Epstein Cover-Up, Ghislaine Maxwell & Israel's Role w/ CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou | PBD Podcast | Ep. 612

Patrick Bet-David sits down with CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou to unpack the alleged Epstein cover-up and the FBI’s newly launched criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey. Kiriakou shares insider perspective on intelligence community corruption, media manipulation, and what these developments could mean for 2024 and beyond. ------ Ⓜ️ MINNECT WITH JOHN KIRIAKOU: https://bit.ly/44EhwQL 📺 SUBSCRIBE TO JOHN KIRIAKOU'S YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/4lE1YmU 🎫 THE VAULT 2025 | SEPT 8TH - 11TH | THE GAYLORD PALMS | ORLANDO, FL: https://bit.ly/4dJlmfL 🍋 ZEST IT FORWARD: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4jYg3Lh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4jYg3Lh 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/41rtEV4⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 📰 VTNEWS. AI: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3OExClZ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm sorry, it's like it takes three years to be. I know this life meant for me.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signed, right here.

• 1:13Patrick Bet-David?

  You are a one of one.

• 1:14Speaker 05

  My son's right, baby.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever said this before.

• 1:22Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so I've been obviously following your story for many years. I'm glad we're finally doing this.

• 1:26Speaker 05

  The pleasure's all mine.

• 1:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Trust me, it is. I'm excited about this, of having you on, you know, as your story CIA officer. You went in, you were one of the first to come out and blow the whistle on waterboarding. You know, they came after you, the FBI came after you. I mean, I want the whole audience to hear the story. The timing of it is kind of weird because we're live right now. We decided to go live with all this stuff coming out with Epstein, with all the stuff that's going on. So many different things to discuss, so great to have you on the podcast.

• 1:52Speaker 05

  The pleasure's mine. As I said, I'm so happy to be here and it's great to meet you.

• 1:57Patrick Bet-David?

  Likewise. So if you don't mind, take a moment and share your background. Because based on, you know, what I've read and what I've seen and what I've heard you say in the past, you were the first ever. Officer, CIA officer to get arrested. How did that happen?

• 2:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, arrested for speaking to the press.

• 2:14Patrick Bet-David?

  The whistle blow, blowing the whistle, yes.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, um, I, I had a, I had an absolutely wonderful career at the CIA. Absolutely wonderful. I, I think about it still every day. I've been out for 20 years. I still think about it every single day.

• 2:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Miss it?

• 2:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, actually.

• 2:29Patrick Bet-David?

  Really?

• 2:30Speaker 05

  I do.

• 2:30Patrick Bet-David?

  What part did you miss?

• 2:31Speaker 05

  I'm not supposed to say that in public, really, because I'm supposed to be this dissident.

• 2:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  But, um, you know, I, I really felt like I was serving the American people. And that's, that's what I set out to do from the day I applied to the CIA. I didn't even really apply. I was recruited, but from the day I went into the process, my desire was to serve the American people. And there were a couple of things I really, really loved. Besides feeling like I was seriously making a contribution. I loved the travel, man. I went to 72 countries.

• 3:02Patrick Bet-David?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:04Patrick Bet-David?

  In, in how many years?

• 3:06Speaker 05

  In, uh, 15 years.

• 3:08Patrick Bet-David?

  72 cou- were you married at the time or single?

• 3:11Speaker 05

  Married twice.

• 3:12Patrick Bet-David?

  Married twice, got it.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  In part because I'm going to 72 countries.

• 3:16Patrick Bet-David?

  That's why I'm asking the question, yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I, I'll tell you, there was one time, I, I was in Yemen. And I flew back and I got back to Washington at like 10 o'clock in the morning. And I thought very stupidly, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna go into the office just to do my accounting. So I go to the office and my boss sees me. And he says, hey, I didn't know you were back. And I said, actually, I'm not really back yet. I just wanted to do my accounting and I'm gonna go home and go to sleep. And he says, okay, well, can you go to Khartoum? And I said, what? When? 3 o'clock? Today?

• 3:51Patrick Bet-David?

  Like that.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and he says, well, it's the curse of speaking Arabic. And I said, all right, let me go home and do some laundry at least. And I went home.

• 3:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Did my laundry, repacked, back to the airport and fly to Khartoum.

• 4:04Patrick Bet-David?

  That's insane. And was that like on any given day, anything could happen and you could be on the road?

• 4:09Speaker 05

  You never knew what was gonna happen that day. And that was one of the things that I loved. Was that it was completely different every day. When I was a little kid, my dad was a public school uh, principal. And he had the same job for forty-four years. And I remember thinking when I was little, wow, I hope I can have a job that I love as much as my dad loves loves his job. And then as an adult, I thought I would cut my own throat if I had to do the same thing every day for forty-four years. But that was the great thing about the CIA was every day was different. One day, it was the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait, August the second, nineteen ninety. We knew that they were gonna invade, so I got up really early, took a shower early, get into the office around six.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  And my boss is already there and he says, don't take your jacket off, we're gonna go to the White House. Well, I had never been to the White House, other than as a, as a tourist.

• 5:04Patrick Bet-David?

  This is nineteen ninety, so it's senior?

• 5:05Speaker 05

  Nineteen ninety, it was senior. That's right. So we go into the Oval Office. I'm twenty-five years old. It's the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the CIA Director, my boss and me. I'm twenty-five. The President sits down, so we all sit down. And then the President says, well, now what do we do? And everybody turns and looks at me. And it took me a second to snap into it. I said, well, Mr. President, as you know, Iraqi troops crossed the border at two o'clock this morning, they took the whole of Kuwait, the royal family fled to Saudi Arabia, blah, blah, blah. But I remember thinking,

• 5:46Speaker 05

  nobody would believe me if I told them what I was doing right now. And that was one of those incidents where it was different every single day. I was, I was the note taker once in a, in a meeting between Bill Clinton and the Greek Prime Minister. And it was the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Greek note taker. For us, it was the President, Secretary Albright, National Security Advisor Berger, Ambassador Nick Burns, and me. And, uh, and we go around the room, the president's saying, you know, can you, would you like a cup of coffee, you want something to eat, can I offer you anything, everybody's

• 6:30Speaker 05

  saying, no, no, no, no, thank you. He comes to me, and I'm just standing there with my notebook, and he says, "May I offer you something to eat?" And I said, "Oh, no, thank you, Mr. President, I'm fine." And he says, "Oh, are you with me?" I said, "Yes, sir, I'm with you." And he said, "I thought you were Greek." I said, "I kinda am, but I'm not, but I'm with you."

• 6:50Patrick Bet-David?

  That's why he's saying, "May I..." like, you're talking slowly to...

• 6:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I'm an idiot, I don't speak English.

• 6:55Patrick Bet-David?

  That is hilarious. So this is, uh, so you're in from when, uh, 92-04?

• 7:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was first of January of 90.

• 7:04Patrick Bet-David?

  First of January, 90.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Cleared calendar, that's a good way to get started.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, funny, huh? The way that worked out.

• 7:10Patrick Bet-David?

  Pretty wild.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Literally the first of January?

• 7:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. So my first workday was like, I think, the third or the fourth, it was whatever the Monday was, but my hiring was affected the first of January. And then I, I left, officially, I left in April of 05.

• 7:25Patrick Bet-David?

  April of 05?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:26Patrick Bet-David?

  So what was it like working under Woolsey?

• 7:28Speaker 05

  You know, I actually liked Woolsey. Woolsey was, Woolsey was not a good fit for, for a Clinton White House.

• 7:37Patrick Bet-David?

  He never talked to him, he never met with him, they, they had...

• 7:40Speaker 05

  No, literally, literally, I can tell you that in his eight years as president, Bill Clinton was briefed twice.

• 7:46Patrick Bet-David?

  I know, he told me this, I talked to Woolsey, and he's like, he never talked to me, I never understood, like, we never had a conversation.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  We used to joke that he wouldn't recognize Woolsey.

• 7:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Why do you think that is? Is that, was that Clinton's strategy to say, "I don't trust anybody from the CIA to even talk to them, because I don't think they're on my team"? Why do you think he did that?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  I don't think it was that clean. I think that Bill Clinton genuinely didn't care about foreign policy, but he knew that Al Gore did. So Gore was briefed six days a week for eight years.

• 8:14Patrick Bet-David?

  So Gore spoke to Woolsey, not, not Clinton?

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, all the time.

• 8:17Patrick Bet-David?

  And then Gore would deliver to Clinton, is that a strategy sometime with presidents, where the president doesn't talk to the director of CIA and they allow the VP to do the dirty work?

• 8:26Speaker 05

  That was the case under George W. Bush. George W. Bush had zero interest in this stuff. And when it came, for example, there's kind of a famous story that came out of, um, of George Tenet's memoir. Um, the torture program was, as you...

