for Assad.
Based on what you actually know about
how the CIA and intelligence agencies
work, is it more likely that Epstein was
an asset for an intelligence agency or
that the intelligence agencies were
working for him?
I hadn't thought of it like that.
I hadn't really thought of it like that.
With this most recent trunch of
documents,
it solidified my belief that at the very
least he was working for Mossad. What we
learned in this, you know what, let me
explain that. I I've explained it in
other in other podcasts, but
if you're a foreign intelligence service
and you want to know what the most
important people in the country are
thinking, the the multi-billionaire
businessmen, the former presidents, the
number six in line to the British
throne,
etc. You're not going to recruit those
people. They don't want or need your
money. They're not going to tell you
what you want to know.
So you do the next best thing and you
recruit a person with ready access to
them and if they've got a weakness like
we've heard for example Bill Gates has
um even better. So you recruit somebody
like Jeffrey Epstein, keep in mind we
don't have any idea the source of his
money. No idea at all. I talked to a a
former journalist for the uh New York uh
Post and she said the first time Jeffrey
Epstein ever popped up
in her career was in the 1990s.
He had agreed to finance the purchase of
the newspaper the New York Sun
and
her editor at the Post said figure out
who this guy Epstein is. We don't have
anybody and we don't have any
information about him in our files. So
she said she called him and asked for an
interview. He hung up on her. She called
other rich people around town. They were
like, "We never heard of this guy." This
is in the this is like the 1997
96 whatever it was. She couldn't find
anything. And so finally in the article
she told me she wrote um that the deal
was backed by financial mystery man
Jeffrey Epstein.
and then she forgot about him until he
got in trouble and was in the papers for
that reason. So, could the money have
come from a foreign intelligence
service? Of course, it could have. Could
it have come from Les Wexner? Certainly,
it could have. Or from the the
Rothschild family, of course. But we
don't know for sure. Um,
we know from this latest trunch of
documents that Epstein was working on
behalf of the Israelis, but
he was probably working on behalf of the
CIA as well, the FBI, MI5 and MI6 in the
UK, the Germans, we think, and he had
tried repeatedly
to get in front of Vladimir Putin to the
point where the Russians offered him a
meeting with Putin and two other
officials and he said, "No, it has to be
just Putin." They said, "Forget it." And
so he never met with Putin.
So I think he was more likely
more likely than being uh an access
agent that he was an intelligence
broker, somebody who collects
intelligence and then sells it to
different intelligence sources,
intelligence rather agencies.
>> Would you say the wealthiest people in
the world
do that occupation.
>> Yeah, sure. Some of them. Look at
Galileain Maxwell and her family. Her
father had all the money in the world
and he was an avowed acknowledged
Israeli spy. Um, but do they start off
in intelligence typically?
>> No. No. They're brought in typically,
although I will tell you
that a lot of them have a very deep um
interest in intelligence. When I was at
the CIA,
I was married to another for another
senior CIA officer. We got invited
to dinner at the fivestory
Park Avenue home
of a Fortune50 CEO.
And I was like, why in blazes would this
guy want to have dinner with me?
So, we went to dinner
and it was perfect in every respect. He
had this staff of like 12 just standing
there like to be your personal slave for
the whole dinner. And at the end of it,
he walked us out and um and I thanked
him. I shook his hand and I said, "I've
got to ask you, why did you want to have
dinner with us?"
And he says,
"Every CIA officer probably wishes he
was a billionaire. I can tell you every
billionaire wishes he was a CIA
officer."
And I thought, "Huh, you learn something
new every day."
He just wanted to hear stories,
you know, lay out a couple of ideas of
his own. Mhm. the money after a while
it's not so important to them. They
start thinking back about all the things
that they could have done, something
that was more exciting.
Have you ever spied on a secret society?
>> No, I actually get that question a lot.
>> Really?
>> Yeah. I have a good friend who's an
investigative journalist,
but she's an she's an independent
investigative journalist making a
handsome living for herself, but she
kind of tends toward conspiracy
theories.
>> And I always try to make her back down
and then she always proves that she was
right and I was wrong. Drives me crazy.
So, for the last couple years, she's
been all about the Masons. And I'm like,
"Well, you leave the Masons alone." I
know a couple of Masons and all they do
is raise money for scholarships. That's
it. It's just a bunch of old men that
get together once a month and play poker
and raise money for scholarships. And
then and then she starts developing some
information that I'm like, "Oo, really?
