#661 - John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, author and speaker. His new book “The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics and Techniques” is available August 4th. John joins Theo to talk about how he was recruited into the CIA, his decision to speak up about the agency’s torture programs, and why there are more spies in America than we might think. John Kiriakou: https://x.com/JohnKiriakou The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics and Techniques: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Skills-Tactics-Techniques ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo Morgan and Morgan: Visit https://forthepeople.com/THEO to see if you might have a case. Morgan and Morgan. America's Largest Injury Law Firm. Carshield: Go to http://carshield.com and use code THEO for 20% off. Saily: Download SAILY's app and use code THEO at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase! For more details go to https://saily.com/theo ⛵ Better Help: Sign up and get 10% off at http://BetterHelp.com/theo Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on our episodes. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Theo Von?

  Today's guest is an author, he's a speaker. He's a former CIA officer who's also known for being a whistleblower in the CIA's use of torture. He has a new book coming out called The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics, and Techniques. Today's guest is Mr. John Kiriakou.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I applied for a presidential pardon.

• 0:40Theo Von?

  You applied for a presidential pardon?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. In fact, I brought a couple of letters. I hope you don't...

• 0:47Theo Von?

  As long as you don't meet me. If I sign him, it's not gonna help anything. I'm just telling you that.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. I was gonna ask if you thought it would be helpful. I got...

• 0:56Theo Von?

  Did you really?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:58Theo Von?

  Oh, okay. Dang, I was joking.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. I'm talking to Tulsi Gabbard on Friday. Did I tell you that?

• 1:04Theo Von?

  Oh, nice. Her husband is winning a surgery today, I saw.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the poor guy.

• 1:07Theo Von?

  I messaged with her yesterday.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  She's great.

• 1:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, Tulsi Gabbard, she seems, um, she's, there's just something about her that seems genuine to me.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  And that's why they tried to destroy her.

• 1:18Theo Von?

  Is that what you think's going on with her right now?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I think that's why the Democrats tried to destroy her. I really do.

• 1:22Theo Von?

  But even right now, I mean, she's just taking a leave. I know it's for her husband's health.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Headed into surgery this morning.

• 1:30Theo Von?

  Oh, is that what it says?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, she tweeted, or she Instagrammed it.

• 1:35Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, do you think, because she's kind of like, and she just took a break. She took a complete break from politics.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. You remember when she was running as a Democrat? Every time she would inch up in the polls, the DNC would change the rules for participating in the next debate. So they would do it just one or two percentage points out of her reach every single time. Because they were threatened by her message. She just wouldn't get with their program.

• 1:59Theo Von?

  She's always seemed very, um... Like she has her own.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Oh, she was definitely independent.

• 2:05Theo Von?

  Independent, that's what it is. She's always seemed very independent. Well, they did the same thing with Bernie Sanders.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  They did exactly the same thing with Bernie Sanders.

• 2:12Theo Von?

  So I guess what my, my question would be like, you know, and I probably, I don't know, I can't remember if I asked Bernie this or not, but why would you stay in a party that you know at a certain point is not, that's cheating you?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yes. And you know, the Democrats did something in, after the 1972 election, which I think people don't pay anywhere near enough attention to. Nobody at the DNC wanted George McGovern to be the 1972 nominee. He was the most popular at the time, especially among young people. But he was, um, he was the weakest nationwide and he ended up losing 49 states. But, you know, it's a party of the people, right? If the people want George McGovern as the nominee, then George McGovern should be the nominee.

• 2:58Theo Von?

  And they didn't let him become the nominee?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  No, they let him become the nominee and then as soon as he lost the race, they instituted this, this thing called super delegates. So if you are a member of the House, a member of the Senate, a governor, a lieutenant governor, a state party director, a state committee chairman, you're automatically made a delegate to the convention. Well, there are like 1,500 of them. And so you end up with situations like West Virginia and Wyoming where Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton in both states and Hillary Clinton wins literally every delegate.

• 3:35Theo Von?

  From those states?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:36Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Like, how's that fair?

• 3:37Theo Von?

  So wait, explain that to me a little bit better because I want to get on this. And George McGovern was a major reason Democrats later created super delegates. After McGovern's 1972 nomination and landslide general election loss, party leaders wanted a way to give more influence to experienced officials and reduce the chance that a highly activist primary electorate would produce another nominee they saw as too extreme. So you're saying the people believed in this guy?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:02Theo Von?

  Even though he lost, the people believed in him, but the party and whoever that is, didn't want it to be like, just like a populist vote. They didn't want just the people to have the choice?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  They wanted to go back to the days with the smoke-filled back rooms with the party bosses choosing who's going to be the nominee.

• 4:21Theo Von?

  And if they put more on the shoulders of just the delegates, the super delegates, then they could control fewer, it was fewer people they had to control.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. I am proud to say. In 1983, I was a sophomore in college. I was the Speaker's Committee Chairman. I was the whole committee of the George Washington University College Democrats in the days when I was a Democrat. And I saw a little blurb in the Washington Post saying, hey, remember George McGovern? He's thinking of running for president again. So I wrote him a letter. I said, hey, I read that you're thinking of running for president again. We have a fantastic theater here at the school. We can do all the legwork. Ready-made volunteers. My phone rings a few days later, wakes me up, and it's George McGovern.

• 5:05Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And he says, can I see that theater? I said, of course. So he comes over to school and we walk over to the theater. Nobody recognized him.

• 5:15Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  And he said, yeah, the theater's perfect. And there's like a cutout for cameras and it was perfect. So he says, don't tell anybody, but I am going to run for president again.

• 5:25Theo Von?

  And this is after the 72 loss?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, uh, yeah, 11 years after the 72 loss. Reagan is president.

• 5:31Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So, um, we put out a press release, major announcement by Senator George McGovern on such and such a date, George Washington University, in the Marvin Theater. And, uh, and packed the place and it was on the news. And here's what a sweet guy he was. He did the announcement and brought important people with him, like, uh, Mo Udall. Remember Mo Udall? He ran for president in 76. He was a congressman from, uh, Arizona. And, uh, there he is. And then, um, Cliff Robertson, the Academy Award-winning actor and his wife, Deena Merrill. Yeah, they both came.

• 6:10Theo Von?

  So he brought some, like, A-listers? He brought his own influencers?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, uh, and Frank Mankiewicz, who had been Robert Kennedy Senior's, uh, uh, press secretary, was, was Senator McGovern's press secretary.

• 6:22Theo Von?

  He must have been geeked, huh?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I was, I mean, it was incredible. And then he makes the announcement, he shakes everybody's hand, and he invites me back to his apartment and his wife made tuna sandwiches.

• 6:33Theo Von?

  Nice.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Just the loveliest people. He ended up... Crazy as it sounds, coming in third. Walter Mondale won, Gary Hart came in second, and McGovern came in third.

• 6:45Theo Von?

  And that was for the Democratic Party?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:47Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And they kept saying, "Drop out, George, drop out, George, drop out, George." Cause he was pulling young people.

• 6:53Theo Von?

  I remember Jesse Jackson, when he ran, he was very close, right? Wasn't he the populist choice, kind of?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yes, he was the populist choice, 1984 and 1988.

• 7:03Theo Von?

  He was.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 7:05Theo Von?

  And, cause I remember, we had, I think we had a sign for him, like, you know, our family was always like, you know, pretty, you know, liberal and hopeful and new ideas, right?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  That's how mine was.

• 7:16Theo Von?

  Yeah, but like, but not, but not like ethereal at the same time, not like unrealistic, right? Not unrealistic, but we were hopeful, you know what I'm saying? Um, but yeah, didn't Jesse Jackson, and did they just not service him, or what happened with Jesse Jackson?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they let him kind of self-destruct. See, it says here, he won 11 contests. He did very, very well in 88, but he was never a Democratic Party insider.

• 7:43Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  The insiders were not gonna let him have that nomination. That's what they do. And the Republicans don't have such a system.

• 7:51Theo Von?

  You don't think so?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  No, they don't have superdelegates, which means then, an insurgent candidate like, like a Donald Trump, can win a nomination.

• 7:58Theo Von?

  I see, but it's less likely to happen in the Democratic Party?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Much less likely to happen.

• 8:01Theo Von?

  Because of superdelegates? Wow, I didn't realize that only one party had those.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Al Franken.

• 8:07Theo Von?

  Because, hold on, before we move forward on Al Franken, so, but, didn't Jesse Jackson win a few, like, in a row?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he was in a roll.

• 8:15Theo Von?

  He was all, he was building momentum.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Uh huh, and they were like, "Yeah, we're gonna put the brakes on this."

• 8:20Theo Von?

  And when they say, "We are gonna put the brakes on this," who is the "we's"? It just?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  It's the, it's the state committee chairman, who make up the Democratic National Committee.

• 8:28Theo Von?

  Got it, but it's just the insiders, it's like the, the money talking, whoever those like, it's the smoky backroom.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  This congresswoman from Florida, her name escapes me, three names, but anyway, she was the head of, what was it? No, she was the head of the DNC in 20, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thank you very much.

• 8:47Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Gave Hillary Clinton's campaign all the debate questions before the debate.

• 8:55Theo Von?

  Remember that.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  But Bernie didn't get the questions.

• 8:58Theo Von?

  Crazy.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  It's crazy. It's fixed.

• 9:00Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think we all know what happened at this point.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the fix was in.

• 9:04Theo Von?

  But the fix was in, but it's just, it's a, it starts to make you feel like, okay, that the, the regular person, like what you really want, the, even the idea of that, it used to feel real.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:15Theo Von?

  And it doesn't feel real anymore.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:17Theo Von?

  And that I think is one of the scariest things happening in America right now. You're like, it used to feel hopeful and now it feels, um,

• 9:27Theo Von?

  it's not, it's, will we survive? It feel, there's something else. It's not a hope. I don't even know if it, it's somewhat of a fear, but it's more of an uncertainty. But America used to feel like this hopeful thing, like we're building this thing that's gonna,

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 9:40Theo Von?

  That means something that we're gonna pass on to our, uh, children. And that, um, and that could possibly stand the test of time. And when that, when something like that, you believe in something like that, it makes your day-to-day, uh, interactions and your interaction with your country. And, uh, it, it makes that all more meaningful to you. So you show up for it differently. Um, we're sitting here with John Kiriakou.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:06Theo Von?

  Kiriakou, uh, thank you so much for coming in.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Thank you for the invitation. I love the show.

• 10:11Theo Von?

  I've seen so many clips of you, uh, recalling stories from your time in the CIA.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:18Theo Von?

  Is having a, a good memory of requirement, uh, for the job.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:23Theo Von?

  Is it really?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yes.

• 10:24Theo Von?

  Is it a requirement?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  It's actively encouraged. I had a station chief one time who gave me the biggest compliment.

• 10:32Theo Von?

  You had a what one time?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  A station chief.

• 10:34Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  So I was doing a, I was doing an operation in the Middle East, but I was doing it from headquarters. The station chief called me. We were friends from our training days. And he said, listen, we recruited a double agent out here. He's insisting on meeting with the chief. But it's just too dangerous for me to meet with him because he doesn't know that we know he's working for the bad guys.

• 10:57Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Can you come out here every month and meet with him and pretend to be me? And I said, sure. So I did. To make a long story short.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  I would do the meeting and then go straight to the airport and fly back to Washington. There was a midnight flight. And I would write the cable, the reporting cable from headquarters instead of writing it from the station and then sending it to headquarters. I'd write it from headquarters and send it to the station. And the great compliment he gave me was, he said, "Your memory is so good. You remember so many details that when I read the cables, I feel like I'm in the room watching it go down." And I said, "That is exactly what I'm going for."

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've always been proud of being able to do that.

• 11:39Theo Von?

  But it wasn't a requirement when you, uh, when you, uh, I guess, I don't know if you audition for the CIA, but how do you?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you kinda do, yeah.

• 11:47Theo Von?

  What's that process like? Like, how do you get?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Extensive.

• 11:50Theo Von?

  Is it?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  It's changed from when I joined. When I joined, I was in graduate school at George Washington University and I was taking a class called "The Psychology of Leadership." And the class was about why foreign leaders make the decisions that they make. One of the examples that sticks in my mind is the Yalta Conference at the end of World War II. Why was it in Yalta of all places?

• 12:18Theo Von?

  I'm not familiar with it. Bringing up the Yalta Conference, uh, the World War II.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:22Theo Von?

  The Yalta Conference was a World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, UK, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post-war reorganization of Germany and Europe. Okay.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.

• 12:34Theo Von?

  They all met in Yalta.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  They all met in Yalta, which is really, really hard to get to. And you can't just, you know, get in a plane and fly over the war. The war's still going on.

• 12:44Theo Von?

  Right.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  So Roosevelt took a train to Norfolk, Virginia, then took a boat to Malta, which took like a week, right? Back in those days.

• 12:57Theo Von?

  Right, which is obviously a psy-op because it rhymes with the Yalta.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Right. And then he had to go to Cairo and then Iran and then from Iran to Yalta. He was sick. He died a month later.

• 13:09Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  So the reason why it was in Yalta is because Stalin had a spy in the White House and the spy told him Roosevelt is sick. And so Stalin wanted him to be as weak as possible. When they arrived, or when, when the American side arrived, Roosevelt was exhausted and he wanted to go to sleep. And he, but Stalin insisted that the talks begin immediately. And so just to be able to go to bed, Roosevelt gave up Poland.

• 13:39Theo Von?

  Look, I'll throw in Poland, let's talk tomorrow.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:41Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, dude, look, sometimes, yeah, sometimes where you show up and you're like, yeah, you just can't do it. Yeah. Or you just say, look, yes, take that, that's fine. I got, you know what I'm saying? I gotta brush my teeth and lay down for a few minutes. It's crazy, the things you will give up when you first get somewhere, just to get to your room and unpack.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 14:02Theo Von?

  To urinate. Oh.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  So I'm in this class.

• 14:06Theo Von?

  And just to be clear, so they made him go all that way just because they knew it would weaken him.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there it is.

• 14:10Theo Von?

  So they created a path that would just like, that would add to him because they had a spy in the wild.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Theo Von?

  President Franklin D Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12th, 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia, just two months after the Yalta Conference, while the grueling 7,000 mile trip to the Soviet Union, combined with this severe underlying cardiovascular conditions, took a significant toll on his already failing health.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Wow. You see what a well-placed spy can do for you?

• 14:37Theo Von?

  That's strategy right there.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  That is strategy. It's, that's the big leagues, right there.

• 14:42Theo Von?

  The big leagues.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  So I'm in this class and the, the professor, Dr. Gerald Post, eminent psychiatrist, tells us to shadow our bosses for a week, just watch our bosses, spend each day with them, and then do a psychological profile on our bosses.

• 15:01Theo Von?

  And this is when you're at George Washington University, you're a student?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Right. I was in grad school. There, there's Jerry. And what, what a great man he was. He died of COVID, the poor guy. So, um.

• 15:11Theo Von?

  So he was murdered.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Right.

• 15:13Theo Von?

  Carry on.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  I'm working at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union at the time. And I worked for this guy. He was a mean, like angry, old school, union organizer, right? I was a little bit afraid of him, to tell you the truth. Big, strong, mean guy. And halfway through the week, we got into an argument and I called him a racist, which he was.

• 15:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And he got so mad, he set a stance and he put up his fist like this. And I put up my hands thinking, dang it, I went too far this time. And he goes, "My penis is bigger than yours." And I said, "What?" And he goes, "My penis is bigger than yours." I said, "You know what? You're nuts." And I quit and I walked out. So I went back and I banged out my paper. I said he was a sociopath with psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies. And I, I footnoted the whole thing. It wasn't just John venting on him.

• 16:08Theo Von?

  But with a possibly decent wiener on it.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  You're right, apparently.

• 16:11Theo Von?