• 8:43Speaker 05

  can imagine it was extraordinarily controversial but in a very small group of people in the beginning it was only something like 16 people on the planet knew that the CIA was doing this

• 8:55Patrick Bet-David?

  waterboarding

• 8:56Speaker 05

  waterboarding so

• 8:58Patrick Bet-David?

  only 16 people knew

• 8:59Speaker 05

  in the beginning yes in the beginning when they were coming up with a plan so the way George tells the story in his memoir he prepared the presidential finding for for George W Bush's signature and he went to the White House and when he when he's in the anteroom of the Oval Office Dick Cheney walks in and he says hi George what are you doing here and and George says I have the I have the presidential finding for the president's signature to approve the torture program and and Cheney says oh I'll take that and George said well no I need to get the president's signature and Cheney said no I'll get the president's signature and then George speculated years later that the president didn't sign it that it was auto penned and that when the president

• 9:44Speaker 05

  later said look I had no idea that this was taking place he was probably telling the truth that Cheney was the one running foreign policy intelligence defense policy and Bush just didn't have any idea

• 9:57Patrick Bet-David?

  he was the front he was the

• 9:58Speaker 05

  exactly

• 9:59Patrick Bet-David?

  face

• 10:00Speaker 05

  he was the face

• 10:00Patrick Bet-David?

  similar to Biden right because even Biden when they asked him when Johnson Speaker Johnson asked him about says I didn't I didn't sign that

• 10:07Speaker 05

  right

• 10:07Patrick Bet-David?

  same similar situations with that

• 10:09Speaker 05

  I think he probably had no idea

• 10:10Patrick Bet-David?

  you think the same applies to Clinton as well with Gore

• 10:14Speaker 05

  no because they met regularly

• 10:16Patrick Bet-David?

  okay so Clinton was a hands-on guy

• 10:18Speaker 05

  a partnership yeah yeah and then on the big issues there were two really big issues in the at the end of the second Clinton tour Clinton administration it was talks with North Korea and Middle East peace I have a very dear friend who was a very senior officer at the National Security Council during Clinton and he said that in that last week that Clinton was president they were at Camp David he was at Camp David with Gore my friend was and it was Yasser Arafat and and Abbas and it was Prime Minister who not Prime Minister Foreign Minister Shimon Perez and I forget who his number two was and he said they had this enormous map of

• 11:01Speaker 05

  Jerusalem and on the table and with a Sharpie they were literally dividing Jerusalem block by block and when they finished Gore said my God we have peace And Arafat said, "I can never sell this to the Palestinian people." And he walked out. And Gore ran out after him and said, "Wait a minute. After all this, you can't just quit. If there's something you don't like, let's renegotiate it." And Arafat said, "I can never sell any deal to the Palestinian people." And then that was the end of it. And Clinton kind of alluded to this in his memoir. When he said that he should have pulled Albright out of North Korea. Because we were getting nowhere with the North Koreans.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  And he should have put Albright in the room as well to pressure Arafat.

• 11:48Patrick Bet-David?

  Interesting. Looking back now, when you hear stories like this. How different history could have been.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  Can you imagine?

• 11:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Totally. How different things could have been. If managed in a different way. Going back to the waterboarding. So when you're saying 16. Who was the original person that proposed the waterboarding idea and said, "This works." And how did that person even find out how it works? Was it accidental?

• 12:10Speaker 05

  You know, the actual person is still unclear. So, listen, I've read all of these guys' memoirs. And I was there amongst them. And I didn't know. So, as it turned out, about a month after 9/11. Somebody went up to George Tenet at a cocktail party. And said, "There are these two psychologists who work for the Air Force. And they've reverse engineered the SERE training, the survival evasion."

• 12:43Patrick Bet-David?

  It's very intense training.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Very intense. And a lot of guys don't make it through.

• 12:47Patrick Bet-David?

  I was supposed to go to SERE training. I never ended up going. I got out of the army.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  It's hideous.

• 12:51Patrick Bet-David?

  It's hideous.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:52Patrick Bet-David?

  Yes.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  So they've reverse engineered it.

• 12:54Patrick Bet-David?

  They broke, break small bones. You know, you go through some, the POW type of training. They gas you.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:59Patrick Bet-David?

  To make sure you're not going to leak information. It's very intense.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And for $108 million, they can contract with us. And implement it. And we're going to call it Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. And whoever it was, it was somebody either in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. Or somebody with proximity to the leadership of the Counterterrorism Center. And so... Contracts were signed. Now, I was in Pakistan at the time as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations. I had no idea, none of us did, that these conversations were taking place at headquarters.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  And so, starting in January of 2002, we began hitting safe houses, Al Qaeda safe houses. And I still remember the first one I did. My first day in Pakistan, I went to introduce myself to the station chief, and he said, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down an Al Qaeda safe house." I said, "Okay." I went back to my office with a legal pad, and I wrote, "All right." I said to myself, "What do I need to do to take down a safe house?" And I had taken all the classes, advanced, counterterrorism operations, all that stuff. I wrote at the top of the paper, "Oh, 200," because I thought, "I would want it to be dark, I would want everybody to be asleep, and I want the element of surprise." 2:00 in the morning.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. 2:00 in the morning. "I need battering rams, I need weapons and ammunition, I need encrypted walkie-talkies, secure comms back to headquarters, you know, we need all this stuff." I just went on to a, online, galls.com, to this police, what do you call it, the supply house in Kentucky. I bought all this crap, put it on my CIA credit card, they shipped it out in the diplomatic pouch. And so, the first night that we tried this, we got a tip, we went to the house, broke down the door, we catch two kids, 18-years-old. They both burst into tears. One of them asks if he can call his mom. I'm like, "No, you can't call your mom."

• 15:13Speaker 05

  So, we cuff him, turn him over to the Pakistanis, they put him in the Rawalpindi jail. Rawalpindi being the, you know, enormous city that's connected to Islamabad.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  We did it again a week later, and we got a tip from a friendly Arab intelligence service, and broke down the door, and this time we got some important people. We got a guy from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and you may recall, they were the ones that killed President Sadat, and then in, I think it was 95, they merged with Al Qaeda. And I thought, okay, this is going pretty well. So we started doing this more and more and more. We're catching so many people, that one day the Pakistanis come to me and say, "Look, the jail's full, like it's literally full, we can't squeeze one more person into it. You gotta do something with these guys." I send a cable to headquarters, and I said, "The jail's full, the Paks want them out,

• 16:06Speaker 05

  what do I do?" They call me, and they said, "We want you to put them on a C-12 cargo plane, and send them to Guantanamo." And I said, "Guantanamo, Cuba? Why would we send them to Cuba?" And they said, "Well, we came up with this idea, we're going to keep them in Cuba for two or three weeks, until we can decide which federal court to try them in." So it was, you know, the eastern and southern districts of New York, the eastern district of Massachusetts, the western district of Pennsylvania, and the eastern district of Virginia. I said, "That's a great idea." So we start sending everybody to Guantanamo, but then Dick Cheney says, or somebody close

• 16:48Speaker 05

  to Dick Cheney, I know that one of those things that's never been really revealed, "They don't have any rights in Cuba. Why don't we just keep them there forever?"

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Okay, so that's what started happening. In the meantime, we capture Abu Zubaydah in late March of 2002. Now, we were told at the time Abu Zubaydah was the number three in Al Qaeda. That turned out to be incorrect. He had actually never even been a member of Al Qaeda. He was a bad guy. He was a facilitator for Al Qaeda. He founded the, what they called the House of Martyrs, the Al Qaeda safe house in Peshawar. He had created and staffed Al Qaeda's two training camps in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan. So if you, if you wanted to make jihad, he would get you in to Afghanistan. If you were tired of the fight and you wanted to go home, he would get you out, get you a

• 17:43Speaker 05

  passport, send you back to your home country. So, bad guy. And then we captured him.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  I had no idea that at headquarters at the time, there was this debate about what to do when we eventually capture a leader. Now, we had already killed Mohammed Atif, who had been what they called the Director of Military Affairs for Al Qaeda. We killed him in Tora Bora in October of 2001. So what do we do with this guy? Al Qaeda? I mean, I'm sorry, Abu Zubaydah. I had no idea that these Enhanced Interrogation Techniques had been in the works from that cocktail party in October until March of 2002. In May of 2002, I get back home to headquarters. And I'm just standing in the sandwich line at the cafeteria, and a senior officer comes

• 18:35Speaker 05

  up to me very casually, and he says, "Hey, I'm glad I ran into you. I meant to ask you, do you want to be certified in the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques?" I had never heard that term before.

• 18:47Patrick Bet-David?

  Certified in Enhanced Interrogation Techniques?

• 18:50Speaker 05

  I said, "Well, what does that mean?" And he says, "We're gonna start getting rough with these guys." Like that. I said, "Well, what does that mean?"

• 18:57Patrick Bet-David?

  He's saying this in a cafeteria?

• 18:59Speaker 05

  In full view of everybody in there. Now, everybody's cleared, but they're not cleared for that information. It was so highly compartmentalized. So, he described these techniques to me. And I said, "Buddy, that sounds like a torture program." And he said, "It's not a torture program. The President signed it, and the Justice Department approved it." And I said, "Hmm, let me think about it for an hour." So I got out of the sandwich line. I went up to the seventh floor of the CIA, which is the executive floor. There was a very, very senior CIA officer up there, for whom I had worked in the Middle East 10 years earlier. And we loved each other. So I knocked on his door, and I said, "I need some advice.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  I was just approached about these Enhanced Interrogation Techniques." And he said, "First of all, let's call a spade a spade here. This is a torture program." And you know how these guys are. He said, "They're cowboys, and somebody's gonna kill a prisoner. And when that happens, there's gonna be a congressional investigation, then there's gonna be a Justice Department investigation, and somebody's gonna go to prison. Do you wanna go to prison?" I said, "No, I don't wanna go to prison." And as it turned out, I was the only person who went to prison. But I said, "No, I don't wanna go to prison." I went back downstairs, I said, "This is a torture program, I want no part of it."

• 20:17Patrick Bet-David?

  So you never learned, you never went through it?

• 20:19Speaker 05

  I was the only one, they approached fourteen people. And I'm sorry to tell you that I was the only one who said no. And the crazy thing is, I knew these guys. I was friends with these guys. Our wives were friends, our kids played together. I had no idea that they had the ability to become monsters, murderers, you know?