Really?" And then she'll lay it out. And
then she goes deep into the histories of
some of these organizations. They were
all founded by the same circle of
people, you know, on Wall Street. We're
in the immediate aftermath of World War
I.
And then I have to admit that, okay,
there may be something to it. But no, I
I never had to try to infiltrate a
secret society. On the contrary,
there were a lot of guys at the agency
who were members of secret societies.
I'll I'll tell you one funny aside.
I happen to be Greek Orthodox
>> and I went to there's one there's a
peninsula in northern Greece called
Mount Aoson
Oros the holy mountain and it's the home
of 32 monasteries.
Uh it's the only place in the European
Union that is exempt from European Union
laws and no women are permitted there.
They even remove female animals that
they capture.
So I went there and I went to the first
mon. You're allowed to go for four days
and three nights. You have to get a
special visa from the Ministry of
Religious Affairs or whatever it's
called. So I went I wanted to see the
the place, check it out. So I get my
visa. I go and uh as soon as you get to
the first monastery, this priest comes
out and says, "Have you had confession
today?"
I said, I said, "No, I just got here."
"Okay, confession." I'm like, "Okay,
well, in Greek Orthodox churches in
America, you just sit there and you tell
the priest, I did this, I did that, I
did the other thing." And he says,
"Okay, you're forgiven." You know, go
about your business. It's different in
Greece.
They read a list of sins and it starts
with murder. Have you committed murder?
I'm like, no.
Rape, no. Robbery, no. And I'm thinking,
what's he doing? So he says, I have to
read the list of sins. I said, oh, okay.
So he's reading this whole list. I'm
like, no, no, no, no. At the end, he
says, are you a member of any secret
societies? And I said, no, well, I'm a
member of a fraternity.
And he says, "Is it secret?" I said,
'Well, we've got a silly, you know,
secret handshake. He said, 'Th that's a
sin.' I said, 'Come on, father.' I said,
'The archbishop's a member.' And he
says, then the archbishop needs to go to
confession.
So, I'm like, okay, I'm a member of
secret society.
When I joined the CIA,
they asked me, "Are you a member of any
secret societies?" And I said, "No." But
then they specifically asked me, "Are
you a member of any fraternities?" M
>> and I said, "Yeah, I'm a member of this
fraternity." We never heard of that one.
I said, "It's just a bunch of guys. We
play poker once a month. We order pizzas
and then we throw in, you know, $100 for
for scholarships for poor children." And
they're like, "Okay, all right." And
then they left it. And I wonder if there
was more to it now in retrospect.
You know, what were they getting at? Did
they want me to be a member of a secret
society?
I don't know. Those people that were
were they when they joined?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Because they have these like
degrees, right? So they're like, you
know,
60th degree, whatever. And it takes you
a lifetime to get up to that position
>> on your
past relationships. Um,
>> do you think Angry Birds led to your
divorce?
>> No. I think Angry Birds was a convenient
excuse for divorce.
You know, in defense of Angry Birds and
my obsession with Angry Birds, I'm proud
to say I have not missed a single day in
almost 9 years. I'm coming right up on
nine years of Angry Birds every single
day. I forget.
>> Are you day 3,000 yet?
>> Uh, I'm 2,800. I can show you on my
phone. Yeah. 2879,
something like that.
>> Wait, is it the original Angry Birds?
>> No, it's Angry Birds 2.
>> I love the original.
>> What's your favorite bird?
>> Angry Birds 2 is better. You know, it's
hard to say what my favorite bird is.
Um, I always love the black one cuz he
explodes.
>> But, um, but there are a couple of new
ones. One that sucks everything up and
then spits it out. That's a good one.
And the latest one that spins around and
knocks stuff down. Very powerful bird.
So, I'm I'm devoting all my new feathers
to him so I can get them up. I I'm I'm
obsessive in the respect that I need for
all my birds to be exactly the same
level.
And so, um I'll focus just on a specific
bird.
>> Do you know what you're ranked in the
world?
>> Um it's it's high up there. Yeah. I'm
I'm at the point where I'm not ranked by
stars anymore. I'm in the like senior
global senior league.
>> That was the most interesting thing I
saw when I started seeing you talking
about Angry Birds. I was like, I haven't
played that game in a while. I I hope
they sponsored this guy.
>> You know what? I should say something. I
love it. I love it.
