John Kiriakou: CIA’s Secret Torture Programs, MK-Ultra, 9-11, and Jailing Political Opponents

John Kiriakou committed Washington’s one unpardonable sin: he embarrassed the CIA. John Brennan tried to have him executed for it. (00:00) Introduction (01:41) Speaking Out Against the CIA’s Torture Program (07:20) Why the CIA Loved Obama (20:05) Why John Brennan Hated Kiriakou (1:08:34) The Major Issue With the Espionage Act (1:20:20) Kiriakou’s Experience in Prison (1:33:55) Did Any Elected Officials Defend Kiriakou? Paid partnerships with: MeriwetherFarms: Visit https://MeriwetherFarms.com/Tucker and use code TUCKER76 for 15% off your first order. Silencer Central: Promo code Tucker10 for 10% off your purchase of banish suppressors at https://www.silencercentral.com 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think it is possible to get people to commit acts that they wouldn't otherwise commit?

• 0:36Speaker 02

  I do. MKUltra caused people to jump out of windows and commit suicide.

• 0:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. You said there are a lot of shrinks at CIA.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  I used those shrinks on operations. We even hypnotized one guy. He was hypnotized with his arm in the air for two hours.

• 0:52Tucker Carlson?

  Would you describe the CIA as an intelligence gathering agency?

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Not anymore. It used to be, until 9/11. And then it became a paramilitary organization. What they would rather do is fancy high-tech satellites and drones. And they're not really in the business anymore of recruiting spies to steal secrets. I got a call from a Japanese diplomat, and he said, "Hey, let's have lunch." I said, "Great." He said to me, "So what's next for you?" And I said, "I think I'm gonna resign soon." And he says, "No. If you give me information, I can give you money." He was an FBI agent.

• 1:28Tucker Carlson?

  What?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Trying to get me to commit actual espionage.

• 1:32Tucker Carlson?

  The FBI did that to you?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35Tucker Carlson?

  We gotta burn the government down, actually.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, your only crime was an ABC interview in which you say, "Yes, the CIA does have a torture program. I know, because I worked there, and the president authorized it and lied about it in public." That's your sum total of your crimes.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  That was it.

• 2:11Tucker Carlson?

  It's pretty unbelievable you went to jail. I think when 9/11 happened, you were one of how many CIA officers at the Counterterrorism Center who spoke Arabic?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Oh, at the Counterterrorism Center? Two?

• 2:25Tucker Carlson?

  Two. So you have this distinguished CIA career. No one outside the CIA has heard of you, but in the CIA, you're very well-known. Helped capture an Al Qaeda operative in Pakistan, risked your life as an operations officer. And then you leave CIA and you mention in an ABC News interview in 2007 that the CIA is torturing people, which it was.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:55Tucker Carlson?

  Illegally.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:57Tucker Carlson?

  And is a stain on the country, didn't make the country safer. You say that and you wind up in jail.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I sure did.

• 3:05Tucker Carlson?

  Did any of the people who are torturing other people wind up in jail?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Not a single one.

• 3:10Tucker Carlson?

  The torturers?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  I'm so crazy. It's nuts. It's nuts. The torturers didn't go to jail, the people who conceived of the torture, the people who funded the torture, appropriated taxpayer money for the torture, the people who implemented it, nobody went to prison but me.

• 3:26Tucker Carlson?

  And what's, I guess what's so funny is when you think of whistleblowers complaining about something like torture, you think of like, I don't know, some, you know, the Barrigans or some, you know, professional peace activist.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:39Tucker Carlson?

  But you're like a...

• 3:40Speaker 02

  I was a true believer.

• 3:41Tucker Carlson?

  But you were CIA operations officer.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:44Tucker Carlson?

  Like doing the war on terror.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Specifically a counterterrorism operations officer. Yes.

• 3:50Tucker Carlson?

  And so you were hardly, you were hardly some like...

• 3:52Speaker 02

  No, I was no bleeding heart.

• 3:53Tucker Carlson?

  Peace Now type, right.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:55Tucker Carlson?

  And you went to jail. Amazing. So can you just, just to come to the point of the story where you're, you're out of the CIA, you're working at Deloitte.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:06Tucker Carlson?

  And you give this interview to Brian Ross at ABC.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:11Tucker Carlson?

  One of the few, I think, pretty honest ABC reporters who of course left ABC.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 4:15Tucker Carlson?

  Too much honesty for them. And...

• 4:19Tucker Carlson?

  And what happened then? This was 2007 during the Bush.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Right, it was in December of 2007.

• 4:24Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  So I went on this interview with Brian Ross and I said three things. I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. I said that torture was official US government policy. And I said that because President Bush had specifically said, "We do not torture." I knew that wasn't true.

• 4:39Tucker Carlson?

  Where did he say that?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  He said that in a press conference at the White House in December of 2007. And I said that the torture had been personally approved by the president, which was also true. And so, within 24 hours, the CIA.

• 4:54Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, how did you know that, by the way?

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Oh, because I was.

• 4:57Tucker Carlson?

  Were you just guessing?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I was the executive assistant to the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations. So I was intimately involved in the planning for all of this nonsense. Not just torture, but the Iraq War as well. And I was watching the rule of law just be thrown to the dogs, almost on a daily basis. And I decided, whatever Brian Ross was gonna ask me, I was gonna tell the truth. That's what I did.

• 5:27Tucker Carlson?

  So that was in late 2007?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Late 2007, December of 2007.

• 5:32Tucker Carlson?

  So the president authorized this. Again, didn't make the country any safer.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:38Tucker Carlson?

  The whole thing really hurt the country, but, and then lied about it in public, which you're not supposed to do. I mean, you're not supposed to do that.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  No, you're just not supposed to.

• 5:47Tucker Carlson?

  You said those three things, which are factually true.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 5:51Tucker Carlson?

  And then what happened?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Well, the FBI began investigating me the next day. And they investigated me for a full year, from December of '07 to December of '08.

• 5:59Tucker Carlson?

  Did they tell you they were investigating you?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  No, I read about it in CNN.

• 6:05Tucker Carlson?

  So how are they investigating you?

• 6:09Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. They never sought to interview me. I ran out and I hired an attorney. And, um, and we leaked that to the press that, oh, I'm represented by this legal giant in Washington DC. It was, uh, it was Plato Kacheras, who's no longer, no longer living.

• 6:26Tucker Carlson?

  But one of the most famous lawyers in the United States.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  One of the most famous lawyers, the greatest in Washington. And, um, they never contacted him. I, I really don't know what constituted an FBI investigation, but a year later in 2008, they dropped the case and they said that I had not committed a crime.

• 6:43Tucker Carlson?

  But when they investigate you, what is that? Do you have any sense of what that means? Like, are they?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  In the subsequent investigation, which we can get to, it was very clear what it meant. But in that year, I think what they did, and I'm speculating here, is that they went over the ABC News interview and a subsequent interview I did with the New York Times. They parsed it and they decided that I had not committed a crime. Now, in the declination letter that they sent to my attorney, declining to prosecute me, they said that it was illegal to classify a program if the program is illegal.

• 7:19Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, can I ask you, is it a federal crime to say the president is lying?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:24Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, it's not. Oh, so you're allowed. In the United States, you're allowed. If you see a politician lying, you can say that person's lying?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  You can call them on it.

• 7:31Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, okay. Just, just one of them.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Cause it is America after all.

• 7:34Tucker Carlson?

  Right. Just want to make sure. Okay. So, um, so they invest, the FBI spends a year investigating you because you say the president is lying?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:44Tucker Carlson?

  Totally normal. Um, and you don't know that they're investigating you because they never contacted you or your lawyer?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Never contacted you, the one of us.

• 7:50Tucker Carlson?

  So then 2008 rolls around, Bush leaves after two terms, Obama gets elected.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:56Tucker Carlson?

  And he's very much the peace candidate. He's for transparency.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Well, I like to say that it was Saint Obama that came down from the heavens into the, into the White House to save us.

• 8:05Tucker Carlson?

  Black Jesus returns.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:06Tucker Carlson?

  And, um, but he's very much a, I mean, I remember, um, in fact, being on, uh, on television saying, you know, he was this wild-eyed, peace-nic-lefty guy.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Oh, no, he wasn't.

• 8:18Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, he wasn't?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is something that I've puzzled over for a long time. And- I've come to the conclusion that the CIA, at the top levels of the CIA, they, they really love it when a new president is elected and he has no background in intelligence or foreign policy. Usually, Donald Trump is a very unique figure in this, in this scenario, very unusual. But Barack Obama, two years as a senator, two years as a senator, no experience in foreign policy, no experience in intelligence. The day after an election, the director of the CIA authorizes a president-elect to begin

• 8:59Speaker 02

  receiving a PDB, a president's daily brief. And so, the day after the election, they go with this, this 16-page document marked at six levels above top secret. And they say, "Mr. President-elect, wait till you see the cool things we're doing all around the world." And they've sucked him in. They made him one of the guys. And every day, they're like, "Wait till you see the update on what we told you yesterday. It's incredible." And then we get the, the feedback at the CIA. "Oh, the president loved this." The president had a follow-up question on that. "Oh, the president said, 'Oh, my God,' when he read this." Well, that's-

• 9:37Tucker Carlson?

  It almost sounds like you're psychologically profiling the president.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I think, I think that's exactly what they do. And don't forget, they have an entire staff of psychiatrists and psychologists that do exactly that.

• 9:49Tucker Carlson?

  And so, they use the tools that they have employed for decades to subvert foreign governments, to subvert their own government?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yes. But they smile while they're doing it. And they say, "No, no, we're just trying to forge a good working relationship with the president." In fact, for a while, in the 90s, they didn't even call him the president. They called him the first customer.

• 10:11Tucker Carlson?

  Come on!

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Swear to, swear to God.

• 10:14Tucker Carlson?

  Is, I know we're getting far afield and we will get back to your story, but it, it, it doesn't sound like, so if you look at the org chart, the president controls CIA?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:26Tucker Carlson?

  But you're describing a situation where CIA kind of controls the president.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  You know, this is another problem. It's that presidents come and go every four years, every eight years. But these CIA people, they're there for 25, 30, 35 years. They don't go anywhere. And so if they don't like a president, or if a president orders them to do something that they don't want to do, they just wait because they know they can wait him out. And then he's not going to be president anymore. And they can continue on with whatever plan the blob or the deep state wants to implement. You know, Donald Trump took a lot of guff in his first term when he used on a regular basis, the term "deep state." And I argued from the very beginning, it is a deep state. Maybe you don't like the terminology.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  You don't have to call it "the deep state." You can call it "the federal bureaucracy." You can call it "the state." But the truth is that it exists.

• 11:24Tucker Carlson?

  I would say by definition, I mean, you just described it, the president. And by the way, the elected representatives, who are the instrument of the population through which they control their government, you know, are perennial. They come and go.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:38Tucker Carlson?

  But the people who carry out those orders remain. So over time, they're the ones with the power, right?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And then when they get caught, they scramble. I remember Jane Harmon, she was a congresswoman from Venice, California. She was the chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee during the Iraq War. And she was briefed on the torture program. Well, when I went public on the torture program, reporters had questions. Well, did Congress approve this? Of course, Congress approved it. And Congress appropriated money for it. So she's the chairman. And reporters went to her and said, "Hey, what about this torture program?" And she said, "I didn't know anything about the torture program."

• 12:18Tucker Carlson?

  She's a liar.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  She was lying. And I said, and I remember saying it to the New York Times, I said, "She was in the room when it was briefed."

• 12:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And when she was challenged, she said, "Oh, yeah, I remember that day. But you know what? I got up and I left early. And I left one of my aides as a note taker, and he never briefed me." Which is also a lie.

• 12:40Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, well, she was just a pure tool of the intel agencies.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  That was it.

• 12:43Tucker Carlson?

  And of foreign governments.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  And that's an ongoing problem on Capitol Hill is rather than being overseers, they're cheerleaders for the intelligence.

• 12:50Tucker Carlson?

  So how, that is absolutely true, and I've known them all. And, um, you know, if you criticize any of the intel agencies, particularly CIA, which was the most powerful, um, they're immediately defensive.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 13:02Tucker Carlson?

  About it, you know, like it's their job to defend these agencies when in fact, their job, as you said, is to oversee these agencies and to keep them within the boundaries of the Constitution.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 13:12Tucker Carlson?

  Um, how does that happen?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  You know, I say all the time that we really did have real oversight for a while from the seventies into the 1980s, a decade, a decade and a half, where people really did exert influence over intelligence policy by really examining some of these covert action programs. But Pat Moynihan is dead and Barry Goldwater is dead and all these other senators and congressmen, Otis Pike, they're all gone. They're all dead. And now we've got people who just egg on the intelligence communities. And I'll give you.

• 13:54Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I know them.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  I'll give you an example. When I got out of prison, I was invited to a dinner at the Greek Ambassador's residence. And I went and, um, there was a senator there, a Democratic senator there, uh, who's a member of the Intelligence Committee. And so he came up to me and he said, hey, welcome home. We were really worried about you. And I said, oh, thank you. I said, Senator, I've got to tell you, I was disappointed that you didn't say anything. You didn't express any support or, or anything related to my case. And he got very angry and he said, listen, it took everything I had just to not lose my security clearance. And I said, so you're afraid of them? That's what this is. And he walked away.

• 14:40Tucker Carlson?

  That's disgusting. That's disgusting. But I think you can go through, certainly in the Senate, you can go through the roster of the, you know, the hundred members of the Senate and then compare it to the list of the permanent, you know, the committee on intelligence. And those are the worst, those are the most dishonest people.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are. They are.

• 15:02Tucker Carlson?

  The, the most rotten, the most morally compromised, the most dishonest by far.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  I have to agree. That was my experience.

• 15:10Tucker Carlson?

  How does that happen?

• 15:12Tucker Carlson?

  Like, sitting on the, the Senate intel committee is like just a sign that, you know,

• 15:19Speaker 02

  You're one of the in crowd.

• 15:21Tucker Carlson?

  Worse than that, like you're not someone I would invite to dinner at my house.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  No, I agree.

• 15:27Tucker Carlson?

  How? How do they identify the most morally compromised people?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  I, I wonder if, if this began with nine 11. I think that it didn't. I think it began earlier than that, like during the Clinton administration.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Where everybody just,

• 15:49Speaker 02

  where the, the intelligence community was seen as a, as a force for good.

• 15:54Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Which was odd to me.

• 15:56Tucker Carlson?

  Well, I mean, that's, I, that's how I grew up thinking that, for sure. I mean, it was not even questioned.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  When I first joined the agency, they were still sort of getting over the whole

• 16:08Speaker 02

  church committee era. And then when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, we were told that there were going to be big changes at the agency. And indeed, one of the things that Clinton did was he ordered what they called a cull. So we had to go through the files of literally every recruited agent in the CIA. And if they had any human rights problem, they were fired, right? We just cut off contact with them. And I remember thinking, wow, they're actually serious about this. I'm, I'm very pleasantly surprised.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  But then nine 11 happened. And not only did that go out the window, the pendulum swung so far to the other side that it has yet to go back to its point of equilibrium.

• 16:52Tucker Carlson?

  And then just naturally, inevitably, predictably, the tactics that that and other agencies used against foreign governments were used against

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Against us.

• 17:01Tucker Carlson?

  The US government, the elected government and the and the population of the country.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  I know you and I agree on this. We've talked about this in the past, but the CIA is forbidden by law from spying on American citizens, as is NSA. It's a part of NSA's charter that it may not collect the communications of American citizens or US persons.

• 17:22Tucker Carlson?

  NSA spied on me and leaked the information to the New York Times.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And leaked the information. I remember it very well.

• 17:28Tucker Carlson?