  You gotta put that in.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And so I get the paper back a week later. Dr. Post gave me an A and then in the margin, he wrote, "Please see me after class." So I go up to him. I said, "Dr. Post, you wanted to see me." He says, "Come to my office." The, this classroom was like on the sixth floor and the office was on the fourth, so I went down there. He closed the door and he says, "Look, I'm not really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here. I'm looking who, for people who would fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit in. Would you like to join the CIA?" And I said, "Oh, yes, I would." And so the rest, though, is up to you. He, it was kind of a long story. I'll skip it. But he made a couple of calls that got me deep into the process.

• 17:00Theo Von?

  So Mr. Post was your professor?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:02Theo Von?

  And you also had this job where you were under, where the, where the guy was the racist guy?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was at a union. So I was, I was using that union job to put myself through grad school.

• 17:13Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  And then I just, I quit and I walked out. I said, "The guy's dangerous." And I guess the way I wrote the paper made him think that the analysis was concise. It was to the point and I backed it up with the facts. So I go through these weird, he sent me across the, across the river to Roslyn, Virginia, Arlington, Virginia. It's a little neighborhood right across the Potomac from Washington.

• 17:37Theo Von?

  Hold one second. So, so he was a, he was a CIA operative, this professor?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:43Theo Von?

  Now, when someone's a CIA operative, but also a professor, are they an actual professor that then gets hired?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 17:52Theo Von?

  Like, which is first?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  That's a great question. It's usually that they're a CIA operative first, and then they get hired as a professor. What he did is illegal today.

• 18:04Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  So in 1993, Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

• 18:08Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  The EEOC, which made this illegal. So, um, now it's very, like, not sexy. You just go to www.cia.gov and click "Apply."

• 18:20Theo Von?

  Right. Different.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  It's different.

• 18:22Theo Von?

  It's a little easier.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Back then, it was, you know, all white guys from Ivy League schools, for the most part, and, uh, now it's different.

• 18:28Theo Von?

  It was exciting.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  It was exciting.

• 18:30Theo Von?

  I bet it was the, I bet it was one of the most exciting things.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  I, I, I used to park my car out in the North Forty.

• 18:35Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And then take, like, 20 minutes to walk all the way around the compound, so I could walk in the main door, across the giant seal, and see the Wall of Honor and the flags, and I felt like I wanted to cry.

• 18:47Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  You know? I was so proud to be there.

• 18:49Theo Von?

  Felt like you were part of something.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I really did.

• 18:51Theo Von?

  I can imagine how you feel like you're part of something. Like, what did you feel like you were part of?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I, I came from this very liberal household, and I remember my mom and dad getting into an argument one time. It was the Pennsylvania primary of 1976, and my, my mom vote, my dad voted for Frank Church, who had created the Church Committee that completely reorganized the CIA and stripped it of its, uh, his power to, its power to, you know, carry out assassinations and things like that. And my mom, uh, voted for Birch Bye, who was a senator from Indiana. And my dad said, "Birch Bye? Why'd you vote for him?" And she said, "He's so good-looking." And my dad's like, "What? Church is the guy doing all the work." And I remember being fascinated by this argument that they were having.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So, when, when Dr. Post approached me, I called a friend of mine that I was in class with, who was married to a, a guy at the CIA, and I said, "Listen, I, I'm not a naf. I, I..." I know the CIA's history, it's pretty ugly. Do I want to be involved in an organization like this? I want to go into public service. I want to see the world. She said, let's have dinner. So the three of us get together for dinner. And he's like, the bad old days CIA's of the CIA are gone.

• 20:09Theo Von?

  The bad old days, he said?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  The bad old days of the CIA are gone. He said, 75 with the Church Committee in the Senate, the Pike Committee in the House, changed everything, no more assassinations, no more overthrowing governments, which was true for a little while. A little while. Because four years later, Ronald Reagan becomes president. The next thing you know, we're, you know, doing Iran-Contra and we're bombing different countries and everything just went back to the way it was. But there was like this golden period. My friends are going to yell at me for saying that. There was this period where the CIA was a really awesome place to work.

• 20:49Theo Von?

  Got it. And so when you're walking into that, when you're taking me back to that moment where you're walking in, did you feel like I'm a part of something that's important to America? Or I'm a part of just an intriguing life and this is exciting? Did you feel like I'm like Clark Kent? Like, and there's no wrong answer. This is all just like curiosity.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. The first seven and a half years that I was there, I was an analyst. Actually, in the, the office that Dr. Post had founded, the Political Psychology Division. And I really felt like I was a part of something big, you know? I was only on the job eight months. And it was just as I started to feel like I really knew what I was doing. I was the, I was the leadership analyst, the psychological analyst on Iraq. And the reason I was given Iraq was because, not my words, these were the words of my leadership. Nothing ever happens there. It's the same cabinet since the 1968 revolution, nothing ever happens.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  So learn the writing style, learn the tradecraft and you can move on to something interesting like Romania, they told me. I said, great. So I'm

• 21:58Theo Von?

  My friend just played ball in Romania, actually.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  It's a great place, Romania. I love it. Oh, yeah, it's great.

• 22:02Theo Von?

  I gotta get over there. My buddy Patrick McCaffrey, he just finished playing ball over there. Anyway, carry on.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  I love it. So, um, just as I get to the point where I, where I really feel like I know what I'm doing, Iraq invades Kuwait. August the 2nd, 1990, I walk into the office, early, like before 7:00, and my boss says,

• 22:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, shit's popping. Now you gotta show up.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I couldn't wait to get into the office that day. My boss says, "Don't take your jacket off. We're gonna go to the White House." I'd never been in the White House before.

• 22:29Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And so, um, we go to the White House. There's this Marine standing there. He walks us into the, into the West Wing. And we go into the anteroom of the Oval Office, and then the Secretary takes us in, and here's the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, and the CIA Director. And so you just kinda stand there. You wait to be told what to do. There are two nice chairs like this. The President's in that one, the Vice President's in this one. There's a couch here. My boss and I sat on, on that. There are two, like, more uncomfortable chairs over here for the CIA Director and the National Security Advisor. And we sit down, and the President goes, "Well, now what do we do?"

• 23:12Speaker 01

  And then everybody turns and looks at me, and I'm looking at them, and then it took me a second, and I'm like, "Oh, what, uh, but..." Well, as you know, Mr. President, Iraqi troops crossed the border at 4 o'clock this morning, and the Kuwaiti royal family, ruling family fled to Saudi Arabia, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I remember thinking, "My friends would never believe in a million years what I was doing right now."

• 23:36Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  They would never believe it. And I was 20... I was 25 years old.

• 23:41Theo Von?

  And it happened overnight that you were kind of suddenly having an influence, like you right there. They're like, they're looking to me for information.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  That, that actually was kind of a recurring theme in my career. I, I was just very, very lucky.

• 23:53Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  A lot of times.

• 23:55Theo Von?

  So when you're walking into, uh, into the building, when you take that long way, and you pass, like, the flags and walk over the seal, it's just like, "I'm a part of something."

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you really feel it.

• 24:04Theo Von?

  Do you think that's the same CIA that we have today?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  No. No. 9/11 changed everything, and it changed it permanently, in a bunch of different ways. Not just... Have you ever heard of Executive Order 12333?

• 24:16Theo Von?

  I haven't.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  12333 was signed by Gerald Ford. Um, and it, it was, it came in the aftermath of the Church and Pike Committees, and, um, yeah. The responsibilities and guidelines for the US intelligence community.

• 24:31Theo Von?

  Okay, Executive Order 1233 establishes the goals, responsibilities, and guidelines for the US intelligence community. Got it?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Number one, you can't kill people anymore, right?

• 24:42Theo Von?

  Well, this was after the church commission, right?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. They said, "You gotta stop killing people." And we had these, like, you know, we're putting explosives in Fidel Castro's cigar, and putting poison on the steering wheel of his car, and stupid stuff. And so, 12333-

• 24:58Theo Von?

  Real Tom and Jerry shit.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You can't do that stuff anymore. And then it's been amended over the years. Well, after 9/11, Bush is just like, "Just kill everybody you want."

• 25:09Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And so, we set up these offices.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  One whole office called the Special Activities Division. And then there's, in the Counterterrorism Center where I was working, there was one called the Special Activities Group. And their job, very simply, was just to, you know, send teams around the world, kill people, come back, get the list for the next week, go out there, kill them, come back, get another list, kill those guys. It was like, uh... Nobody was trying to collect intelligence anymore.

• 25:41Theo Von?

  Things changed overnight.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Overnight.

• 25:44Theo Von?

  One time, I was, um, I was traveling somewhere, you know, because I had my luggage with me and everything, and I was, I think I was in Guam, maybe. Or Viet Kwam, or somewhere. I don't know. And I couldn't get the internet. They didn't have it. They didn't, some people, they didn't even know what I was talking about. I'd like point at the sky, and then point at like, a book or whatever. And they didn't understand it. That's where Salie comes in. "Salie is an essential travel tool because it provides affordable internet data plans in over 200 destinations, giving you secure internet connection as soon as you arrive." Yep. Not only that, Salie saves you money.

• 26:27Theo Von?

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• 26:47Theo Von?

  Say goodbye to surprise roaming charges and stay protected with saley. That's code Theo at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. You know, my brother used to bring a little bit of raccoon over there. A little bit of that dumpster squirrel, you feel me? He'd bring it over to uh, Thanksgiving over there and he'd grill a couple of them up. Make you, make you a couple of uh, pieces of footwear or something. Couple of hand mittens out of the body fur. Um, that's a power move. That's what we called it in our family. And when your mom's friends stayed over just one night, you know what I'm talking about? That's a power move, guys. Look, we're talking power moves. I'm talking Morgan and Morgan.

• 27:31Theo Von?

  That's a power move. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. They have over 100 offices nationwide and more than 1,000 lawyers. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win. That's the facts. For more information, go to forthepeople.com/theo or dial pound law, that's pound 529 from your cell phone. That's F O R the people.com slash T H E O or pound L A W pound 529.

• 28:15Theo Von?

  This is a paid advertisement. Do you think, there's a lot of like conspiracies about nine 11, right? And I'm sure you've had, um.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I take a lot of shit about the conspiracies.

• 28:25Theo Von?

  You do?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I do. I take a lot of shit because I don't believe in them.

• 28:28Theo Von?

  You don't?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:29Theo Von?

  So from your experience, cause you were there when it happened. You were in the CIA when it occurred to where we are now. Has your point of view changed at all since then to now?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  My point of view actually has changed. So I don't think I deserve a lot of the, a lot of the, sorry, the criticism that I get. I'm gonna start on July the 6th of 2001.

• 28:49Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  So.

• 28:51Theo Von?

  And I'm not familiar with the criticism either.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm glad. I'll explain it to you then, because I, I get all the time. The Jews did it. The Saudis did it. Literally the space aliens did it. The Israeli government did it. The Bush family did it. The, you know, it's like, come on, people. Nano thermite paint, there's no such thing as nano thermite paint.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  That they painted in 1972 to make the bu- the buildings blow up? Come on, you guys.

• 29:17Theo Von?

  That to me sounds very, uh, that sounds ridiculous.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's ridiculous.

• 29:21Theo Von?

  Uh, but what doesn't sound ridiculous is somebody having long-term strategy, like you were saying a little while ago, that people play a longer game, right?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  And we're not good at that generally.

• 29:29Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, I don't think that we are. We're, we're like a country when everything now, you know? And we're kind of a newer country as well. So it's like, and we got everything fast anyway. And when you get something fast, you don't really have a ton of respect for it in some ways.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 29:43Theo Von?

  And it's tough for me to say that because we all just live like one life term. But I think some of that could be infectious over like a society over time. Um, I'd never even thought about it before. And it's like, yeah, when you get something easy, you're kind of used to something coming easy.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 29:56Theo Von?

  And so, uh, but I do believe that other countries, uh, could have strategy against us. And also-

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Oh, and I believe that there were.

• 30:04Theo Von?

  And would it change for us as a people? Like, would it change like, um, for how we look out of our own eyes? For how we walk out of like, uh... I remember on 9/11, I walked out of a building. I was staying with some friends. I walked outside. And, um, there was just some like construction going on and it'd been going on for a while. And they were like redoing these like, uh, this stone walkway. I was in Charleston, South Carolina. And they had these bulldozers and stuff out there and like, people had been excited about the construction. Like it was like, um, because the streets are cobblestones, really beautiful. And suddenly that day, everybody was like, are these, like, are they demolishing something? Like suddenly this had a whole different energy of like, oh, like this is the rubble. Like there was a connection with like what you just seen on television to suddenly like,

• 30:49Theo Von?

  something that was being done that was positive, uh, structurally was now suddenly looked at like there was a lot of fear around it. And I know that's a ridiculous, small thing.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  But that, but that's normal. That happened at the time.

• 30:59Theo Von?

  Right. And it's just, it just, just how much of a small thing in your head, like, okay, I'd just seen this. And now everything is scary. That's what I'm trying to say.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:07Theo Von?

  Everything is scary.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. The whole country was traumatized. It, it was our Pearl Harbor, the Pearl Harbor of our generation.

• 31:14Theo Von?

  And it changed, and it changed how you would operate. It changed, um, it changed just like every, it, it adjusted so many things. Go on, though.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So July 6th, 2001.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  I'm hosting a group of intelligence officers from a Middle Eastern country. This is something we did literally every single day, usually multiple times a day. And what we do is we set up a day of briefings. They get a photo op with the director, you know, shaking hands. We exchange gifts and we take them out to a fancy dinner at night. So these guys, they were all mid-level, like majors and lieutenant colonels.

• 31:49Theo Von?

  So it's a lot of bullshit.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of it, a lot, yes. So I set up a day of briefings and I, I went to see this kid, young guy, twenties, that was covering Al Qaeda. And I said, can you come and just talk to these guys about Al Qaeda for an hour? He said, yes. So it came time for his briefing, but instead of him coming, the director of counterterrorism comes, Kofa Black, later Ambassador Kofa Black, and he comes-

• 32:14Theo Von?

  From which country? Oh, from the US?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he was our director.

• 32:19Theo Von?

  So he showed up.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Kofa shows up with the Director of Operations from the Osama bin Laden unit. And, um, and I jumped up, I was, I was like, oh, gentlemen, I said, this is, this is Kofa Black, he's the Director of Counterterrorism for the entire American intelligence community.

• 32:36Theo Von?

  And you were working in counterterrorism at the time?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so he came in and, and sat down and he was very, very serious. He said, uh, something terrible is going to happen. We don't know exactly when or exactly where, but we know it's going to be an attack on a scale that we've never seen before. He said, we're picking up chatter from the Al Qaeda training camps where camp commanders are on the phone with their students and they're crying and telling them, I'll see you in paradise. We're hearing code words for a massive attack. The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities of honey, where there's going to be a huge wedding or a huge football game. And he said, we know that they're planning an enormous attack. We just don't know when or where.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  And he said, I'm begging you, if you have any sources inside Al Qaeda, please help us. They just sat there and looked at him, nothing. So at the end of the day, I was not working on Al Qaeda at the time. I later, weeks later, became the Chief of, uh- Counterintelligence in the Osama bin Laden unit. And so I went to his office at the end of the day before I took those guys to dinner. And I said, Kofor, I gotta tell you, you shocked me with that briefing today. Was that just for them or were you serious? He said, oh, I was deadly serious. Something terrible is gonna happen. And then on September 11th, there it was. He and I were supposed to go to the White House that morning. We had a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, who was the National Security Advisor at the time,

• 34:04Speaker 01

  on an issue that's so stupid now, I'm almost embarrassed to tell you what it is. It was about a book that was being printed by the government printing office, this minor governmental agency called Greece, Turkey, Cyprus. No, it was called Foreign Affairs of the United States, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, 1949 to 1967. Literally, nobody's gonna read this book.

• 34:25Theo Von?

  Nobody, I was gonna tell you that, nobody's gonna read it.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Literally, nobody.

• 34:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And it's like a thousand pages long.

• 34:32Theo Von?

  That's money laundering.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And it had the names of three CIA sources who were still alive. And we've got this obscure law in the United States that if the government outs a CIA source, we have to offer the source citizenship. These guys are like 198 and 97 years old. They're not gonna, they don't care.