>> Um,
>> Angry Birds did not lead to my divorce.
I woke up I wake up an hour earlier than
I need to every day just so I can play
Angry Birds for the first hour. I don't
even get out of bed. As soon as I wake
up, I put my glasses on, I pick up my
phone, I go to Angry Birds, and it takes
me an hour to do all the daily games.
Um, that was just an excuse that a
former spouse used to try to justify,
you know,
the current situation.
Yeah, that's some that's some [ __ ]
My wife and I, we we have arguments, of
course, like any couple, but uh she does
not talk about me playing. I I played
this game called Clash Royale. It's kind
of like Clash of Clans. Have you heard
of this one?
>> Yes.
>> Do you play it?
>> No.
>> But it looks good. I actually downloaded
it and I never started it.
>> You got to get into it. It's It's like
chess, but there's a little more luck
involved so you don't have to
>> You can have an excuse for losing pretty
much. You know what I mean? Um, but
you've been married and divorced twice.
>> Twice.
>> Do you ever wonder if the CIA played a
role in anyone's divorce?
>> The CIA played a role in my divorce. I
apologize that by court order, I'm not
at liberty to explain that, but the CIA
had an active role in my divorce.
>> What did you say to your wife the night
before you went to prison?
>> I apologize. I I probably shouldn't say.
>> Yeah, I shouldn't say.
That was a That was a terrible night. I
barely slept a wink.
Cuz you know the there there's we all
have this natural fear of the unknown.
And I didn't know what I was getting
into. At my sentencing, my attorneys ask
that I be sent to a minimum security
work camp. And at the minimum security
camps, there are no fences, no bars on
the windows, the doors are unlocked.
You're free to just come and go as you
please. You're just on your honor, not
to
>> abscond.
>> And most of those guys work in town at
the university. There's a small
university and um you know, they're
janitors or what have you. Um the judge
asked the justice department if they had
any objection. They said no objection.
And the judge says, "Minimum security
work camp." So I got to the prison and
um I went to the camp, knocked on the
door. It's weird. Unless they just take
you into custody and ship you to a
prison, they send you a letter and they
say, "Report to this prison on this day
at this time
and you just drive up there and knock on
the door and turn yourself in." So I
knock on the door. I said, "I'm I'm John
Kuryako. I'm here to turn myself in. The
guy says, "Oh, you got to go across the
street to the actual prison." Then they
put you through the metal detector and
then they walk you back over here. I
said, "Okay, great." So, I go across the
street, knock on the door. I'm John
Kuryak. I'm here to turn myself in. He
puts me through the metal detector and
then starts leading me around to the
back of the prison. And I said, "No, no,
I'm at the camp across the street." And
he goes, "Not according to my paperwork,
you're not." And I was like, "Take it
easy. Don't say anything. They'll put
you in solitary." I didn't say a word.
So,
it took me 4 days to get access to a
phone. And I called my lead attorney and
I said, "Hey, they put me in the actual
prison with the mafia dons and the drug
kingpins and the pals." I said, "What do
I do?"
He's like, "Oh my god." He said, "Buddy,
we could uh file a motion, but it'll be
two years before we get a hearing and
you'll be home by then." He said, "I'm
sorry. You're going to have to tough it
out."
I was like, "Dang it." I said, "Okay,
I'm trained for this. I've lived in way
worse places than this. I can do it."
And so, I did it.
I used my CIA training to keep myself
safe and at the very top of the social
heap.
Why do you think no one ever made you
disappear?
I'm not really sure,
>> but I I have I have a theory.
I have a theory
that
that I'm so highprofile
that it would just be too obvious
what happened.
I'm not blind. I saw what happened to
Charlie Kirk. Um so I've taken, you
know, steps to protect myself certainly
and I get death threats like a lot of
other people do. Um and I take them
seriously.
But um you know this is one of the
reasons one of the two reasons why I
really want and need a presidential
pardon. I've applied for one but uh in
addition to losing my federal pension
which I really really would like to have
back. I want my guns back. I need to
protect myself.
And so, you know, when people write me
emails saying, "I can't wait to see your
brain splattered out in front of," and
then they give me my home address,
I have to take that seriously,
>> right?
So, I don't know. I think that it's a
combination of things. I think I'm too
high-profile that I would be missed. And
to tell you the truth, all of my
detractors are either dead or retired. I
have a a
a young friend who's at the CIA now.