  To control me, right? Oh, it's illegal. Guess what happened?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Nothing. And here again, Congress just says, well, what are we gonna do?

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• 20:53Tucker Carlson?

  So we'll get back to all this, but I just want to return to the thread of what happened to you. So Obama gets elected and you've got to think because your your real crime was calling the president a liar.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:07Tucker Carlson?

  George W. Bush, you had to have thought that once he was gone, you know, it was going to be forgotten.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  When.

• 21:14Tucker Carlson?

  Because what you said was true.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  That's right. And when my attorneys received this declination letter, my wife and I actually went out and celebrated that night. We went out and had dinner. I had no idea that three weeks later, when Barack Obama became president, that that's when my trouble was really going to start. Obama initially named John Brennan as the CIA director. Liberals were up in arms at the time. And so that that nomination was withdrawn, you may recall. And he named Brennan instead the Deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism. John Brennan and I always hated each other. I don't know why he hated me. I hated him for what were very clear reasons.

• 21:54Tucker Carlson?

  How weird he seems like such a marvelous guy.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Such a such a sweetheart. I found him to be a very dark figure, very dangerous, willing to take risks that no one should take without appropriate congressional oversight. And frankly, I said this on your show one time, and I don't mean to sound like, you know, that guy, but I thought he was in over his head intellectually in that position. He was not cut out for that.

• 22:22Tucker Carlson?

  When did you meet him?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  I met him in 1990, January of 1990.

• 22:27Tucker Carlson?

  Over 35 years ago.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:29Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so it's fair to say you.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I knew him very, very well. In fact, when I was the executive assistant to the Deputy Director for Operations, John was the he first, he was the Deputy Executive Director and then Executive Director of the CIA. So he was the number three officer in the CIA, while I was the assistant to the number four officer in the CIA. So I briefed him every single morning. And we just did not like or respect one another.

• 22:58Tucker Carlson?

  Why didn't you like or respect him?

• 23:01Speaker 02

  First of all, I thought he was unqualified. Number one. John made a life in analysis. But he struck up a very close friendship with George Tenet when George was at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. George became the deputy CIA director and then CIA director. And every time George got promoted, he promoted Brennan. But he promoted him into jobs that he simply wasn't qualified for. Like the station chief in Riyadh? This is a guy that had been an analyst for, you know, 20 something years. And you're gonna make him the station chief? Not only has he never recruited an agent, he's never even met one. And that's who you want in charge of, of operations?

• 23:42Tucker Carlson?

  In Riyadh?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  In Riyadh? One of the most important places in the Middle East.

• 23:46Tucker Carlson?

  Complicated place.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Very complicated. And then when he went back, he named him the deputy executive director. So he's running the day-to-day operations of the entire CIA. The whole thing. It just didn't make sense to me.

• 24:02Tucker Carlson?

  So you thought that he was unqualified, but it sounds like you thought that he was morally unqualified also?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I always believed he was morally unqualified. John had a reputation as being vindictive. He had once worked for a woman who didn't like or respect him. And she let him go. He got a job briefing George Tenet at the National Security Council. And then when George was promoted, he promoted John to the point where he called this woman in and he fired her. Like, was that really necessary? You could take the high road. There's no reason to be that guy, that you just go in and start, you know, trashing your enemies. But that's what he did. And there was a group of, there was a group of guys that, that came of age with him.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  And he all promoted all of them with, with himself, with his rising boat. They all went to the, to the top. And I'll tell you too, I was in operations at the time, working for people who had spent 30 years in operations. And they disliked him with, with a special kind of passion. And it was because they didn't respect him either. It was clear.

• 25:18Tucker Carlson?

  Interesting. You said he was dangerous?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  I always thought that he was dangerous.

• 25:24Tucker Carlson?

  Why?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  That's a strong thing to say about somebody. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna get on my soapbox again, so forgive me. But we're a nation of laws, right? We're a nation of laws, and whether you like the law or you don't like the law, you have to respect it, or you work to change it. You can't just pretend that the law doesn't exist. Right. Oh, we're the good guys. So let's, let's talk about the torture program for a second. Here he is, the number three in the CIA, and the leadership wants to implement a torture program. Okay, we've got this thing called the Federal Torture Act of 1946 that says, you can't do that. In 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American POWs.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  We executed, that was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody. In January of 1968, The Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. The day that that picture was published, the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, ordered an investigation. That soldier was arrested, he was convicted of torture, and sentenced to 20 years at Leavenworth. But then, in 2002, like magic, it's all legal. So waterboarding's been around a long time. Oh, it's been around a long time. The Chinese actually invented waterboarding. Of course they did. In like the 15th century. Can you explain waterboarding for a moment? Sure.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  So a prisoner is strapped to a board with his feet elevated compared to his, his head. There's something put in his mouth, like, like material, a cloth, burlap, whatever. And then water is poured on his face. So it's supposed to give you the feeling that you're drowning. In fact, in many cases, you are drowning, because a lot of water's getting past that, that cloth. In the case of Abu Zubaydah, and we can talk about him later if you want, we drowned him, his heart stopped beating, and he had to be revived so that he could be tortured more. That's what waterboarding is. Why is it done?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  The idea is, this is a term that the CIA came up with. The idea is to instill the feeling of learned helplessness in the prisoner. So that the prisoner is so terrified of you, so terrified of what you can do to him, that he'll whimper as soon as you walk into the room and just confess everything that you want him to confess to. But the problem is that torture just simply doesn't work. This is a proven fact that decades of scientists and psychologists and psychiatrists have proven it doesn't work. And so the prisoner will tell you what he thinks you want to know, just to get you to stop torturing him.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  You know, we know from prisoners held in North Vietnamese prisons, American prisoners, that when asked, "Well, who was on your ship? What were the names of the men on your ship?" They would recite like, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line from 1968. Or just make up names or childhood friends, just to get them to stop torturing. So it just doesn't work.

• 28:44Tucker Carlson?

  So what was the process post 9/11 for waterboarding? I mean, I noticed that in the later reports, some of these guys were waterboarded, KSM, for example.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  187 times.

• 28:57Tucker Carlson?

  187 times. So was he coming up with the offensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers every time? Like, why would they keep doing that?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Well, he even, well, they were convinced that he knew the location of Osama bin Laden. And that he knew what the plans were for the next attack on the United States. Well, there were no plans for the next attack. Sometimes there would be, you know, 10 or 12 guys sitting around a campfire in Afghanistan saying, "You know what we should do? We should attack, you know, we should attack the Chicago Stock Exchange. Oh yeah, that's what we should do." Okay, that's not a plot. That's just some guy at a campfire just throwing it out there. So they were convinced that there was another plot planned, and they wanted to get it.

• 29:46Tucker Carlson?

  But 187 times like

• 29:47Speaker 02

  And KSM ended up confessing to the Daniel Pearl murder, which we we know for a fact he wasn't even in Pakistan when Daniel Pearl was murdered.

• 29:56Tucker Carlson?

  And he confessed to it?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  He confessed to it. And then when they showed him the video showing that it wasn't his arm that was sawing off Daniel Pearl's head, he's like, no, look, look at the hair on that arm. My arm's that hairy. That's my arm. No, you didn't kill Daniel Pearl. Stop saying that you did.

• 30:11Tucker Carlson?

  A lot of hairy people in the region.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:15Tucker Carlson?

  But 187 times?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And Abu Zubaydah, 83 times.

• 30:20Tucker Carlson?

  They waterboarded him 83 times?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  It was worse than that. You know, there's this conventional wisdom that waterboarding was the worst. It was sort of the top of the of the the list of of torture techniques. There were worse techniques. We we killed people with other techniques. For example, the cold cell. So you're you're stripped naked, you're chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling so you can't sit or kneel or lay or get comfortable in any way. Your cell is chilled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and then every hour, a CIA officer goes into your cell and throws a bucket of ice water on you. And people died of hypothermia. We the Justice Department didn't say we could murder people. They said we could use these, you know, different techniques. They didn't say we could use this cold cell. That was just made up.

• 31:06Tucker Carlson?

  And people died?

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. There was another one, well, sleep deprivation. The American Psychological Association, the APA, has published studies saying that people begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep. They they begin to die at day nine. Their organs begin to shut down. But the CIA was authorized to keep people awake for 12 days. And people just drop dead as they're being kept awake. With that eye bolt in the ceiling again and strong lights and hard rock, you know, death metal music 24 hours a day on a loop. You go crazy and then your organs just don't work.

• 31:47Tucker Carlson?

  Do we have any idea how many people died under torture?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  The CIA has never said. They um

• 31:54Speaker 02

  It was in the Senate torture report, but it was redacted. So we don't know the number. What's your sense? At least a half a dozen. Or tortured to death. Yeah, to death.

• 32:04Tucker Carlson?

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• 33:18Speaker 00

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• 33:47Tucker Carlson?

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• 34:08Tucker Carlson?

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• 34:51Tucker Carlson?

  That's joyandblokes.com/tucker. Use the code TUCKER. 50% off labs, 20% off supplements. Joy and Blokes. Get your edge back. Do you think, obviously, you're very much part of the story. You went to prison because of it. So it's kind of hard to, you know, you have an interest in this. Sure. But as objectively as you can, do you think there was a lot of useful information produced by all this torture? No, not by the torture. Listen, it's like a kick in my gut to have to compliment the FBI. It really is. You know, when I've had 22 FBI agents raiding my house and taking all my stuff.

• 35:33Tucker Carlson?

  But if there's one thing that the FBI is really good at, it's interrogations. And they proved it with Abu Zubaydah. They proved that if you treat a prisoner with respect and engage in rapport building and take some time to build this relationship, the prisoner will tell you everything that you want to know. And that's what happened with Abu Zubaydah. But every time the CIA would step in and begin torturing him, he would clam up, like completely clam up. And then the FBI would have to go back in, try to reverse the damage and start the whole thing over again.

• 36:11Tucker Carlson?

  So you gave that interview at the end of 2007 in which you said, really, just it was pretty spare interview.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  It was.

• 36:20Tucker Carlson?

  You didn't go into any detail.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:23Tucker Carlson?

  Investigation happens, it's dropped, Obama gets elected, a month later, John Brennan, I interrupted you.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  I had no idea that John Brennan asked Eric Holder to secretly reopen the case against me.

• 36:37Tucker Carlson?

  Why do you think he did that?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  I think-

• 36:40Tucker Carlson?

  Of all the problems that were going on in the world.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  No other problems in the world, right. I think for two reasons. Number one, he genuinely disliked me. And he has this history of going after people using lawfare, which now we all know what that means, using lawfare to take down his enemies, number one.

• 37:01Tucker Carlson?

  Lawfare understates it. Violence, I mean, they came to your house, they cuffed you, they threw you in a cell.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:08Tucker Carlson?

  Like, those are acts of violence, physical force they're using against you.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Very much so.

• 37:13Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:15Tucker Carlson?

  So if you'll do that, if you'll take a man from his five children and lock him in a cell for years.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  And they fired my wife just because she was married to me. She was a senior CIA officer.

• 37:24Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so you've answered the question, how is John Brennan a dangerous man? So he goes to the then Attorney General Eric Holder and says, we need to reopen. Of all the problems that we've got, we need to make sure John Kiriakou goes to jail.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. We received 15,000 pages of classified discovery in my case, but we found in that discovery three memos. There was a memo from John Brennan to Eric Holder saying, "Charge him with espionage."

• 37:52Tucker Carlson?

  Espionage?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Espionage, which can be a death penalty charge, I might add.

• 37:58Tucker Carlson?

  Who were you spying for?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. Who?

• 38:01Tucker Carlson?

  Well, did they allege you were spying for somebody?

• 38:03Speaker 02

  No. What they said is that I told the media that the CIA had a torture program, and so because the media published it, our enemies knew that we had this top secret program.

• 38:14Tucker Carlson?

  But how is that espionage?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  I know, it's not. So Holder writes back and says, "My people don't think he committed espionage."

• 38:22Tucker Carlson?

  Sha.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And then, and then Brennan wrote back and said, charge him anyway and make him defend.

• 38:28Tucker Carlson?

  Try not to use the effort. This is my new, this is my new thing, self-improvement of journey I'm taking, but it's making me mad hearing this because, I mean, you were in, I happened to be in Pakistan around the time you were, very dangerous country.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Oh, boy, was it?

• 38:43Tucker Carlson?

  I wasn't even doing anything dangerous.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it was.

• 38:44Tucker Carlson?

  Super dangerous, but the most dangerous place I've ever been.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  On earth.

• 38:47Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  At the time, yeah.

• 38:48Tucker Carlson?

  And so you're, it's not an overstatement to say you're risking your life, father of all these kids, to fight the war on terror against the Islamic terrorists, and now they're accusing you of aiding those terrorists?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Aiding the enemy. It gets worse.

• 39:03Tucker Carlson?

  That's really over the top.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I don't think I've ever told you this story, but when I was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was the senior investigator. And so, one of the great things about that job is you get to have lunch with diplomats from around the world and just talk about the issues of the day.

• 39:20Tucker Carlson?

  You were working for CIA at the time?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  No, I was working for John Kerry.

• 39:23Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  When he was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

• 39:26Tucker Carlson?

  When was this?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Uh, 2009 to 2011.

• 39:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  So, I got a call from a Japanese diplomat, and he said, hey, let's have lunch. I said, great. So, we meet at a restaurant on Capitol Hill. His English was so bad that we had to do the lunches in Arabic, right? He was an Arabist, and I'm an Arabist, and so we would have our lunches in Arabic. And I remember what we talked about in that first meeting. I know, it's absurd, isn't it?

• 39:55Tucker Carlson?

  You and the Japanese guy, speaking Arabic?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Surprised somebody didn't call the cops.

• 40:00Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  So, um, we talked about the Israeli election, the Turkish election, we talked about the peace process. I remember it very clearly. And at the end of it, he said to me, so what's next for you? And I said, I think I'm going to resign soon. I promised Senator Kerry that I would give him two years. It's been two and a half, and I have five kids that I need to put through college. And he says, no, don't do that. If you give me information, I can give you money. And I said, what in the world is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how many times I've made that pitch? Shame on you for cold pitching me.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  And I indignantly got up and walked out and I went directly without stopping to the office of the Senate Security Officer. And I said, I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer. I need to report it. He said, was it that damn Russian again? And I said, no, it was Japanese. He said, Japanese? Well, occasionally they're poking around looking for trade secrets. So he said, sit at this standalone computer, write it up and I'll send it to the FBI. I said, fine. I wrote the entire thing as a memo. He sent it to the FBI. The next day, he calls me and says, two FBI agents are going to come up. They want to interview you. I said, great. I go back down to the security vault and these two young FBI agents come. I tell them the story again and they said, okay, here's what we want you to do.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  We want you to call him back and invite him to lunch and try to get him to tell you exactly what information he's looking for and what he's willing to pay for it. And because I'm a patriot, I said, do you want me to wear a wire or something? And they said, no, we'll just be at the next table. We'll listen to everything.

• 41:43Tucker Carlson?

  You're such a boy scout.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 41:45Tucker Carlson?

  Well, kind of. I mean, everyone who lives in DC get, you know, has had something like what you described, but I've never heard of anybody going to the authorities over it.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  So, um, the morning of the lunch, they called me and said, something came up. We can't do it. So do the lunch and write another memo. So I did, and I wrote up a comprehensive report. I sent it back to the FBI. Then they asked me to do it a third time, a fourth time and a fifth time, which I did. And in the final lunch, it was a place in Georgetown.

• 42:16Tucker Carlson?

  Which place?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  It was, uh, on lower Wisconsin, the famous Italian place.

• 42:21Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, um, oh, where they give you after dinner drinks at the end.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Yes. And the ladies in the front window making the pasta.