• 34:51Theo Von?

  Right.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Nobody's gonna read the book anyway. So we were gonna go down there and ask her, just pull those pages out of the, out of the book. You know, nobody's gonna miss it. Nobody's gonna read it anyhow. Just pull the pages out or redact the names or whatever. But I went up to tell them that the car was ready and the secretary's got a little TV on her desk and the World Trade Center's on fire. I said, what happened to World Trade Center? She said, a plane flew into it. And I go, cuz I'm a genius, I said, you know, that happened once before in 1930. A bomber flew into the Empire State Building, but it was like pouring rain and fog. I said, it's so crystal clear today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And just as I spoke the words, the second plane hit.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  And then she turned and she said, "Did you see that or did I imagine it?" And it's like, "Oh, everything's gonna go to shit now."

• 35:44Theo Von?

  And, and at this point, you're already working in counterterrorism, yeah?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Well, I was already in counterterrorism, but I was working on a group. See, again, I'm embarrassed to even say, I was working in a group that was targeting European communist terrorists, like Carlos the Jackal, who nobody remembers now. He was the Osama bin Laden of the 70s. Nobody remembers who in the world he was.

• 36:02Theo Von?

  Really?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, Carlos the Jackal.

• 36:03Theo Von?

  Bring him up.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  There he is!

• 36:05Theo Von?

  Whoa, he looks suave, huh?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  He was Venezuelan, Ilije Ramirez Sanchez. Listen to the balls this guy had.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  OPEC had an oil ministers meeting, right? So the ministers-

• 36:18Theo Von?

  And for those who don't know what OPEC is, it's the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. So, um, it's basically like your oil kind of, um, commission.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  It's the monopoly, yeah. Yeah.

• 36:29Theo Von?

  Yeah, monopoly.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  The, uh, what do you call it? The, uh, cartel. It's an oil cartel.

• 36:34Theo Von?

  Very fair.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  So, he and his gang of terrorists raided the OPEC oil ministers meeting in Vienna, Austria, and kidnapped every single minister of oil.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  They killed three people, says there.

• 36:49Theo Von?

  Hell, yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  He and, he demanded a plane, flew everybody to Libya, took his billion dollars ransom that they gave him, and then let everybody go.

• 36:58Theo Von?

  Wow. So he was just trying to get a bag, really, huh?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and he was good at it. And then he was so good at it, he set up terrorist training camps in Libya and Lebanon, and he trained the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, he trained Greece's Revolutionary Organization 17 November, the Red Brigades, the Aktion Direct.

• 37:19Theo Von?

  Why did he feel so convicted to, to do this sort of behavior?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  He was a true believing communist. And he just wanted to bring down the West.

• 37:28Theo Von?

  Hmm, uh-huh. Interesting.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Theo Von?

  But take me back, so it's like, you guys hear that something's gonna happen?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Something terrible's gonna happen.

• 37:35Theo Von?

  But what do you do at that point?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Well, see, that's the key. What do you do? We, we didn't know what to do, so we're going to the, you know, Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Saudis, the this one, and that one, and they're like, "We, we don't know what's going on." Well, as it turned out, that wasn't true.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Almost all the hijackers, was it seventeen, sixteen or seventeen of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia?

• 37:57Theo Von?

  Arabia, right?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  And we know that the Saudi ambassador to the United States at the time, Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, his wife transferred fifty thousand dollars from her personal bank account to the hijackers. What are we supposed to make of that?

• 38:12Theo Von?

  Yeah, sometimes you gotta get your girl to Venmo if you need, you know what I'm saying?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Seriously, you know, the only time I ever saw George Tenet, it was the CIA director at the time, the only time I ever saw George completely lose his shit was in a meeting with Prince Bandar. He said, "If we don't start getting help from the Saudi government, on this case, we're gonna start killing people, a lot of people, and some of them are gonna be named Al Saud." I go out to Pakistan as the chief of counterterrorism operations there in January of O2. So it's still fresh, we're bombing Tora Bora, all these Al Qaeda people are trying to get out of Afghanistan, cross into Pakistan, and my job was then to catch them when they came into Pakistan.

• 38:58Theo Von?

  But we're bombing what? We're bombing which country?

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Afghanistan.

• 39:01Theo Von?

  We're bombing Afghanistan, right? But there was, why were we looking for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  That's where they were living, all of them. They launched 9/11 from Afghanistan.

• 39:09Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  At least theoretically, the ideas came when they were in Afghanistan.

• 39:15Theo Von?

  Because from the American like population, it always felt like we never went after Saudi Arabia. That's what it felt like.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we should have.

• 39:22Theo Von?

  But if you, didn't you know that?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  We did not. We suspected, but we didn't have, there was no smoking gun. So that's what I'm getting to. We catch Abu Zubaydah, Zain al-Abedin, Mohammed Hussein. Abu Zubaydah, who we believed at the time-

• 39:37Theo Von?

  Oh, I thought you were having a stroke for a second.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  No, no, it's his name.

• 39:40Theo Von?

  No, I'm just joking. That was a joke.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  The profession, I know. The profession of faith.

• 39:46Theo Von?

  I've been around people that are stroking out, and if you don't tap in with them, they'll just keep going.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Jeez.

• 39:51Theo Von?

  You know, and they never buy a vowel, and then they just fucking tap out, you know?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  That's terrible.

• 39:57Theo Von?

  So you guys were doing this guy?

• 39:59Speaker 01

  So we're looking for him.

• 40:00Theo Von?

  Oh, bro.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Catch him.

• 40:02Theo Von?

  This dude is a fucking mumble rapper, I think. Go on.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  He, we were on him for six weeks. We chased him. Some days we'd bust down the door and there's like a warm meal and a half lit cigarette still on the table. We're like, dang it, with 15 minutes, we could have gotten him. Some days we were a day or two behind. So he knew we were after him. He knew we were chased him all over the frigging country. And we catch him. In late March 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. So we also confiscated his diary. This, this led to a huge fight between the FBI and the CIA, huge. And the CIA was right and the FBI was wrong. But um.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  The, the fight was, well, we had, we'd captured his diary. So I'm sitting there.

• 40:50Theo Von?

  That sounds so suspect that he has a diary.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  It was more than a diary, though.

• 40:55Theo Von?

  But even though, you know what I'm saying? Like as a regular person.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Didn't have terrorism stuff in it.

• 41:00Theo Von?

  Right, but even then, first of all, who the fuck has a?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  See, but look.

• 41:04Theo Von?

  He does have an eye patch.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:06Theo Von?

  Oh, he drew a lot as well.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  It's, it's all drawings.

• 41:08Theo Von?

  Oh, okay.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of its drawings. And most of them are classified top secret. The, uh, the CIA wouldn't allow them to be released.

• 41:16Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Um, cause they were mostly about the torture that was done to him.

• 41:19Theo Von?

  Understood.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  So anyway, we catch the diary and I call headquarters and I said, listen, we got his diary. And there's some fascinating shit in here. Like what? And I said, well, for one, there are the cell phone numbers of three Saudi princes. Like, what's up with that? So they were like, put it in writing. So I write this cable back and I was like, we found these three princes. Here are their cell phone numbers. George calls in the Saudi ambassador. The president calls the king. What kind of country are you running over there? So we said, we want those three princes. We want them like right now. Next thing you know, one goes into the hospital for bariatric surgery because they're all fat.

• 41:59Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  And he dies on the operating table. The other one is driving from Riyadh to Jeddah on the Riyadh to Jeddah highway. He's in a one-car accident and is killed in the accident. The third one goes camping in the desert, which is a very popular pastime, and dies of thirst.

• 42:18Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, we couldn't interrogate any of them.

• 42:23Theo Von?

  Who do you think was, do you think that Saudi Arabia did that?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 42:28Theo Von?

  Right. Do you think we ever got to the bottom of 9/11?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:33Theo Von?

  Do you think, you don't?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  No. And I'm going to say something that's very unpopular. I think that the Israelis, while not involved in 9/11, absolutely, positively had advance warning of 9/11. They had sources inside of Al Qaeda. And they purposely did not tell us the details because they knew what was going to happen. They knew that we would attack Afghanistan, and we would attack Iraq, and we would kill 2 million Muslims. And, I mean, these dancing Israelis, they've never answered for this. I'm still mad about the dancing Israelis.

• 43:07Theo Von?

  I've heard about the dancing Israelis. Bring it up? So you're saying that you believe that they knew?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I think they knew in advance and didn't warn us.

• 43:15Theo Von?

  But they didn't warn us because we would then, we would-

• 43:17Speaker 01

  We would do their dirty work for them.

• 43:19Theo Von?

  We would take out issues with their surrounding guys.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  You know, there are videos making the rounds now of Benjamin Netanyahu over the years, over the last 20-plus years, testifying before Congress and saying, you know, "If we just took out Saddam Hussein, we would be peace in the Middle East. If we just took out Muammar Gaddafi, there would be, I guarantee you," he says, "there would be peace in the Middle East."

• 43:43Theo Von?

  And we do it all.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  "We'd take out Iran, and we're going to have peace in the Middle East."

• 43:46Theo Von?

  It's starting to get a little bit more like-

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. A little sus.

• 43:50Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  So, the Iraqis have electrical towers like we have everywhere, but ours have four legs, and the Iraqis have three legs. So just a few days before we attacked Iraq, at that time, I'm the, I'm the executive assistant to the deputy director for operations at the CIA. So it's a serious, the most serious job I ever had in my life.

• 44:10Theo Von?

  So you have access to a lot?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Literally everything.

• 44:12Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And the Israelis come to us and they said, listen, you guys are going to attack Iraq in a couple of days. We want in. We said, absolutely not. We put this coalition together with all these Arab countries. As soon as you guys jump in, all the Arabs are going to drop out. Just let us do it. Next thing you know, every one of these electrical towers just begins to topple over, like 150 miles worth in the western desert, because somebody put explosives on just one of the three legs.

• 44:40Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  And I remember my boss saying, these damn Israelis, they just can't leave well enough alone? They just don't ever do as they're told?

• 44:50Theo Von?

  Um, let me look at this. The dancing Israelis, and we're talking about the Israeli government. We're not talking about Israeli people.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm far less worried about the dancing Israelis than, than I am about the Israelis who were arrested on nine 11.

• 45:03Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  It was, there was a-

• 45:04Theo Von?

  But just so I, just so I can say the claim, because I don't know, I've never even spoken about this. The dancing Israelis is a nine 11 related conspiracy trope based on the arrest of five Israeli men in New Jersey on September 11, 2001. Um, and this is according to perplexity. And it was some guys, I think they were on a building top and they were kind of dancing like around-

• 45:23Speaker 01

  High fiving each other.

• 45:24Theo Von?

  Yeah, a bread truck or something as the, uh, as you can see the towers in the distance. Um, yeah, a New Jersey woman reported five men near a van overlooking Manhattan who appeared to be celebrating and taking photos as the twin towers burned. Police later stopped a suspicious van and detained five Israeli citizens. Um, they had items like box cutters and multiple passports, which conspiracy theorists later fixated on, but box cutters are normal tools for a moving delivery job.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  They were happy because they knew exactly what was going to happen, that we would have to enter the war, we would attack Afghanistan, we would probably then, you know, take a permanent position in the, in the region, which is exactly what happened.

• 46:05Theo Von?

  Right.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  That's why they were dancing, they were happy, 9/11 is a good thing for Israel.

• 46:09Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  It, it got us militarily engaged over the long term.

• 46:13Theo Von?

  But you don't think that they were involved in the setting up of it?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  I don't, no, no, no, there's, and there's never been any evidence to suggest that they were involved in any way.

• 46:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, I have no idea.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  No, but there was another thing too, and this is, this is a bigger issue, it's that, uh, the Israelis spy on the United States, they've always spied on the United States.

• 46:33Theo Von?

  Do we spy on them also?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  No, and, and that's written in stone at the CIA, we do not spy on Israel, but they openly spy on us, they're all over the country stealing defense secrets.

• 46:44Theo Von?

  Do we spy on other countries?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, we spy on almost every.

• 46:48Theo Von?

  Why can't we spy on them?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  It's a political decision that's been made, yeah, a political decision in the White House, on Capitol Hill.

• 46:59Theo Von?

  Sometimes it just feels like our country is just kind of owned by Israel and they just don't say that, do you think that that's true, or do you think that's fictional?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think it's so clear cut, I think, I think the truth is that the Israelis have inordinate political influence in the United States, especially in our elections.

• 47:15Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, they just had that election with Thomas Massey that, um,

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Exactly, that, that's the best example.

• 47:20Theo Von?

  That got overtaken, what happened with that election, let's bring it up, I mean, I know that Thomas lost, but it was, it was the largest,

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, $35 million was spent.

• 47:28Theo Von?

  The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Representative Thomas Massey on Tuesday, which they did, in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records. Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC, stood up by President Donald Trump's political operation, that has spent nearly $7 million on the race. Overall ad spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary on record per tracking firm ad impact, wow.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  For a job that pays $180,000 a year.

• 48:06Theo Von?

  So what are the long-term benefits of them getting this position? Or was it just about getting Massey out?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  It was getting Massey. The thing about AIPAC is if you are not 100% pro-Israel, they will primary you. They'll, they'll primary you with somebody who is 100% pro-Israel. And sometimes, you know, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Where, um,

• 48:27Theo Von?

  What does that mean?

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Uh, where you've got, for example, there was a, an incumbent Democrat in New Jersey who voted pro-Israel 90% of the time. They ran a primary opponent against him. Um, and, uh, who was 100% pro-Israel and he lost, but so did she. And the one that won was the one that's pro-Palestinian.

• 48:49Theo Von?

  Ah, I see. So sometimes by taking out, by, by aiming for one, you might let another through.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  You end up hurting your own cause.

• 48:55Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:56Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I can understand people's, uh, angst with this sort of thing. I mean, the, the biggest thing is just like, if Israel's involved in a genocide, right? They're genociding people. It's almost like, why would you let Nazi Germany invest in your, in your people who are going to be running congressmen or senators in your country? It's crazy. I don't see how there's not a law, like, why isn't there a law if there's some, if a country's doing like a, like a Holocaust or like a genocide, that they're not allowed to invest in, um, that they're not allowed to have a lobby in, in, in our elections? See, was there ever a law about that?

• 49:35Speaker 01

  No. And, and they would lose their shit over the use of the word genocide. You used it, I use it. It's a genocide.

• 49:44Theo Von?

  We've been using it on here for years.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. It meets all the international legal requirements of a genocide.

• 49:49Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, I think the UN has voted that it is.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:52Theo Von?

  Um, I don't know if the vote passed because I think there was maybe some groups that were, that wouldn't agree to it.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Um, well, it didn't pass the Security Council, but it passed by 90 something percent in the General Assembly.

• 50:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, but I just, I don't understand why that seems fair. And also I'm amazed that, I don't understand why people that made like movies and wrote books about the Holocaust, why they don't speak up and say, hey,

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:18Theo Von?

  This is the same thing that I wrote about. You know what I'm saying? You can show picture to picture that makes it exactly.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Killing is wrong. It's wrong. No matter who's doing the killing or who's being killed, it's just wrong.

• 50:27Theo Von?

  But I don't see why some of those people don't speak up.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Well, there, there is an increasingly large number of Jewish Americans who are speaking out. There's a big group called Jewish Voices for Peace. The Orthodox Jewish community in New York has been very vocal. Just this week, uh, there was, um, there was a protest going on, wasn't there? Annual Israel Day Parade. And, and a lot of the Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn showed up with Palestinian and Iranian flags. And it caused violence.

• 50:59Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, I guess I just don't understand why. What are, like, what is America afraid of? Like, are, like, what have you seen, like, in the CIA? Because it does, you hear a lot that, like, that, that the Israeli influence, like, has taken over our CIA and our FBI. Do you think that that's true or not?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Well, I can't speak to the FBI and my, my CIA information is dated. I left the CIA more than 20 years ago, but when I was there, we kept the Israelis at arm's length, like, seriously so. The very first intelligence liaison intelligence briefing I ever gave was to the Israelis. I had been only on the job six weeks. And my boss said, listen, you're going to give a liaison briefing. It's going to be a whole big group of people. So you're going to be the last one to talk because you're the most junior. But you need to know some of the ground rules. He said, we do not meet with the Israelis in the building. We used to, but every time they'd come, they'd bring us gifts. And the gifts are always packed with listening devices and batteries.