• 20:40Patrick Bet-David?

  But the two psychologists who originally came up with that, where did they take that from, and how did they come up with the testing?

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 20:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Because you either are taught how to do this, or it accidentally happens to you.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  That's right. So they were actually instructors in the Air Force's SERE training program. And they said, "Hey, this turns these guys into babbling, weeping little girls. We should be doing this on prison."

• 21:07Patrick Bet-David?

  How did they learn, though?

• 21:08Speaker 05

  They were taught.

• 21:09Patrick Bet-David?

  By who?

• 21:10Speaker 05

  The Air Force. They had both been Air Force.

• 21:11Patrick Bet-David?

  How did the Air Force learn?

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Oh, it's a longstanding program. Because the idea is, let's say you're an Air Force pilot, and you get shot down over Iran. They wanna teach you what presumably the Iranians would do to you, and then how you can try to withstand it.

• 21:30Patrick Bet-David?

  And these were what, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen?

• 21:32Speaker 05

  And Bruce Jessen, that's correct.

• 21:33Patrick Bet-David?

  So those are the guys that came up with the waterboarding program?

• 21:36Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 21:36Patrick Bet-David?

  And then you...

• 21:37Speaker 05

  And they got rich.

• 21:39Patrick Bet-David?

  And so, how did he get rich, by the way? How do you make money if you come up with that?

• 21:43Speaker 05

  They charged, they charged the CIA, the reports are between forty-seven million and one hundred and eight million dollars for their services.

• 21:51Patrick Bet-David?

  What?

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:52Patrick Bet-David?

  To teach people how to do waterboarding, they taught them.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then to make matters worse, these two guys go out to the secret prison and they actually carry out the torture. At the CIA, we were never trained in this kind of thing. We were never trained in interrogation. When I started interrogating prisoners, I cabled headquarters. I said, "Look, we have these prisoners. I have to interrogate them." Or somebody has to interrogate them. What should I do? Should I turn them over to the FBI? They said, "No, interrogate them." I said, "Yeah, but I've never had an interrogation class." "Oh, just wing it. You can figure it out."

• 22:23Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Even right now, it says the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA reported, uh, torture identified that they got paid over eighty million dollars for their work. That is pretty... So did you ever see anybody waterboard anybody?

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Well, we waterboarded each other in training, but in terms of prisoners being waterboarded, no.

• 22:42Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  But, but I should add, after I turned it down, as crazy as this sounds, I got passed over for promotion. And I went into the deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center's office, he was an old friend of mine, and I said, "Damn it, what do I have to do to get promoted around here? I just caught the number three of Al Qaeda with these two hands and I get passed over for promotion? What do I have to catch Bin Laden to get promoted around here?" And that senior officer that I had spoken to, that I'd gotten the advice from, he promoted me out of cycle. He said, "This is a travesty." But a friend of mine who was in my promotion panel said that, that the chief of counterterrorism said that I had, his words, "displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism."

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Shocking lack of commitment. Man, this thing was so patently illegal. I thought, certainly I can't be the only person that sees the illegality in this program. But then what happened was, when I got promoted, I also became the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. And in that position, I got to see everything that the CIA was doing around the world. And then the cables started coming back from the secret site, saying, "We're waterboarding him, and this is what's happening."

• 24:00Patrick Bet-David?

  And you're seeing this communication?

• 24:02Speaker 05

  Every single day.

• 24:03Patrick Bet-David?

  But, but let me ask you this, isn't there a... Don't they expect you to get in, and then there comes a moment where they talk to you, where it's the wink-wink conversation? Nothing email, nothing text, nothing on WhatsApp signal? Where it's like, "What do you think we do here, bro? Like, you think we follow the law?"

• 24:21Speaker 05

  But that was okay for me, for the most part. I'll give you an example.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  I sat next to this guy, who was a friend of mine, and we would have lunch together, we traveled together a couple of times. And then there was another guy who sat 20 feet away in one of the very few private offices. And this third guy would come in every day. "Hey, guys," we'd say, "Hey, man, how you doing?" "Hey, guys, how was your weekend?" "Hey, it was great. How are you?" "How was your weekend?" "Hey, how are the kids?" "Good, you know, Merry Christmas, whatever." Finally, I said to my buddy, you know, he is the nicest guy, and I don't have any idea what he does here. And my friend says, "Dude, he's the head of the Special Activities Division." And I said, "Okay."

• 25:09Speaker 05

  That was cool to me, because there are very bad people out there who present a clear and imminent danger to the United States and to American citizens and American facilities, and sometimes you have to do some ugly things. But the torture program was, was a crime of choice. We didn't have to do that. In fact... We were so deeply at odds with the FBI over this. That, that the FBI actually removed all FBI personnel from the country where the secret prison was located. They didn't even want to be in the same country while the torture was, was going on.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  Listen, Patrick, it is like a kick in my gut to have to compliment the FBI. But if there's one thing that they are really good at, it's interrogation. And we should have just let them do their job.

• 26:07Patrick Bet-David?

  Legal interrogation.

• 26:09Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 26:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Not creative CIA, the stuff that you guys.

• 26:11Speaker 05

  Precisely.

• 26:12Patrick Bet-David?

  Really? So you give them credit on so.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  They've been doing it since the Nuremberg.

• 26:17Patrick Bet-David?

  What, what is the difference tactics they use interrogation from the CIA?

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, well, that's, that's a good question. It's the most basic one. Their tactic is to sit across the table like you and I are doing right now.

• 26:29Patrick Bet-David?

  Uh huh.

• 26:29Speaker 05

  Treat each, each prisoner with respect.

• 26:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Right.

• 26:32Speaker 05

  Maybe you give him an apple or a cup of tea or a cigarette. And you establish this rapport, this relationship. Eventually, he's going to talk to you. Eventually. For the CIA, there was this element of revenge. 9/11 was the worst intelligence failure in the history of the republic. And so there was this idea that we had to avenge the deaths of 3,000 Americans. We had the deaths of 3,000 Americans on our shoulders. And so you want to go in there with fists flailing. And that just didn't accomplish anything. Besides the fact that the CIA did not stop at those 10 techniques.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  They did things that the Justice Department had never approved, that nobody had ever been trained in. You know, things well beyond waterboarding, things that I thought were worse than waterboarding.

• 27:25Patrick Bet-David?

  Like what?

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Like, for example, what they called the cold cell. A cold cell, you're, you're stripped naked, you're chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling. So you can't sit or lay or get comfortable in any way. Your cell is chilled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And then every, um, every hour, a CIA officer throws a bucket of ice water on you. Okay, we, we killed prisoners with that technique. They had hypothermia and they died. And what did we do? We just dig a hole outside the, the interrogation room and put them in the hole and cover it up.

• 27:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Literally?

• 27:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. You can't send the body back to their families. You don't even know where they're from half the time. The other one was, uh, was sleep deprivation, which sounds kinda silly. But, uh, for example, Don Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense at the time and, and he poo-pooed this, this whole thing in the press, saying, "I have a stand-up desk in my office, and sometimes I work for 24 hours standing there. Sleep deprivation doesn't hurt anybody." Well, we're not talking about standing for 24 hours at Don Rumsfeld's desk. We're talking about something far worse. The American Psychological Association, the APA, was on contract to the CIA at the

• 28:44Speaker 05

  time. They told us that people begin to lose their minds at day seven with no sleep. They begin to die of organ failure at day nine. The CIA was authorized to keep people awake for 12 days. Now imagine, again, you're chained to that eyeball in the ceiling with industrial strength lighting on you 24 hours a day and death metal at volume 11 in your cell 24 hours a day. And then your organs just shut down and you die chained to that eyeball.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 30:18Patrick Bet-David?

  And you heard and saw many stories of people that died that didn't make it past night.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  We would, we would get cables, you know, the next morning saying, unfortunately prisoner so-and-so passed away as a result of interrogation. We will, you know, dispose of his body in this way. And I'm like, again?

• 30:34Patrick Bet-David?

  And all this stuff is being documented and communicated. How, how does the CIA protect that somebody right there doesn't take a screenshot and keep it in their phones for later on in case if the CIA flips and comes after them for them to say, let me tell you what I have on you guys, leave me alone.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  I don't mean to smile, but the CIA would tell, would tell you that that's an easy answer. It's called the Espionage Act. Because if you breathe one word, one word to the press, we're gonna charge you with espionage.

• 31:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Is that what happened to you?

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Three counts.

• 31:09Patrick Bet-David?

  So walk me through it when this happened because from the moment you left, it didn't happen eight years until after you left the CIA, right? Seven or eight years?