• 42:30Tucker Carlson?

  Such a great restaurant. Filomena.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Filomena, thank you.

• 42:33Tucker Carlson?

  Sorry.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Forever.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  I love filming. It's wonderful. It really is wonderful. So, so I, I do it. And in that final lunch, he says, I got promoted. I got my dream job. I'm going to be the number two at the Japanese embassy in Cairo. I said, congratulations. I shook his hand. I never talked to him again. A year later, I've been arrested and we get discovery and we see that there never was any Japanese diplomat. He was an FBI agent. What? Trying to get me to commit actual espionage. But I kept reporting the meetings back to

• 43:15Speaker 02

  the FBI. And then there was a, there was a memo to Peter Strzok, who actually put- Not really. Put the cuffs on me in, in 2012. The Peter Strzok? The Peter Strzok. He actually, I'll get to that in a second. But, um, one of the, one of the FBI agents wrote to Peter Strzok and said, we should end this operation. He's clearly not going to take the bait.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  No way. And I said to my lawyer, why would they do this? I'm a patriot. The FBI did that to you? Mm hmm. Because I hadn't committed espionage. We're gonna burn the government down, actually. I mean, that's- Yeah. John Brennan specifically said, charge him with espionage. Well, I hadn't committed espionage. And so they're trying to get me to commit it so they can charge me. I kept reporting it back to them. Who was the guy? The Japanese diplomat? No, he was just an Asian FBI agent who didn't speak a word of Japanese, but he did speak Arabic. So he pretended- No, you're blowing my mind. He pretended to not speak English so that I wouldn't be alerted. Are you sure this happened? Hundred percent. It's all, it was all in the discovery.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  But Brennan said, "Charge him with espionage." And they were like, "Okay, well, we gotta charge him with espionage."

• 44:33Tucker Carlson?

  We have to create the crime in order to fit the charge.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And what happened? They charged me with three counts of espionage.

• 44:39Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, how can you believe that? It's so like, I have friends who have a lot of interesting information on the Oklahoma City bombing.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 44:47Tucker Carlson?

  And my brain doesn't want to go there. Same on January 6th. Same with a bunch of different operations the FBI has been involved in where it seems pretty obvious they're trying to get people to commit felonies. Acts of violence, acts of terrorism. And I'm like, I just, I can't bring myself to believe that that happens in the United States, but you're describing it.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Oh, Tucker, I was in prison with this poor guy. This guy was just a dope. And he and a couple of buddies were in a bar one day in Cleveland. And this other guy was there drinking with them. And he said, "Hey, you know what would be fun? We should blow up the Route 82 Bridge." And they were saying, they were drunk. They said, "Yeah, that would be so much fun. I'll get the explosives." Well, he's an FBI informant. The FBI gives inert explosives. These idiots go out to the Route 82 Bridge and try to blow it up. It doesn't blow up. And then the FBI comes out from behind the bushes. They got 20, 25, and 30 years in prison.

• 45:45Tucker Carlson?

  Why would they do that to these guys?

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Why would they do that? It wasn't their idea to blow up the stupid bridge.

• 45:50Tucker Carlson?

  But, but why were they targeted?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Because this is how FBI agents get promoted. They don't get promoted by not arresting you. They get promoted by arresting you and heaping charges on you so that eventually you go bankrupt and you give up. And then they say, "Okay, here's the deal. We'll drop all the charges but one. You take a guilty plea to a felony and then you do, you know, two years or whatever." But these guys went to trial because they said, "No, it wasn't our idea. It wasn't our explosives. It was the FBI's explosives. And it was the FBI's guy that talked us into doing it. We were just having drinks that night. We weren't gonna blow up a bridge." But that's, that's how they get ahead in Washington.

• 46:33Tucker Carlson?

  That is, but they're, I mean, they're targeting American citizens for destruction.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Sure. Sure. That's what they do.

• 46:45Tucker Carlson?

  You need to shut down the FBI right away.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  I would not object to that at all.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  And in my case, they charged me with three counts of espionage.

• 46:56Tucker Carlson?

  What is the fucking point of all of this? Pay your taxes.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 47:00Tucker Carlson?

  Hoist the flag on your front lawn. I do those things.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do too.

• 47:03Tucker Carlson?

  And, and then they try to destroy you?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:07Tucker Carlson?

  And you're, because your crime is, you didn't like John Brennan when you both were junior guys at CIA.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:15Tucker Carlson?

  Because you correctly said the president, George W. Bush.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Was lying.

• 47:21Tucker Carlson?

  Was lying. Cause he is a liar, unfortunately. Um, and so like, let's spend millions of dollars and all this.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Six million dollars of the taxpayers' money is what they spent on my case.

• 47:35Tucker Carlson?

  To destroy you.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Six million dollars.

• 47:38Tucker Carlson?

  You need a pardon right away from Trump. But okay, but sorry, sorry. You're making me emotional. This is just too ridiculous. I've known you a while. I didn't, I didn't know the details.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was ugly.

• 47:49Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so like, can we just go back? So Brennan orders this investigation, the second Obama takes office. Goes to Eric Holder. Holder says, we, actually, our staff attorneys don't think that he committed espionage. Then what happens? Like, do you know that they're investigating you again?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  No idea. No idea that I'm being investigated. So I'm going on my merry way. I'm trying to build a business in consulting. I have some big name clients. Things are starting to look up. In fact, I was going to New York so often that my wife said, you know, maybe we should buy a little pied-à-terre there. So instead of staying in a hotel, because things are going really well right now, you should, you should talk to a real estate agent. It was so exciting, right? And then 22 FBI agents raid my house.

• 48:36Tucker Carlson?

  When?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Uh, January 12th, 2012.

• 48:43Tucker Carlson?

  2012?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  2012. They investigated me for three years.

• 48:48Tucker Carlson?

  Did you know they were investigating you?

• 48:50Speaker 02

  No. And then when we got the discovery.

• 48:52Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, they investigated you for three years? And this is now? Quite a few years after, the only thing you've done wrong is you gave an interview to ABC News saying three things: "The president lied, we had a torture program." And what was the third one?

• 49:04Speaker 02

  And the torture was

• 49:06Tucker Carlson?

  And was approved.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Signed by the president.

• 49:08Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. All true.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  All true.

• 49:11Tucker Carlson?

  And so for five, six years, they investigate you without telling you. Now, what were they doing to investigate you?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  They were, they had my phones tapped.

• 49:21Tucker Carlson?

  Actually?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Actually tapped, yep. They intercepted all of my emails, and I'll tell you something funny about that.

• 49:28Tucker Carlson?

  For real?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  There's a service that you can pay like $36 a year called ReadNotify.com. So if I want to write you an email, I put, you know, [email protected] ReedNotify.com. And when you access it, it'll show me. Tucker Carlson read your email. He read it for 2 minutes and 37 seconds. He forwarded it, he deleted it, he filed it, whatever, and this is where he was located. And it has a town, and it'll have sometimes geocoordinates.

• 50:02Tucker Carlson?

  Damn.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  So I wanted to write a Freedom of Information Act request, because I was thinking of writing a book about an author, a novelist from the 50s, and I wanted to know whether he had worked at the CIA. So I sent this Freedom of Information Act request.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Actually, I called a journalist that I knew who writes these things every day, and I said, "I don't want it to get rejected, so can you walk me through the process?" He said, "Yeah, just send me what you have, and I'll correct it for you." So I sent it to him, and I got a ReadNotify notification, and I looked at it, and it said, "Accessed in Washington DC." And I said to him, I called him, and I said, "You're not in Washington today, right?" And he said, "No, I'm in LA." "Why?" I said, "Because somebody just accessed the email, and it's in Washington." I said, "Hold on, because it has geocoordinates attached to it." So I took the geocoordinates, I put it into Google Earth, and you know, Google Earth, it shows you the whole planet, and then it kind of zeros in.

• 51:02Tucker Carlson?

  On the FBI's Washington Field Office.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  No way.

• 51:05Tucker Carlson?

  And he said, are they looking at you or are they looking at me? I said, I haven't done anything. They're probably looking at you.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Because you didn't even know you were under investigation.

• 51:15Tucker Carlson?

  No idea. But they were looking at me and they were accessing all of my emails. They even followed my family and me into church, into Target to go shopping. And they would write these stupid reports. Subject and his family went to church, sat in the first pew. Hour and 15 minutes later, subject and family went home.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  All because you called the president a liar?

• 51:38Tucker Carlson?

  Mm hmm. I was in a restaurant the other night, in fact, this weekend, and I had a little trouble hearing what people were saying. And I thought to myself, I'm a little young to go deaf. Why? Well, because I grew up shooting, bird hunting, target shooting. And I remember my father saying, just stick a Marlboro filter in your opposite ear and you'll be fine. I wish we'd had suppressors, but we didn't. You can now. Check out Silencer Central. Silencers play a crucial role in improving accuracy, maximizing your experience and protecting your hearing. They're not dangerous or scary. It's just the opposite. Not using them can be dangerous. Have dinner with me in a restaurant and you'll know what I mean.

• 52:21Tucker Carlson?

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• 52:59Speaker 00

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• 53:28Tucker Carlson?

  Did, am I missing part of this? I don't.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Brendan complained that I had aired the CIA's dirty laundry. But that was, I think, more of just an excuse to cover up his own narcissism.

• 53:41Tucker Carlson?

  But I mean, right. But airing dirty laundry, calling liars liars.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:46Tucker Carlson?

  These are not crimes.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  No, they're not crimes, exactly.

• 53:49Tucker Carlson?

  But am I missing something? I mean, did you kill anybody? Were you dealing heroin at all?

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Nope. Nothing.

• 53:57Tucker Carlson?

  And then? You didn't start some kind of fake cryptocurrency company?

• 53:59Speaker 02

  I wish I had thought of it. I'd be rich today.

• 54:03Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. I hope at some point we can talk about all the actual criminals who are now richer, living in my neighborhood.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:11Tucker Carlson?

  Richer than ever. Okay, so, but you don't know any of this is going on. When do you get confirmation that you're the target of an investigation?

• 54:18Speaker 02

  The FBI called me. I was sitting at my computer one morning, writing an op-ed, and the FBI called me. And I looked at my phone and it said, "Federal Bureau of Investigation." And I thought, "What in the world is that?" So I answered it. I said, "Hi, this is John. May I help you?" And he says, "Hi, this is Special Agent, I forget what." "Do you remember that case that you helped us out with when you were on Capitol Hill?" Because remember, I didn't know that this Japanese guy was an FBI agent yet. I said, "Sure."

• 54:45Tucker Carlson?

  This is so freaking bonkers. Yeah.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  And he said, "Well, we have another case, and we need your help." And I said, because I'm an idiot and a patriot, I said, "Anything for the FBI. What do you want from me?" That's what I told him. He said, "Can you come down here tomorrow at 10?" I said, "Absolutely." So I went at 10 o'clock, and I said, "What do you want me to do?"

• 55:09Tucker Carlson?

  Was this to the FBI building downtown?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Yes. I said, "Is it, what, the Russians? Who is it?" Well, you know, before we get to that, he says, uh, I wanted to ask you, you know, I just read your book, which was a lie. I had a book that had come out two years earlier. I just read your book and I just want to ask you a couple of questions. And it was all about the torture program. And I'm getting more and more nervous. And finally- What were the questions? Well, um, when you were in Pakistan and you were describing this, uh, this piece of technology, did you get that cleared by the CIA? I said, of course I got it cleared. I said, it took me nine months to write that book and 22 months to get it cleared at the CIA's Publications Review Board.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Well, you know, what about this guy? You mentioned this guy. Do you remember? You just say John Doe. Do you remember his name? I'm like, yeah, I remember his name. And then I said, what, what, what are we talking about here? And then one of them said, well, we probably should tell you that as we're speaking right now, we're raiding your house, we're confiscating all of your electronics and- Holy shit! You're gonna be charged with a lot of crimes. What? Uh, that's what he said. And thank God- Wait, as you were talking, they're raiding your house? Mm-hmm. My wife later told me that as soon as I got on the metro to go to the FBI, they just broke down the door. Was she home? With our two-month-old son.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Ah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And then one of the, one of the female FBI agents- I don't think Draine's swamp is not, is not strong enough. No, it's not. Burn it down. Burn it down. Burn it down. Yes. You know, this is neither here nor there, because my opinion's not important. But when Cash Patel was named the Director of the FBI, I wrote an op-ed in a leftist, at a, for a leftist news outlet, celebrating this appointment, saying, this is exactly what we need to do. We need to tear the place down to its studs. If there's going to be a federal law enforcement organization, this one needs to be scrapped and rebuilt, and nobody else has the guts to do it.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Let's build them in headquarters, though. Yeah. Yeah. Um, in Kansas, maybe.

• 57:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, Leavenworth.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Um, oh, excuse me. One final sentence. I thank God that I had the presence of mind to say, I want, I want to speak to my attorney and I'm not saying anything else. And that was the only reason they didn't put the cuffs on me right there. So I said, I want to leave. And I got up and they said, just a minute, just a minute. I said, no, if I'm not under arrest, that means I'm free to leave. And as I walked out, Peter Strzok was standing there and he said, did he implicate himself? And the guy says, not really, but I'll tell you about it in a second. And he turned to me and he said, you're free to go.

• 58:07Tucker Carlson?

  Did you have any idea what this was about?

• 58:09Speaker 02

  No, no idea.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  No idea. They're, they, they

• 58:14Tucker Carlson?

  Charged me with This is like a bad dream.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. I, I went outside, I called my lawyer. He told me, come to the office immediately. I went, told him everything that happened. He told me, try to take it easy. I said, this is a death penalty case. He said, just take it easy. They're not going to see

• 58:33Tucker Carlson?

  What was happening? Did you call home and ask your wife?

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And she was just wonderful. She, she was as calm

• 58:42Speaker 02

  as I wished I could be. And she said, the FBI is here. I said, I know. I said, are they treating you with respect? And she said, well, one of the female agents said, why don't you sit with that beautiful baby? And don't get up.

• 58:59Tucker Carlson?

  You want to go fuck yourself.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 59:02Tucker Carlson?

  Excuse me.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 59:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Talking that way to your wife with a newborn baby.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. And then within hours, of course, they leak it to the media immediately. So within hours, all four of my clients, and these were like household name clients that I had for this consulting business I was trying to get up and running. All four of them dropped me.

• 59:25Tucker Carlson?

  That day?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  That day. And then immediately

• 59:28Tucker Carlson?

  Profiles in Courage Award.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I'll tell you. The phone, we got, we counted, actually. We got something like 65 or 67 calls from the media that, that night. I just shut my phone off. We unplugged the, we had landlines back then. One of the local networks put a truck in front of our house with a spotlight on the house.

• 59:52Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  It was humiliating, just utterly humiliating.

• 59:57Tucker Carlson?

  And I just want to say for the fifth time, because at this point, I mean, you're being treated like El Chapo.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Tucker Carlson?

  Your only crime was an ABC interview with Brian Ross in 2007, in which you say, "Yes, the CIA does have a torture program. I know because I worked there and the president authorized it and lied about it in public." That's, that's, that's your, some total of your crimes.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  That was it.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  I'm going to cut to the chase here.

• 1:00:23Tucker Carlson?

  This is so unbelievable. So you go to your lawyer's office, you find out you're being charged with espionage.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  I called my wife. She came and picked me up and I told her, "I'm going to kill myself."

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  "This is a death penalty case."

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  "I haven't done anything wrong." And she's like, "You're not going to kill yourself. Let's just take this one step at a time." What did the lawyers say? And then we started taking it from there.

• 1:00:50Tucker Carlson?