• 52:02Theo Von?

  Is that true?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yes, 100% true.

• 52:04Theo Von?

  Would you guys find him? How do you even know that that's true?

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Because you have to X-ray everything that comes into the building. He can't just wantonly walk in off the street with, you know, boxes of gifts and say, here, this is for you.

• 52:14Theo Von?

  And what'd they do? Just sew a couple Palestinian ears from the rubble?

• 52:17Speaker 01

  And they're like, oh, we're just joking.

• 52:21Theo Von?

  Oh, it's like joking stuff?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not joking.

• 52:23Theo Von?

  Right. So that happened during your time? Was that with other countries too? So I'm sure there's other countries that like.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Oh, there are other countries we don't even have liaison with.

• 52:30Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  But with the Israelis, we had to, we had to rent a place and we would meet with them in the place. On my very first day at the CIA, you meet in the auditorium called the bubble. And the head of HR comes out and the director comes and says, welcome to the CIA. And then the head of security, it's just a parade of important people come to welcome you. So the head of security said, he said a couple of things. One was funny. He said, "The gravest threat facing America today is the threat of Soviet communism." And I said to the guy next to me, "Does this guy not read the papers? There is no Soviet Union anymore." Anyway, he went on to say that the Israelis have two declared intelligence officers in the United States. One Mossad and one Shin Bet.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  So CIA and FBI equivalents. They're at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. But the FBI has identified 187 additional undeclared Israeli intelligence officers, spread out all over America, stealing secrets from defense contractors. So the lesson was, don't ever talk about work outside the building. Don't ever eat at the restaurants in McLean, Virginia, because they're all Russian KGB. And back then it was the KGB. And Israeli Mossad agents eating there to hear what the CIA people are saying after work.

• 53:52Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:52Theo Von?

  It sounds exciting, though, at least.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  It was kind of exciting.

• 53:55Theo Von?

  I bet it was, it was like a real whodunit.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  I, I loved it. I really did. I loved it until I didn't love it, you know? And after 9/11, everybody went nuts and just wanted to kill everyone. I was getting ready to go to Pakistan. And so I stopped by the office on my way to the airport, just to say goodbye. Because Kofor said on 9/11, he stood up on his desk.

• 54:12Theo Von?

  Kofor Black, you said?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Kofor Black, yeah. He stood up on his desk and he said, "Today we're at war. All of us are going to have to do our part. Not all of us are going to be able to come home." So he said, "If you, if you want to walk now, walk, and nobody will think less of you." Nobody budged. So I stopped by the office because I wanted to say goodbye. I don't know, am I going to get shot? Am I going to get blown up? Am I going to get killed? I, I don't know, so I just wanted to say goodbye.

• 54:37Theo Von?

  Say goodbye to Kofor?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  No, to Kofor, to my boss, excuse me, and to the people I was working with.

• 54:43Theo Von?

  But why would you have gotten shot? I'm, I'm.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  I was the chief of counterterrorism operations. It's the job I'm going out to. I'm busting down doors three nights a week and, um. And I worked for this guy, lovely, lovely guy. Nice suits, just a really, like, like, very professorial. And he gives me a hug and he leans in and he says, "Kill them all." And I said, "Really? Have we gotten there already?"

• 55:08Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  And he says, "Kill them all." And then I went to the airport. I was like, "Am I the only guy who thinks we should do this by the book?" Apparently, I was.

• 55:19Theo Von?

  That's, that's crazy, man.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  It was ugly. You should see some of the pictures I have on my phone. Those make your hair stand up.

• 55:26Theo Von?

  I don't know. I'm already, there's already a lot of stuff I'm not allowed to look at. Um, I have blockers on my phone, so, uh, yeah. I'm just gonna donate my eyes to charity, I think, soon. Um, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. For some, summer is their favorite season. Travel picks up and the kids are out of school and adventure is the focus. For others, juggling it all can be tough and, and they're just counting down the minutes until the kids are back in school. If you're feeling off, this is a reminder to check in with yourself. Hey, self, what's going on? BetterHelp can help.

• 56:10Theo Von?

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• 56:54Theo Von?

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• 57:35Theo Von?

  Right now, CarShield is offering our listeners 20% off with the code Theo at carshield.com. Visit carshield.com to lock in your 2026 protection today. And protect yourself from expensive car repairs? Again, go to carshield.com and use code Theo for 20% off. So when you get involved, like, how bad did it get after 9/11 where the rules of like, um, interrogating and that sort of thing changed?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  That's a good question. You know, the, the dirty little secret was literally not one single CIA officer was trained in interrogation techniques. So I, as soon as we started catching these guys, I mean, I'd only been there about a week, we started catching them. And my boss is like, interrogate them. I'm like, I don't know how to interrogate people. I can interview them.

• 58:33Theo Von?

  And what do you even wear sneakers? What do you even put on to do something like that?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wore sneakers most days, polo shirt, jeans.

• 58:40Theo Von?

  Bro, you can't interrogate somebody in a polo shirt.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  That's all I brought with me, that and sweatshirts. Cause it was cold when I arrived.

• 58:47Theo Von?

  You gotta put on a Chicago Bears jersey or something.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Oh my God, it was so weird. See, in one of the early raids, we had also confiscated the Al Qaeda training manual. Well, I, I've.

• 58:59Theo Von?

  Do you still have one of those or not?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I turned everything in. Uh, but you know what? It might be online. It might be out there now.

• 59:05Theo Von?

  I want one.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  So I was, uh, I spoke and, and read Arabic. And so we're going through the training manual and I, and I'm translating it to the guys in my branch as I'm reading it. Well, everything that was in the manual, these prisoners would do as we would catch them. So I say, what's your name? The guy goes, oh, like he's having a ruptured appendix. Oh, what's your name? And he like pretends to faint and falls off the chair. And then he just kind of opens one eye to look at you. I'm like, get the fuck up and get back in the chair. What's your name? And then like, do you, do you hit him? Do you not hit him? Do you grab him by the shirt and shake? I mean, I didn't know what the rules were. So there were no rules.

• 59:46Theo Von?

  And so what kind of environment, I mean, what did you end up having to do? Like, what do you do in those sort of situations? Like, are you responsible to garner information? Do you even feel like the people you're catching have real information? The shit sounds kind of vague.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Everybody has something. It's called the mosaic concept where everybody's got a little tile in his brain. And if you collect enough tiles, you can put the whole picture together. So, I mean, some of it sounds comical now.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  I would say to the Pakistani lieutenant colonel that I was working with on a daily basis, I'd say, you want to be the good cop today? I'll be the bad cop. Or you want to be the, the bad cop again? I'll be the good cop. And then we decide in advance. Then I go in, you know, we start talking to these guys. The first guy we captured, he was Jordanian and they bring him in. He's shackled at the ankles, shackled at the waist. And then they undo the waist shackle and they, they chain him to an eye bolt in the, in the table. So you have to know the answers to all the questions that you're asking, right? So I'm like, what's your name? He tells me his name. Uh, how, where did you come from? I came from Tora Bora. And what happened in Tora Bora? The Americans began bombing us. And then where did you go?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  He said, I tried to escape, so I went into a cave and then the Americans bombed the cave. And the guy like had blood squirted out of his ears and he had brain damage. And finally made it across the border. I lay out a map. Tell me exactly how you got across the border. We knew what the rat lines were and he told the truth. This is the way we came through this pass. Everything he told me was true. And so I, I said to him, he said, what's going to happen to me? And I said, honestly, I don't know. You're probably going to spend some time in jail here and then we're going to send you to Jordan. And I don't know what the Jordanians are going to do to you because he was Jordanian.

• 1:01:37Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  So I said to him, but let me ask you something.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  I know that what you told me was true. Why did you tell me the truth? And he goes, I'm your prisoner. What good would it do me to lie to you? He said, I know how these things work. I know that you knew the answers to these questions. It doesn't help me in any way to lie to you. And then I said, okay, thank you. And then he says, let me ask you something now. He said, I assume you're Christian? And I said, yes. And he says, I would like to invite you into the embrace of Islam and I'll be your godfather. I said, well, thank you very much.

• 1:02:15Theo Von?

  And what is that? It's almost like the Boy Scouts or something? I mean, he like as a scout leader, kind of like, like he'll like,

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Theo Von?

  Be like your sponsor?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like my sponsor. He's gonna convert me to Islam and I'm gonna say-

• 1:02:25Theo Von?

  Which is Muslim, yeah?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:26Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  And, um, and I said, yeah, thanks, but no thanks. And I wish you the best. And I remember saying to a colleague of mine, my God, if everyone goes like that, it's gonna be incredible. The next raid we did, we bust down the door, 2 o'clock in the morning. And it's two kids, they're 19 years old, from Tunisia. And they both just burst into tears.

• 1:02:50Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  And so we cuff them. And one kid is just heaving, sobbing. And the other one is begging me to let him call his mother. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry, you can't call your mother.

• 1:03:00Theo Von?

  What'd they do?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  They, they were Arabs without passports or visas in an Al Qaeda safe house. And that was good enough for me.

• 1:03:09Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  So, we got to the point where we had literally filled the Rawalpindi jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. It's, it's this gigantic city that's kind of attached to Islamabad. Islamabad's the capital, but it's very, very small. Rawalpindi is where the military is located. And it's like 5, 6, 7 million people there. So, uh, Rawalpindi jail, there it is? That's it? My God, I haven't, I haven't been to the Rawalpindi jail in 24 years. And I'll tell you what, I don't remember it looking that good either.

• 1:03:42Theo Von?

  I've never been.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, thank your lucky stars.

• 1:03:46Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not good. So, so the, the PAX called me and they said, "Look, we've, we've literally filled the jail. You gotta do something with these guys." I said, "Okay," so I call headquarters. I said, "The PAX are telling me that the jail's full. What do you want to do with them?" They said, "Put them on a C-12 and send them to Guantanamo." I said, "Guantanamo, Cuba? Why would we send them to Cuba?" And they said, "We came up with this idea. We're gonna send everybody to Cuba and then we're gonna divide them up after we figure out what federal district court to charge them with." Because 9/11 was an open criminal investigation at the time and the crimes were committed in the Eastern District of Massachusetts, hijacking,

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  the Western District of Pennsylvania, hijacking, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Pentagon, and the Southern District of New York. I said, "That's a great idea." So we just started loading these guys on an endless, you know, parade of C-12 transport planes and sent them to Guantanamo. And then somebody in Dick Cheney's office, probably David Attington, although he's never admitted it, somebody said, "You know what? These guys don't have any rights in Cuba. Why don't we just leave them there, like, forever?" And here we are, 24 years later.

• 1:05:06Theo Von?

  Some of them are still there?

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  And they're still there.

• 1:05:08Theo Von?

  Most of them, you think?

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Thirty-four of them. At the height, we had like 770, I think was when it was at its most full.

• 1:05:17Theo Von?

  I went there one time as a, to perform as a comedian.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Theo Von?

  Went down there and was performing for some of the troops here and stuff. You got to see some of the, uh, just the way you would fly in it.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  You can see it in the distance.

• 1:05:27Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, well, when you, the way you'd fly in at night, uh, they would fly in like this kind of crazy pattern.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:05:33Theo Von?

  And it was lit up. It almost looked like a big wedding ring in the distance because they had like just these bright, bright lights, um, on the fences surrounding the, uh, the base. And so you come in like at this crazy kind of pattern and, uh, and you kind of had to go around.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Right. Because you can't cross Cuban airspace.

• 1:05:53Theo Von?

  I think we went from-

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  You have to go around and come up from the south.

• 1:05:55Theo Von?

  We went from somewhere in Florida and went around.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Theo Von?

  It was pretty intense. I mean, it was definitely, it was interesting. Uh, and then we got to go right up by the, by the detainee centers. And I think we even saw some guys playing volleyball and stuff, but, um- Were there tortures where people lost their lives where you that you were involved in?

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Not that I was involved in, thank God. There were, you know.

• 1:06:17Theo Von?

  But like, at what point do you call like one office getting out of hand? Like, have you been in one that was getting out of hand?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  No, because when we were catching guys, we had not yet implemented the torture program. So the torture program was was conceived and approved in October of 2001.

• 1:06:32Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  I got to Pakistan in January of 2002. And we're like, what do we do with these guys? Well, we the FBI is there with us there. You can't, you can't like hit them or you can't do anything to them. If they don't talk, then okay, we just send them to Guantanamo.

• 1:06:48Theo Von?

  And because you you ended up coming out and talking, speaking out about.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Theo Von?

  Uh, torch that was happening.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:54Theo Von?

  But how would they let you do that if you weren't aware of it firsthand, though?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Well, because remember, I became the executive assistant to the deputy director.

• 1:07:00Theo Von?

  Oh, she was see the reports coming back. You see all the cables coming back in?

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:04Theo Von?

  Huh.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:06Theo Von?

  Was some of it pretty intense, do you feel like?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Oh, it was bad. You know, I most, most of the news outlets that I talked to, they make the biggest deal out of waterboarding. There's waterboarding right there. Um, I think that there were, there were techniques that were worse than waterboarding. Sleep deprivation.

• 1:07:23Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Is one. Um. And in terms of causing death, uh, the cold cell, you see sensory deprivation. That was also a terrible one.

• 1:07:32Theo Von?

  What is that like?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Sensory deprivation, they put you in in like an isolation tank. And you're surrounded by water. And you literally go crazy from the silence.

• 1:07:43Theo Von?

  So you're in like, uh, like one of those, uh, like kind of one of those places you can go pay to do and it's like quiet in there?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  But instead of being in there for an hour or two hours, you're in there for three weeks.

• 1:07:54Theo Von?

  Is there, are they playing music or?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's complete silence and darkness. Complete and total, like you're dead.

• 1:08:01Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Theo Von?

  I think Aaron Rodgers does that.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  I think that's nuts. But there were a couple that were worse than than waterboarding. The cold cell, we strip the prisoner naked. You chain him to an eye bolt in the ceiling so he can't lay or sit or get comfortable.

• 1:08:18Theo Von?

  Can you keep your underpants on?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. Because the idea is to humiliate them. Remember, in their religion, nakedness is shameful.

• 1:08:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Right? And nakedness in front of a woman. And we would have women interrogators stripped them naked, just to humiliate them. Yeah. You see this rectal feeding.

• 1:08:38Theo Von?

  Rectal feeding?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. What we did is we forced tubes up their asses and then with a pump, pumped hummus up there, just to insult their culture.

• 1:08:47Theo Von?

  No way. Who was coming up with these ideas?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  I'm sure the There were two contract psychologists at the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

• 1:08:57Theo Von?

  Is that true?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:08:58Theo Von?

  They came up with these plans?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we paid them 108 million dollars, the taxpayers' money for it.

• 1:09:02Theo Von?

  Wow. But when you look at, were these people criminals? I, see, this is what's

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. That's the thing, Theo. They've never been charged with a crime.

• 1:09:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  So charge them, if these guys are as bad as we say they are, charge them with a crime. If they're as bad as we say they are, find them guilty, sentence them to death, and execute them.

• 1:09:23Theo Von?

  We won't even charge people in our country who are committing a crime, a crime.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:27Theo Von?

  So I think that it's like, that's like a problem that's been across the board is like, what is the crime? Charge somebody with a crime?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:36Theo Von?

  It's not happening in our own country. Because this is so wild to hear about because it's like, you know, it's really, it's interesting, like, just as a person, right? You're like, okay, did these guys do something really bad to kill people in our country? Right? Were they doing really harmful stuff? Are they like?

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  And they were.

• 1:09:52Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. But they confessed through torture. So none of it's admissible. None of it.

• 1:09:58Theo Von?