I I try to advise a lot of young people
who apply for the CIA. I'm a realist. I
know the CIA is not going anywhere. And
so, you know, if there's going to be
change, it has to be change that comes
from the inside.
So, I'm I'm proud to say that there are
six people
who have been students in college
classes that I've taught who have
successfully applied at the CIA. They've
gotten in. One of them told me a couple
of weeks ago that she was in a uh
counter intelligence class
and there was a slide that said the
insider threat
and it had a picture of me and she said
everybody in the class started to boo.
And the instructor said are you booing
him or are you booing
the slide? And they said the slide, he's
not an insider threat. He was the
whistleblower.
It was the agency that was the threat.
And she said that in the next running of
the class, they took the slide out.
>> So, I think that they probably thought
that prosecuting me would silence me
forever.
And in fact, my ex-wife said to me one
time,
"Boy, if they thought this was going to
silence you, they didn't know you at
all."
And I said, "No, they've given me, you
know, a reason for being.
Now, this is going to be my thing. This
is going to be my life. Civil rights,
civil liberties, and human rights." And
it has. It's been my life.
I'll tell you what, if they had called
me
after my initial ABC News interview in
which I blew the whistle and if they had
said, "Dog gone you, you need to shut
the [ __ ] up."
I probably would have said, "I'm sorry.
You're right. I'll drop it." And that
would have been the end of it. But no,
they had to be dicks about it
and they had to prosecute me. And so now
look what happened. John Brennan was the
one who insisted that I be prosecuted
and go to prison. And now he's going to
be prosecuted and he's going to go to
prison.
Mhm. When you think about your work, the
missions you've done,
some of the more emotional, visceral
things you've seen,
is there any one person or one face that
you see in your sleep?
>> Yeah. I mean, it may sound cliche at
this point, but but it's Abu Zubeda.
Abu Zubeta. The night that we captured
Abu Zuba, my entire life changed. The
entire course of the rest of my life
changed. This was the highest level
terrorist up until that point that we
had ever captured.
And he just turned out to be not the guy
we thought he was. Part of the problem
was we didn't know. We believed he was
the number three in al-Qaeda.
We didn't know that he had a cousin who
went by the same name, Abu Zubeda. Abu
Zuba's real name is um Zan Abadin
Muhammad Hussein. He just goes by Abu
Zuba and his cousin went by Abu Zuba. So
we're getting these reports Abu Zuba is
planning an attack in Aman. Okay, we
better inform the Jordanians. Abu Zub is
planning an attack in Charlotte. Like
Charlotte? How do you get to Charlotte?
Abuzz is planning an attack in Riad.
Abuz is in Billings, Montana planning an
attack. We're like, "Oh my god, this
guy's a terrorist superman."
There were two of them.
So, the one that we were after, he was a
bad guy. He had founded al-Qaeda's two
training camps in southern Afghanistan.
He had founded the House of Martyrs,
Al-Qaeda safe house in Pashaw, Pakistan.
He was a logistician for al-Qaeda. If
you wanted to get into Afghanistan and
fight the Americans, he would get you
in, smuggle you in. if you wanted to
leave and go home, you're tired of the
fight, he would get you a fake passport
and get you home.
But he was not the superman that we
thought he was. He was not the number
three in al-Qaeda. He was never even in
al-Qaeda.
And we tortured this guy to within an
inch of his life. To the point where
there's a footnote in the Senate torture
report saying that Abu Zubeda will never
be released. He will never have access
to the outside world ever. And when he
dies at Guantanamo will cremate his body
and throw the ashes into the Caribbean
as if he never existed.
That's not the American way. If this guy
was really who we said he was, charge
him with a crime and make him defend
himself. But we can't charge him with a
crime because we tortured him. And so
literally nothing of what he said is is
we're able are we able to use in court.
None of it's admissible in court.
Um,
I was the first
CIA officer, former CIA officer to call
for his release. I did it um on the BBC
in 2015.
And now I'm in touch with his attorneys
wanting to know how I can help because
he should be released even if he's
guilty.
He has done 24 years in the worst
possible prison conditions, having been
tortured almost to death. Even if he's
guilty of crimes, he's done his time.
Let him go.
This could be a dumb question. What's
the Arabic word for terrorist? Well,
we always just use jihadi, which isn't
really terrorist. It's struggler.
>> But do they call us terrorist?