  When did you get arrested?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Uh, January, uh, Janu-, uh, no, four days later. That was on a, "Ah, so this is another trick that they use." And they did this with the J6 people. The FBI loves, loves, loves to make their arrests, um, on Fridays, right? Or Thursdays after five, because there are no federal arraignments on Fridays. So you get arrested on a Thursday evening and you have to spend Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night in jail. And then you get to go to a Did that happen? Monday. No, only because I asked to see my attorney. And so they told me I had to turn myself in at the FBI Monday morning at 10.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Tucker, when I tell you I had these guys on me from Thursday to Monday, like white on rice. I mean, six feet off my bunk, my bumper everywhere we went. Even one of my neighbors called to say he had gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and he looked out the window and he said, buddy, there are like carloads of people out there at three o'clock in the morning, just staring at your house. And I said, I know, I know, it's the FBI. There's nothing I can do. And so they followed us like there were FBI cars on either side of us and behind us as we drove to the FBI that Monday morning. And then when I got out of the car and walked into the FBI headquarters, they broke off.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  And then they, they chained me to a, to a metal bench. So I'm, I'm like this. Actually? With a handcuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, And Struck was there. Oh yeah, he was there. And you know, but I didn't know, I didn't know he was Peter Struck until I got a call in 2019 from a reporter at the Washington Post, 20, no, no, 2017, reporter for the Washington Post. And he said, Hey, I wanted to get your thoughts on Peter Struck being fired from the FBI. I said, I don't know anything about Peter Struck, other than what I've read in the Washington Post. He said, no, Peter Struck arrested you in January of 2012. I said, that was Peter Struck?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  He said, yeah, it was Peter Struck. He was the head of the counterintelligence division. It was Peter Struck that wrote the reports on your arrest. He's the one that physically put the cuffs on you. And I said, oh my God. I said, yes, I'll give you a statement. He said, what's the statement? And I said, the statement is that.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  The statement is that karma is a bitch and now it's his turn.

• 1:03:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  So all they printed was now it's his turn.

• 1:03:30Tucker Carlson?

  I think he wound up getting like a million dollar settlement, actually.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  He did, and there was a GoFundMe.

• 1:03:35Tucker Carlson?

  He got richer!

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  He got richer, and there was a GoFundMe that raised another half a million dollars. Yeah.

• 1:03:42Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, this is so...

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  It was a nightmare.

• 1:03:44Tucker Carlson?

  So, okay, you're charged, just to...

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, three counts of espionage.

• 1:03:50Tucker Carlson?

  Three counts of espionage.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  One...

• 1:03:52Tucker Carlson?

  But not specifying who you spied for.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Nope. There was never even an accusation that I had spied for anybody. One count of making a false statement. We were never exactly sure what the false statement was supposed to have been. It had something to do with the clearance process for my book. And one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

• 1:04:16Tucker Carlson?

  Did you reveal the identities of anyone?

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Here's that story. In the summer of 2008, six months after I blew the whistle, I got an email from a journalist who was writing a book on the CIA's rendition program. I told him, "I don't know anything about renditions. Kidnapping was not my thing at the agency. I can't help you." So he sends me a list of a dozen names. He said, "Can you introduce me to any of these people so that I can interview them?" I said, "I don't know any of these people." Then he sent me a second list of a dozen names, and I said, "Look, you clearly know this better than I do. I don't know any of these people." And then he said, "There's a guy that you mentioned on like page 165 of your book. You

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  called him John. Can I mention, can I interview him?" And I said, "Oh, you're talking about John Doe. I don't know whatever happened to him. He's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere." They got me. I confirmed the surname of a former colleague. That was it. That's the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

• 1:05:32Tucker Carlson?

  And they knew that because they were listening to the call.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Well, it got worse. They didn't recognize that as a violation until the journalist, who wasn't really writing a book, gave the name to Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch gave the name to the Guantanamo defense attorneys. The Guantanamo defense attorneys wrote a classified motion telling the judge at Guantanamo, we'd like to interview this John Doe. The judge said, hey, this name is probably classified. He gave it to the FBI. They gave it to the CIA. The CIA gave it to John Brennan.

• 1:06:13Tucker Carlson?

  This is crazy. What do you mean the journalist wasn't really writing a book?

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  He was pretending to write a book on the Abu Omar rendition from Milan. There really was no book. He was really working for the Guantanamo defense attorneys as kind of a private eye without telling anybody.

• 1:06:30Tucker Carlson?

  What?

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Tucker Carlson?

  Man, the level of treachery.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, welcome to Washington. It's that bad.

• 1:06:39Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I'm very aware of that. Yeah. I'm so glad I'm not there anymore.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I can't wait until the day I can leave.

• 1:06:48Tucker Carlson?

  It's like nothing is as it seems. Everyone's lying. Everyone's pretending to be something he's not. And underneath it all is the willingness to hurt people, to kill them.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:07:01Tucker Carlson?

  It's not just like, you know, we're competing and I'm elbowing you out of the way.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  I'm gonna get that promotion before you do.

• 1:07:07Tucker Carlson?

  It's like, if I need to make sure you die in prison, that's okay. That's really.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Speaking of which, I took a plea to make the... First of all, they waited until I went bankrupt. And then they dropped all three of the espionage charges.

• 1:07:24Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so what were you facing initially? You get charged, you get-

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Forty, forty-five years.

• 1:07:30Tucker Carlson?

  Forty-five years in prison?

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And one of the, one of the attorneys in, in the Obama Holder Justice Department said to me at the first proffer meeting, they offered me forty-five years. And this woman says, "Take the deal, Mr. Kiriakou, and you may live to meet your grandchildren."

• 1:07:49Tucker Carlson?

  Who, what, do you remember her name?

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  I don't. I remember she had a Vietnamese name, like Nguyen or Tran or something like that. But she ended up like getting promoted in the Biden Justice Department.

• 1:07:59Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  And became very, very important. Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Tucker Carlson?

  I hope, I hope that she becomes famous for that.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  I hope so, too.

• 1:08:08Tucker Carlson?

  That level of cruelty to another human being is, there's no justification for that.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  They wanted me to die in prison. That was the plan. And so my attorney said, "You haven't done anything wrong. We're gonna go to trial." Right? "We're gonna go to trial." And I said, "Okay, let's do it."

• 1:08:23Tucker Carlson?

  Can I ask you, anyone allege that you lied, ever?

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Ever? Never. Never! And you know, that's a really important point. And we talked about that. We talked about me testifying in my trial because literally everything I said was the truth. In fact, fast forward to December of 2014, I'm gonna be released from prison in six weeks, and I called my wife. And I was allowed to call her for fifteen minutes every other day. And I said, "How was your day?" And she said, "It was great." And I said, "Great? Why was it so great?" And she said, "Because the Senate torture report came out today, and it proved that everything you said was true." So I said, "You know what? That made it worth it."

• 1:09:05Tucker Carlson?

  So you went to prison, you were facing life in prison, actually you're facing the death penalty initially-

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, death penalty.

• 1:09:09Tucker Carlson?

  Because you told the truth about other people's lies.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:09:16Tucker Carlson?

  So the truth teller, and I'm just, I wanna put a very fine point on this because I think it is a trend, and I think it's a sign of evil.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:23Tucker Carlson?

  You know, the definition of evil is lies, lying. And the truth teller faces death, the liars thrive.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:33Tucker Carlson?

  So that's a system that can't continue. That's not a virtuous system, that's an evil system.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  You're exactly right. And may I add a statistic? The Espionage Act was written in 1917

• 1:09:44Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  To combat German saboteurs during the First World War.

• 1:09:47Tucker Carlson?

  1917 being one of the darkest periods in American history.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  When it comes to civil liberties, one of the darkest periods.

• 1:09:53Tucker Carlson?

  The most anti, most un-American moment, really with

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Without any question.

• 1:09:58Tucker Carlson?

  Probably one of the worst presidents we ever had, Woodrow Wilson.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Double without any question.

• 1:10:02Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Destroy Christian Europe for no reason at all. Right. Yep.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  The espionage has never been meaningfully updated. In fact, it doesn't even mention the words classified information because the classification system wasn't invented until the 1950s.

• 1:10:16Tucker Carlson?

  Most Americans didn't have electricity in 1917.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 1:10:19Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Between 1917 and the election of Barack Obama, three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the press. Under Barack Obama, eight people, almost three times all previous presidents combined, were charged with espionage for speaking to the press.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Three times.

• 1:10:43Tucker Carlson?

  And none of them was charged with lying.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Not a single one of them.

• 1:10:47Tucker Carlson?

  Because lying is not a crime.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:10:49Tucker Carlson?

  Telling the truth is a crime.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  That's it right there.

• 1:10:52Tucker Carlson?

  That's all you need to know.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  That's it right there.

• 1:10:53Tucker Carlson?

  You can't support a system in which telling the truth is a crime and lying is rewarded. Sorry. Pretty much every day we hear from desperate American retailers all asking the same question. When can we start selling the world's best nicotine pouch? Alp, well, we finally have an answer right now. We're opening up wholesale orders for stores that want to be the first to carry Alp. It's super easy. Go to alpouch.com/wholesale and sign up. We'll send you cases of Alp and your customers will be grateful. Don't wait until they start begging for Alp before they start moving to another store down the road to get the Alp. Beat the crowd, get Alp now. Alpouch.com/wholesale.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  I mentioned to you last night privately that one of my attorneys

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Really put this whole thing into a couple of sentences. And it was so powerful, so profound what he said that it has stuck with me. I decided to turn down the Justice Department's best and final offer of two and a half years in prison. I said, I haven't done anything wrong. And I, I had this stupid idea that as soon as I get in front of a jury, they're going to see how ridiculous this is and I'm going to be acquitted. Well, that's nuts.

• 1:12:07Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  So he said to me, you know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage. Take the deal. And so I took the deal. What was I gonna do? I have five kids at home. Should I take two and a half years? I'm gonna do 23 months? Or should I roll the dice? And I said to him, I said, if I turn the deal down, what am I realistically looking at here? And he said 12 to 18 years. Take the deal.

• 1:12:40Tucker Carlson?

  Years?

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  So I took it.

• 1:12:45Tucker Carlson?

  For telling the truth in an ABC interview? How long was that ABC interview?

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  30 minutes? 40 minutes?

• 1:12:54Tucker Carlson?

  If, if you had to replay your life, live it again, would you have done that?

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Yes, actually.

• 1:12:59Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  I would have. The only thing I would have done differently is I would have had my attorney sitting with me. I, I had to be reactive by hiring an attorney after blowing the whistle. So we had to respond to the media and respond to the Justice Department. I would have hired the attorney first. But yes, somebody had to say something. Somebody. It, it's these, these Bush people and the Obama people who covered up the Bush administration's crimes that were the, that were the criminals.

• 1:13:30Tucker Carlson?

  The amazing thing is that Barack Obama, I mean, I was there. I mean, I knew Obama. He ran against all that stuff.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did.

• 1:13:38Tucker Carlson?

  Right? Iraq was the bad war. Afghanistan was the good war. And he, he ran a campaign against that.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:13:48Tucker Carlson?

  But he ended up throwing into prison the guy who told the truth about it.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Mark Halpern and John Heileman wrote a book about the, well, both the 2008 election, the 2012 election. And in the second book, they quote Obama twice, saying things that just put it all into perspective. Number one, he said, I never said I was a liberal.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Like, why are the liberals so mad? That he's a war mongering, you know, neocon? "I never said I was a liberal," he said. And the other thing he said that really struck me, he was talking about the drone program. He killed 10 times more people with drones than George W. Bush did. And he said, "You know, I never realized I would be so good at killing people."

• 1:14:31Tucker Carlson?

  He's a cold human being.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  What is that? That's sociopathy.

• 1:14:34Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, well, for sure.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  You have to be a sociopath to even think that way.

• 1:14:38Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  But he surrounded himself with other sociopaths, like John Brennan, who, for sport, would ruin people's lives to the point where they're actively considering suicide or making plans to die in prison.

• 1:14:52Tucker Carlson?

  These are Americans he's doing this to.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Americans. Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:58Tucker Carlson?

  Clearly a man capable of great violence, and you wonder if he's involved in plotting physical violence against Americans now. Would not surprise me at all.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  I would not be surprised by anything anymore. You know, when President Trump... I had to laugh. When President Trump stripped him of his security clearance, I went on one of the networks. Well, I went on Fox, but I think I also went on MSNBC that week to say, "Why does John Brennan deserve a security clearance?"

• 1:15:28Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly. Why don't I have one?

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  He's a private citizen.

• 1:15:29Tucker Carlson?

  Do you have one?

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:15:31Tucker Carlson?

  I don't either.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  See? So why does John Brennan get one?

• 1:15:34Tucker Carlson?

  I agree.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  So I said, "Of course, the president should strip John Brennan of the security clearance." And then, when he disallowed Brennan from entering into a government building, I went on Fox, and they said, "Is this legit?" I said, "Of course it is. This guy is so dangerous that he shouldn't be anywhere near a federal building. With what we know, he's plotted in the past, God knows what he's cooking up today. No, I wouldn't trust him in a federal building. I wouldn't trust him in a position of trust, and I wouldn't trust him with a security clearance. He's dangerous."

• 1:16:11Tucker Carlson?

  Well, all these people have security clearances, which really are the currency in Washington.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  Very much so.

• 1:16:15Tucker Carlson?

  Conduct business without one in DC because everything is classified.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:16:19Tucker Carlson?

  Not to protect American national security, but for the obvious power advantage it gives the holders of those clearances.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:16:26Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, you know, I think there should be a real attempt to do that to a lot of people, like a lot of people. But there won't be.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  No, no, there won't be.

• 1:16:36Tucker Carlson?

  So anyway, you, you plead, you get, how much time?

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  I got 30 months. And at sentencing, my attorneys asked that I be sent to a minimum security work camp. There are no bars on the windows, there are no locks on the doors, you're free to come and go. Most of those guys worked in town at the local university, sweeping the floors or whatever. And there was a, there was a possibility that I, I could get out in 17 months with good behavior and halfway house, not halfway house, but home confinement. So I said, okay, I, this will be easy. So I get to the prison. It's very strange when you go to prison. If you're not remanded at sentencing, you

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  have to physically drive to the prison and knock on the door and say, I'm here to turn myself in for.

• 1:17:30Tucker Carlson?

  The opposite of a jailbreak.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Yes, it's nuts. It's nuts. And of course, I've got, you know, two cars with me. There's a documentary film crew and my lawyers and my cousin and we have this caravan that, that go to the prison with us.

• 1:17:46Tucker Carlson?

  So you've already said goodbye to your children?

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  Already said goodbye to my children.

• 1:17:49Tucker Carlson?

  What was that like?

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  They were very young. And so I said, I said, you remember I had that fight with the FBI? And they said, yes. And I said, well, I lost. And so I have to go to Pennsylvania for a while and I'm going to teach bad guys how to read and write because I figured I'd probably teach a GED class or something. And I said, but you're going to come and visit me all the time. And then I'm going to come back home and everything's going to be great.

• 1:18:18Tucker Carlson?

  How old were they?

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  They were eight, six, and one.

• 1:18:23Tucker Carlson?

  Your little kids.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. And so.

• 1:18:26Tucker Carlson?

  Eight, six, and one.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  At, in the visiting room, there was a sign on one of the doors that said inmates only. And my eight year old said, uh, dad, what's an inmate? And I, without thinking, I said, it's a prisoner. And he said, wait a minute. Are you a prisoner here? Or are you a teacher here? And I said, uh, buddy, I'm a prisoner here. But we're going to get past this. It's going to go quickly and I'm going to be home and everything's going to be good again.

• 1:19:00Tucker Carlson?

  Ah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  It took everything I had not to.

• 1:19:03Tucker Carlson?

