S2 Bonus Episode: Expert Witness

THE BLURB: In this bonus episode, John tells the story of a legal case in which he testified as an expert witness - against the FBI in a case against an accused terrorist. As John learned from personal experience, democracy and secrecy don't always play well together. The people holding the secrets tend to disregard democracy in order to protect their secrets. In this instance, the FBI went after a homeless man, determined - despite a complete lack of actual evidence - that he was a dangerous terrorist. Did John's expert testimony save the day? You'll have to listen to find out! SHOW NOTES If you're enjoying Dead Drop, please check out the other terrific podcasts at Costard & Touchstone costardandtouchstone.com. Your next podcast obsession is just a click away! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.

• 0:12John Kiriakou?

  Hi, I'm John Kurayaku and welcome to a little bonus episode, a mini episode of Dead Drop, What Makes Us By Tick. I wanted to tell you about something that has happened to me over the last two weeks. Somehow, and I think it's because I'm out in the, the public eye as much as I am, I've become a go-to person to serve as an expert witness in trials. I've just returned from a trial in western Colorado, but I want to tell you about a trial in which I testified a week ago in the federal district court for the southern district of Florida. That's the federal court in Miami. This story is about a young man, 32 years old, named Harun

• 0:56John Kiriakou?

  Abdul Malik Yener. Harun Yener lived in Coral Springs in the Miami area. He's unhoused, as we say these days. He had come to Miami from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, all alone, family's dead, no friends, tried to make a new life. Instead, he ended up still homeless, living in the alley behind a restaurant. He was able to scrape enough money together to rent a very small storage unit where he kept his personal possessions. They included a baseball bat in, on which he had written with Sharpie, something silly like "thy will be done." I should add that Harun suffers from mental illness. He also had in this storage unit,

• 1:39John Kiriakou?

  some childlike drawings of guns and bombs and rockets and missiles. Well, an employee of the storage company saw him coming and going, noticed that he didn't have a lock on his unit, he couldn't afford a lock, and so the employee helped himself and just went in. I don't know why, maybe to burglarize it, maybe to snoop, he was just curious, who knows. He saw the bat, he saw the drawings, and he called the police. The police went to the unit, they saw the same things, they called the FBI, and the FBI- Without a warrant, took his phone, which he had left in the storage unit, made copies of all the drawings of the guns and the missiles and the rockets, and pictures of the baseball bat. Well, writing something on a baseball bat is odd,

• 2:23John Kiriakou?

  but it's not a crime to be odd. It's not a crime to draw a picture of a gun, or a picture of a rocket flying through the air. So what they did is they had an FBI agent, acting as an undercover, reach out to him on Facebook. And the undercover FBI agent said, "Hey, I was in the restaurant, and they told me that you live behind the restaurant in the alley, and that you're Muslim. I'm Muslim too. Allahu Akbar. Salaamualaikum. Hey, let me take you out for a pizza and a beer." The truth was that Harun was hungry, and so he accepted the offer of a pizza and a beer. He and the FBI agent went out, and they started talking, and talking, and talking, and they ended up communicating via Facebook

• 3:06John Kiriakou?

  over the course of hundreds and hundreds of pages of chats. They would also go out to restaurants two, three times a week. The FBI agent would buy Harun cigarettes, pay for his pizza, pay for his beer, call him brother, call him my best friend. And then the FBI agent said, "Listen, don't tell anybody, but I'm working with some guys, and we're putting together a militia. And we want to attack Washington DC, and overthrow the government, and institute a reset. We don't want to change the form of government, we just want to get rid of all these people that are in now, and reset it with new people. What do you think?" Well, on four separate occasions,

• 3:50John Kiriakou?

  Harun said, "No, I'm not interested." Then they said, "You know what would be cool? It would be cool to blow up a synagogue. You want to do that?" And he said, "No, I don't want to do that." The FBI started pressuring him. "What kind of Muslim are you? I thought we were friends. I vouched for you." The guys in the militia, which, funny enough, was called the Pineapple Militia, because it was based in South Florida, allegedly. Of course, no such militia ever existed. Making them angry. They thought you were part of the team. They thought you were a brother. Finally, he said, okay, okay, I'll do it, just to get the guy off of his back. As soon as he said he would help them to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, they grabbed him and arrested him.

• 4:34John Kiriakou?

  They charged him with six separate felonies, all of which carried a sentence of life without parole. He was charged with two counts of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder by terrorism, and conspiracy to murder federal agents. Haroon is homeless, and he's broke, and he couldn't afford a lawyer. So he was assigned the federal public defender. I have a great deal of respect for federal public defenders. I've known a lot of attorneys over the years. I've employed a lot of attorneys over the years. The federal public defenders work as hard or harder than any other attorneys I've met in my life.

• 5:15John Kiriakou?

  The federal public defenders reached out to me just two weeks ago and asked if I would read the discovery in the case, and if I felt comfortable, testify as an expert witness on how to recruit an agent, how to carry out a recruitment without the person realizing that he's been recruited. I agreed to testify on behalf of the defense. Haroon's trial was the last week of June. I testified just a few days before the end of the trial. I did that via Zoom as I was overseas for another event. I testified for about three hours without stopping. The government's questioning was brutal.

• 5:58John Kiriakou?

  Really, all they wanted to talk about was my own whistleblowing and my own conviction of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. But I frustrated them because I had an answer. Whistleblowing is a defense, and I kept coming back to my whistleblowing. The federal public defender later told me, "You couldn't see the jury on Zoom, but they were laughing at him," meaning the Assistant U.S. Attorney. He said, "They loved you. You aced it." I kind of thought that I had aced it, because the last question that the prosecutor had for me was, and I quote, At the end of the day, Mr. Kiriakou, you really are just a convicted criminal, aren't you? I answered, "Okay." And he said, "Not a yes or a no?" "Oh, I'm sorry.

• 6:40John Kiriakou?

  I thought the judge said we're not supposed to answer rhetorical questions." And the judge said, "Move on, Counselor." He said, "I have no further questions, Your Honor." And then the public defender jumped up and said, "Direct, Your Honor." And this is exactly how it went. He said, "Mr. Kiriakou, whose idea was it to blow up the New York Stock Exchange?" "That was the FBI's idea." "Whose idea was it to blow up a synagogue?" I said, "That was the FBI's idea." "Who built the bomb?" "The FBI built the bomb." "Who provided the explosives?" "The FBI provided the explosives." "Who provided the timer and the debt cord?" "The FBI provided the timer and the debt cord." "Who provided the getaway car?" "The FBI provided the getaway car." "Mr. Kiriakou, in your expert opinion, who's the criminal in this case?"

• 7:25John Kiriakou?

  I said, "The FBI is the criminal in this case." Well, I'm proud to tell you that yesterday, June 30th, Harun Yenar was acquitted on all six charges. Funny thing, when he was arrested in November 2024, and compared to Osama bin Laden in the USA Today, his arrest was covered by every major paper in America: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and with banner coverage in The Miami Herald. His acquittal on all charges was not even noted in a blog. There's not even one word about it on the internet. And I think that says a lot about our government. In any event, I thought you'd want to hear the story. I'm John Kiriakou. Thanks for joining us.

• 8:09John Kiriakou?

  We'll talk to you soon. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast. And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.