>> Probably. Probably in relation to our uh
Israel Palestine policy.
>> Yeah.
Have you spoke to him?
>> No.
No. And I've not written to him either
because he's not permitted to have
access to the outside world. It's almost
impossible even for his own attorneys to
meet with him. They can only meet with
him in the presence of either a CIA
officer or a Pentagon official or both.
Even he drew he's an accomplished
artist. The night that we captured him,
we also confiscated his diary. Um that's
a whole different topic, but in the
diary were his sketches and drawings.
He's a gifted artist. Gifted. I remember
leafing through it that night thinking,
"Wow, this guy's really talented."
So, he drew
pictures of his own torture and the
things that they did to him, and the CIA
classified all the pictures top secret,
so nobody's ever seen them.
>> What would you guess would be the worst
one? Well, you know, the the
conventional wisdom is the worst one is
water boarding. And certainly it's
horrible, but but I didn't think it was
the worst. I thought there were two that
were worse. We never killed anybody by
waterboarding them. His heart stopped at
one point and we revived him so he could
be tortured more. But there were two
techniques that I always believed were
worse than water boarding. One was the
cold cell where we would chain a
prisoner to an eyebolt in the ceiling.
So he couldn't sit or lay or get
comfortable in any way and strip him
naked and chill the cell to 50°
Fahrenheit and then every hour a CIA
officer would go in the cell and throw
ice water on them. We killed people with
that with hypothermia. We killed them.
We weren't authorized to kill people in
these sessions. We get these cables like
uh Ahmed Mahmed unfortunately didn't
make it through the night. He was in the
cold cell. What do we do?
You dig a hole and bury him.
That's awful. But that's what we did.
The other technique was sleep
deprivation.
People don't think that sleep
deprivation is any big deal. You know,
again, you're chained to that eyebolt in
the ceiling and you've got these
industrial strength lights right on you
and then you've got, you know, death
metal on a loop at a volume of 10 24/7.
We know from the American Psychological
Association that people begin to lose
their minds at day seven with no sleep.
Day seven, they begin to die at day nine
because your organs start to fail. The
CIA was authorized to keep people awake
for 12 days.
12 days. We murdered people with that.
Murdered from lack of sleep.
Have you ever met anyone that you
suspect enjoyed torture?
Yes, I have. I've met a number of people
over the years who enjoyed torture. One
of them ended up becoming the director
of the CIA.
Gina Haspel was a senior
counterterrorism official who flew out
to the secret site just to sit in on a
torture session because it got her rocks
off in the hall. We used to call her
Bloody Gina. Bloody Gina. Can you
imagine being a woman known through your
career as Bloody Gina because you're
such a psychopath that you enjoy
watching other people be tortured and
humiliated? What kind of person is that?
So yeah, there were others that they
would come out of these sessions like
energized like whoa, you know, USA.
That's not normal.
That's just not normal.
But there were a lot of people like
that. What's the comment section of a
ex CIA officer look like?
>> You know, normally
people are wonderful. They really are.
normally and then every once in a while
I'll just get an [ __ ] and I'm like
guy it's my [ __ ] page. You can't come
on here and say I'm a traitor and I need
to be put to death and so I block people
almost every day.
>> Really?
>> Yeah, I have to. If you want to engage
in debate and disagree with me, awesome.
I look forward to it.
But don't say that, you know, you're
going to spread my brains on the
sidewalk, for example. We're not we're
not going to have that conversation. I
do get a lot of uh I can't possibly
answer all the DMs. I can't like
hundreds a day in addition to the
hundreds of emails. And most of them are
most of them are people who just are
they're in need of psychiatric
intervention. Yeah, there are a lot of
people like that out there.
>> You get a lot of cameo requests, too.
>> Oh my god.
>> I think you broke the record.
>> I broke the record.
>> Five years ago, my brother-in-law bought
my sister a cameo. M
>> she watches the Real Housewives of
something or other and and she loved it.
So I was like vaguely aware in the back
of my mind there's this thing called
Cameo and it's fun.
So within like a day of my explosion on
Tik Tok, uh Cameo reached out and said,
"Hey, have you ever heard of Cameo?" I
said, "Oh yes, my sister had this Cameo
from my brother-in-law. Would you like
to do it?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, sure.
Why not?" And I said to my sister,
I make $400 for an op-ed. If I could
make $400 a month to replace the op-ed,
hey, that would be good, right? The
first month I was on Cameo, I broke the
all-time record for the number of cameos
in one month.