  Ah, it makes me emotional. Yeah. Oh, that's bad.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Tucker Carlson?

  Um, I'm out of adjectives actually for that. Um, so you didn't wind up in the work camp?

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  No, the CIA, under John Brennan, who was, uh.

• 1:19:19Tucker Carlson?

  He was director by this point?

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  No, but he was soon to be director and actually 2012. Yeah, he was director at that point. Yes, yes. Thanks for correcting me. Uh, the CIA objected. They objected to my placement in a minimum security camp.

• 1:19:33Tucker Carlson?

  Well, they're vindictive, aren't they? I guess ask Julian Assange how vindictive they are.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  And why I got there. Exactly, exactly. Ask Julian Assange. They almost killed him. So.

• 1:19:46Tucker Carlson?

  Under, Mike Pompeo plotted his murder.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 1:19:49Tucker Carlson?

  Who's still free, by the way, is Mike Pompeo in jail?

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  I haven't seen any announcement that he's been.

• 1:19:53Tucker Carlson?

  Are you allowed as an appointee to a government, not elected, just an appointee? Are you allowed to plot the murder of people who embarrass the agency you are in?

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  You are not.

• 1:20:02Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, you're not allowed? Okay.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  You are not.

• 1:20:05Tucker Carlson?

  You can't, so you can't use federal funds to murder people who embarrass you?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Only if you're Barack Obama, but anybody else, no, you can't do that.

• 1:20:12Tucker Carlson?

  So if you do that, have you committed a crime?

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, a serious crime.

• 1:20:17Tucker Carlson?

  A serious crime would be attempted murder, I think, plotting a murder.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  There's a former CIA officer, Bob Baer, who was, who was given a choice to either be charged with attempted murder or resign from the agency for talking to a Kurdish group about killing Saddam Hussein.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  So why wasn't Mike Pompeo arrested for talking about or planning? He did more than talking. They planned to murder Julian Assange.

• 1:20:45Tucker Carlson?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  That's a whole different conversation.

• 1:20:47Tucker Carlson?

  Pompeo keeps threatening to sue me for saying that.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Well, the facts are a defense.

• 1:20:50Tucker Carlson?

  I hope he will.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:20:52Tucker Carlson?

  Discovery would be fun. Um, anyway, sorry.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  So I was in prison.

• 1:20:56Tucker Carlson?

  It's also frustrating. So you say goodbye to your children.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I do. I say goodbye to my children.

• 1:20:58Tucker Carlson?

  The CIA makes certain you don't go to the work camp.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:01Tucker Carlson?

  You go to a prison.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was five days before I got access to a phone at the prison and I called my lawyer.

• 1:21:08Tucker Carlson?

  What was that like, the first five days?

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  It was, you know, looking back, I think I was in shock.

• 1:21:15Tucker Carlson?

  Did you think about fleeing?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Everybody does.

• 1:21:19Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I don't know that I would submit to that. I mean, you know, you never know until you're there.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  You find yourself constantly looking at the fences, constantly calculating how bad you'll get cut up with the concertina wire.

• 1:21:31Tucker Carlson?

  Before you report to prison, did you think like, I served this country? I grew up here. You're from a, you know, middle-class family, pro-America.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:21:41Tucker Carlson?

  You never thought about fleeing the country?

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  No, no. Because I was right and they were wrong. And, you know, the truth, Tucker always has a way of, of coming out. Always. Sometimes it takes a while, but the truth always comes out. And in fact, the, the deputy director for operations at the CIA under Brennan, Jose Rodriguez, another notorious murderer, tweeted at me the night before I left for prison. And he said, don't drop the soap.

• 1:22:12Tucker Carlson?

  He actually tweeted that at you?

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. And I tweeted back at him and I said, Jose, I am on the right side of history and you are not.

• 1:22:20Tucker Carlson?

  These people are morally diseased.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:23Tucker Carlson?

  When Michael Avenatti, who I mocked for years as the creepy porn lawyer, went to prison, I felt sad for him.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Sure, because you're a human being.

• 1:22:31Tucker Carlson?

  I despised him, but he's in prison. Ever been to a prison? I've been to many prisons. You don't want to be in prison. You've served in prison.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  You don't want to be in prison.

• 1:22:38Tucker Carlson?

  To, to cheer when a man goes to prison and your only crime was embarrassing them by telling the truth. Whatever happened to the Jose character?

• 1:22:48Tucker Carlson?

  Is he an MSNBC contributor?

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  He took his $6 million book advance and moved to Florida.

• 1:22:52Tucker Carlson?

  Actually?

• 1:22:56Tucker Carlson?

  Doesn't this, I mean, why are you not insane?

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:22:59Tucker Carlson?

  There's a lightness to you that...

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Thank you. And maybe I'm an idiot, but I really believe that I'm on the right side of this. And I'm hopeful that President Trump will pardon me. I have an amazing amount of support.

• 1:23:16Tucker Carlson?

  I, I, I hope that you get a pardon this afternoon. I really do. This is horrifying. His enemies are the people who did this to you.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:25Tucker Carlson?

  He ran against this kind of

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yes, he did. And he righted it with the J6 people, with Rod Blagojevich. I wrote Rod Blagojevich a letter when he went to prison. This is before I was ever in trouble.

• 1:23:39Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  I wrote him a letter and I said, you don't know me. I don't live in Illinois, but this is a travesty.

• 1:23:45Tucker Carlson?

  It was, I remember.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  There's no crime that was actually committed.

• 1:23:48Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  And then 14 years? Have people lost their minds?

• 1:23:53Tucker Carlson?

  I know.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  But the president, you know, you and I were talking about this privately. The president has been unlike almost every other president in that he's not waiting for the political safe period to issue pardons after an election, right? He just issues them as they come to him.

• 1:24:14Tucker Carlson?

  To pardon Mark Rich because he's sleeping with his wife.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  Precisely. Precisely. You know who else did that? Historians have told us, historians have documented that Abraham Lincoln used to sit up late into the night pardoning people by candlelight because he said, for example, that army deserters shouldn't be executed for cowardice.

• 1:24:39Tucker Carlson?

  I agree.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  He didn't wait until after a congressional election. And neither does this president.

• 1:24:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, the British Army. Disgraced itself by they they murdered a lot of their own men.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  Yes, they did.

• 1:24:52Tucker Carlson?

  Who snapped cowardice is contemptible, of course, but you shouldn't kill a boy because he runs away.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:24:58Tucker Carlson?

  It's disgusting. It's disgusting. It's like, you know, regain your senses for a second. So anyway, the first five days. You were in shock.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  I was in shock. I was in prison for 40 minutes and the only thing that the cop who processed me said to me was if somebody comes into your cell uninvited, that's an act of aggression. And I said, great, thank you. And then he walked away. And sure enough, these two guys walk in. One of them had a swastika that took up his entire neck. Came up onto his face. The other one had fuck you tattooed on his on his eyelids.

• 1:25:37Tucker Carlson?

  It's like kind of a movie.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  It was nuts. And I jumped up and I said, what do you want? Cause I thought, it's two of them. It's one of me, but I'm, I'm gonna do my best.

• 1:25:45Tucker Carlson?

  You got to, yeah.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  And the one with the swastika said, are you the CIA guy? And I said, yeah, so? And he said, are you a fag? And I said, no, I'm not a fag. You know, I haven't even said that word in so many years, but.

• 1:26:00Tucker Carlson?

  We're not in Georgetown anymore.

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  And he says, are you a rat? I said, no, I'm not a rat. I didn't have anybody else in my case. And he said, are you a chomo? I said, I don't know what that word means. And he goes, chomo, like I'm stupid. Chomo, child molester. I said, no, I'm not a child molester. And he says, okay, you can sit with the Aryans in the cafeteria. And I said, oh, okay, then.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  And you know, funny thing, a year later, I, I, I lived right across the hall from, from a senior captain. The number three in one of New York's five families, right? And he said, good, great guy, not even good guy, a great guy. I would give him.

• 1:26:45Tucker Carlson?

  A good fellow, really.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  He was a good fellow. I'd give him the New York Times every day. He would give me the New York Post. So we traded papers every day.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  So, uh, you know, he got a Christmas card one year from Derek Jeter that really impressed me.

• 1:27:00Tucker Carlson?

  I've met Derek Jeter, nice man.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  Sweet guy.

• 1:27:02Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  So anyway, he said to me, let me ask you something. Why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria?

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  I said, I don't know. My first day here, they told me to sit with them. And he says, very dramatically, "From today, you're with the Italians."

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  And so from that day, I was with the Italians.

• 1:27:25Tucker Carlson?

  And you're still friends with some of them?

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:27:26Tucker Carlson?

  We were talking about it at dinner last night.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  We, we, we talk frequently.

• 1:27:30Tucker Carlson?

  Good guys. Yeah.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Tucker Carlson?

  That was a misapplication of federal power. It's like, you know, obviously you don't want, you know, organized crime. On the other hand, like if that's your number one, well, look at what's happened to America post mafia. Has it gotten a lot better?

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:45Tucker Carlson?

  I don't think so.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  No, it hasn't.

• 1:27:47Tucker Carlson?

  Bensonhurst is not improved.

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  No, it hasn't.

• 1:27:49Tucker Carlson?

  I know. I'm aware. I'm aware. They did a better job with Staten Island than the current rulers have. So

• 1:27:59Tucker Carlson?

  at this point, your case is well-known. Not well, it's known. Okay. I was, I'm in the media, so I'm sort of following it, but I don't really know. It's a leak investigation. You've somehow betrayed your country.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:14Tucker Carlson?

  That's all we know.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:17Tucker Carlson?

  But there are some people who are paying attention and they're making a lot of noise, but they're, but it doesn't matter.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:28:23Tucker Carlson?

  It doesn't matter.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny. My support came from people on the hard left.

• 1:28:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  And people on the libertarian right.

• 1:28:33Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  It, it led me to the conclusion that the ideological spectrum is not a straight line.

• 1:28:39Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  It's a circle and it meets at a certain point.

• 1:28:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Where civil liberties are concerned.

• 1:28:43Tucker Carlson?

  I agree.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  And so I started following other people's cases that would never have interested me in the past. And it was always cases dealing with government overreach, like reassessing Ruby Ridge, right? Or, or Waco. I mean,

• 1:29:00Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, Ruby Ridge was really just absolutely murdered the guys.

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  In cold blood.

• 1:29:05Tucker Carlson?

  And his wife, shot his dog.

• 1:29:09Tucker Carlson?

  Randy Weaver, because his shotgun was two inches too short or something.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:29:13Tucker Carlson?

  Lon Horuji, I think was the name of the FBI sniper. I want to say it again. Lon Horuji.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Murdered them in cold blood and

• 1:29:21Tucker Carlson?

  Shot a woman, really?

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, a woman.

• 1:29:22Tucker Carlson?

  Who's just standing in the door. Holding a baby.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  Holding a baby. Uh huh. That's right.

• 1:29:27Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, and that was, and by the way, that was not only never punished, Lon Haruchy was never punished for that. He should have gone right to prison for murder and his superior should have gone right to prison for authorizing that murder. But it was like, at the time, it was like, oh, were you a Ruby Ridge person? Like, you care?

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:46Tucker Carlson?

  Like, you're a wacko or something?

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  You're some kind of right-wing extremist.

• 1:29:49Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. I was a right-wing extremist, so I knew about it and I was really bothered by it. Right-wing in the sense that I, I believed in the Bill of Rights. I don't think you should be able to murder women for no reason.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  People began sending me books by John Whitehead, and I remember just blowing through these books, saying, why have I never heard of this guy before?

• 1:30:11Tucker Carlson?

  No, no.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  I mean, he's talking sense here about government overreach.

• 1:30:15Tucker Carlson?

  You had case after case after case.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  All documented.

• 1:30:18Tucker Carlson?

  I have that book on my shelf in my office.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Government of Wolves.

• 1:30:21Tucker Carlson?

  It's unbelievable. But the media, not to blame everything on the media, but it is kind of the mouthpiece of the blob.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 1:30:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, the Praetorian Guard, really, the protectors, the bodyguards of the murderers and the liars. They just, man, they swarmed anybody who expressed concern about these cases.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  That's right. They try to paint you as a radical.

• 1:30:45Tucker Carlson?

  A conspiracy theorist.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Conspiracy theorist, a term that was created by the CIA, by the way.

• 1:30:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Shut the man's wife. So this, so you, your views, and I should have done, people can Google you and I hope that they will, but it's hard to overstate the departure that this turn is from the rest of your life.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:06Tucker Carlson?

  You weren't a CIA paramilitary. You were an actual, just like, officer.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Case officer, yeah.

• 1:31:11Tucker Carlson?

  Case officer.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  Recruiting spies to steal secrets.

• 1:31:13Tucker Carlson?

  Multilingual, you speak Greek, you speak Arabic, which is like, considered basically impossible for native English speakers. You're a scholar, literally, and, um, and kind of an academic in some ways. I mean, right?

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm a professor of intelligence studies now at the University of Salamanca in Spain, and I taught for, for four years at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

• 1:31:36Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  And it's funny, when they called me to hire me, I said, I said, wow, I'm flattered, but you and I probably disagree on 99% of the issues. Why would you want me to teach in the Jesse Helm School of Government? And the dean said, because torture's not Christian.

• 1:31:52Tucker Carlson?

  It certainly isn't.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  And I said, you know what? I'll take the job.

• 1:31:54Tucker Carlson?

  Certainly isn't.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  And I love those guys. I'm still in touch with them.

• 1:31:58Tucker Carlson?

  Killing unarmed, defenseless people is immoral.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:32:01Tucker Carlson?

  And it's also just dishonorable in the most secular terms.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:32:05Tucker Carlson?

  If a man is handcuffed, you don't punch him in the face because it's bad for him, but it also degrades you.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  That's right. It does.

• 1:32:10Tucker Carlson?

  It's not how honorable men behave.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  PTSD and moral injury are real.

• 1:32:16Tucker Carlson?

  I totally agree.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  We damage ourselves.

• 1:32:18Tucker Carlson?

  It's also disgusting. Like, what is this, anyway? I mean, I sort of believe that the country was good because it was virtuous. And like, certain things we don't do because we're above that. We don't send our wives to go fight wars for us. We don't torture people who are chained because they can't fight back.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:32:36Tucker Carlson?

  What is this, anyway? What is this?

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  And then what happens when you go in and you say, oh, I accidentally killed him. Oh, well, just bury him out back. That's literally what they did.

• 1:32:47Tucker Carlson?

  Actually?

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  Just bury him out back. Yeah.

• 1:32:51Tucker Carlson?

  It's just hard to make a moral case for the things that you're doing when you behave that way.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:32:58Tucker Carlson?

  And to see, once again, the only man who tells the truth face the penalty, and the liars thrive, is really dispiriting.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  It is. I'm confident things are going to turn around.

• 1:33:12Tucker Carlson?

  I think so, too. I hope so. I pray that.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:33:14Tucker Carlson?

  So how long were you in prison in the end?

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  23 months. I didn't get a single day of halfway house time. They made sure that I did every day of that sentence. They had to take seven months off for good behavior. They had to. Because it's legally mandated. But I was in that prison for every last day that they could get out of me.

• 1:33:38Tucker Carlson?

  Were any elected officials sympathetic at all?

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yes, but none were really willing to go out on a limb. Gus Bilirakis, who's a congressman from Florida, he was very supportive and friendly. I should add, it wasn't just Gus. Gus is a sweetheart of a guy. It was the whole Greek American community.

• 1:34:04Tucker Carlson?

  Man, they're cohesive.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  They are. We stick together.

• 1:34:08Tucker Carlson?