• 31:18Speaker 05

  I wish I could tell you that I took a moral stand and I went up there and I told them. That wasn't it at all. It was, it was actually selfish on my part. So I'm seeing these cables come back from the secret sites. And I'm thinking to myself, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. This is absolutely illegal. We, listen, we've got a, we've got a law in this country called the Federal Torture Act of 1946 that specifically outlawed these, these techniques. And not only are we signatories to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, we wrote the United Nations Convention Against Torture,

• 32:02Speaker 05

  which again specifically outlawed these techniques. And then like magic, in 2002, it's all legal. Well, the law never changed. Let me add before I get to your specific point.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  In 1946, 1945, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American POWs. That was a death penalty crime to waterboard somebody. In January of 1968, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara saw a front-page photograph in The Washington Post of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. He ordered that the soldier be investigated. That soldier was arrested, he was convicted of torture, and sent to Leavenworth for 20 years. And as I said, the law never changed. We changed. And so like magic, in 2002, because we didn't like that law, we're just going to pretend it doesn't exist.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  So I'm seeing all these cables come back. I'm thinking, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. Certainly, somebody's going to say something. And then I'm seeing cables from people who were out there at the secret site, saying, "Whoa, I never signed up for this. I think this is illegal. I quit." People are saying that in the... In writing, in the cables. And you're seeing people quitting? Yeah. How often did that happen? With regularity. I'm going to say at least a dozen people either resigned, retired, or curtailed. Because of this specific reason? Yes. We had a secretary who passed out while watching somebody be tortured. We had doctors. There was a doctor who revived Abu Zubaydah when his heart stopped during waterboarding,

• 33:47Speaker 05

  revived him so he could be tortured more. And he's like, "Look, I took a Hippocratic oath. First, do no harm." I'm not doing this. That's a career-ending decision to curtail an assignment and come back. But they did. They quit, they retired, or they curtailed. So I thought, well, certainly, somebody's going to say something. And then I left in 2004. My resignation was effective 2005. I went into the private sector. And then in 2007, December of 2007, I get a call from Brian Ross at ABC News. And he said, he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. I said, "That was absolutely untrue.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah." I said, "I never laid a hand on him or on anybody else." And so, he said, and I didn't know this was an old reporter's trick because I'd never spoken to a reporter before. He said, "Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself." I said, "Yeah, I'll think about it." So, a couple of days pass. We get to Monday, and there's a presidential press conference. And a reporter asks President Bush about these reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, saying that the CIA was torturing its prisoners.

• 35:11Speaker 05

  And the president looks right in the camera, and he says, "We do not torture." And I said to my wife, who was a senior CIA officer, "He is a bald-faced liar. He's looking the American people in the eye and he's lying." Now, in retrospect, he may not have known, but he said, "We do not torture." Two days later, he's walking out of the South Portico of the White House to go to the-

• 35:40Patrick Bet-David?

  Is this it, by the way? Is this when he says, "We don't torture people"?

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Play drop?

• 35:45Speaker 06

  We- Something else. There's been a lot of talk in the newspapers and on TV about a program that I put in motion to detain and question terrorists and extremists. I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people. And when we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we're going to detain them. And you bet we're going to question them. Because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can help them, help protect them. That's our job.

• 36:30Patrick Bet-David?

  But it doesn't say we-

• 36:32Speaker 06

  Secondly, this government does not torture people.

• 36:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Got it.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  You know, we, we, we-

• 36:38Patrick Bet-David?

  And this is what you see-

• 36:39Speaker 06

  We stick to US law and our international obligation-

• 36:42Patrick Bet-David?

  And then go to the other clip I just sent you. Is this your interview with Brian? This is you?

• 36:45Speaker 05

  Yes, that's the Brian Ross interview.

• 36:46Patrick Bet-David?

  So, press play just to see the first 30 seconds.

• 36:48Speaker 07

  John, you were involved in the capture of Abu Zubaydah?

• 36:50Speaker 05

  I was.

• 36:51Speaker 07

  And tell me about that, how it happened?

• 36:54Speaker 05

  It was quite a long process. We had information that Abu Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan, in either Faisalabad or Lahore-

• 37:01Patrick Bet-David?

  At what point of this interview do you say that we do waterboard? How far along is it?

• 37:04Speaker 05

  It was pretty well into the, into the interview. And you know, I, I made a, I made a very serious mistake in that interview. When Mitchell and Jessen were out in, thi- this requires a little bit of background. When they were out at the secret site, okay, so there's this CIA team and an FBI team. The FBI interrogation team is headed by an FBI agent named Ali Sufan. Ali and I worked together in, in Pakistan, and he was, he was what every FBI agent should be, right? This guy was a professional from the word go. And he established this relationship with Abu Zubaydah, so that Abu Zubaydah was giving

• 37:47Speaker 05

  him actionable intelligence, like real intelligence that saved American lives. On August the 2nd, 2002, for reasons that have never been clear, George Tenet asked President Bush to move primacy of the Abu Zubaydah operation, or Abu Zubaydah interrogation, from the FBI to the CIA. And that day, August 2nd, the CIA began torturing Abu Zubaydah. He immediately went silent. Okay. Now, the mistake I made in the, in the Brian Ross interview is, I said Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded once. I said it was torture and it was wrong and it was illegal, but I said that it worked

• 38:30Speaker 05

  because he had been waterboarded once and he gave us actual intelligence. That was not true. Now, the reason I said that was because Mitchell and Jessen-

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Reported that he had been waterboarded once. Now, how did they get away with that? The CIA and the FBI historically had hated each other so much that even their computer systems were incompatible with one another. And so Ali Sufan, every day, is interrogating Abu Zubaydah, and then he's writing up these cables, saying, "He said this, and he said that, and he said the other thing, and this thing. And, you know, we need to talk to this country and talk to that country." That information was never making its way back to the CIA, because the systems were incompatible. Mitchell and Jessen take over. They waterboard Abu Zubaydah. He clams up, stops talking entirely.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  They waterboard him 83 times, and he still says nothing. So they go into the FBI's system. They pull out Ali Sufan's cables. They retype the cables in the CIA system, and they say, "We waterboarded him once, and oh my God, look what he told us." And I said to my boss, the deputy director, I said, "Maybe I'm wrong about this." Right? I still think it's, I still think it's crime, but maybe it actually works. Well, it wasn't until 2005 that the CIA Inspector General found, in an investigation, that this had happened, that they had faked the intelligence, essentially.

• 40:09Speaker 05

  And it wasn't until 2009 that it was finally declassified. And in 2005 was when they destroyed all the evidence, right? Exactly. So, the White House Counsel, Harriet Myers, told Jose Rodriguez, who was the deputy director for operations, and Gina Haspel, who was the head of counterterrorism at the time, and later became the CIA Director, "Don't destroy the videotapes of the torture sessions." As soon as they got back to the building, they put them all in an industrial grinder, and they destroyed everything. How do you feel about Gina?

• 40:46Speaker 05

  You know, I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post when her appointment as director was announced. And I said, "In the halls at the CIA, we used to call her bloody Gina Haspel." Because she, she went out to the secret site to observe the torture just for the kick of watching the torture.

• 41:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Get out of here.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  She was 1,000% pro-torture. And the other thing is, you know, we talk a lot nowadays about the deep state. She was the definition of the deep state.

• 41:17Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 41:18Speaker 05

  She was 30-plus years at the CIA. Like, wouldn't you want an outsider to be the adult in the room?

• 41:26Patrick Bet-David?

  So, okay, so then you go out there, you, you know, you talk to Brian Ross. Now that's out there.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 41:34Patrick Bet-David?

  Now they're coming after you. Now the eight years takes place. Uh, do you end up doing time or you?

• 41:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did 23 months.

• 41:41Patrick Bet-David?

  You did 23 months?

• 41:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:42Patrick Bet-David?

  And where were you at?

• 41:43Speaker 05

  I was at the Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania.

• 41:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Who else is in that, uh, facility? Who is getting arrested there? Who's doing time there?

• 41:51Speaker 05

  A third of the prisoners are pedophiles.

• 41:54Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Um, mafia, dons, there were a lot of mob guys.

• 41:59Patrick Bet-David?

  A third of the people there are pedophiles?

• 42:01Speaker 05

  Pedophiles.

• 42:02Patrick Bet-David?

  So why would they put you there with?

• 42:04Speaker 05

  Ah, I'm, I'm glad you asked me that question, and I swear, we didn't plant the question. At my sentencing, my attorneys asked the judge to put me in a minimum-security work camp. Okay, there are no bars on the windows, the doors are unlocked, you're free to come and go as you please, you're just on your honor not to run away. And most of those guys work at a, there's a, a university in, in the town, the little village nearby, and you sweep the floors or whatever. The judge says to the prosecutors, "Any objection?" They said, "No objection." She says, "Okay, minimum-security work camp." Well, the, the strange thing in our system is, if you're sentenced to prison and... And you're free until you're the date of your incarceration.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  You physically drive to the prison and knock on the door and say, I'm, I'm here to turn myself in. It's weird, right? So I got up that morning and a couple of my lawyers, my cousin and his son, documentary film crew. We drive to the prison and I go to the camp, minimum security camp, and I knock on the door and I said, I'm John Kiriakou, I'm here to turn myself in. They said, oh, you have to go across the street to the actual prison. They'll process you and then they'll just bring you back over here. I said, okay. So I go across the street to the prison and said, I'm here to turn myself in. The guy says, okay, they put me through a metal detector.

• 43:29Speaker 05

  And then he starts to lead me around to the back of the actual prison. And I said, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be at the, at the camp across the street. And he goes, not according to my paperwork, you're not.

• 43:43Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  And I told myself, take it easy, there's nothing you can do. They'll put you in solitary if you say anything. So I didn't say a word.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  It took me about 45 minutes to get processed. And then they put me in a cell, like an actual cell. It was a four man cell, but they squeezed six guys in there because of overcrowding. It took me four or five days before I got access to a phone.

• 44:09Patrick Bet-David?

  To call your lawyer.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  I called my lawyer and I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison with the mafia kingpins and the, and the Mexican drug cartel guys and the pedophiles. What do I do? And he said, oh my God, he said, well, we can make a motion, but, but it'll be two years before we have a, a court date. He said, buddy, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to tough it out.

• 44:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Get out of here. 23 months, two years.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  And I told myself, you've lived in far worse places than this.

• 44:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Are you married at this time or no? What is your wife doing? Cause I know your wife was also in the CIA.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  Yes, she was fired from the CIA on the day of my arrest, just because she was married to me.