>> How much do you charge? It's really
cheap, right?
>> I charge 99. I charged $49 and then they
told me to raise it to 99, but the
algorithm changes the price every 15
minutes depending on how busy you are,
how many requests you're getting. So, I
don't think it's ever actually been at
99, even though that's what I have it
set at. Right now, as we're sitting here
speaking,
I will tell you real quickly.
It is
uh
159.
>> Oh, gotcha.
>> Yeah. Huh. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've
you do a lot. Like most people like they
just charge $10,000 or like 5,000 and
then they just do like
>> if it hits but like you want to do a lot
of I think you like it a lot.
>> I enjoy it so much. The CEO of Cameo,
who's an awesome guy, Stephen Steven
flew to DC to take me to dinner that
first night and they gave me this Cameo
jacket that I wear every day and it it's
just so much fun. But they told me in
the beginning most cameos are between
like 60 seconds and 90 seconds. I can't
possibly do one so short. So mine are
like between 3 minutes and four minutes.
And there are people like in the top 10
that I'm not competing with, but
comparing with. So I looked at some of
them. They're they're rappers and
reality TV stars and stuff like that.
And some of them like their average
cameo is 15 seconds, 20 seconds. But
then they have like 2.3 stars out of
five and I have 4.98 stars out of five
because they'll do cameos like in the
backseat of the car at night so it's
just completely black and you can't see.
And
you know, people are spending hardearned
money
and they're asking mostly for well about
50% of them are birthday wishes and tell
me a story, but the others are asking
for advice or pep talks. And I'll tell
you one thing that's really been
touching to me
is three or four times a week
somebody will message me or email me and
say that I said something or I messaged
them and I talked them out of committing
s
which is just
mindblowing to me.
You know, it's funny. We we get so
wrapped up in our own lives, we don't
really think about other people's
suffering.
And um
you know, if somebody reaches out and
says, "Let me back up.
I've got a friend."
Every time we'd have a conversation,
he would say, "I'm going to kill myself.
I'm going to kill myself." And I'd say,
"Dude, you've been telling me for years
that you're going to kill himself.
You're not going to kill."
Then he got in trouble. He decided,
"Okay, he's going to do it. He's going
to kill himself." He drives to a Walmart
because he doesn't want to mess up his
mom's house.
He has a gun. He puts the gun in his
mouth just as an offduty ATF agent is
pulling into the parking lot to do his
grocery shopping. sees him with a gun,
pulls his gun, drop the gun, drop the
gun, arrests him. Now, my buddy had a
felony conviction at some point, years
and years ago. They got him for felon
with a gun. Mandatory minimum 5 years.
So, he calls me one night. I get this
call from from a a jail in Wyoming. I
was like, "What? Who in the world would
be calling me from a jail?" So, I'm
intrigued enough. I answer the call.
It's him. I said, "What the [ __ ] are you
doing in a jail in Wyoming?" And he
tells me, "I was going to kill and I
went to the Walmart parking lot." So, I
find him a lawyer. The lawyer gets him
out on bail.
He had a son with his girlfriend and um
she was just so appalled that he had
gotten himself into trouble again. She
wouldn't let him see the the child. So,
he's depressed and he's calling me every
day. I'm going to kill myself. I said,
"James, you're not going to
you're going to pick your pick yourself
up by the bootstraps and you're going to
fight this thing.
And then he called me one day and he
said, "Hey, I got bad news. My sister
lit off a firecracker and she blew three
fingers off." I was like, "Oh my god,
that's terrible news." Oh, she was in
surgery for like 14 hours and they
attached her fingers back. I said, "Oh
my god, what a terrible thing." Two days
later, she calls me and I said, "Hey,
how are your fingers doing?" And she
said, "The fingers are fine. I got to
tell you, James killed himself last
night." And I was like, "What? I just
talked to him two days ago. He sounded
great."
And she said, "He sounded great because
he finally made the decision to do it
and he was at peace with himself." But
she said, "The reason I'm calling is he
left a note and he said, "Please tell
John that I said I was sorry."
And the reason why I'm still so mad
about this, have you ever heard of the
folk singer Pete Seager? Pete is one of
the giants of 20th century American
history
and and one of my idols and role models.
This land is your land. Pete made that
uh famous. It's a Woody Guthrie song.