  I'm aware of, yes.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  They really went to the mat for me. I got fantastic press coverage in Greece. The Greek government hired me to help them write a new whistleblower protection law when I got out of prison. It was my first trip. I had to get permission from the judge to travel because I had just gotten out of prison. So that was fun. But really, and Jim Moran, who was a Democratic congressman from...

• 1:34:32Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  Jim was very helpful, very, very helpful. But that was it, besides the two of them.

• 1:34:39Tucker Carlson?

  Moran was, I don't even know if he's still alive. I knew Moran pretty well.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:34:43Tucker Carlson?

  Drank too much, florid and wild private life, crazy town. And I disagreed with him on all domestic policy issues passionately, because he's very liberal. But his foreign policy views were out of the mainstream.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:34:59Tucker Carlson?

  He was not a neocon.

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:35:01Tucker Carlson?

  And boy, watching the job they did on Jim Moran.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  How many times did they primary him?

• 1:35:07Tucker Carlson?

  Ran against him, ghouls like that, who were just like, on the merits. So Jim Rand seemed like possibly hadn't honored his marriage vows and drank too much. Okay, okay. And he was like a loud mouth and he was always ready to beat people up. He was like this big Irish guy. Okay, got it. Those are his sins, as I understand them. The people who were against him had like committed genocide.

• 1:35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Right.

• 1:35:30Tucker Carlson?

  And they were like, it was crazy. It was crazy. And they systematically destroyed Jim Rand's life.

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:39Tucker Carlson?

  For asking like pretty obvious questions like, why did 9/11 happen?

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Right. They don't want to talk about that.

• 1:35:44Tucker Carlson?

  Shouldn't we know?

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  You'd think.

• 1:35:46Tucker Carlson?

  Assuming that it was exactly what they told us it was, which was this group of 19 Arabs, mostly Saudis, decided to, you know, attack the United States, whatever. Let's just say that's true. I'm assuming it is true.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:00Tucker Carlson?

  Why did they do that? Why were they willing to die for that? Like, what were they mad about?

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  That's the question.

• 1:36:03Tucker Carlson?

  What were they mad about? That's what Jim Moran asked, and I'm like,

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  You can't ask that question.

• 1:36:07Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, by the way, Jim Moran, and then they like plastered, they Glenn Greenwald him.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:36:12Tucker Carlson?

  Big time.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  They did.

• 1:36:14Tucker Carlson?

  And they kind of drove him out, and I think they, he lost his seat in the end.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  He retired.

• 1:36:19Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, he did, okay.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  And he, he's at a political consulting firm in McLean, Virginia. I ran into him at a conference about a year ago.

• 1:36:26Tucker Carlson?

  No way.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, he's a lovely man. He really is.

• 1:36:30Tucker Carlson?

  I always secretly liked him. I had him on, I interviewed him a lot, and he would get, you know, per his, the ethnic stereotype, he'd get like red in the face, or like, spit would come out, but I kind of, you know, he was like, I liked him.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 1:36:45Tucker Carlson?

  Still, sorry, not to.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  And Gus Bilirakis is one of those guys who's just a genuinely nice guy. He, and he's actually, he's quite an accomplished legislator, which he doesn't get a lot of credit for. But he's a good guy. And so, you know, a fellow Greek American needed some help, and he was there to help.

• 1:37:06Tucker Carlson?

  Wow. Have you ever had any contact with CIA since you got out of prison?

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  No. Well, not other than sending articles and books in for clearance.

• 1:37:17Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  No. You know, when I got out of prison, I finished house arrest. I had 90 days of house arrest. And, uh, and people started calling me, hey, let's meet for lunch, or let's have a pizza or whatever. And every time I would go to meet them, I'd be under surveillance. And the first few times,

• 1:37:35Tucker Carlson?

  Still?

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Tucker Carlson?

  But from whom?

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  It, it had to be the FBI. It could have been the CIA.

• 1:37:40Tucker Carlson?

  On what basis could they justify surveilling you? They sent you to prison for an ABC interview.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  And it's done. It's all done. I'm just gonna go have a pizza.

• 1:37:47Tucker Carlson?

  And moreover, by this point, a congressional investigation has confirmed that you were telling the truth.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  You're exactly right.

• 1:37:53Tucker Carlson?

  And this is just, this is now on Wikipedia.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  But Barack Obama was still in the White House.

• 1:38:01Tucker Carlson?

  Now, why was he mad at you?

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  I don't think he knew who I was one way or the other. I think that Brendan went to him and said, there's this very dangerous guy insider threat from the CIA. He leaked to the press and Obama just said, vaya con Dios, you know?

• 1:38:18Tucker Carlson?

  He's a cold man.

• 1:38:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Tucker Carlson?

  Doesn't care.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  No, he doesn't care.

• 1:38:20Tucker Carlson?

  So, part of the reason that this has to be precedent, they cannot allow a CIA officer to break ranks.

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  This is what's very dangerous. There, there actually was a legal precedent that was set in my case and it was, it was one of the things used against President Trump in the documents case.

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  I was charged in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is called the Espionage Court for a couple of reasons.

• 1:38:47Tucker Carlson?

  No, I'm aware.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, no national security defendant has ever won a case there, ever. And it's the home of the Pentagon, the CIA.

• 1:38:55Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  All the defense contractors. So, um, we made a hundred motions to use a hundred classified documents that we received in discovery in my defense. And we asked the judge to block off three days to hear our motions. And we walked into the courtroom and she says, I'm going to make everybody's day much easier and I'm going to just deny all 100 of these motions. You can't use any of these documents in the case. And my lawyer said, Your Honor, it's, it's our whole defense. You're saying that we can't mount a defense. And she said, classified is classified. So you can't use the classified documents to defend him.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  So as we were walking out, I said to my lawyer, what just happened? And he said, we just lost the case. That's what happened. And I said, well, now what do we do? He said, now we talk about a plea.

• 1:39:52Tucker Carlson?

  So the government charges you with a death penalty offense and then gets to decide what you can talk about in court?

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  In fact, they made a list of words that I wasn't allowed to use in court. Like I could not use the word whistleblower. I had to use the words swimming pool. There's a whole list, so.

• 1:40:11Tucker Carlson?

  Swimming pool?

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Because the word whistleblower in and of itself, they deemed to be classified. And so I couldn't say I'm a whistleblower.

• 1:40:20Tucker Carlson?

  On what grounds? How is it classified?

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  They say so.

• 1:40:23Tucker Carlson?

  It's a secret word?

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So they invoked something called the SIPA, the Classified Information Protection Act. So they would clear the courtroom. Every time I had a hearing, they would put plastic tarp over the windows and tape it up so nobody could shoot a laser beam at the window and listen to the vibrations and hear classified information. There was the list of banned words like whistleblower.

• 1:40:47Tucker Carlson?

  Wait.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Whistleblower. Absurd.

• 1:40:52Tucker Carlson?

  So the physical security of the United States dependent upon you not using the word whistleblower?

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. That was it. And so my lawyer said to the judge, well, the judge said, his reason for blowing the whistle is irrelevant. The question is, does the intelligence community say that he violated the Espionage Act? The answer is yes. And my lawyer said, Your Honor, are you saying that a person can accidentally commit espionage? And she said, that's exactly what I'm saying.

• 1:41:29Tucker Carlson?

  Who is this judge?

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  Her name was Leanne Brinkema. She was a Clinton appointee.

• 1:41:35Tucker Carlson?

  Was she not bright? Or was she just so committed to the status quo, to the intel community?

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  Oh, she's committed. She reserves every national security case for herself. They're supposed to go into a wheel, right? And be chosen randomly. She had Julian Assange. She had the Ed Snowden case, which never came. She had my case. She had Jeffrey Sterling, another CIA whistleblower. Every national security. She had Zacharias Musawi, the 20th hijacker. So she reserves these cases for herself and everybody gets the maximum. So she said, in response to my attorney,

• 1:42:10Tucker Carlson?

  She sounds like a scary person.

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  Oh, she was terrifying. That the definition of whistle, first she said, I'm not respecting a precedent set in the federal district of Maryland. She's not respecting it in the Tom Drake case, where the judge ruled that there had to be some harm to the national security. There was no harm in my case. Nobody was harmed, literally. The name that I confirmed was never made public, never. So, nobody was harmed. So, she says, the definition-

• 1:42:43Tucker Carlson?

  And actually, you were speaking out against harm.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was speaking out against harm. She says that the definition of espionage is providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it, period.

• 1:42:56Tucker Carlson?

  That's espionage?

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  In her view-

• 1:43:02Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, it may be illegal, but it's not- Espionage is spying-

• 1:43:07Speaker 02

  For a foreign country.

• 1:43:08Tucker Carlson?

  Correct.

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  Daniel Ellsberg called me. He and I became very close friends over this whole thing. And he said, "I'm gonna ask you to do something that's completely selfless. I'm gonna ask you to go to trial, because we can only challenge the constitutionality of the Espionage Act if somebody goes to trial and is convicted." I said, "Dan, I have five kids. I can't go to trial." So, he asked Jeffrey Sterling to do it. Jeffrey did go to trial, was convicted. The judge saw that this conviction was kinda trumped up. And so, he was convicted of nine felonies, including seven counts of espionage, and to use her words, "I'm giving you kiriaku plus 12 months." That's what she said at sentencing.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  "I'm giving you kiriaku plus 12 months."

• 1:43:56Tucker Carlson?

  Who is he alleged to have spied for?

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  Uh, no one. He gave, he gave an interview to the New York Times about the, uh, the racial discrimination suit that he had filed against the CIA. They passed him over for a promotion just because he was black, and then they had the temerity to tell him, "We're not promoting you because you're black." And he said, "When did you realize I was black?"

• 1:44:26Tucker Carlson?

  The irony is that there's a lot of espionage in Washington.

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  Apparently, yeah.

• 1:44:31Tucker Carlson?

  Well, there, I mean, there is.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Every intelligence service in the world has its officers in Washington.

• 1:44:37Tucker Carlson?

  There are also people who work for the US government who, without any kind of authorization.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:44:42Tucker Carlson?

  Give highly relevant classified information to foreign governments.

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:44:47Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 1:44:48Tucker Carlson?

  I know that for a fact, and I know people who've done it. And none of them is in jail.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  No. No, none of them, none of them is in jail.

• 1:44:57Tucker Carlson?

  And it's also fair to say the US government is penetrated by foreign actors.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:45:03Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  And it has been for a long time.

• 1:45:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, I'm aware. And I don't think anyone goes to jail for that.

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:45:11Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  You know, I tried a couple of times to get a pardon under Presidents Obama and Biden, thinking that most of my contacts in the Greek American community had access to those presidents. I was laughed out of the room under Obama, and I knew I would be. Under Biden, there's a Greek Orthodox priest who very generously offered his access to the White House.

• 1:45:42Tucker Carlson?

  That, can I just, just note parenthetically, I don't think there are a lot of Greek liberals left.

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  No, there aren't.

• 1:45:48Tucker Carlson?

  There used to be.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  There used to be, they used to be almost all liberals.

• 1:45:51Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  They've, they've all moved.

• 1:45:52Tucker Carlson?

  I've noticed. I don't think I've met a Greek liberal in a long time.

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  No, they're, they're just not out there anymore.

• 1:45:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  So he said, look, you know, I've known Biden since the early seventies. I, I can, I can help you. And then, nothing. And I called him and I said, Father, forgive me for being so blunt, but maybe if I had been, you know, a crackhead relative of the, of the president, or a Chinese spy, or a, a judge that sold children into bondage in Pennsylvania, maybe then I would have had a chance. But Joe Biden doesn't want to hear about a case like mine. And the truth is, and I mentioned this to you yesterday, my support comes exclusively from the Republican Party, the Libertarian movement, and the conservative movement. And I embrace it.

• 1:46:44Tucker Carlson?

  That's just wild, though.

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  Because they're the ones thinking about civil liberties now. They're the ones thinking about individual freedoms.

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  You know, what's his name? Hakeem Jeffries, the other day, said Vladimir Putin is an avowed enemy of the United States. Uh, no, he's not. That's a neocon position. When did he take a vow? He said he was an avowed enemy. When did he take a vow that he was going to be an enemy of the United States? No. Stop trying to lie us into a war, or trick us into a war. But that's today's Democratic Party.

• 1:47:22Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I'm aware. It's, um, are you, do you think, I mean, the kind of casual cruelty and violence in the CIA that you describe, I haven't seen any meaningful attempt to stop it.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, no, I agree, very strongly.

• 1:47:42Tucker Carlson?

  Do you believe that the CIA has hurt other American citizens?

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Yes. I'm sure of it. Yes.

• 1:47:51Tucker Carlson?

  What about physically?

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  Well, there are two very well documented cases where Barack Obama used a drone to murder Anwar al-Awlaki.

• 1:48:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  And whether you like the man's politics or not, he was an American citizen who had never been charged with a crime. And then a week later, Obama droned his 16-year-old son and 14-year-old nephew, who were sitting in a coffee shop, having a cup of tea. Also, American citizens who had never been charged with a crime, and they were children. So yeah, the CIA does all kinds of things like that.

• 1:48:28Tucker Carlson?

  What about domestically?

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I keep thinking back to Eric Holder's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, when Rand Paul asked him, "Does the President have the legal authority to murder an American on US soil?" Well, Senator, you know, just answer the question. Say yes or no question. Yes, he has the authority. Now, has he done that? We didn't know. But the Attorney General of the United States said that the President can murder an American citizen in the United States if the President believes that he presents a clear and present danger to the national security. That's sick.

• 1:49:14Tucker Carlson?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  It's anti-constitutional. Not just unconstitutional, it's anti-constitutional.

• 1:49:21Tucker Carlson?

  Do people who work at the CIA have a sense that maybe they're not serving good?

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Generally, no. Generally, these are, I mean, at the working level, these are hardworking, really smart, patriotic people.

• 1:49:37Tucker Carlson?

  Some of them are really smart, I can confirm that.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Really smart. At the upper levels, you know, they believe they're the smartest people in the room, they're smarter than whoever happens to be President at any given time, and if they don't like this President, eh, they just wait him out. He'll be gone in four years, they'll still be there in their still senior positions, and they're gonna do exactly what they want to do. You know, this is why they panicked when Ronald Reagan named an outsider as the Deputy Director for Operations. Remember?

• 1:50:10Tucker Carlson?

  Do I remember?

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  They lost it. Because they were like, oh my God, okay, you, you appoint your campaign manager, the Director, that's one thing, but now Operations, you're gonna bring a friend from Wall Street or wherever he was, he was an attorney? Yeah, yeah, I would.

• 1:50:26Tucker Carlson?

  I think that's when they called in Bob Woodward to, to blow them up, right? The former Naval Intel Officer Bob Woodward.

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I'll tell ya.

• 1:50:32Tucker Carlson?

  Not, not the only time Bob Woodward has been called in by the, by the national security state to destroy Americans.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Well, when I was, when I was the Deputy Director, the, the Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Operations, I, I had just finished writing a cable, I had this lovely private office, and it looked out past the Secretary into the hallway. So I finished writing, and I leaned back like this in my chair, and I happened to be looking at the hall, and Bob Woodward walked by. And I said to the Secretary, Was that Bob Woodward that just walked by the office? And she said, yeah. And I said, without a security escort, like he owns the place. And she said, you didn't see the memo? I said, what memo? She said, George, George Tennant. She said, George sent a memo saying that Woodward's writing a book and we're all ordered to cooperate with him. I said, I'm not talking to Bob Woodward.

• 1:51:24Speaker 02

  I couldn't believe it.

• 1:51:25Tucker Carlson?

  He's just a great reporter. Come on, John.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  He's free to walk.

• 1:51:28Tucker Carlson?

  That's called shoe leather. He's not.