  Right. Okay. So but then it's like, yeah, it's like, how do you solve something like that, you know, with more crime?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Well, there was a, there was a deal that was made during the Biden administration. So it was, it was like, the top three or four, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Ammar Al Baluch, Ramsey Bin Ashib, and somebody else. They agreed to plead guilty to terrorism. And what they got in exchange was life without parole. And a promise not to send them to Supermax in Colorado because they they said they couldn't deal with the cold. They wanted to stay in Cuba because it's warm. So life without parole. And Biden's Secretary of Defense. Vacated the deal and he says, you can't make a deal like that. I have to make that deal because I'm the Secretary of Defense. And it went through the courts and then the Biden administration. There it is right there.

• 1:10:59Theo Von?

  The Biden administration, Department of Defense. And who were these four guys? They were the men accused of plotting.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Itash, Mustafa Hawsawi.

• 1:11:09Theo Von?

  They were accused of plotting the September 11 terrorist attacks. Right? The Biden administration, Department of Defense, reached plea agreements with three prominent Al Qaeda figures whom you just mentioned. Accused of plotting the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, following intense political and public backlash, the administration moved to block the agreement and the courts later threw it out. So what happened to the guys? They're just still being held?

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  They're just still there. You see right there, the terms. They they agreed to plead guilty to murdering 2,976 people. In exchange for life without parole. Okay, so the deal was thrown out. So now what do they have? They have they have life without parole. That's the deal.

• 1:11:48Theo Von?

  Right. Same thing.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  It's the same thing.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  They're never going to be released.

• 1:11:53Theo Von?

  But why didn't we? What was the reason why? Oh, because the reaction from people?

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  It was it was really reaction from the Biden administration, from the Biden Defense Department.

• 1:12:02Theo Von?

  Well, this has 9/11 families too.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Well, the 9/11 families just want to chop everybody's head off. And I understand. I get it. I really do.

• 1:12:10Theo Von?

  It makes sense.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  I get it. But that's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. We're a country of laws. We can't just pretend that we're a country of laws, except when the laws aren't convenient for us.

• 1:12:21Theo Von?

  But if you kill enough people, it seems like you would face the death penalty.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yes, but this, you have the, you have to blame the CIA for that. If the CIA hadn't tortured these guys, they would all be, have been executed by now.

• 1:12:32Theo Von?

  It's inadmissible.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  It's all inadmissible.

• 1:12:34Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  They confessed everything.

• 1:12:36Theo Von?

  Understood.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  But it was all under torture. And so you can't do anything with them. Now, there's no evidence against them. None.

• 1:12:43Theo Von?

  What a, I can't even imagine what it's like to be some of those families and like, and just the drawn out of all of that and just...

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  It's been 24 years, 25 years in, in September.

• 1:12:55Theo Von?

  Let's get a little bit more current. Did you, oh, did you see that they just had the, like, they have those flotillas that are going to Gaza? Did you see that the Prime Minister of Ireland's sister was on one of them?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, the Irish hate the Israelis and the Israelis hate the Irish.

• 1:13:12Theo Von?

  Has that always been the case, you think?

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  No, only in the last eight or 10 years.

• 1:13:16Theo Von?

  Let me see this. Gaza aid flotilla activist home after torture ship nightmare. Scroll a little. Irish activists have claimed they were kidnapped and beaten by Israeli forces after their aid flotilla to Gaza was intercepted in international waters. Margaret Connolly, the sister of President Connolly, was among the emotional arrivals at Dublin Airport on Saturday. "They wanted us to suffer," she said. "None of them could look us in the eye. What a dehumanizing thing to do to men and women aged from 22 to 75." That's just wild. Imagine if like Obama's sister or...

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Can you imagine?

• 1:13:49Theo Von?

  Can't even imagine. I want to interview Greta Thunberg.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  That would be fun.

• 1:13:52Theo Von?

  It'd be cool, huh?

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Theo Von?

  I just would like to get to see what she's like. You know, I've never been around her. I just see, you just see like bits and clips of people.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:00Theo Von?

  So it'd be pretty fascinating. The Irish detainees were among hundreds of participants from other countries who were also detained when the latest iteration of the global Samud flotilla, flotilla, was stopped by Israeli forces in international waters. And a lot of these groups were trying to get there to bring aid to the people in Gaza. And then also, I think, to just document what was going on there.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:24Theo Von?

  They've had the largest killing of journalists

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:28Theo Von?

  in the history of time.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, of the world.

• 1:14:31Theo Von?

  In the history of the world.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. How are people not outraged? Have you heard of?

• 1:14:35Theo Von?

  I don't know if people have any feelings anymore. I don't know what's going on.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Have you heard of Shereen Abu Akhla?

• 1:14:40Theo Von?

  No, I couldn't even hear that. I don't even know how to, you know. I couldn't, I couldn't do it if I, yeah.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Shereen Abu Akla was an American citizen and she was the top journalist on Al Jazeera. So, um.

• 1:14:54Theo Von?

  Bring her up.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Shereen. Shereen Abu Akla.

• 1:14:57Theo Von?

  Abu Akla.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  So, again, American citizen, she goes to Israel and she's covering the, uh, the fighting between the Israelis and Palestinians. I think it was in the, in the West Bank. There she is. Yeah, in the West Bank. So she's wearing a bulletproof vest that says press and she's wearing a helmet that says press. And she's, she's taking cover behind a tree and Israeli sniper shot her in the face.

• 1:15:21Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  And killed her, killed her instantly. So, her funeral is held a couple of days later in a Greek Orthodox church in the West Bank. The IDF raids the church, beats the pallbearers and they drop the, the coffin.

• 1:15:37Theo Von?

  You're lying.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Isn't that awful?

• 1:15:39Theo Von?

  Let me see. The manner of her death and the subsequent vile, violent disruption of her funeral drew widespread international condemnation of Israel. During her funeral procession, the Israel police attacked the pallbearers at the St. Joseph's Hospital in East Jerusalem with batons and stun grenades. The hospital itself was also stormed by Israeli police officers who assaulted patients and threw stun grenades.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  What is? An American citizen.

• 1:16:02Theo Von?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  And we, and we didn't say anything.

• 1:16:05Theo Von?

  We didn't say anything. Well, most of our media won't say a lot of stuff about this.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:10Theo Von?

  What do you think's going on? It feels like this is almost like, it almost feels like, um, like the Twilight Zone. Does that make any sense to you?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Yes, very much.

• 1:16:20Theo Von?

  Well, as someone who's seen like a lot of like psy-ops and things that go on, what's going on here? Like, like, does Israel have like an end goal? Like, uh, like I have a lot of Jewish friends that are great people and stuff like that, right?

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  And one of my best friends is an IDF Special Forces veteran.

• 1:16:36Theo Von?

  No way.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Theo Von?

  How does he feel about this sort of thing?

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  He's ashamed. He's ashamed. He's like, we didn't used to be like this.

• 1:16:43Theo Von?

  I just don't under like, is there some goal of Israel that's a bigger goal, do you think? Do you think some-

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Well, the goal might be in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. It integrates for the first time ever, the Israeli and American militaries. So they become like one military. It's like, who, who thought of that?

• 1:17:06Theo Von?

  Oh, my friend Ro Khanna actually is putting together-

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:17:11Theo Von?

  He's trying to put together a bill, I think, to challenge this. I'm not-

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:17:15Theo Von?

  And I don't know if the term is a bill. I'm not sure. So, you know, I'm more of an emotional guy than I am.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  I like and respect Ro Khanna. I hope he runs for president.

• 1:17:25Theo Von?

  He's a neat guy. We had him on here and it was, it was cool. I think he's a, I think he's a really interesting guy. I think he's brave. Um, I like the stuff that he's brave enough to do.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  See, and I say the same thing about Tucker Carlson.

• 1:17:38Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  I think Tucker, I'll tell you something about Tucker is the Tucker that you see on the screen, that's Tucker in real life.

• 1:17:46Theo Von?

  I agree.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  He's, he's the sweetest guy. He means exactly what he says. He doesn't hold anything back. Totally honest.

• 1:17:55Theo Von?

  Well, I think it's like, you're just a human being who lives in a country-

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:59Theo Von?

  And you're supposed to have these like things of what means something. And then you start to see all this stuff that you're like, well, this goes against everything that I've learned.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:07Theo Von?

  This goes against like, especially like you grow up, like you see like every other book at the airport is about the Holocaust for my entire life. So it's like every time you're getting on a plane, you're grabbing one and you're learning about it and you're like, you're, you, you see these things that are wrong or that are like, you know, and then you see this thing happening like, well, how is this? And then if you mention like, and people act like, I don't know. It's almost like you feel like you're being just gaslit and then your media won't cover a lot of it.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:18:38Theo Von?

  So I don't know what's going, I don't know. And I don't know what's going on.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  I was on, I was on the Pierce Morgan Show not too long ago. I go on every couple of months and-

• 1:18:46Theo Von?

  I've never been on his show. What's that guy like?

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Oh, he's, he's a good guy too. And I have to admit-

• 1:18:50Theo Von?

  Is he pretty tall or not?

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  I haven't met him in person, actually, only on Zoom.

• 1:18:54Theo Von?

  Always wondered how tall he was. Somebody said he was like 5'5", dude.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:18:58Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  That would surprise. 6'1"?

• 1:19:01Theo Von?

  6'1"?

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. That makes more sense.

• 1:19:02Theo Von?

  Maybe the exchange rate on him or something.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the exchange rate. So, um, I was on his show and I was with, um- Scott Horton, who's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. Um, and Alan Dershowitz and Danny Ayalon, General Danny Ayalon. Um, for former Israeli general. And there we are, eh, there we are. So, uh,

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  so when you're on with Dershowitz, Dershowitz never shuts his mouth. That's it. That was what I was gonna say.

• 1:19:35Theo Von?

  Let me see, former CIA agent John Kira Kira Ku, uh, believes Jeffrey.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that wasn't it. That's Jeffrey Epstein. Uh, no, it was about, it was about Hamas in Gaza. And he asked me, cause I had said the least on this episode. And he said, do you believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization? And I said, I said, yes, if the point was on October 7th was to attack civilians. The definition of terrorism is the act of using violence to instill terror in a civilian population. So that's the definition of terrorism. So yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization. He said, uh, do you believe October 7th was a terrorist attack? And I said, yes. He said, then what are you doing on this show? I was supposed to be in the like anti-Israel, I guess, or whatever. And I said, Pierce, you can't have as a policy, just kill everybody.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Women, children, the elderly, wipe out every hospital, every school, every apartment block. That's genocide.

• 1:20:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Somebody's gotta say it.

• 1:20:35Theo Von?

  Yeah. I mean, it's scary. And then, and then, and then to think, how would our country be okay right now? With us joining military forces with a group that's doing that?

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  I'm sure not okay. And then you have to ask, what about these people like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham? Lindsey Graham said the other day, a week ago, that until I breathe my last breath, I will stand with Israel. Why? Why?

• 1:21:01Theo Von?

  Oh, that dude's just a newt rock me a fucking bullshit.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Oh my god, and Cruz is just as bad. And these clowns from Florida that wear IDF uniforms under the floor of the house, they should be arrested.

• 1:21:11Theo Von?

  I didn't even see that.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  It was Congressman Fine, Randy Fine.

• 1:21:16Theo Von?

  But you're like an eight, you're supposed to have like a read on these types of things? Like, what do you think's going on?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  I think it's AIPAC's money. I think it's two things. It's AIPAC's money, millions upon millions and millions of dollars in American politics. So they have an inordinate influence on our political system. And AIPAC is the only group of its kind that does not have to register as a foreign agent.

• 1:21:42Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  You know, I've made a, I've made a point on a couple of podcasts. Back in 2008, I got a very small contract, just, I don't know, five, six thousand bucks, to write four op-eds in support of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce. So I wrote these op-eds, "Oh, you should do business in Abu Dhabi. It's really business friendly. They love Americans, everybody makes money." Alright, send. I had to register as a foreign agent.

• 1:22:10Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Because I was, uh, I was, I was publishing in support of a foreign entity.

• 1:22:17Theo Von?

  Interesting.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  What the heck is AIPAC doing 24/7? How come they don't have to register as foreign agents?

• 1:22:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, and I, I think it seems like we have, our, uh, our people, our government officials are afraid to stand up to them. I don't know why.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  They're very afraid. And then you have these morons like John Fetterman.

• 1:22:32Theo Von?

  But why do you think they're afraid?

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  They don't want to be primaried.

• 1:22:35Theo Von?

  Like, even if you get primaried, but like, you would, eventually, somebody will win, right? You're like...

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yes, but, but who among them has the courage to be the first? I mean, Massey stood up. Massey took it. I, I saw him about a week before the election.

• 1:22:51Theo Von?

  But he can't be the only person in there.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, but she didn't have the guts. She quit. She quit halfway through her term.

• 1:22:59Theo Von?

  What do you think they're compromising, these people? Like, what are they saying to them? Are they saying, like, something bad is gonna hap- like, what do you suggest?

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  No, they're saying you will never work in politics ever again. We will hound you for the rest of your career.

• 1:23:12Theo Von?

  Then if you lose, then what do you have any- then you have nothing to lose then?

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  That's what you and I say. You and I would say- would stand up.

• 1:23:18Theo Von?

  Yeah. Bring up the thing about the- just the government, just like the government's being interacted, those two are- that, right? The House Armed Services Committee has unveiled its proposed 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which would see a record-shattering $1.15 trillion spent on the US military over the next fiscal year. Among the bill's many provisions is Section 224, entitled the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. The provision would bring the US and Israel into an unprecedented partnership covering technology sharing, the co-production of weapon systems, and bilateral research and development across multiple domains of warfare, including biotech, autonomous systems, AI, cyber warfare, and more. Well, this could just mean that we are, uh...

• 1:24:03Theo Von?

  we're employing technology that they have, right? Is there any more specifics about this?

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  It looks closer than that. I'll tell you what, if- if even-

• 1:24:10Theo Von?

  And I'm not saying it isn't. Look, it definitely scares me. I mean, I don't want to be involved with a country that's doing something like that. And I don't think that's crazy for me to say that either.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Even if it's just this, um, that means they're not gonna have to steal the 2% of defense technology that we don't give them. I'll give you an example. When I was still there, we were developing the F-35. So, they came to us, and they said, "We want the F-35. We wanna be the first ones to have the F-35." We said, "Great, we're gonna have- we're gonna give you the F-35. We're gonna call it the F-35i for Israel." And it's gonna have just a barely, slightly degraded, um, avionics system, just in case, God forbid, you know, it doesn't get shot down, and then the Chinese and the Russians get it, and then they can steal the avionics. They said, "No, not good enough. We want the- we want the F-35, the same one that you guys fly." In the meantime, the Emirates came to us, and they said, "We want the F-35."

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  We said, "Great, we're gonna give you the F-35E, we're gonna call it, for Emirates, and it's gonna have just a slightly degraded avionics package. Same thing we're giving the Israelis." They said, "Fine, we'll take it." The Israelis- Then tasked their spies with stealing whatever the downgrade was in the in the avionics so that they could re-upgrade it once they took delivery of the F-35. Well, now, we're just gonna share everything with them. We'll just give them the F-35.

• 1:25:29Theo Von?

  But can you like, can you fault a country? Like, it's kind of interesting, cuz I think if you if you think that we're playing like that the, I guess I always felt like we were out of the colonization era.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  I know, I'm with you.

• 1:25:42Theo Von?

  And and

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  And I know what you're getting at.

• 1:25:44Theo Von?

  And so it's like, you can't fault a country really for just trying to survive.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  And I don't, I don't.

• 1:25:50Theo Von?

  And I'm not saying you are.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:25:52Theo Von?

  I'm thinking out loud.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  I'm agreeing with you.

• 1:25:54Theo Von?

  But let me finish this sentence real quick.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:25:56Theo Von?