• 44:48Patrick Bet-David?

  No other reason?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:49Patrick Bet-David?

  And is that common etiquette because married, they're worried you're gonna?

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Unprecedented.

• 44:54Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, because Jonah Mendez and Tony Mendez were in it together and they were married for 28 years or something like that.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  The CIA encourages agency romances because you're both cleared, so you can talk about work. We used to have this joke at the agency that-

• 45:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Marry another CIA-

• 45:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Everybody's married. We had this joke at the CIA that when you go into a meeting, don't touch the conference room table because you don't know who was having sex on it last night.

• 45:16Patrick Bet-David?

  No. Seriously?

• 45:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:18Patrick Bet-David?

  Because they're married and they're just-

• 45:20Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  I worked for a deputy director of the CIA who had been married three times, and all three of his wives had been his secretary.

• 45:27Patrick Bet-David?

  All three of his wives had been his secretary? So the place smells like beducis. It's just a terrible- Wow.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:33Patrick Bet-David?

  It's not good. Some people like that.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  And that's why you've got a 75% divorce rate.

• 45:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  Because they're all banging each other.

• 45:39Patrick Bet-David?

  No, I mean, okay. So, and are they banging each other and like dropping intel? You don't even know what I learned yesterday. Ooh, tell me.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 45:47Patrick Bet-David?

  That's pretty nasty.

• 45:47Speaker 05

  And then they'll ask you about that on the polygraph.

• 45:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. Interesting. So, okay. So now, you're going through things to any famous people you weren't there that we would know about? Any bosses that we would know about?

• 46:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, the boss of the Gambinos was there.

• 46:02Patrick Bet-David?

  Which one?

• 46:03Speaker 05

  Uh, Little Nicky Caruso.

• 46:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  And the number three in the Bonanno's.

• 46:09Patrick Bet-David?

  And you're hanging out with them?

• 46:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, in fact, they, the Italians adopted me. So I was with, I was with the Italians the whole time I was there.

• 46:18Patrick Bet-David?

  And were they, did they know what your background is?

• 46:20Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:20Patrick Bet-David?

  They all know?

• 46:21Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, they all know.

• 46:22Patrick Bet-David?

  And how did they-

• 46:22Speaker 05

  And I'm still friends with all of them.

• 46:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Did they treat you as a, were they afraid of you? Did they respect you? Did they hate you? Did they want to kill you?

• 46:30Speaker 05

  It was all respect. And I owe the easy time that I had there. I owe to Mark Lanzalotti. So Mark was from Philadelphia and-

• 46:42Patrick Bet-David?

  With Scarfo and those guys?

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Exactly. And then he saw in the New York Times, an article saying that I was coming to that prison. And God bless him, on his own volition, he went to every one of the Italians to explain to them, this CIA guy is coming, he's not a cop. The FBI are cops, the CIA protect us from the Muslims. That's what he told them. And so, when I arrived, they had been told, I hate the FBI as much as they do. And so

• 47:16Patrick Bet-David?

  Interesting.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  We were all one big happy family.

• 47:18Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so, so let me, let me, I asked Jonah a question, right in front of the White House when we did the interview. This is when she told me about, she was the chief disguise officer of the CIA.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  She's a giant, by the way, at the CIA.

• 47:29Patrick Bet-David?

  She is a giant.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Everybody loves and respects her.

• 47:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Really?

• 47:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:32Patrick Bet-David?

  So she's, she's somebody that's admired.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  She's the real deal, yeah.

• 47:37Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, and she's the one that held the mask in front of President Bush and, hey, this is not really me. Look what I, we have, we have capabilities of building. I asked her, what are the profile of a great, successful CIA agent? Okay, and she gave me her criterias. What, what would you say? What makes, because you know you hear about what types of people they recruit? And you said earlier, you says, I applied to work at CIA and you change, you're like, I was recruited, right? Because you get recruited to the CIA.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, my, my grad school advisor recruited me.

• 48:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Great. And, but what would you say are the top qualities that help you have a successful 20, 30 year career at the CIA?

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could give you four, four or five.

• 48:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Especially somebody like you that's going to 70. Now, not the ones that work at the office. The guys on the road are some sort of like you.

• 48:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, the guys in the field.

• 48:19Patrick Bet-David?

  Yes.

• 48:20Speaker 05

  A CIA psychiatrist once told me what's probably the most important attribute. You have to, you have to have what they call sociopathic tendencies. Not a sociopath. Because sociopaths don't have a conscience and you can't control them. And they blow right through the polygraph because they, they don't feel guilt. Okay, you want to hire somebody who feels guilt but is happy to break the law because we're the good guys. Right? And I'll give you an example, if we have a minute. Um, when I was going through the process, the hiring process, uh, I was with, uh, four other, four other people, three guys and a woman. And, um, the interviewer said, let's say you are a CIA officer in the field.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  And you get a cable from headquarters and they say, we need for you to get the new classified Indonesian economic figures. And then you go out and target the Indonesian Economic Secretary. Okay. So you take him to lunch, you take him to dinner, you hit it off, your wives become friends, you go on weekend vacations together. Your kids are playing together. Six months pass, you realize he's not recruitable. But headquarters says, hey, we need those figures. What do you do? One guy raises his hand, he says, you double down, you spend more money.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  The woman says, "Maybe you can run it through the wives, maybe the wives get even closer." And I'm looking around like, "What?" So I raised my hand. I said, "You break into the Indonesian Embassy and you steal it." He says, "That's exactly what you do." That's a sociopathic tendency. A normal person wouldn't say, "Uh, I need something that Patrick has. I think I'm gonna break into his house and steal it." Normal people don't do that, but remember, we're the good guys. So, sociopathic tendencies. An ability to work alone without having to be motivated by an outside factor. I loved that job so much. I hated to leave at the end of the day.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  And then I couldn't wait to get back in in the morning to see what I had missed from overnight. Um, you have to be able to work for much of your career without any rewards. Right? You, you, you catch up as a beta. You can't then call your friends and say, "Hey, I caught up as a beta." Or call the, you know, your hometown radio station. "I call, I caught up as a beta." You can't tell anybody what you did. My first wife was a ballet teacher. And I would get home and she'd say, "How was work?" I'd say, "Great." "What'd you do?" "Nothing." "Who'd you talk to?" "Nobody." And then my phone would ring at midnight and I would speak in Arabic.

• 51:11Speaker 05

  And then I would leave to do a meeting in the middle of the night after a two-hour surveillance detection route to the meeting and a two-hour surveillance detection route from the meeting. Get back home at 6 o'clock in the morning. And then she says, "So, what was her name?" And I'm like, "No, I was working." "Uh huh." "In the middle of the night." "Have a good time?" Well, I mean, what are you gonna do? I can't tell her I was, you know, at some clandestine meeting with the ambassador.

• 51:44Patrick Bet-David?

  She didn't know she was a CIA officer.

• 51:46Speaker 05

  She knew I was CIA, but that was literally all that she knew. She had no idea what I did for a living.

• 51:52Patrick Bet-David?

  So number one is sociopathic tendencies, but not a sociopath. You have to understand to make a decision without feeling guilty. Number two is a level of work that you came in without any outside motivations to get you to go to work. Like you sincerely love the game.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  And they give you an assignment and they say, "Do it." And that's it. Nobody's gonna call and say, "Hey, can I help in any way, make this easier for you?" Do it. "Well, I got a cable." Patrick, they said, "Abuzabda's somewhere in Pakistan. Go catch him." Like, "Go catch him." This country's the size of Texas and it has 220 million people. What do you mean, "Go catch him?" But by God, I set out to catch him and I did.

• 52:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Pretty wild when you think about what... The one thing that she said is similar to what you said. She says, "When you do save the free world from the next World War III and you're watching TV and you know they're reporting and you know that you're the one that did that, you don't need the recognition."

• 52:50Speaker 05

  No. You know, the day I got back from Pakistan, there was this kid in the office. He was an intern, a graduate fellow, and he had been reading the cables from Pakistan. So I walk in and I've been gone for six, seven months. I walk in and he sees me and he goes, goes like this. And I said, "No, no, no, no. It was a team effort." And he said, "Dude, I read the cables." I said, "Don't say a word, because not everybody here in the office is cleared for what happened." So now, you gotta just eat it.

• 53:22Patrick Bet-David?

  That's wild. But to me, when I... A few good men, code rag. "You want the truth? I deserve it. You can't handle the truth." You know, and he gives that whole speech, right?

• 53:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:35Patrick Bet-David?

  I gotta say that. If I got a job at the CIA... It's almost naive to believe there isn't code red type of tendencies, right? Because you have, you have the what? You have the official budget for the CIA that we all know about.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 53:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Then you have the official black, you know, budget that operations that not everybody will know about. And then you have the unofficial black budget. So there's three different tiers. So you have to know that if you're in this game, listen, we do certain things that the average person is just never gonna understand. So don't act like we have to do this and we have to do that. Don't be naive, John. This is what we do. You know what you signed up for. I would assume that's a norm, isn't it?

• 54:26Speaker 05

  Now, yes, but remember at the time of the nine 11 attacks, executive order 12333 was the law of the land. The CIA cannot murder people. President Ford signed that, that executive order. It had the force of law.

• 54:42Patrick Bet-David?

  Would have signed, but that means nothing.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  Oh, no, but you'd be surprised. I had a friend, Bob Baer. Bob Baer is a pretty famous former CIA officer. He's written many books. One of his books became the film Siriana with George Clooney. He was serving in Iraq and came up with a plot to kill Saddam Hussein. And they threatened to arrest him for attempted murder. He had to resign from the CIA. You're in violation of executive order.