• 1:51:30Speaker 02

  You're talking about people that have been undercover or deep cover for decades and he's just walking the halls.

• 1:51:36Tucker Carlson?

  He's not an instrument of the government. He's a, he's a counterbalance. He's a check against their overreach.

• 1:51:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:42Tucker Carlson?

  He's a journalist.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  They're, they're gonna run with that.

• 1:51:45Tucker Carlson?

  It's so absurd.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  I was shocked.

• 1:51:49Tucker Carlson?

  What, what did you think of Bill Burns?

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  I wrote an op ed when Bill Burns was appointed.

• 1:51:56Tucker Carlson?

  Former ambassador to Russia.

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:51:58Tucker Carlson?

  Um, and then up until January, the CIA director.

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  I said that I disagreed with his position on Russia, as I think every free thinking American should. But we needed an outsider in that job. Having insiders is a mistake. You know, Obama proved that having insiders, Clinton proved that. It's just a mistake. It's incestuous and they feed on each other.

• 1:52:29Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  So you needed an outsider. Bill Burns was one of the most highly respected ambassadors that we had in the State Department.

• 1:52:35Tucker Carlson?

  That is true.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  And I, I called him the adult in the room. And I thought, you know, if we have to have a Washington insider in that position, he was a good choice.

• 1:52:48Tucker Carlson?

  Yep. That, that's, that sounds right from everything I know about him. Um, when you worked there, did anyone ever talk about the murder of the president in 1963?

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, Oliver Stone and I got into quite a spirited argument about this one time. Because I made the mistake of saying that I didn't think we had given enough thought to, to the involvement, the, the possible involvement of, um, of Santo Trafficante and, and the mob. And he said, oh, you're so full of shit, he says, and he just started yelling at me.

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  I came to my own conclusion. I talked to Bobby Kennedy about this too. Actually, he's the one that pushed me over the edge and led me to this conclusion. I believe that elements of the CIA were responsible for the assassination of the president. I don't agree when people say it was a CIA operation because John McCain was the head of the CIA and he was Bobby Kennedy's best friend.

• 1:53:56Tucker Carlson?

  A name forgotten to history, but yes.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  That's right, and a good and decent man. But there were a lot of people, unfortunately, one was a Greek American, who

• 1:54:07Tucker Carlson?

  Very famously.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  Very, very famous Greek American. His name does not bear repeating. Who hated John Kennedy for not providing air cover for the Bay of Pigs.

• 1:54:19Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:54:19Speaker 02

  And wanted revenge against Kennedy. And these guys were still in constant touch with the Dulles Brothers, who were also just dark stains on American history. And so I came to the conclusion that, yeah, there were CIA officers who were responsible for carrying this thing.

• 1:54:38Tucker Carlson?

  Did you think that when you worked there?

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. In fact, I thought it was so absurd, I couldn't believe people were even talking about it.

• 1:54:44Tucker Carlson?

  Really?

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like, we're the good guys.

• 1:54:48Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  Why would we kill the president?

• 1:54:49Tucker Carlson?

  I thought the same. Why haven't all the files been released?

• 1:54:57Speaker 02

  I genuinely don't know. For JFK, I think they have been.

• 1:55:02Tucker Carlson?

  No, they have not.

• 1:55:03Speaker 02

  They have not?

• 1:55:04Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  That frightens me. You know, there were a couple of explosive revelations in the last tranche. The fact that James Angleton, the Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, wanted to recruit, to formally recruit Lee Harvey Oswald, is exactly the opposite of what the CIA has been telling us for so many years.

• 1:55:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  For 60 years.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  Why? If, if the Russians came to the conclusion that he was just a nut when he was living in Minsk and didn't want him to come back, why was the CIA involved or interested rather in, uh, in recruiting him? What was he doing in Mexico City in October of, of 1963? He said, or not he said, but the, the CIA has said over the years that he was there to go to the Cuban and Soviet embassies to try to get visas. Why was he meeting with Americans? And were those American CIA officers? Of course they were. Why else would he have gone to Mexico City?

• 1:56:07Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  I'm actually more interested in the RFK and the MLK documents. There is so much that we don't know about those two, especially RFK.

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  They recovered one more bullet than Sirhan Sirhan's gun held.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  And Thomas Naguchi-

• 1:56:29Tucker Carlson?

  And this is confirmed.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  Yes. And Thomas Naguchi-

• 1:56:32Tucker Carlson?

  Well, then that's kind of case closed, then.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 1:56:36Tucker Carlson?

  Right. I mean, we, we don't know what happened. We know the official explanation is untrue.

• 1:56:39Speaker 02

  It's untrue. So-

• 1:56:41Tucker Carlson?

  Cause it was a revolver, it was a 22 caliber revolver.

• 1:56:44Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:56:44Tucker Carlson?

  It's like a nine shot.

• 1:56:45Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:56:46Tucker Carlson?

  22s fit a lot in the cylinder.

• 1:56:50Tucker Carlson?

  Is that, I did not know that.

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Thomas Naguchi, the coroner-

• 1:56:54Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  Said that the, that the death shot came from behind.

• 1:56:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:59Speaker 02

  At an angle from, from down on the ground. But Sirhan was in front of it.

• 1:57:04Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  There was a, there was a security guard there who was not associated with the Kennedy campaign or with the, um-

• 1:57:13Tucker Carlson?

  Ambassador Hotel.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Ambassador Hotel, uh, named Caesar. He was a well-known, um, racist and white supremacist. On video, you see him lifting a gun out of his belt and then you hear bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And he puts it back in the belt. He never got it fully out. In the nineties, the National Geographic Channel tracked him down to Mississippi or Alabama or something and they interviewed him. And they said, did you shoot Robert Kennedy? And he said, no, I was going to, but that Arab fella got him first. Well, we know that there had to be somebody else in the kitchen at the Ambassador.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  And we know that the shot came from behind. We know that there was a second gun because there were too many bullets. So why hasn't this been released?

• 1:58:06Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, and it raises the really obvious question, which was, I mean, we know Sirhan had a gun.

• 1:58:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:14Tucker Carlson?

  Fired.

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  Fired the gun.

• 1:58:15Tucker Carlson?

  On film.

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:58:17Tucker Carlson?

  Lots of people there, including lots of famous people.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:20Tucker Carlson?

  Rosie Greer.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:21Tucker Carlson?

  Right. So Kennedy had just won the California primary. Johnson had announced a few months before that he's not running. Bobby Kennedy clearly is going to be the Democratic nominee. He's murdered that night after his victory speech.

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:58:35Tucker Carlson?

  Walking through the kitchen of this now demolished hotel in Los Angeles.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:39Tucker Carlson?

  Sirhan Sirhan, a Christian Palestinian from a very poor family, was arrested for it. His apartment is searched and there are all kinds of papers where he writes RFK must die, RFK must die, over and over again. What would, he has said, he's still alive, by the way.

• 1:58:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, and still in prison.

• 1:58:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, he is. And, I mean, that was before I was born and I'm 56, so it was quite some time ago. What was that?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's the $64,000 question.

• 1:59:11Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Because now, there are rumors that when he was at whatever it's called, Los Angeles Community College, or whatever the community college there was, that he may have participated in experiments that fell under a CIA operation then known as MKUltra.

• 1:59:33Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  So what's the truth? Now, Director Helms, during the Nixon administration, or during, I guess it was the Ford administration, ordered that the MKUltra documents be destroyed.

• 1:59:46Tucker Carlson?

  Which they were.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  Which they were. After being specifically told, it's a crime to destroy federal documents.

• 1:59:54Tucker Carlson?

  And they don't belong to you.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly.

• 1:59:57Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think it's, and this is a debate about, you know, a lot of different people in Louis Dronin West and the CIA affiliated psychiatrist.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:07Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think it is possible to get people to commit acts that they wouldn't?

• 2:00:15Tucker Carlson?

  Otherwise commit.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:00:17Tucker Carlson?

  You do?

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:00:18Tucker Carlson?

  You said there are a lot of shrinks at CIA.

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, there are offices where everybody is either a psychiatrist or a psychologist. And they're operational psychiatrists and psychologists. So you take them with you on an operation to consult with them on how do you get this guy to crack? You want him to just lose his mind. What do I need to do to push this guy over the edge? Right? Or what do I need to do to convince this guy to do something that he definitely doesn't want to do? I used those shrinks on operations. We even hypnotized one guy. He was hypnotized with his arm in the air for two hours. Never saw anything like it in my life. And then when he took him out of the hypnosis, his arm fell down. He looked around. He said, what happened? And then he vomited. I've never seen anything like it in my life. So people-

• 2:01:04Tucker Carlson?

  Did it work?

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  It did work. We asked him, I'm getting a little off the subject, but we asked him-

• 2:01:12Tucker Carlson?

  No, this is definitely the subject.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  -about a political assassination that had taken place that he had claimed to see. So the guy didn't speak any English. So the shrink is asking questions and I'm translating the questions as softly and as gently as I can.

• 2:01:31Tucker Carlson?

  Into Arabic.

• 2:01:32Speaker 02

  Yes. And I'm asking, what did you see? Well, the guy had stopped at a mosque, at this little, small roadside mosque to relieve himself. So he's behind a tree and a car pulls up and it's these people who had been identified as the shooters in an assassination that had just taken place. And I said, so describe the guys. And he's describing what they're wearing. And I said, what kind of car are they driving? They're driving a van. I said, does the van have a license plate? He said, yes. I said, can you see the license plate? And he goes, his eyes are closed and he goes like this.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  And then he reads off the numbers and letters to me. So I hand it to another officer that was in the room, runs into the next room.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Does a cable to the country intelligence service, it comes back stolen plates. I said, my God, he actually did see the plates. The plates were stolen specifically for use in that assassination.

• 2:02:44Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  So you can convince people to do things that they otherwise would never dream of.

• 2:02:50Tucker Carlson?

  So mind control is not a sci fi fantasy?

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  No, no. MKUltra did far, far more damage, caused just grief and misery to hundreds of people, maybe more. And there are subsets like MKChickWit and there are like five or six other sub operations that were part of MKUltra that just, you know, caused people to jump out of windows and commit suicide and jump off bridges.

• 2:03:22Tucker Carlson?

  Well, the Defense Secretary did.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did.

• 2:03:25Tucker Carlson?

  James Forrestal.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Yep, committed suicide.

• 2:03:28Tucker Carlson?

  Well, sure he did. Um, yeah, quite, that's quite an amazing story. I don't think that's on Wikipedia.

• 2:03:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:03:37Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, but I would encourage people to look into that because that is definitely worth knowing about.

• 2:03:43Tucker Carlson?

  Is it possible to infect people with cancer?

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  Not while I was there. People talked about it a lot, but.

• 2:03:50Tucker Carlson?

  They talked about it a lot.

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, do you think it's possible? Can we do it? I mean, you know, if we could do it, what would we do with it? This is something that the Venezuelan government and the Cuban government have both accused us of doing.

• 2:04:03Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  When I was there.

• 2:04:04Tucker Carlson?

  And many governments around the world believe that that is real.

• 2:04:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, remember, I left 20 years ago, so who knows? I don't know.

• 2:04:16Tucker Carlson?

  Is, would you describe the CIA as an intelligence gathering agency?

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  Not anymore, no. It used to be. The Deputy Director for whom I worked was very fond of saying, and he used to say this all the time, "The job of the CIA is to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and to analyze those secrets so that our policymakers can make the best informed policies."

• 2:04:38Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, so I thought that was the whole idea behind creating the agency, right there?

• 2:04:43Speaker 02

  Yes, that was it until 9/11. And then it became a paramilitary organization. You know, the director gave a speech the other day in which he said that we need to focus on human source intelligence. True. Every director says that when he becomes the director. But the truth is, what they would rather do is fancy high-tech, you know, science stuff. Satellites and drones and, you know, computer intrusions and stuff like that. They're not really in the business anymore of recruiting spies to steal secrets. They should be, but they're not.

• 2:05:20Tucker Carlson?

  This is not directly related, but we know, because it's public information, that somebody bet big against United Airlines and American Airlines right before 9/11. So people knew it was coming. Now, the people who planned it knew it was coming.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:35Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think that those bets, those stock bets, shorting those airlines, that al Qaeda did that?

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  No, I don't think al Qaeda did it. I think that...

• 2:05:51Tucker Carlson?

  In other words, who else knew it was coming?

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  I think there were intelligence services out there, foreign intelligence services, that knew it was coming. But it was in their interests for the US to be at war. I think that's where this came from.

• 2:06:05Tucker Carlson?

  Did you think that when you worked there?

• 2:06:07Speaker 02

  No. And I'll tell you why. On July 6th, 2001, totally normal day, I was entertaining a group of Middle Eastern intelligence officers, which we did every day. They come in, we do a day of briefings, we exchange gifts, they get a photo op with the director, and then we take them out to a fancy...

• 2:06:31Tucker Carlson?

  This is at Langley.

• 2:06:32Speaker 02

  Yes, at Langley. So I had this group of Arabs that day. And I had gone to this very young junior analyst on al Qaeda at the counterterrorism center. And I said, "Hey, I've got this delegation. Can you come in and give us 30 minutes on al Qaeda?" He said, "Sure." So it comes time for the briefing and instead of this junior analyst showing up, Kofor Black shows up with the chief of operations. And who was Kofor Black? Kofor Black was the director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, later Ambassador Kofor Black. He was the special coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department. Then he went on to Blackwater and Great Wealth. So I jumped up and I said, "Oh," I said,

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  "Gentlemen, this is Kofor Black. He's the director of the Counterterrorism Center and this is the chief of operations for the Osama bin Laden group called Alex Station." And I mean, I had no idea why somebody as important and as busy as Kofor would come in. He sits down and he says, he starts off by saying, "Something terrible is going to happen. We don't know exactly when or where, but we're hearing communications from Al Qaeda that tell us that something big that we've never seen before is going to happen. We're hearing code words for a huge attack. The honey salesman is coming with vast quantities

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  of honey. There's going to be an enormous wedding. There's going to be a great football match. We're hearing Al Qaeda camp commanders on the phone with their students and they're crying and saying, "I'll see you in paradise." He said, "We have no idea when and where this attack is going to come." He said, "I'm begging you, if you have any sources inside Al Qaeda, please help us." And they just kind of sat there and, you know, looked at each other and he got up and he shook their hands and walked out. So at the end of the day, I'm thinking about this all day. At the end of the day, I send them back to their hotel. I said, "I'll pick you up at the hotel. I'll take you to dinner." But I went back to Kofor's office and I said,

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  "Kofor, I wanted to thank you for coming and talking to those guys, but I have to ask, were you serious or was that for their benefit?" And he said, "Oh, I'm dead serious. Something terrible is going to happen." And then it happened. On the morning of September 11th, Kofa and I had a meeting scheduled with Condoleezza Rice for the stupidest idea now in retrospect. The government printing office was going to print a volume of declassified cables called "Foreign Policy of the United States, 1949 to 1967, Greece-Turkey-Cypress." Nobody's ever gonna read this thing, right?

• 2:09:23Tucker Carlson?

  Not one person.

• 2:09:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:09:25Tucker Carlson?

  Even the Cypriots will ignore it.

• 2:09:26Speaker 02

  Not interested. But it mentioned three people who were still alive, who had been informants for the CIA. And the law says that if they are outed, we have to offer them resettlement. So rather than go through that whole rigmarole, we made an appointment with Condi to ask her-

• 2:09:48Tucker Carlson?

  National Security-

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  National Security Advisor, thank you, to just remove those three cables. Nobody's gonna miss them because nobody's ever gonna read this book. But just in case. So I walked over to Kofa's office to tell him that our car was ready. And his-

• 2:10:02Tucker Carlson?

  So you were at Langley that morning, early?