  Sorry, John. But yeah, you can't fault like, you know, if a country's just trying to survive and they're good at it and better at it than others, then it's like, that has to be respected in in some senses, for sure.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Agreed. I don't fault the Israelis for doing this. If I were the Prime Minister of Israel, I would do the same thing when it comes to acquiring defense technology. I fault the US government, and it makes not one whit of difference if there's a Democrat in the White House or a Republican in the White House. We don't stand up to the Israelis.

• 1:26:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  You know, I will say Reagan did in the so-called year of the spy, when Jonathan Pollard was, uh, no, actually, it wasn't Reagan by then, it was Clinton, wasn't it? Clinton stood up and said, "We're gonna prosecute this guy Pollard. He got 30 years, and he did every single day of the 30 years."

• 1:26:46Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Peaked in 84.

• 1:26:49Theo Von?

  Jonathan Pollard.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  So when was he arrested? 85. Okay, so it was Reagan. It was Reagan. He did every single day of the 30 years. And then when he got out of prison, Miriam Adelson, or not Miriam Adelson, her husband, it was, uh, what's his name? Adelson, uh, the the king of Las Vegas. Sent his private jet, the jet took Pollard to Israel. Netanyahu met him at the airport, he kissed the ground, and in an interview, Sheldon Adelson, in an interview, he urged American Jews to take up arms against the American government.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  And then Huckabee meets with him and welcomes him into the American Embassy. I would have shot him if he had come into the American Embassy and I were the ambassador.

• 1:27:40Theo Von?

  Yeah, I just don't understand. I think it makes it like, I don't know. I think a lot of people are looking for guidance right now.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  I think you're right.

• 1:27:48Theo Von?

  If you're a regular person who we're just trying to get through the week. We want to believe in our country. We get scared that our taxes are going towards like violent things and evil things. That's the thing. It starts to feel like there's something evil going on.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not like we're right and everybody else in the rest of the world is wrong. You know, you look at these votes-

• 1:28:08Theo Von?

  I don't know if I'm right about anything.

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  You look at these votes at the UN General Assembly and it's everybody in the world voting yes and voting no is the United States, I'm serious about this because I served at the UN. It's the United States, Israel, Costa Rica, and Palau. A little island with 30,000 people in the Pacific. That's it. And the whole rest of the world is voting the other way.

• 1:28:33Theo Von?

  You've talked, like you've worked in counterterrorism. Is it weird, like terrorism is such an interesting term because it's like, at a certain point, it feels like we're chasing the tail of the dog we let loose, kind of. Does that make any sense even?

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that. I might steal that.

• 1:28:52Theo Von?

  Yeah, steal it. I don't even know exactly what it means, but, um, you know, they just had a, they, I saw something the other day. It was like, uh, $300 billion to rebuild, um,

• 1:29:05Theo Von?

  parts of, I don't think it's Iran, but I think it's Libya. Can you look that up? 300 billion to rebuild parts of Libya?

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  That we blew up.

• 1:29:14Theo Von?

  That we just blew up.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:15Theo Von?

  So right here, it says a truce, $300 billion investment plan in Hormuz. What's in the deal draft that can end US-Iran war? US and Iran mediators are now engaged in high stakes negotiations aimed at ending the conflict despite a fragile ceasefire in the place and months of turmoil in the Middle East. The possible truce plan includes key bargaining points between these two sides, including a $300 billion investment package and the crucial Strait of Hormuz issue, making the agreement extremely closely watched for. However, one of the biggest developments emerging from the discussions is a proposed multi-billion dollar reconstruction and investment package that could fundamentally reshape Iran's economy if a final deal is reached.

• 1:29:58Theo Von?

  So it's just why, it's like, we just went there and got involved in this. I don't know if this is a taxpayer thing.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  God, I hope not.

• 1:30:07Theo Von?

  But just the whole thing is like, uh, I don't know. You start to feel so defeated sometimes.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, isn't that the truth?

• 1:30:14Theo Von?

  And you start to feel like your vote isn't gonna do anything.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:17Theo Von?

  That's the scary part. And then part of this feels like a long-term psy-op. Like, it's a slow weakening of the values, like, okay, let's put things in this society over time that'll like, you know, tear apart the American family and like, that'll like, poison people and let's, do you think there, like, there's big psy-ops like that going on? Like, let's put COVID out there so that, uh, people are separate from each other and, um, and that people can't go to meetings and meet up and so you start to deteriorate the value of human connection and, uh, let's pu- let's make food so that it's just poisoning people and that it's, um, you know, that it's, it's just gonna, you know, it's gonna make people sick or let's make healthcare so it's not, there's no real way, uh, besides

• 1:31:02Theo Von?

  extreme stress that you have to go through if you even have to make a claim, like, you know? Do you think that, uh, some of that is just corporate greed and stuff? Or do you think some of that's a longer-term psy-op by like, bigger powers out there?

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  I don't, I, I don't think it's a part of a bigger psy-op.

• 1:31:19Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Um, but I do believe firmly that it's mostly corporate greed. You, you just reminded me of something I was, excuse me, I saw recently. Um, and it was this experiment that, I don't know, somebody did, I saw it on YouTube, where they put a, they, they put a homemade, um, hamburger on the ground and they put a, a McDonald's Quarter Pounder on the ground and then they photographed it, you know, over the course of days and then weeks and then months.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Bugs come, ants come, they go to the hamburger, they tear the bun down. Mostly they went for the meat, but they end up, you know, a week later, it's just a spot on the sidewalk. Even bugs won't touch a McDonald's hamburger. And then months later, it's, it looks like it just came out of the package.

• 1:32:10Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  And Europeans can't understand how we eat like that.

• 1:32:15Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Like their laws are different. McDonald's can't do that in, in European countries.

• 1:32:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, let's look at the ingredients right here, the difference between McDonald's Europe and McDonald's America.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  10 plus ingredients versus four ingredients.

• 1:32:29Theo Von?

  Wow, so the US has 10 plus ingredients and yeah, Europe has four ingredients in the US, potatoes, vegetable oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor, wheat and milk derivatives, dextrose, sodium acid, phi- pyroso- pyrophosphate and salt.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Pyrophosphate.

• 1:32:49Theo Von?

  Pyrophosphate, thank you. And then Europe has potatoes, non-hydrogenated oil, rape cedar sunflower and dextrose.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  And look below that, contains hydrogenated oils, beef flavoring and TBHQ, which are banned, restricted in EU.

• 1:33:06Theo Von?

  These are for the french fries. It says, contains hydrogenated oils, beef flavoring, TBHQ. And then it says for Europe, that those are, those exactly things are banned and restricted in the EU. What about the burger? Yeah, what does it say? The US beef is 100% pure beef, the additives, several hundred additives.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Several hundred additives?

• 1:33:31Theo Von?

  Prohibited in EU.

• 1:33:35Theo Von?

  And let me see, Europe says 100% beef from British Irish farmers, no hormone treated beef. And then the additives are stricter, quality control and fewer additives.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Look at the Big Mac sauce, the special sauce on the Big Mac contains HFCS, xanthan gum, propylene glycol algenate and caramel color.

• 1:33:58Theo Von?

  What the fuck? Why? I just like, at some, at some point you have to be like, well, what happened? You know? And while the Europe Big Mac sauce contains simpler ingredients list and 40 fewer calories, it says.

• 1:34:13Theo Von?

  The differences are EU food regulations are much stricter. Uh, customer preferences and local supply chains vary. Um, and the US fries would likely be illegal to sell in Europe due to ingredient restrictions.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen what's in the McRib? I tell you what, I, I loved those McRibs.

• 1:34:30Theo Von?

  Well, the black community goes bonkers when they come back. I know that.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  You rush to McDonald's for McRib, but then when you see what's in it, you're like, oh my God.

• 1:34:37Theo Von?

  Well, yeah, dude. Anybody thinking it has anything to do with a fucking animal, the McRib? But at a certain point, we are also guilty.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are.

• 1:34:46Theo Von?

  It's like, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  It's our own laziness.

• 1:34:49Theo Von?

  It is.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  And we give in and we just go do it.

• 1:34:52Theo Von?

  That's a big part of it. So that's what's interesting too right now. It's like, there's a real test of like, what do I, you know, how much do I want to stand up for myself? And, but then also how much can I? Some people are trapped financially by certain abilities and restrictions.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Food deserts.

• 1:35:05Theo Von?

  Yeah. So it's just kind of interesting and it's tough. Um, and I don't want to get all super dour. Um, what, uh, do you feel like there are a lot of, uh, foreign agents in America right now?

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. In fact, there's an advertisement that you see on the sides of buses around Washington, saying that, and, and it's the, the advertisement is to visit the spy museum, that there are between 10 and 15,000 foreign intelligence officers in Washington DC.

• 1:35:36Theo Von?

  In Washington DC.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  More than anywhere else on the planet.

• 1:35:40Theo Von?

  Wow. Do you think that's real?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  There's a spy on this bus.

• 1:35:44Theo Von?

  Oh, that's what that advertisement says?

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  It's part of the, thank you Edward Snowden. Um, it's part of the advertising campaign. Yeah.

• 1:35:52Theo Von?

  And is the campaign to, to what? To hire more of them?

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  No, no, to get people to go to the spy museum.

• 1:35:58Theo Von?

  Oh, it's to get them to go to the spy museum. Dude, I've been in the spy museum before. It's awesome.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:36:02Theo Von?

  Spy museum is so good.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really great. I agree.

• 1:36:05Theo Von?

  Times were different back in the day when it was like, you'd like be, like using a secret pen or like you'd have a homing pigeon with like a little backpack on.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Now it's all so crazy sophisticated. I was just telling somebody the other day. About the CIA trained cats to wander onto the Soviet Embassy compound with collars that had listening devices on them, just to see what the Russians were saying when they come out of the embassy. But that didn't work because you can't train the cats. So they trained pigeons and they put little listening devices around their little pigeon feet and they would land on the window sills. But the thing is that the Russians had double pane glass and they were piping music in between the two panes of glass. So the pigeons couldn't hear anything.

• 1:36:52Theo Von?

  No way. What a game. Like what a game of like espionage, huh?

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, so much fun.

• 1:36:58Theo Von?

  That's so. See, that kind of stuff is so exciting. Now it feels like, I don't know, it feels like we're entering something like a surveillance state or.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  We are. We are. It's not like the old days. You know, one of the best recruitments I ever made, Theo, I was doing surveillance on this guy for a week. I thought, you know, this guy would be an interesting target. He doesn't have, he doesn't make much money.

• 1:37:18Theo Von?

  Oh, you were doing surveillance on a guy?

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  On a guy.

• 1:37:22Theo Von?

  And what does that mean? You're doing surveillance here? Like you're wandering around in the distance?

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Yes, that's exactly what it means. Yeah, you just wander around the distance, watch him every day, see where he goes, what he does, where he hangs out, who he talks to. His, his wife had left him, but I noticed he walked his dog every morning at 6:30.

• 1:37:38Theo Von?

  Dang.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Every morning he'd leave the house at 6:30 and he would walk across the park, the dog would do his business and then he'd walk back. So I asked in the office, I said, hey, does anybody have a dog? And one of the women's like, yeah, I have a dog. I said, can I borrow your dog for a week? She says, for what? I said, I want to, I want to accidentally bump into this guy. And while he's walking his dog, I want to walk your dog. And then I meet him and I'm going to say hello. And then the next day I'm going to say hello again. Then the third day I'm going to invite him to lunch and whatever. It was the best recruitment I ever made in my entire career. And we bonded over the dogs. And it wasn't even my dog. At the end of the week, I just gave her her dog back.

• 1:38:15Theo Von?

  And did you learn something from the guy?

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  This guy was like every case officer's dream recruitment.

• 1:38:24Theo Von?

  And what recruitment means, somebody that you're just, you're get, trying to gain intel from?

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  The, the person, you, you pitch him, you say, look, I'm with the CIA.

• 1:38:32Theo Von?

  Oh, you're pay, you told him that?

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I'm with the CIA, I know who you are, I know what you do, and I'm willing to pay you very handsomely to give it to me. And he's like, how handsome he is handsome. And I gave him a number.

• 1:38:47Theo Von?

  What's that number, ballpark?

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Well, this is 25 years ago. And then it was $5,000 a month, it would probably be 20,000 a month now. And, um.

• 1:38:57Theo Von?

  Good money.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  And he wanted all of his expenses. I said, what expenses do you think you're gonna have?

• 1:39:01Theo Von?

  Yeah. What, dog shots for the dog?

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  I know, right? So, oh, he nickel and dimed to me the expenses. And my boss would always say, just, just give it to him, just give it to him, because the information was so great. So.

• 1:39:13Theo Von?

  Information about what?

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  His country.

• 1:39:16Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  He worked in the embassy.

• 1:39:18Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Of his country. And, uh. I gave him a disposable cellphone, and back then, you had to buy these little cards at the convenience store, and you scratch them off, and you put the number in your phone, and it gives you units, you know?

• 1:39:31Theo Von?

  I remember that.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  And, um. So the phone was only supposed to be used to call me. He used it for everything. He'd give me like $800 phone bills at the end of the month. And I'm like, come on, man, come on.

• 1:39:44Theo Von?

  That's awesome.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Five grand already.

• 1:39:46Theo Von?

  That dude's a friggin' snake, I love that.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, my boss just, just pay it, just pay it.

• 1:39:52Theo Von?

  Acoustic Kitty.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Oh, it's an, oh.

• 1:39:57Theo Von?

  Acoustic Kitty was a central intelligence agency project launched by the Directorate of Science and Technology in the 1960s. It was intended to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon implanted a microphone in the cat's ear canal, a small radio transmitter at the base of its skull, dear God, and a thin wire into its fur. This would allow the cat to innocuously record and transmit sound from its surroundings. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  It sees a bird.

• 1:40:32Theo Von?

  Had to be addressed in another operation.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  20 million dollars.

• 1:40:36Theo Von?

  20 million dollars, dude. And that's your Somali fraud right there. The first acoustic hidden mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. The cat was released nearby but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately. However, this was disputed. The equipment was taken out of the cat, the cat was re-sewn for a second time and lived a long and happy life afterwards. That sounds like a cover up.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  Nothing to see here, folks.

• 1:41:06Theo Von?

  Just a cat that has call waiting, you know, that's fucking insane, dude.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  I worked with this one guy who was going to a denied area. A denied area is a place where CIA people just can't go, right? But he looked kinda ethnic and he could fit into, you know, whatever, the culture. And so I said, buddy, aren't you afraid of, uh, like being kidnapped and then we just never see you again? And he said, yeah, they offered to implant a, a, a chip, a beacon, a ping in my butt crack, he says. And I said, nah, leave my butt crack alone.

• 1:41:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. That's fair. I think that should be our national anthem.

• 1:41:50Theo Von?

  How weary do people have to be of, uh, being spied upon today? Do you think like, there's a lot of these new like data center projects? And stuff like that's going on with that. First, let's talk, yeah, real quick about the data centers. What do you think is really going on? Because if you look at the, the size of these places, like, we don't need that much data. Like, we're already using our phones, we're already have like, um, televisions, like, you know, there's already like a lot of stuff being stored on servers. How are we jumping to a level where we need that? That's what I want to know.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I have to agree. Besides the fact that they use massive amounts of water. And oddly enough, they're located in a lot of states that don't have a ton of water, like Texas.

• 1:42:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Or you go out to, uh, Loudoun County, Virginia. Okay, we have enough water, but Loudoun County, Virginia, you drive for miles and miles and they're just these never-ending gigantic complexes of data centers.

• 1:42:44Theo Von?

  The proposed Stratos project in Utah is a massive 40,000 acre.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  There's no water in Utah.

• 1:42:50Theo Von?

  A 40,000 acre AI data center campus.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Two and a half times larger than Manhattan.

• 1:42:57Theo Von?

  Yeah. I wonder how long the actual data, how big the-

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  And, and just the data center requires more than double the current energy consumption of the entire state of Utah.

• 1:43:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 1:43:09Theo Von?

  I mean, that's unbelievable. What do you think's really going on there? Do you have any intel about it?