• 55:10Patrick Bet-David?

  The moment it became public?

• 55:11Speaker 05

  No. NSA heard somebody talking about the CIA guy is gonna come up with a plan.

• 55:19Patrick Bet-David?

  It became public. That's a form of becoming public.

• 55:20Speaker 05

  It became public.

• 55:21Patrick Bet-David?

  But to me, that's like him being sloppy. To me, you know.

• 55:24Speaker 05

  No, no, what it was, was he was working with a group of Kurds. And the Kurds are on the phone saying, hey, so how do we do this? We're gonna figure out a plan. And NSA called the White House and said, hey, one of your guys is out there trying to come up with a plan to kill Saddam Hussein. And they said, you can either resign or you can be prosecuted for attempted murder.

• 55:43Patrick Bet-David?

  He resigned.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  He resigned. It was a ridiculous slap.

• 55:48Patrick Bet-David?

  Interesting. Okay, well.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  But anyway, on, on September 12th, all that changed.

• 55:52Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. So, so President Trump, okay, let's go through today.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:58Patrick Bet-David?

  The Epstein fumble that just, the biggest fumble of the administration so far.

• 56:05Patrick Bet-David?

  He's being interviewed by Rachel Campos Duffy. She asks, in the interview, "Are you gonna release the John F. Kennedy files?" "Yes." "Are you gonna release the 9/11 files?" "Yes." "Are you gonna release the, you know, uh, this is in it, 'cause somebody was sitting to her, "right." I don't think that's the one, it's a different interview. "Are you gonna release the Epstein files?" And then she said, "That's the one." Let me see if that's the one, Rob. No, no, that's not the one. "Are you gonna release this, are you gonna release that?" And then that's it, right there. So if you can play this, I don't know if you've seen this or not. Yes. Okay. So if you've seen this, you know which one it is, uh, once we get the video to work. And then he finally, when they ask him about Epstein, he hesitates. Hmm. Okay? And he doesn't want to release it for whatever reason.

• 56:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Now, we don't know what the reasoning may be. He says, "Well, you know, sometimes, you know, stories like that get other people involved, "and we don't wanna do that." Great. Then now, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, all of these guys who have talked about Epstein, there's a video of, uh, Dan Bongino, who is on Tim Poole Podcast, and he's being asked about, and you've been on Tim Poole before, and he's on the Tim Poole Podcast, you have been on there, right? Yeah. I think you have been, yeah. And he's being asked about, you know, "Well, I'm in the waiting room of Fox News, and this guy's telling me that, you know, Epstein was Mossad, and pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, and that's exactly what happened." Okay. And then now, all of a sudden, we get the report, three days ago. No client list, no this, no that.

• 57:30Patrick Bet-David?

  And yesterday, when they're being asked about it, Pam Bondi says, "They found child porn." That's what they found, and that's what they don't wanna release. Is that the video, Rob, the one that President Trump is asking about Epstein? Yes. I think you just had the video. How long is that video, by the way? Uh, this one is the shorter version. No, you need the other one, to find a bonding one. I have the entire one right here. Okay, play that one, play that one, because I want her answer to also be in it. And, and, I got so many questions with this on the CIA side, but go ahead and play this clip here, go for it.

• 58:00Speaker 08

  ... left some lingering mysteries. One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for a American or foreign intelligence agency. Um, the former Labor Secretary, who was Miami US Attorney, Alex Costa, he allegedly said that he did work for an intelligence agency. So could you resolve whether or not he did? And also, could you say why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse tape on the night of September?

• 58:26Speaker 09

  Yeah, sure. Hey, ma'am, can I just interrupt for a second? Sure.

• 58:30Speaker 10

  Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time and do you feel like answering?

• 58:49Speaker 09

  I don't mind answering.

• 58:51Speaker 10

  I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration, but you go ahead.

• 59:06Speaker 09

  Sure, sure. First to back up on that, in February, I did an interview on Fox and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said, I was asked a question about the client list and my response was, it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that. Also, to the tens of thousands of video, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein. Child porn is what they were. Never going to be released, never going to see the light of day. To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that.

• 59:48Speaker 09

  And the minute missing from the video, we released the video showing definitively.

• 59:55Patrick Bet-David?

  It's a fumble.

• 59:56Speaker 09

  The video was not conclusive, but.

• 59:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Why would you release that video?

• 1:00:00Speaker 09

  Evidence prior to it was showing he committed.

• 1:00:03Patrick Bet-David?

  You've seen this, right?

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay. Body language, your job is body language. You have to, as a sociopathic tendency, you have to be able to size up the other person's body language. When you see this here, you see the president, you see Bond, you see the way they're handling this topic.

• 1:00:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Patrick Bet-David?

  In your mind, what are you speculating?

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  That they're deflecting.

• 1:00:21Patrick Bet-David?

  Why?

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  I think that this is one of those things where they just don't want people to go deeper.

• 1:00:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Why?

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  And I don't think it has to do with, like, I don't think, I don't think people are going to be implicated if the, people in the White House are going to be implicated in anything. I think it's more, I think it's more about protecting the Israelis, actually.

• 1:00:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Why?

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

  Jeffrey Epstein, in my view, is a textbook case of an access agent. I've said this before, but I think it's important and it bears repeating. If, if you are a foreign intelligence service and you want information from Bill Clinton, or Bill Gates, or, you know, Alan Dershowitz, or important people, you want the secret information from them, you're not going to recruit them. They don't need anything from you, they don't have any financial vulnerabilities. So you do the next best thing, and you recruit somebody who has access to them.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  And you finance this person, uh, he has a private island, he's got a private jet, he flies these people down, all the bedrooms and bathrooms, we learned this week, were wired for video and for sound. And then, you can get them, you can catch them in these compromising positions, just in case you need to squeeze them a little bit. There's no evidence that any of them were squeezed, but just in case, and then you pass it back to your handlers. I had a, I had a, a, um, a trainer, one of my, uh, one of my operational trainers,

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  who told us, when we were going through the, the process, that the best recruitment he ever made was a copy machine repairman. And I laughed when he said it. And he said, "No, no, I'm serious, hear me out." He said, "All of us want to recruit the prime minister. We're not going to recruit the prime minister. We're not even going to have access to the prime minister." But the prime minister's got a copy machine in his office, and every once in a while, that machine is going to need to be cleaned and serviced. So you recruit the copy machine repairman, and when he goes in there to make his repair, or to clean the, the drums, or whatever, he installs a little device that we give

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  him, so that every time somebody makes a copy, it transmits a copy back to the CIA. He said, "I got a promotion, I got a medal, I got a photo op with the director, it made my career." Because every sheet of paper that went through that prime minister's office, went straight to the CIA.

• 1:03:10Patrick Bet-David?

  One little chip was doing that.

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 1:03:12Patrick Bet-David?

  So now, so how do you use, so what do you do with those assets now you're getting? You know what the communication is, you know what they're thinking about, you know what their next move is, you know who their enemy is, you know who their ally is.

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Exactly. Maybe it's what their position's gonna be on trade negotiations. Maybe it's, you know, the prime minister's got some kind of health problem that you need to know about for planning purposes. You never know. You never know what's gonna pop. Maybe it's just, you know, spam, or it's a rent-a-car application, or stupid stuff. You just throw it in the shredder, or in the burn bag. But, you know, that, that one nugget might come through. And I think that that's what Jeffrey Epstein was. Now, we know all about Ghislaine Maxwell's father, having had this long relationship with, with Mossad. I, I believe, I believe that he was a Mossad access agent. It makes perfect sense to me.

• 1:04:00Patrick Bet-David?

  So, you know, in this situation with Epstein and what's going on, who knows exactly what happened? The FBI or CIA?

• 1:04:12Speaker 05

  Well, see, that's, that's really the $64,000 question right there. That, one thing that didn't surprise me at all was the conclusion that he committed suicide. I've always said he committed suicide. And I say that only because of my own experience in the prison system.

• 1:04:26Patrick Bet-David?

  You don't think someone killed him?

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  No, I don't.

• 1:04:28Patrick Bet-David?

  You think he committed suicide?

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I'll tell you why.

• 1:04:31Patrick Bet-David?

  Please.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Because the Federal Bureau of Prisons is the biggest repository of semi-literate boobs anywhere in government. If you are, if you have a, an IQ of 65, and you wanna work in government, straight to the Bureau of Prisons with you. Right? Every flunky who couldn't make it through the local police academy, or every loser who left the, the, the military and couldn't find a job 'cause he lives in some rural area, and there are no jobs unless you wanna be a farmer and live in a double-wide, they go to the Bureau of Prisons.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  The guards, so many of the guards were so stupid where I was, that they couldn't even read. So they couldn't do mail call, because they couldn't read the envelopes. And so prisoners had to do the mail call for them. The only qualifications to be a prison guard are you have to have a GED, or be working on a GED, and no felony convictions. That's it. That's all. And you're in. So... Number one, they're all morons. Number two, the cameras never work. Never. I wrote a blog. I used to smuggle out this blog and my attorney would publish it. And it became my second book, Doing Time Like a Spy.

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  But I wrote this blog about how I was working as a janitor in the chapel.

• 1:06:04Patrick Bet-David?

  This is when you're doing your 23 months.