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  I was. I was there early. And his secretary had a small TV on her desk. You couldn't watch TV on your computer in those days. And I said, "What happened to the World Trade Center?" And she said, "A plane flew into it." And because I'm an idiot sometimes, I said, "You know what? That happened once before. In the 1930s, a plane flew into the Empire State Building, but it was really foggy and raining that day. It's so crystal clear today. How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And then the second plane hit." And she turned to me and she said, "Did you see that or did I imagine it?" And I ran back to my office. I said, "Guys, we're under attack. Two planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center."

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  We all ran up to the front where Kofa's office was. And you have to imagine this big bullpen where there are maybe 150 or 200 people in partitioned, you know, cubbies, and then there are private offices all around the perimeter. And then there are TVs hanging from the ceiling above Kofa's office on, you know, BBC, CNN, Fox, Canal Plus, RT, from all over the world. And they're all showing the same thing. And there's silence. And then somebody behind me shouts, will somebody please lead? And Kofor said, oh, yes, you go to the director's office and tell him this. You go to

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  security, you go to operations. And the rest of us like, what do you want us to do? Evacuate. Nobody's evacuating, literally not a single person evacuated. Finally, the CIA cops came in and said, if you don't evacuate, you'll be you'll be arrested. So we evacuated. I got about halfway home, had to abandon my car. So I started walking.

• 2:11:55Tucker Carlson?

  Why?

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  It was gridlock, like, like World War Z, like the end of the world, you know? I mean, on the George Washington Parkway, which is four lanes, it's like 12, 12 cars wide. And everybody's just parked.

• 2:12:11Tucker Carlson?

  That Parkway pass is right by the Pentagon.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  And that's right, right by the Pentagon. When I got to the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, I lived just up from the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, I saw the Deputy National Security Advisor with no shoes evacuating. And I said to this guy next to me, how could this happen? That's the Deputy National Security Advisor. He ran out of the White House without shoes to save himself. I ended up, my, my, my ex-wife and I, we climbed to the roof of my building, but we were engaged at the time and we watched the Pentagon burn for a little

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  while. And finally, I said, this is ridiculous. We have to get back to work. And so I walked back to my car, drove across the median, went back to CIA and stayed there for the next four days. I just slept under the desk, hour, two hours.

• 2:13:08Tucker Carlson?

  And your fiance also worked at CIA?

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. She did the same thing.

• 2:13:13Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, and then, you know, the world changed in your life, in particular changed.

• 2:13:17Speaker 02

  I could never, ever have predicted the changes either for me personally or for the CIA in the country.

• 2:13:24Tucker Carlson?

  So you didn't think as one of the only Arabic speakers at the counterterrorism center at CIA in Langley. Of course, you knew you would play a significant role in what came next.

• 2:13:34Speaker 02

  I expected that.

• 2:13:35Tucker Carlson?

  And you did, but you never expected you'd go to prison.

• 2:13:38Speaker 02

  Never, not in a thousand years, would I have said, I'll do the prison experience for a little while. See how that works out.

• 2:13:47Tucker Carlson?

  So I just want to ask you one last question. Of all the things you've said, which I've known you for a while, but I'm, and we just had dinner last night, but I'm, I'm shocked by some of the things that you have said, actually. And I grew up around this stuff and I'm still shocked.

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:14:00Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, the story that you told about the fake Japanese diplomat trying to set you up is, is, is remarkable. That's a remarkable story.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  Sick.

• 2:14:12Tucker Carlson?

  It was sick. It's unbelievable that they would do that to an American citizen, particularly one with a demonstrated record of serving the country at personal risk. So, but outrage aside, it does sort of reframe your understanding of how things actually work. That happened to you. That's a real thing.

• 2:14:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:14:29Tucker Carlson?

  Provable. And you said that it had in fact changed your view of how things actually worked. And you'd reassessed, um, your understanding of things that had happened in American history. And then maybe they're not exactly what they seem to be.

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:14:42Tucker Carlson?

  Can you go into a little more depth about what you're thinking now?

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  The, the short version is I have come to believe very strongly that Ronald Reagan was right when he said that government is the problem. It's not the solution to the problem. He was right. He recognized it and the rest of us failed to see it. So now, when I hear about standoffs, let's say, between American citizens and the Bureau of Land Management, for example.

• 2:15:14Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 2:15:17Speaker 02

  ATF or DEA, I no longer believe what is reported in the media. I no longer believe the strategic leaks that come from whatever bureau or agency to spin the story. I, I've gotten to the point where I'm obsessed with doing my own investigations.

• 2:15:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 2:15:42Speaker 02

  And I read all source material because the truth has to be out there somewhere. I just feel like I have to put it together for myself. So now, when we talk about the Kennedy assassinations, or RFK, I mean, or MLK, or, as we said earlier, Ruby Ridge, or Waco, whatever it is, I, I default to doubting the government account.

• 2:16:11Tucker Carlson?

  So you worked for the government during Waco? That was my first day working at a newspaper, so I remember the chaos in the newsroom when that happened. So that was 93?

• 2:16:23Speaker 02

  93.

• 2:16:24Tucker Carlson?

  That must have been the spring of 93. Correct, is that right?

• 2:16:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:28Tucker Carlson?

  So, boy, over 30 years ago, but you worked for the government then?

• 2:16:31Speaker 02

  I was at the CIA at the time, and it was on every TV in the CIA, and I remember looking at it, not really having an opinion, and my boss saying, "Well, it's about time they finally moved on that operation."

• 2:16:45Tucker Carlson?

  So what was that? Boy, that's really a forgotten moment in American history. So there was a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians, or that's what we called them.

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:16:55Tucker Carlson?

  A guy called David Koresh, that was his cult name, anyway. And they were accused of mistreating children.

• 2:17:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:17:03Tucker Carlson?

  Which, maybe they were, I have no idea.

• 2:17:04Speaker 02

  Hoarding weapons.

• 2:17:05Tucker Carlson?

  And hoarding, of course, and hoarding weapons, and they were surrounded by federal agents at their compound in Waco, Texas, and that standoff culminated in a shootout, in which federal agents were killed.

• 2:17:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:17:17Tucker Carlson?

  And most of the occupants of that compound were burned to death.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  I think, it was something like 27 of them, and half of them were children.

• 2:17:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:27Speaker 02

  Like, young children.

• 2:17:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I think it was maybe more than 27.

• 2:17:30Speaker 02

  More than 27.

• 2:17:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, it was, it was.

• 2:17:32Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 2:17:33Tucker Carlson?

  It was awful. But what was it? Was that more than what we were told it was, do you think?

• 2:17:39Speaker 02

  Well, the spin was this was a dangerous lunatic and he had to be stopped before he used those guns to go out and kill people. The truth of the matter is you're allowed to buy as many guns as you want.

• 2:17:51Tucker Carlson?

  I've proven that, yeah. I have.

• 2:17:54Speaker 02

  Good.

• 2:17:54Tucker Carlson?

  You're not allowed to buy guns because you're a convicted felon.

• 2:17:56Speaker 02

  A convicted felon.

• 2:17:57Tucker Carlson?

  And you've done nothing wrong and I really hope you receive that presidential pardon soon.

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  Thank you. And on top of losing my gun, I lost my pension. The Obama Justice Department seized my federal pension.

• 2:18:11Tucker Carlson?

  Why?

• 2:18:11Speaker 02

  20 years of proud service, $770,000. I'm gonna have to work until the day I die.

• 2:18:20Speaker 02

  Only a pardon.

• 2:18:22Tucker Carlson?

  How could you have worked at CIA for all those years and not wound up rich?

• 2:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 2:18:27Tucker Carlson?

  I have to say, that is the story that no one ever tells and I just know it from my personal, I'm just living in DC my whole life. They're all rich. Have you noticed this?

• 2:18:38Speaker 02

  They are all rich.

• 2:18:39Tucker Carlson?

  How, why are there all these former CIA officers who are rich?

• 2:18:44Speaker 02

  Some of them, excuse me, some of them get enormous book advances. Others make this odd transition into venture capital or consulting or butts in the seats kind of, you know, Booz Allen style firms. A lot of them go overseas and stay overseas. So the CIA pays for everything. The only thing you pay for is your phone bill and they just invest, invest, invest for 30 years and come out with plenty of money.

• 2:19:17Tucker Carlson?

  I've lived in nice neighborhoods for a long time and they're always CIA people on my street.

• 2:19:22Speaker 02

  Always.

• 2:19:23Tucker Carlson?

  Always.

• 2:19:24Speaker 02

  Half of McLean, Virginia is CIA.

• 2:19:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, and the District of Columbia in Florida and it's just like legit rich.

• 2:19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, rich.

• 2:19:32Tucker Carlson?

  Is that, that's not a good sign, is it?

• 2:19:35Speaker 02

  No, it's not a good sign. Cause you're not supposed to capitalize on a position.

• 2:19:40Tucker Carlson?

  Not when you have the power of life and death over people. That's what bothers me. It's not just like people from the Labor Department or Commerce who are like leveraging their skills to riches. It's like people who have information that they're the only ones legally allowed to possess, like true inside information and the power to kill people.

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:20:00Tucker Carlson?

  Like that's one category.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  With no questions asked.

• 2:20:05Speaker 02

  May I add one thing?

• 2:20:06Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  I recently received, I recently received an email from someone I'd never heard of, but this is the third such email that I have received, and I wanted to mention it. So of all things, I received it through eBay, right? I was selling something on eBay and somebody saw that, because I'm an open book, so I'm just like John Kiriakou on eBay.

• 2:20:37Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:37Speaker 02

  So I received this thing through eBay and it says, "Dear John, it's so nice to finally speak to you. I've been watching your YouTube videos and I love all the content, and I've been wanting to reach out to you for many years. I'm one of the FBI agents who wants to personally apologize to you for the disgraceful way that the FBI and our federal government treated you. I worked on your case with both headquarters and the Washington Field Office team, and I know many of the personnel that you're familiar with, unfortunately. That case was directed and driven by senior most officials. Many mid-level and street personnel were against it, but nevertheless, we just followed orders. Anyway, I've always felt bad about what we did to you and for the way you and your family were treated, and I want to personally apologize."

• 2:21:21Tucker Carlson?

  Well, God bless that man.

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:23Tucker Carlson?

  Do you think that's real?

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. Two other FBI agents sent similar emails to my attorneys. They're sorry they did as they were told. It's nice, but-

• 2:21:36Tucker Carlson?

  Do you worry about anything further happening to you?

• 2:21:39Speaker 02

  I did for a long time, yes. I, there were people inside the Justice Department with whom I was friendly, who said, "Ooh, the CIA is really mad that you only did 23 months." Like, they really wanted you to die in there. So be on your best behavior, because they're watching everything you do." And then that wore off about two years out of prison. I didn't see their surveillance anymore. Never got any funny emails. As soon as I got home, I was home for a couple of days from prison, and I got an email from a guy who claimed to be an attorney, saying he had some classified information that showed a crime, and he wanted to send it to me. And I said, "Don't you dare. I don't want any classified information. Call the FBI

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  and give it to them." But I figured it's just some nut trying to set me up. So anytime I had a question, I would just call the lawyers, refer people to the lawyers, and then it ended up just going away after a while.

• 2:22:36Tucker Carlson?

  So the story that you just told over the last couple of hours is very distressing to hear, as someone who grew up in this country, believes in the country, loves the country. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be you, and yet you tell it complete without bitterness and no self pity whatsoever. How have you been able to maintain emotional equilibrium, wisdom, perspective, and peace in the middle of everything you've been through?

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  Thank you for asking that. When I was in prison, I read constantly, including biographies of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. And I thought, wow, what these guys went through, and they just forgave over and over. Nelson Mandela especially, the way he was treated and kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island, and he forgave. And then there was a biography of a 20th century Greek Orthodox saint called Saint Nektarios, Nektarios of Egea. And he had been the Greek Orthodox bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, and other priests who were jealous of his rapid rise accused him of having an affair with

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  a nun, and so he was stripped of his office. He never attained high office again, but he forgave everybody for what they had done to him.

• 2:23:56Tucker Carlson?

  And he hadn't done it?

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  No, he hadn't done anything. And I thought, you know what? These people went through so much more than I did. It was so much worse for them. And I've become friendly with one of the former prisoners at Guantanamo, Mohamedu Udslahe. The CIA kidnapped Mohamedu from Mauritania while he was attending his cousin's wedding. We tortured him mercilessly for 14 years.

• 2:24:26Tucker Carlson?

  14 years?

• 2:24:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And then we decided, eh, wrong guy. Let him go.

• 2:24:31Tucker Carlson?

  Actually?

• 2:24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, which happens with more frequency than you might think. And so when he got out, he went on to Twitter and I tweeted at him. And I said, Muhammadu, you don't know me, but my government will never apologize for what it did to you. So I want to apologize. I am so sorry for what happened over the last 14 years. And his attorney called me and said, would you be interested in a conversation? I said, absolutely. We've been friends ever since. He actually lectures to my, my grad school class at the University of Salamanca. He comes on Zoom. The, the poor guy couldn't go back to Mauritania.

• 2:25:13Speaker 02

  He was afraid they'd kill him. No country wanted him because he had been in Guantanamo for 14 years. Finally, the Dutch said, we'll give you citizenship. And so he has gotten married. He has children. He got an education, living happily ever after in, in the Netherlands. And zero bitterness. And I said to him one day, he said to me in front of my class, what you just said, you're not bitter at all for what happened. And I said, me? I said, you, you're like Mandela. How can you not be bitter after what we did to you 14 years? I was 23 months. And he said, what would bitterness accomplish?

• 2:25:56Speaker 02

  Nothing. He said bitterness would put me right back into that cage and I don't want to live in there.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  So that's the position that I've come to take.

• 2:26:06Tucker Carlson?

  There's a very, uh, that's, that's a rational explanation of it. And I think, I think it makes total sense. I think it's true. But forgiving people is kind of the next step, which I've also done. And I like, what's the purpose of that?

• 2:26:21Speaker 02

  I've forgiven for myself. I'm sure that John Brennan doesn't give two shits if John Kiriakou forgives him. But I feel better having that monkey off my back.

• 2:26:34Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 2:26:35Speaker 02

  So I did it for myself. I don't care what John Brennan's feelings are.

• 2:26:40Tucker Carlson?

  And John Brennan, as you described, is a grudge holder. He's the opposite.

• 2:26:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, he is.

• 2:26:44Tucker Carlson?

  And a prisoner of that.

• 2:26:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:26:48Tucker Carlson?

  John, I really appreciate all the time that you've taken to tell your story today.

• 2:26:52Speaker 02

  I appreciate you giving me the opportunity.

• 2:26:54Tucker Carlson?

  And I hope that you are vindicated in the...

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:26:57Tucker Carlson?

  To the fullest extent.

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  Thank you very, very much.

• 2:26:59Tucker Carlson?

  And I hope that your pension back.

• 2:27:00Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:27:01Tucker Carlson?

  Truth telling should be rewarded, not punished.

• 2:27:03Speaker 02

  It should be. You know, like I said, I'm very, very fortunate, blessed to have the support of people like you and Dr. Phil and Bruce Fein and Brett Tolman and Doug Deason and people who understand the import, not just to me, but the import to all Americans of protecting our civil liberties from a government out of control. We have to make sure that we never go back there.

• 2:27:30Tucker Carlson?

  You have to reward the truth and punish lies. And if you invert that, then it's a system you can't live under.

• 2:27:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:27:37Tucker Carlson?

  Because it's evil.

• 2:27:38Speaker 02

  It is. It's evil.

• 2:27:40Tucker Carlson?

  John, thank you.

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:27:41Tucker Carlson?

  Very much.

• 2:27:46Tucker Carlson?

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