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  You have to assume that this is intel related because look at the, the companies that are involved. We're talking about Palantir and Nvidia and Abraxis and all these, these big companies that either took CIA investments to get started as seed money or, um, or are staffed by retired senior CIA officers. They're not doing it for their health. Why is this, so is the CIA now is spying on our own people? Oh yeah, that's what Ed Snowden warned us about. Yeah. Without Ed Snowden's revelations, we wouldn't have any idea that NSA and CIA were spying on Americans, which is not just illegal, it's a part of NSA's charter that it may not spy on Americans.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  And this place in Utah, um, he and Julian Assange told us about Utah. This new compound in Utah that NSA has built has enough memory, storage space for every phone call, every email and every text message from every American for the next 500 years.

• 1:44:17Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:44:19Theo Von?

  Just that building?

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:20Theo Von?

  Then why do they need all these buildings?

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, why? They're everywhere. What are they collecting?

• 1:44:25Theo Von?

  I'm not sure. And that's it. It's like, what, it must be, it's gotta be all of our information. What would you do right now? Is there any way that people can protect themselves? Do you know?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  It's almost impossible now. I, I wrote a series of books during COVID for Skyhorse Publishing, The CIA Insider's Guides to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection, Lying and Lie Detection, and Disappearing and Living Off the Grid. They put them together and they're republishing them in the next month, I guess, um, as one volume, CIA Skills, Tactics and The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics and Techniques.

• 1:45:04Theo Von?

  There we go.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  But when it comes to protecting yourself from, from, you know, the data state, you gotta go Eric Rudolph or Unabomber and just own no technology at all. It's the only way to protect yourself. Otherwise, you're going to be scooped up in all this. Now, the odd thing is, according to Ed Snowden, uh-

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  NSA, CIA, other governmental organizations are scooping up all this data and they're just holding it. Why? Why are they holding it? Now, time was, really until the immediate post 9/11 period, where if the government wanted your information, they had to go to a federal judge and say, "We want Theo Von's information and this is the reason we want it." And the judge had to say, "Okay, that's a legitimate reason. I'll sign the warrant." Now, they just write something called a national security letter. They give it to your provider and they say, "Give us everything you have on Theo Von." And they just turn it over. Or they go to these new data centers and just put your name in, your information, and everything

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  pops up. They don't even, you don't have any legal protections. They just take whatever they want.

• 1:46:17Theo Von?

  And that's legal now, they can do that?

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  And it's legal now.

• 1:46:20Theo Von?

  How'd that become legal?

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  In the National Defense Act of 2016. National Defense Authorization Act of 2016.

• 1:46:28Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which also, this is a pet peeve of mine, that nobody knows about. It also, for the first time in American history, allowed the American government to propagandize the American people. It was always illegal for our government to propagandize us.

• 1:46:44Theo Von?

  What does it mean?

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  Well, for example, the Voice of America, that's our government's propaganda news outlet. And we beam it overseas so everybody gets the official US point of view. Okay. Back in the 80s, the Reagan administration came up with these two broadcasters called Radio Marti and TV Marti to beam at Cuba. The Cubans tried to jam them all the time, but what they mostly are used for is to broadcast baseball games in Spanish, which the Cubans love.

• 1:47:19Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  I flew down to Cuba to do a study. I did a study for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when I was the chief investigator there. And...

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Nobody watches TV Marti. You can only actually get it in the waiting room of the US consulate.

• 1:47:37Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  So if you're there to apply for a visa, you can watch a soap opera in Spanish that's American propaganda. Nobody cares. Radio, people like listening to baseball. So Dish Network, when it began, when it began selling services in Florida, found that there was this just narrow swath along the shore on the, on the west coast of Florida where you could pick up TV Marti. That's illegal. You can't propagandize the American people.

• 1:48:11Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  As Americans, we're not allowed to watch our own government's propaganda. So instead of telling Dish Network, "Well, you're gonna have to like move your satellite, or do something, or pixelate it, or whatever," so, "No, no, no, we'll change the law." And so in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016, the Obama administration said, "No, we can propagandize Americans now."

• 1:48:35Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  And so now, radio, TV are no problem.

• 1:48:38Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Theo Von?

  But, I mean, we're always propagandizing. I mean, people put out propaganda all the time.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I went to Yemen in 2011, when I was with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, my fifth trip to Yemen. Every time I'd go to Yemen, it's worse than the previous time. So, I have a meeting with a defense attache, and he was so proud of this thing that he was doing, this PSYOP. I hate that word. PSYOP. I said, "Sure, what's your, what's your PSYOP?" And he goes, "We're funding a radio station here modeled on NPR, and it plays American jazz, and then it has a call-in show so young Yemeni guys can call in and talk about the jazz." I'm like, "What the fuck are you talking about? That's a terrible idea. Nobody's gonna

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  listen to that." And nobody did, and they shut it down after a year. But that's, that's what we're doing?

• 1:49:32Theo Von?

  But what was the goal of it even?

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  To make people pro-American, because they would be like, "Oh, Americans have jazz."

• 1:49:38Theo Von?

  Oh, I see what you mean.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna be pro-American now. It's like, what are you thinking? You, you sit there and think-

• 1:49:42Theo Von?

  That sounds like money laundering.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, seriously.

• 1:49:44Theo Von?

  That's what it sounds like. Um, how do I know I can believe you about anything, kinda? People ask you that all the time?

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. People ask me all the time. Um-

• 1:49:52Theo Von?

  Because who would believe anybody that's ex-CI, who would even, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Oh, that's such a thing with me. You know, generally, I don't read the chats. Anywhere, right?

• 1:50:02Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Everybody I talk to, at your level, you, Tucker Carlson, you know, Patrick Bet-David, Rogan, whomever, they never read the chats. Sometimes I can't help it, and I'll scan them. The only time I ever respond is when people say, "Want CIA? Always CIA."

• 1:50:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  It's like, moron, you thought, you thought all of that all up on your own?

• 1:50:28Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's true, that's true.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  So I said, I said to one guy, I said, "You know what? Let me call Ed Snowden and the Sons of Philip Agee and Ray McGovern and tell them that you think they're all still in the CIA."

• 1:50:41Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  So I went to prison for telling the truth, and

• 1:50:46Theo Von?

  That's a good point.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  I would do it again in a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. Nobody else has gone to prison for ratting out the CIA and its illegal, you know, programs. I was proud to do it.

• 1:50:59Theo Von?

  That's a good answer.

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:51:01Theo Von?

  It's a really good answer. If you, look, here it is, I can say this, if you really went to jail and everything, then it's a great answer, and if you didn't, I believe you, I believe you, but also there's a little part of me that's like, if he didn't, then that's fucking even colder that he's making it up and living it. That's the most CIA shit.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  That would be pretty intense.

• 1:51:21Theo Von?

  But that's what I'm saying.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, nobody in the world hates me as much as my ex-wife does.

• 1:51:27Theo Von?

  From spending all that time in the CIA or in jail? At least jail, you have a good excuse.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  But she came every month with the kids and visited me in jail for two years, yeah.

• 1:51:35Theo Von?

  And so why does she hate you, then?

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that's, that's all, yeah, post-

• 1:51:39Theo Von?

  Another story?

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Post, yeah, I'm actually prohibited by court order from answering that question.

• 1:51:45Theo Von?

  Well, that's, I think that's amazing that she did that and brought your kids to do it.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  She was, she was great, she was great.

• 1:51:50Theo Von?

  A lot of wives, I mean, I think that's, I can't even imagine, it's a tough thing for families, especially if you had young children.

• 1:51:58Theo Von?

  Kudos to her for that.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:01Theo Von?

  Was being in prison kind of fun?

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  Um, fun.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  No, I, no, I wouldn't say fun.

• 1:52:11Theo Von?

  Like, what was kinda cool about it? I've always wanted to go to jail.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  You know, there, there's this old saying that you don't go to jail to make friends. And I made some lifelong friends in jail. Um, mostly named Gambino, Lucchese, Banano, yeah.

• 1:52:27Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Genovese.

• 1:52:28Theo Von?

  So, a lot of good storytellers in there, I bet.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  Oh, listen, those guys were so honorable. I learned so much from those guys in just 23 months.

• 1:52:39Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Uh, lessons I'll carry with me forever. Real honor. It's funny, the Italians were the smallest, they, they call them gangs in prison. The Italians weren't a gang. This is, I'll, I'll use the word gang just for the purpose of this response. They were the smallest gang in the prison, yet commanded the highest level of respect.

• 1:52:59Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:00Theo Von?

  More than the blacks and the Latinos?

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  The blacks and Latinos were always at, at each other's throats and they had, like, for example, it was Crips and Bloods. And there was this uneasy peace between them, just because it's not worth upsetting the apple cart. And everybody goes to solitary and then gets spread out all over the country. For the Latinos, it was far more complicated, because it was burachos, norteños, Latin Kings, MS-13, um, Mexican Mafia, and then the individual cartels. So, overall, there's one gigantic Hispanic prison gang called Pisces. And then within Pisces are all the different divisions.

• 1:53:41Theo Von?

  Gosh.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the Pisces, if you were Hispanic, you were automatically in Pisces whether you liked it or not. And you had to work out every single day.

• 1:53:51Theo Von?

  Oh, that's pretty good.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  For the coming race war with the blacks.

• 1:53:53Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  Right. And the whites are like, uh, we have nothing to do with this.

• 1:53:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, I just wanna, I would just wanna do it just to get in shape, but...

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:02Theo Von?

  Sometimes you need motivation.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  We had, we had Aryan Brotherhood.

• 1:54:06Theo Von?

  What's that? What are they doing? What are they up to?

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  You know, Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is far more violent than Aryan Brotherhood. And they're not, it says there right there, they're not connected. Um, I never met anybody from the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Aryan Brotherhood, at a low-security prison, just wants to sorta, you know, go along to get along.

• 1:54:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. You stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. My very first day in prison, my very first hour in prison... When the, when the guard dropped me off in my cell, the only thing he said to me, the whole time I was, you know, checking in and getting processed was if somebody comes into your cell uninvited, that's an act of aggression. And I said, great, thank you. I've been here 40 minutes. I'm gonna get my ass kicked now. Sure enough, as soon as he left, these two guys walked into my cell, just walked right in. One of them had a swastika that took up his entire neck and then came up onto his face. And the other one had fuck you tattooed on his eyelids.

• 1:55:07Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. That checked. I mean, that's, yeah.

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  And so I jump up, I go, what do you want? Cause I thought, you know, if I'm going down, I'm taking one of them down with me at least. What do you want? And the, the one with the swastika, he says, you the new guy? I go, yeah, so?

• 1:55:22Theo Von?

  This is like, this sounds like a story from like the 1940s, John.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  It was, I said in my second book, prison is a combination of seventh grade, the Lord of the Flies and a mental institution. And it's set in the 1950s.

• 1:55:38Theo Von?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  So I go, what do you want? He's, he goes, you the new guy? I said, yeah, so? And he goes, I'm standing there like this. He goes, you a [BLEEP]? And I go, no, I'm not a [BLEEP]. He, he says.

• 1:55:50Theo Von?

  And they were bummed out?

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  You a rat? No, no, no gays allowed. You a rat? And I said, no, I'm not a rat. You a chomo? I go, I don't know what that word means. He goes, chomo, child molester. I said, no, I'm not a child molester.

• 1:56:05Theo Von?

  That's good.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  And then he says, you can sit with the Aryans in the cafeteria. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm, I'm with the Aryans now. But then a couple of months later.

• 1:56:16Theo Von?

  Simple rules.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  I was across the hall from, from a captain in the Banano family. And he said to me one day, he goes, let me ask you a question. Why do you sit with those Nazi retards every day? And I said, I don't know. I said, my first day here, they just told me to sit with them. And he goes, from today, you are with the Italians? I said, it's about time.

• 1:56:38Theo Von?

  That was it? Yeah.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Took you long enough.

• 1:56:40Theo Von?

  You got drafted.

• 1:56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. But they were the best.

• 1:56:43Theo Von?

  Yeah, but a lot of good stories, dude. Any good story come to mind from somebody you, like a good story you heard in, uh, in prison?

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's one. I'm actually, you're gonna think less of me and I don't care.

• 1:56:54Theo Von?

  That's fine. I could tell you some stuff. That would probably make it even.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  There was a guy in my housing unit who was a serial killer. He was called Truck because he drove long distance trucks from east coast to the west coast. And he would pick up prostitutes at uh truck stops and he would rape them and murder them, drive them a couple of hundred miles down the highway and then dump the bodies out. So the cops estimated that he killed fourteen. It was probably more than that. But um, he strangled one and she survived. And she was able to give the cops the license number. Now, this was in the days before DNA training, DNA testing. So

• 1:57:33Theo Von?

  Before DNA testing?

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was in the seventies.

• 1:57:36Theo Von?

  Oh, he'd been in for a long time.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  He was doing life.

• 1:57:37Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  So um for reasons that were never clear to me, this guy constantly sought my approval. He was full of shit. He would come up, he had the worst breath because he had just these blackened rotten nubs where his that used to be his teeth. And he was saying

• 1:57:54Theo Von?

  That makes my fucking dick soft, dude.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it was awful, awful. He goes, you CIA? And I said, yeah, I used to be. He goes, I did work for the CIA. I ran a shrimp boat full of weapons to Angola. I go, get the fuck out of here. I didn't know he was a serial killer. I go, get the fuck out of here. Shrimp boat to Angola. Have you ever been on a shrimp boat? And I walked away. People are looking at me like, are you crazy? Do you know who that is? Well, I didn't know who it was. So um

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  instead of making him mad, it just made him more actively seek my approval. So I'm a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

• 1:58:31Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  And um he would say, hey, John, the Steelers are the game of the featured game of the week. I saved you a seat in the TV room. I'm like, ah, thanks, Truck. Like, okay. John, uh, I, I know you listen to classic rock. There's a new classic rock station, sixteen hundred AM. You should check it out. I'm like, okay, thanks, Truck. In the meantime, there's this guy we called Cat in the Hat because he had this oddly elongated head, like a birth defect kind of giant Cat in the Hat head. And he comes up to me one day and he said, hey, I heard you had a, an empty bunk in your, in your cell. I want to move into your cell. I heard it's a good cell. And I said, well, not so fast, buddy. I said, we don't allow any pedophiles in our cell and no rats. I said, what's your

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  crime? He goes murder for hire and no [bleep]. I don't even care about that. Yeah. But the other guy, I can't speak for the other guys. Yeah, I was trying to like, I was trying to be a part of the group, you know, but go on, go on. So, uh, so he says, uh, I, murder for hire. I said, I don't think I like that any better than the pedophiles or rats. What were the circumstances? And he said, I owed the mob a lot of money, hundred thousand in gambling. I couldn't pay it. So I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner and I hired a hitman to kill him. And, uh, and the hitman got, uh, got caught. I said, let me think about it. Well, think about it. I went straight to the law library and I looked up his case and that wasn't it at all. It was true. He owed the mob

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  a hundred thousand. He took out the life insurance policy. He hired the hitman. He got caught because of course he's going to get caught where the, where's the first place the cops are going to go. Where the money went. And he ratted out the hitman so that he wouldn't get the federal death penalty. Instead, he got 20 years. So I said, no rats in the room. So he was mad at me. Anyway, one day, Jake Tapper comes up to the prison to interview me and I get called down to the lieutenant's office. Normally if you're called down to the lieutenant's office, it's to go to solitary. If you come back, usually it's because you ratted somebody out. Well, I went down there to sign the, the waiver so I could give Jake Tapper the interview. So I'm sitting in the TV room

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  next to Truck. Truck was very, very sensitive about being called a chomo because that girl that he strangled was 16, which technically made him a chomo. Right. Right? So Truck's sitting here. I'm sitting here. Right here is Cat in the Hat with his back toward me. He's on the computer. There's like this internal internet, not internet, internal email system. He doesn't see me. I'm sitting 18 inches away from him. And then he says to the guy next to him, did you hear? Kiriakou got called down to the lieutenant's office. He goes, that guy's a fucking rat. He went down there to rat us out. And I just sat there watching the game. And then Truck says, that fucking guy just called you a rat. And I said, "An hour ago, I heard him call you a chomo."