But anyway,
Pete wrote dozens of songs that you know
every word to.
He told me one time a story about Phil
Oaks, who was also a gigantic folk
singer of the 60s and 70s. Pete said he
was finishing up a concert at a at a
folk club in uh in Grange Village one
night and he had to literally run to
Grand Central Station to get the last
train of the night back to Beacon, New
York, which is where he lived. And as
he's packing up his guitar,
one of the waitresses said, "Pete Phils
is on the phone for you." and he grabs
the phone. He said, "Phil, I can't talk
right now. I got to run to catch the
last train to Beacon. Call me tomorrow."
And hung up. And Phil killed himself.
And he said, "That selfish prick will
never know how many people he hurt by
taking his own life that night." And I
never understood that anger until my
friend James.
And I'm furious with him five years
after he did it. Like dog gone you. Why
didn't you call me?
>> Yeah. Well, anyway,
>> because you answered so many times.
>> So many times. I went on Facebook and I
said, "My friend James killed last
night." And I said, "Please call
somebody. Call me if you're thinking of
yourself." And three of my Facebook
friends called me that night. I had no
idea so many people were suffering. No
idea.
So, you know,
I think we always have to be we have to
remind ourselves to be more aware of the
feelings of others and not be so wrapped
up in our own lives. It's easy to be
wrapped up in your own life, but we
really have to be cognizant of what
other people are suffering through.
Right.
Mrs. Heidi cannot function unless you
are. You're absolutely right, John.
You've spent a good majority of your
life serving America, not just the
country, but our people. You've exposed
a dark part of the system when you
thought that we've gone too far. Many
agreed, even when it cost you
everything.
If every interview, every Tik Tok, every
book you've written, every cameo was
erased from the face of the earth,
what is the one story from your life
that you would want to leave with the
world? Oh, that's an easy one. Thank
you. That I told the truth.
If we don't have the truth, we don't
have anything. We really don't. The
truth always has a way of coming out.
Sometimes it takes a long time, years,
decades,
but the truth always comes out. And we
should want to be on the right side of
it.
If there's one thing that my children
can be proud of, it's that I told the
truth. I have lots of faults just like
every other human, but at least I want
to be known for telling the truth.
And one more.
Aside from the truth or maybe on that
vein, what's the best piece of advice
someone has given you?
When I was in college,
somebody told me that Senator Jennings
Randolph of West Virginia
was listed in the Washington DC
telephone book.
And I looked and there he was. And I
called him and I said, "Senator
Randolph, you don't know me. I'm a
student at George Washington University
and I just wanted to thank you for your
50 years of service to our country."
Going back to Franklin Roosevelt. He was
elected in the election of 1934, the
senator.
And he said, "Why, thank you, young
man." And he said, "May I offer you some
advice?" And I said, "Senator, anything
you have to say, I'd love to hear it."
And he said, "Always do the right thing.
This city is too full of people who are
willing to do the expedient thing."
And I said, "I'm going to write that
down." And he says, "You have a good
night." And he hung up.
And I've always remembered. I actually
did write it down. and I stuck it inside
a book which I still have.
>> Right.
>> Mhm. And you know, it's funny. I was a
little bit starruck at the time, but as
I've aged and I've accumulated, you
know, life events of my own, I realized
that just those few words were really,
really important.
It's it's so much easier to do what's
expedient. It's easier to do what might
make us a little bit of money.
And you come to realize life's not about
the money. You know, we're all going to
end up in the ground someday. I I read
something that was very depressing in
the Washington Post the other day. It
said, "We all die two deaths. We die
when we take our last breath, and we die
when our name is spoken for the last
time."
Well,
I don't want my name spoken for a last
time.
I want to be remembered for something.
And what I want is to be remembered as
someone who told the truth.
Beautiful.
Well, everyone, uh this has been your
guest, John Kiryaku.
>> John, is there anything uh any platforms
you want to shout out specifically?
Thanks for asking. Yeah, I'm on I'm on
Instagram, Facebook, and and X and uh
and LinkedIn, but I'm launching a new
>> um podcast in July on YouTube. If you go
to Real John Kuryaku, I'd really
appreciate it if you would subscribe so
that when we hit the ground running the
first week of July, you're on and you
don't miss an episode.
>> Number one podcast in the world. I hope.
Uh
>> I hope so.
This is the Jack Neil podcast. I
appreciate you coming on, man.