• 1:06:06Speaker 05

  When I was doing my 23 months. I was a janitor. I offered to teach a class because I, you know, did my PhD coursework in international affairs and they told me if they wanted me to teach an effing class, they would ask me to teach an effing class. Now pick up the sweeper, the broom and, you know, sweep the floors. So that's what I did. I said, "Fine," for 16 cents an hour. So anyway, every time I'd go to the chapel, in a period where there wasn't, you know, some sort of religious service scheduled, the guys are having sex in there and I'd have to chase them out. And the reason they had sex in there all the time is because the cameras never worked. And everybody knew where the cameras didn't work. They didn't work in the stairwell that led down to the mailroom,

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  for example. They didn't work in the hallway that led to the laundry. And so people are constantly having sex in there. So when they say, "Oh, my God, the cameras weren't working. It's a conspiracy." No, the cameras weren't working because they never work. And then they said, "Oh, the guards were asleep." Yeah, because the guards are always asleep. Right? They're supposed to work eight hours, no more than eight hours. These guys were doing it.

• 1:07:14Patrick Bet-David?

  This is so hard to believe.

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  It's awful. It's awful.

• 1:07:17Patrick Bet-David?

  No, no, no. This is naive to believe that. For me, my opinion, you've got a guy, this heavyweight of a guy that's got access to this information,

• 1:07:27Patrick Bet-David?

  you're gonna allow something like that to happen? There's a lot of guys that have said that.

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  But you're gonna trust, you're gonna trust in your people. That they realize he's a high-profile prisoner, he's a suicide risk.

• 1:07:38Patrick Bet-David?

  This makes me also, this what this makes me also think about is the following. So, what did you say? You call them stupid people, right? People who work there, okay. But what did you call the other guy? That was able to put a chip on the printer to get all the intel, right? If you're able to con a prime minister to get all the facts and stuff that's coming in, how much easier is it if I'm dealing with stupid men? To go and kill a guy that I want to kill, it's the easiest person to kill. I mean, cameras don't work, the prisoners are lazy. Guys, this is like easy job where a brand-new elementary guy can go and take them out.

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  Yes, but then the FBI at all are gonna investigate that and they're gonna look at everybody's financial records. Has anybody made a big deposit, bought a boat, moved into a bigger house, you know? And there's no indication that anybody profited in any way.

• 1:08:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Not yet. We don't know yet, cuz it's not, uh... And even if you, you know, uh, there's many ways of doing it with, uh... If a person wants to take them out, they're not gonna have a hard time taking them out. But go back to this year, so you said Israel.

• 1:08:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Patrick Bet-David?

  So, do you think, you don't think anybody from the administration is being implicated, that they're on that list? I don't think so either. I'm not there. But who actually knows what happened? That's what I wanna know. You know, cuz in the CIA, you said something. I talked to Wolsey, Wolsey's like, I never talked to the President Clinton. He was, uh, you know, he's like, I was there for two visits, or two this, and nothing ever happened.

• 1:09:08Speaker 05

  Literally.

• 1:09:08Patrick Bet-David?

  Like, and now you're saying Gore was the one that would talk five, six days a weekend to briefing. But who are the people that actually know the client list?

• 1:09:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Patrick Bet-David?

  That actually have seen the videos, that actually have access to those, who have actually seen it? How many people you think know exactly what happened? How big's that number?

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  I think it's actually more than most people realize. Because you figure Ghislaine Maxwell 100%.

• 1:09:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Sure.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  But you figure, Virginia Giuffre told us, and actually five other young women, in their statements, in their lawsuit, told us that there were rooms with banks of monitors, right? And they were monitoring every room and every bathroom. So if there were clients, and I believe there were, and they were having sex with minors, and I believe they were, every single person who was hired to monitor those screens would have known. I believe that there was a list, a client list. There had to have been. We know that there was a black book. It sold its sotheby's for heaven's sake.

• 1:10:19Speaker 05

  So where is it? Was it destroyed? And even if it was destroyed, why didn't Ghislaine Maxwell try to use it to save herself?

• 1:10:30Speaker 11

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 1:11:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, so now out of all these people that have access to it, say somebody is, um, did you say it sold at Sotheby's?

• 1:11:39Speaker 05

  Sotheby's or Christie's?

• 1:11:41Patrick Bet-David?

  Actually, they both declined to handle it. In a 2020 Maryland auction, someone was going to attempt to sell one of Epstein's, the Little Black Book, but it failed to meet the reserve, but it did not sell. The book had been offered privately earlier with bids exceeding 100,000. If that book is still out there, I'd buy it myself for that number. Is that it? Where's that at, Rob?

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  Alexander Historical Auctions. That's what it was, on Maryland's eastern shore.

• 1:12:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Can you send me that link, Rob?

• 1:12:05Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:12:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Is that the original book?

• 1:12:07Speaker 05

  The original book. And you know what? I actually bought something from them. There was something that passed, and I emailed them after the auction, and I said, "Hey, I'd really like to have it", and they gave it to me for the minimum reserve.

• 1:12:19Patrick Bet-David?

  Just text it to me if you could. So, okay, so, so going back to it, but how many people? So the number has to be in the thousands. Fair to say it's in the thousands? Because all the clients, all the employees, all the people that set up the cameras, all the girls that were involved, how many people they told?

• 1:12:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Patrick Bet-David?

  But then, but then there's-

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  For hundreds at least.

• 1:12:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, but then here's, here's, uh, uh,

• 1:12:41Patrick Bet-David?

  there is the people that were friends with Virginia who they told, so you're secondhand.

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  Right, right, yes.

• 1:12:46Patrick Bet-David?

  But she knows knows, because she had the experience with Andrew and whoever it is, whatever the individuals were. So, how many people have seen, have files, have information, have communication where 100% they know? Not, "I have faith in Virginia telling me the truth", I have, like, how many Virginias are there?

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:13:08Patrick Bet-David?

  How many of those, is that 50?

• 1:13:09Speaker 05

  It's gotta be, right?

• 1:13:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay. So out of the 50, out of the 50, if, if I'm somebody that wants to get that intel, okay, if I'm somebody that wants to get that intel, and I want to get the next John, who is a FBI agent, CIA who is conflicted, you were conflicted with waterboarding, and that person's conflicted with the fact that they have access to this information, we're a bunch of minors, but-

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  Right. Where's the whistleblower?

• 1:13:37Patrick Bet-David?

  How do you, how do you get that person that has access to that information to be coming out to public? How do you get access to that person?

• 1:13:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, in, in the CIA- 10 years ago, I would have said WikiLeaks. They can protect your identity. They're the only ones who will protect your identity. Go to WikiLeaks. Today? I mean, for all intents and purposes WikiLeaks doesn't really exist anymore. Um, but you need somebody with a strong moral compass. Who's willing to take a serious risk because again, you're gonna be prosecuted. You know, maybe even under that Espionage Act. The judge in my case, Judge Leoni Brinkema, um, set two precedents. In espionage related cases. First of all, she ruled that she would not respect

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  uh, the other district courts precedents that uh, there had to be harm to the national security. For an Espionage Act prosecution. Secondly, she ruled that a person can accidentally commit espionage. Without the intent to commit espionage, without any criminal intent. And she defined espionage very simply as providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. People could argue that the Epstein files are national defense information, especially if they have something to do with a foreign country. Or with a foreign leader and we know that Prince Andrew was implicated.

• 1:15:14Speaker 05

  So, somebody would have to seriously take a risk by releasing that information.

• 1:15:21Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so you're familiar with the Franklin cover up?

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:15:23Patrick Bet-David?

  You know the whole Larry King, that story, right?

• 1:15:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:15:26Patrick Bet-David?

  Robert, do you have the two, uh, actually you know what? I'm gonna text it to you. There's, the book opens up with a story of what happened there. And the Franklin cover up is the child prostitution ring allegations. The guy actually ended up going to prison for different reasons. He didn't end up going to prison for that. He ended up going to prison. He was like a Epstein.

• 1:15:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:15:51Patrick Bet-David?

  Is who he was, right? Back in the days. If you can pull up what I just sent you, in this book, I think the book is called The Franklin Cover Up. I wanna give credit. To what the book is. Here's, here's what it reads in the first two pages. If you can go, yeah, right there. What do Ronald Reagan, President George Bush, Fanner CIA Director William E. Colby, Democratic Presidential Candidate Bob Kerry, Billionaire and Second Richest Man in America, and now Head of Selma Brothers, Warren Buffett and Ronald Rosskins, the current administration of the Agency of International Development, all have in common? I asked my close friend and advisor William Colby one day, 1991. "I give up," Fanner Head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Colby said. What could that group have in common? "Three things," I replied.

• 1:16:34Patrick Bet-David?

  "All of them, a burden at times, for those who have to carry. The three things are me, John DeCamp, a case called the Franklin, and a man named Larry King." "Are you serious?" "Dead serious," I responded. And I hope that word "dead" does not turn out to be a prophetic pronouncement as it has for at least fifteen other Franklin-related personalities. My statement to Bill Colby was not made lightly. Colby and his wife, Sally Shelton Colby, United States Ambassador under President Carter, were at that very, were at that very moment warning me to get away from the Franklin Child Abuse Investigation, Larry King, and anybody else linked with the Franklin as quickly as possible for the sake of my own life and safety. Sally and Bill had never talked to me like this before.

• 1:17:19Patrick Bet-David?

  They sat me down, made it clear that this was not one of our routine discussions about life and health and happiness, and emphasized to me the serious nature of what and whom I was dealing with. What you understand, what you have to understand, John, is that sometimes, you can go to the next page.