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  Which was a total lie, I just made it up. He didn't say a single word. He just stood up, walked over here, and beat this guy almost to death. They had to land a helicopter in the yard to lifelike Cat in the Hat to Pittsburgh. They gave Truck five more years and-

• 2:01:49Theo Von?

  Cat scanning the hat, huh?

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Cat scanning the hat. See, now how come I didn't think of that? Cause I'm not a comedian. I should have put that in my book.

• 2:01:56Theo Von?

  I don't know, is there any real value in me thinking of that? That's a good question.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  Six weeks later, Cat in the Hat is finally released from the hospital. He comes, he's all fucked up still. And, um, and he's like this, somebody had told him what had happened. He goes, "I wanted to say I'm sorry for calling you a rat. I should never have said that." And everybody stops to look to see what I'm gonna say. Well, what am I gonna say? Ah, forget it, it's all water under the bridge. I go, "Listen, look at me, look at me." And he lifts his head up. And I said, "So help me God, if I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again, you're dead and they won't even find you." "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  So everybody's like, "Ah." The CIA guy's tough after all. But I said in the book, one of my rules that I learned at the CIA, let others do your dirty work. And then I get called down to the lieutenant's office again. Because as he's beating him, I sat back down and I'm watching the game. Everybody else runs. As soon as there's a fight, everybody just runs like cockroaches.

• 2:03:00Theo Von?

  That's insane though, man.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  Right? So I'm watching the game. "Kiriakou, lieutenant's office, immediately." They always do it the same way. It's like they're caricatures of themselves. So I go down there. And the, one of the lieutenants, there are two of them. And he says, "So, tell us about this fight."

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  I go, "What fight? What fight? You're gonna be a smart guy now." I said, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." "The fight. We had four cameras showing you saying something to that crazy person, and then he got up and beat the other guy." I said, "I was watching the Steelers game. I don't know what you're talking about." "Oh, you're not gonna tell us about the fight." I said, "You know what? Maybe I will tell you about the fight. Maybe it was you that started the fight. Did you ever think of that? Maybe it wasn't me. I was an innocent bystander. Maybe you put them up to fight each other. I think I might make a complaint against you." He goes, "Get the fuck out of my office." And I wrote in my book, "Rule number one. Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations."

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  And as I was walking out, I just said, "Exactly."

• 2:04:09Theo Von?

  Dang, bro. I don't even know what to think anymore.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  You know, I figured-

• 2:04:13Theo Von?

  Sometimes that's where you get people to that point. You're like this, you know, it's like-

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  They pushed me, and pushed me, and pushed me. And at sentencing, the judge sentenced me to a minimum-security work camp. And the CIA was furious that I got such a light sentence and I was going to a minimum-security camp. So the CIA intervened to send me to a medi- uh, sorry, a low-security prison, which is an actual prison with the double, you know, walls and- They were furious that I-

• 2:04:41Theo Von?

  The CIA was?

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  When I was first charged, I mean, this is a potential death penalty case. Three counts of espionage for talking to ABC News and the New York Times.

• 2:04:51Theo Von?

  Cause you were talking to them about, about, uh, torture, right? What cases specifically were you talking to them about?

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Abu Zubaydah. And they were furious because nobody had ever confirmed that there was a torture program. And I said, "It was illegal. Besides being immoral and unethical, it's illegal. You wanna torture people? God bless, but you gotta change the law first. We're a nation of laws."

• 2:05:16Theo Von?

  Which country do you think had the mo- like, the toughest torture programs over the years?

• 2:05:22Theo Von?

  Or do you even know?

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  Over the years, like, let's go back 100 years. The Chinese, the Vietnamese, and the Belgians. The Belgians, if you can imagine, the horrors that they perpetrated in Congo. Of epic proportions.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Russians, the Iranians, the Israelis, the United States.

• 2:05:48Theo Von?

  Is it weird, like, we talk about the term terrorism now, but it's like, it definitely feels like, when we talked about it a few, a little bit earlier, it's like, it feels sometimes, it's like, how much is America like a terrorist state in the world? And I hate to say that because this is the country that we live in.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Theo Von?

  But it's like, I think at a certain point, if you use, you know, I don't know. I don't know, you know, it's gotta be hard to figure that out. But it's like, um, you know, it's like, when do you use, like, fear tactics and that sort of thing to make sure that everything's okay, you know?

• 2:06:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, I don't know, it's like, do you, here's my question, do you think it's possible for America to get to a place, where we're an actual peacekeeper? Or do you think it's possible to keep peace without terror? Does that make any sense or not?

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a hard question.

• 2:06:40Theo Von?

  Good.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  You know, and, and I think my answer has changed over the years. I believed for a very long time that we were the good guys. I was a true believer, that's why I worked there, we were the good guys.

• 2:06:53Theo Von?

  And we still, I think as people, we still are.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  As people.

• 2:06:55Theo Von?

  As citizens, we still are.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  Agreed, agreed, we still are. Somebody commented on a Facebook post that I made the other day. Like, I heard you say that the United States is the best country in the world. You should be ashamed of yourself. It's like, I believe that the United States is the best country in the world, that's why I live here.

• 2:07:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  I could go live in some other country if I wanted to, but this is the best country in the world. We have problems, every country has problems. But the reason why I'm as active and as vocal as I am is because I want to change the things that I disagree with. I don't think we should be a nation that tortures people or murders people without trial. If somebody is a clear and present danger, which is the language that's used in the amendment to 12333. Okay, clear and present danger, they're getting ready to, you know, deliver the dirty bomb, or, you know, whatever. Okay. Sometimes we have to work in the shadows. Awful, but it's

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  a fact of life. But if you just send teams around the world to kill people whose politics you don't like, people who have never been charged with a crime, then shame on us. That's not what the founding fathers gave us. So if you want to torture people, you gotta change the law. Ronald Reagan said, "We were a shining city on a hill," right? "We're a beacon of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties." That's the country I want to be.

• 2:08:23Theo Von?

  Same. That's what most people want to be.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:08:28Theo Von?

  Do you think we can get back to that place, or what do you think?

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  I think it's possible.

• 2:08:31Theo Von?

  You do?

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  I think it's gonna take a very long time, but I think it's possible. And I think we have to start by trying to snap out of this mindset that we have to be the world's policeman. Like, why? I have relatives in Greece and friends all over Europe, and they ask me the same question all the time. "Why are you guys doing this?" Like, did we really need to overthrow Libya? Uh, Gaddafi, rather, in Libya?

• 2:09:00Theo Von?

  I think a lot of people don't know what's going on. They just want their families to be okay. They don't want data centers. A lot of people do not want AI. They don't give a shit about it. It's not gonna benefit them.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  I'm genuinely frightened.

• 2:09:10Theo Von?

  Oh, the Pope is frightened. I'm trying to get the Pope to come and, I offered that I would go to the Vatican and talk with the Pope. I just wanna, I wanna learn about what he thinks.

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. The Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church just issued an encyclical, 100% supporting everything the Pope said on this.

• 2:09:25Theo Von?

  Wow. Yeah, I mean, it would be a blessing to get to talk with him and just learn. I just wanna like be able to like, you know, share a message, be a part of, not me share, but just be like, you know, just part of the telephone game of helping or being a part of the message getting out if I can. Cause I do think it's important. We don't want that. Nobody wants it. 30 people want it. 100 people want it with a lot of power. We don't want it.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yes.

• 2:09:55Theo Von?

  Nobody wants it. Nobody wants it.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, there it is right there.

• 2:09:59Theo Von?

  Nobody wants it.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  Cyclical.

• 2:10:00Theo Von?

  Yeah, I read about this. I've read part of the Pope's, but I haven't seen this new one. This is from the Orthodox Church.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop, it's El Pido Foros is his name endorsing everything the Pope said about AI.

• 2:10:15Theo Von?

  You have a new podcast. Thanks, Sean, for hanging out. Sorry if I haven't had the best questions at certain point.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  No, your questions were great and they cut right to the heart of things.

• 2:10:22Theo Von?

  Trying to get my brain back on track a little bit. It's just been like a long month. But before you do leave, I know you have a podcast that you're starting your own finally.

• 2:10:30Speaker 01

  Finally.

• 2:10:31Theo Von?

  Thank you.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  Finally.

• 2:10:32Theo Von?

  Because you've been on all of them, so you have to start your own.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  I'm excited.

• 2:10:36Theo Von?

  The briefing room?

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, John Kiriakou's briefing room.

• 2:10:39Theo Von?

  John Kiriakou's briefing room.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  We're gonna launch it in about four weeks. If you go to Real John Kiriakou on YouTube, it'll pop up saying coming soon. Please, please, please subscribe. And I have another one too called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop. That's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It's just story after story after story. And it's been actually very popular, been very lucky. We've gone up to number five in the history category worldwide.

• 2:11:07Theo Von?

  Oh, it's exciting.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Really, yeah, very exciting.

• 2:11:10Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's an exciting time. I mean, that's one thing that we also have to remember is like, sure, things seem this way and that way, but also it isn't like, if you can see excitement as like being of all things and not just things that seem positive, but things that could seem to be decided, then there is a lot of excitement. And so that's like a nice way to think about things.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 2:11:38Theo Von?

  And this is your book, The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Techniques and Techniques.

• 2:11:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11:42Theo Von?

  Is there a basic one you can give us out of the book, man? That's just something that you can notice about people?

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one, the part that I'm proudest of in this book is the section on surveillance and surveillance detection. I took it so seriously that I actually became a surveillance instructor at the CIA for the last two years that I was at headquarters. I'll tell you something that happened to me when I was in Pakistan. I was always very, very, very careful about my own personal security and

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  I noticed one day, I was staying at a, at a guest house, a little 14-room guest house. And I noticed one day, there's a guy in a motorcycle, he's trying really hard to stay in my blind spot. And the only reason I even noticed him was, he had a red motorcycle helmet on. And nobody in Pakistan wore motorcycle helmets. I don't even know where you would buy a motorcycle helmet. So I was like, huh, that's funny. I speed up, he speeds up. I slow down, he slows down. I change lanes, he changes lanes. I'm like, oh, this, this isn't good. I get to the entrance to the diplomatic quarter, which was the part of town where all the embassies were, and he breaks off. Well, I work like 14, 15, 16 hours every single day. I get to work when it's dark, I leave work when it's dark. And

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  so I pull out of the diplomatic quarter, and the guy's on me again. And I was like, oh, this is definitely not good. I was worried about it all night. So the next morning, I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, and I'm taking a different route to work every day. I'm leaving at a different time every day. My routes to work don't make any sense, just to make sure I'm not being followed. And now, twice, I am being followed. There's a definition of surveillance at the CIA. It's multiple sightings at time and distance. So you see the person more than once, at different times of the day, and at different places. So, we have a database. So I put in the database when I first arrived. I think I'm under surveillance. It's a motorcycle. Here's the license number. This is a description

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  of the guy. He's wearing a red helmet. Next day, I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. I just open the door a crack. I look up and down the street. I don't see anybody. So, they, they had assigned us these like, poles, these retracting poles with a mirror on the bottom. So I look under my car. I don't see any explosives, or tracking devices, or anything. So you gotta be careful, you know? So I get in the car, I go like, two blocks, and the guy's on me again. So I finally get to the office and I waited for the security officer to come in. And I said, listen, I'm under surveillance. I'm 100% sure I'm under surveillance. I told him about the three sightings. He's like, oh, this isn't good. I said, I know. He said, we have to wait

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  until the chief comes in. So finally, the chief comes in around seven and I said, I'm under surveillance, 100% certain. So I explained to him the three different sightings and he's like, well, you know what you have to do. And I said, I, I know. He goes, you never popped your cherry that way, did you?

• 2:14:43Theo Von?

  Not shoot somebody?

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Uh huh. And I said, nope, never needed to. He's like, well, we're gonna have, we're gonna have teams out there. Don't worry. We're gonna have guys all around you. You're not gonna be alone. I'm like, okay, all right. I was very worried. So I get back to my office. My office, it was me, I was the only staff officer and six retirees who had all been in the senior intelligence service. Every one of the six had either been the chief or deputy chief of Near Eastern Operations. One had been the assistant deputy director of the CIA, but they all came back after nine 11 for patriotic reasons. But if you're a contractor, you can't be the chief. So they all worked for me, right? And word got around, they're like, don't worry, buddy. We're all gonna be out there.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Don't worry about a thing. I'm like, I'm very worried. That afternoon, I have a meeting at a safe house that we shared with the Pakistani intelligence service. We interrogated a prisoner and I get up to leave and I don't know what possessed me to stop. And I turned and I said, General Mohammed, are you following me? And he says, no, why? I said, because I'm under surveillance. I'm 100% sure that I'm under surveillance and I'm gonna kill the guy this afternoon. And he's like, no, it's not us. I never saw him again. So weeks later, we heard that a bunch of them were sitting around the table and one

• 2:16:09Speaker 01

  of them said, the new guy, Kiriakou, he's a nice guy. And everybody's like, yeah, he's a very nice guy. And then one of them said, you know what? Nobody's that nice. He's probably being nice just to, to trick us into a sense of complacency. We don't know what he's doing when he's not here. He's probably spying on us. I wasn't.

• 2:16:34Speaker 01

  But they put the worst surveillance officer in the entire Pakistani intelligence service on me. So instead of two blocks back, he's right there in my blind spot. And it was only because I stopped before I got to the door that afternoon and asked General Mohammed if they were following me. If that's the only reason that guy's not in the ground today. I was gonna kill him that

• 2:16:57Theo Von?

  Were you?

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, I was.

• 2:16:59Theo Von?

  Dang, John, I'm about to pop off, bruh.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  Because I was convinced he was gonna kill me.

• 2:17:02Theo Von?

  That big guy. That's crazy, bro. Dang, dude. I think everybody wants to shoot somebody. But they don't let you.

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  I worked with a guy, great friend, go to the same church, from the same men's group.

• 2:17:14Theo Von?

  They don't let you.

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  And he's a psychiatrist. Sorry. You made me laugh. He's a psychiatrist. And he said to me,

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  I find it fascinating that you don't have PTSD. And I said, is that good or bad? He said, from a psychiatric point of view? And I said, yeah. He goes, not good. I said, I wasn't afraid of those people, Steve. I was not afraid of them.

• 2:17:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, it is interesting, man. The things that we hold, what's going on inside of us, you know? How it comes out, what gets figured out, you know?

• 2:17:47Speaker 01

  You just never know. You never know what's gonna bother you. You never know what's gonna stick in your mind and bother you and fester for years. It happens.

• 2:17:54Theo Von?

  Yeah. The stories, man. And about just making a story, you know? I mean, you seem like the kind of guy that likes to make a story, you know?

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  I like telling these stories. And people say, ah.

• 2:18:06Theo Von?

  And living a story, though, I mean.

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, listen, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have these stories in my past. I'd be like, oh, my God. My first wife, she's like, I want to move back to Ohio and I want you to sell car insurance with my cousin Dean. I said, I would rather cut my throat than move to Ohio and sell insurance with your cousin Dean.

• 2:18:23Theo Von?

  I'd rather join the Aryan Brotherhood in prison.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  Seriously? Seriously?

• 2:18:27Theo Von?

  And you did.

• 2:18:28Speaker 01

  And I did.

• 2:18:29Theo Von?

  So I take a look. Insurance next time.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, next life. No, thank you.

• 2:18:34Theo Von?

  John, tell your son I said what's up that you mentioned on the way in.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Thank you. Max.

• 2:18:38Theo Von?

  Max, tell him I said what's up. And is kiriaku, is it Greek?

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Greek.

• 2:18:42Theo Von?

  Greek. I was thinking about that. You have a new book, you have a new podcast. Thank you so much for your time, brother.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for the invitations. Great to meet you.

• 2:18:49Theo Von?

  You too, man. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

• 2:19:02Speaker 02

  Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones. But it's gonna take a little...