• 1:17:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions that you cannot deny, do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are, and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are and how much evidence you have, this is simply one of those hard facts of life you have to face. You have done your part. You've tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. It has hurt you terribly, but it has not killed you up to this point. I'm telling you, get out of this before it does. Sometimes, things are just too big for us to deal with, and we have to step aside and let history take its course. I can read the rest. I think, kind of get the idea of what's going on here.

• 1:18:11Speaker 05

  That's absolutely true.

• 1:18:13Patrick Bet-David?

  Is that absolutely true right now with that? Okay.

• 1:18:15Speaker 05

  Yes, it's absolutely true.

• 1:18:18Speaker 05

  I got lucky. I only got 23 months in prison. Big deal. I came out stronger on the other end. But there are some people who have paid with their lives.

• 1:18:27Patrick Bet-David?

  So the idea is the people that, the 50 people that know who have seen the tapes, who have access to the information, who know for a fact, it's not like they are speculating. If, if, if a person

• 1:18:41Patrick Bet-David?

  had the resources, could offer the freedom, could offer all of that to you.

• 1:18:50Patrick Bet-David?

  So I'm trying to think, let's just say this is, this is US and Israel, okay? And it's CIA and Mossad working together. And I, I had Jeffrey Epstein's brother, he did a two hour podcast with me, came to the cigar lounge. We sat there, met. He ended up leaving an hour later and he came back, walked back to tell me one other thing. I'm like, why did you come back to tell me this one other thing? And then he left. And I'm trying to find out what the hell is going on with this case here, right? But

• 1:19:18Patrick Bet-David?

  to me, let's say Mossad and CIA know everything.

• 1:19:26Patrick Bet-David?

  But say I hate Mossad and I hate the CIA and I'm an enemy of those two guys.

• 1:19:33Patrick Bet-David?

  You can call me KGB. You can call me any other intelligence agency that's out there. What would be my creative methods to get access to that? Or do I also have that?

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  No, no, that's a good, that's a good question. So what you do is, is what the CIA calls the asset acquisition cycle. Spot, assess, develop, recruit. You have to, you have to identify people who would have access to the information.

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  That's spotting them. You assess whether they have ready access to the information that you want. Then you develop them. And when I say develop, I mean, maybe you start schmoozing, but really what you're doing, it's not just schmoozing, it's you have to identify a vulnerability. And the vulnerability in 95% of the cases is money. Everybody wants money.

• 1:20:28Speaker 05

  I shouldn't say everybody, almost everybody wants money. Some people might do it because they hate what the CIA and the FBI have done, or what they think the CIA and the FBI have done. They may do it for the thrill, the clandestinity of it. They may do it because, you know, their wife has cancer and you can provide the money to take her to the Mayo Clinic, let's say. If there is a vulnerability, you move on that vulnerability, you act on it. Otherwise, you're out of luck and the information's just never gonna get out there.

• 1:21:05Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't know about that. I don't know if I-

• 1:21:07Speaker 05

  I hope you're right.

• 1:21:08Patrick Bet-David?

  No, I don't know about the fact that it's that hard to get the information. I don't know about that.

• 1:21:13Speaker 05

  You need one person to do the right thing.

• 1:21:16Patrick Bet-David?

  Either the right thing or somebody that's sick of it.

• 1:21:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:21:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Somebody that's angry, somebody that's agitated, somebody that's... Because... Okay, when you were CIA officer and you guys worked with intel, you're like, "Hey, when I was going to Sudan or I don't, whatever city, Kirak..."

• 1:21:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, Khartoum.

• 1:21:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Khartoum, yeah. "Hey, you're going there at 3:00 PM today." "Ah, shit. Okay, I'm going there. Boom." Okay. And we got an intel from a Saudi intel, you know, from this, from that. What other intel agencies did you guys work with that collectively amongst each other, you're like, "Dude, I work with those guys. I don't trust them at all." And which intel agencies did you work with, you're like, "You know, I think those guys are fair." Who did you not at all trust, even though you had to work with them?

• 1:22:00Speaker 05

  The Israelis.

• 1:22:00Patrick Bet-David?

  You didn't trust them?

• 1:22:02Speaker 05

  Not as far as I could throw them.

• 1:22:04Patrick Bet-David?

  You, or was that a cultural thing?

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  It was cultural. But my very first encounter with the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, was I was a brand-new analyst. This is like March of 1990. And-

• 1:22:19Speaker 05

  I was instructed to participate in a large-scale briefing of the Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet representatives in Washington. And we don't allow the Israelis into CIA headquarters because they would always come with gifts, and the gifts had always listening devices packed inside them. And you know, somebody brings you a gift, you X-ray it, it's the normal process. And we're like, "You guys can't keep coming back here every single time trying to bug our conference rooms." So, no more.

• 1:22:50Patrick Bet-David?

  And was it easy to X-ray and see that they had bugs in them?

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Patrick Bet-David?

  What percentage of the time did gifts have bugs in them?

• 1:22:55Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 1:22:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Be quiet.

• 1:22:57Speaker 05

  No, seriously.

• 1:22:58Patrick Bet-David?

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:22:59Speaker 05

  Absolutely not. I wish I was.

• 1:23:01Patrick Bet-David?

  A hundred percent of the time they brought gifts had bugs in them?

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And we're like, "Okay, no more, you can't come on campus anymore."

• 1:23:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Were you guys joke about it with them? Were you like, "Dude, what are you doing? What is this?" So was it like a joke?

• 1:23:09Speaker 05

  Come on, you guys. No, no, they were serious. They were hoping one would slip through. So, we, we had a safe house in Virginia, and we would meet with them there. So, I'm one of like eight analysts at the time, and because I was the junior-most analyst, I went last. So, you know, the political analyst, the econ analyst, the oil analyst, the military analyst, they all take their turns, and it comes to me. And because I was overt at the time, I used my true name, so I said, "My name is John Kiriakou, and I'm going to brief you today on Saddam Hussein's state of mind." And the Mossad guy, his glasses were like this, and he says, "Spell your name?" So I spell it.

• 1:23:51Speaker 05

  And then in front of all my colleagues, he says to me, "You are Jewish?" And I said, "I am not recruitable. I am not recruitable, don't even think about it." I was so furious that he was ready to cold pitch me right there in front of all my colleagues. Like, "Let's have lunch afterwards." "Get out of here, moron." Tried to recruit me in front of everybody.

• 1:24:16Patrick Bet-David?

  John, was that across the board with everybody that didn't trust them the most?

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:22Patrick Bet-David?

  What percentage of guys you worked with didn't trust Mossad?

• 1:24:24Speaker 05

  Hundred percent. I'll give you another example. So, when I, when I went on, on a tour to Bahrain, the guy I sat next to at headquarters, and his wife went on a tour to Jerusalem, they were absolutely lovely people. Husband and wife tandem team. They were declared to the Israelis. So the Israelis knew that they were CIA officers and they went to Jerusalem for a two-year assignment not to work against the Israelis. We don't work against the Israelis. So when they arrived, the chief took them to Mossad and said, "You already know them, but now they're going to be here for two years. She's going to work on Palestinian issues and he's going to take Arabic classes at the university." Easy.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

  So they're there for a few weeks. The ambassador has a welcome party for them and they go back to their house after the party and all the living room furniture had been rearranged while they were gone. And they're like, "Okay, the Israelis break into the house. We get it. It's your country. All right. You don't have to be jerks about it." That December, they go to a Christmas party at the ambassador's residence and when they get back to the house, people had taken shits in all their toilets and left it unflushed.

• 1:25:43Patrick Bet-David?

  What?

• 1:25:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Why? It's just an intimidation thing. They do their two years there. The ambassador has a going-away party for them. They drive back home and when they get home, the dog is whimpering under the dining room table. Somebody had cut his tail off and wrapped it in gauze and medical tape. Like, why? So when this happens, and it happens all the time, we have to go to the Israelis and say, "Stop harassing our people." And they're like, "Okay, okay." And then they stop for a year or two and then they start doing it again.

• 1:26:23Patrick Bet-David?

  Why do you... Okay, give me one you trusted the most.

• 1:26:33Speaker 05

  The Brits. I worked very, very closely with the Brits.

• 1:26:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Why were they easier to work with?

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  Because our national interests are so closely aligned, especially on the issues that I was working on, terrorism, that...

• 1:26:51Speaker 05

  Everything we wanted to do, they wanted to do as well. And one of the great things about MI6 and MI5 frankly, is that their bureaucracy is a fraction of what ours is. And so, let's say I want to do something against Hezbollah. It's gonna take six months of paperwork for five different layers to approve. The Brits want to do something against Hezbollah, they just go out and do it. And then they'll call us and say, "Hey, we're gonna do this thing against Hezbollah, you want in?" I say, "Heck yeah, I went in." They fly out to London, you know, implement it together. So I worked closely with them in different countries all around the world.

• 1:27:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Who would you put second on who you guys didn't trust?

• 1:27:32Speaker 05

  Didn't trust?

• 1:27:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Behind Israel?

• 1:27:34Speaker 05

  Well, you can't trust, obviously, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Cubans, you know, the usual cast of characters. I will say, I had a serious problem with the French.

• 1:27:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Why? The French?

• 1:27:47Speaker 05

  Because they're just dicks. You know, in the 90s, we had this, we had this period where we were forbidden from transiting Charles de Gaulle Airport. Because laptops had just become a thing in the 90s, right? And so, a lot of us had work laptops that were double, triple secured, they were tempested, you couldn't break into them. And so, you transit through Paris and you have a diplomatic passport and they say, "Okay, you come into secondary." And they take the laptop and they say, "Open up the laptop." And you say, "No, I'm a diplomat on a diplomatic passport.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  The laptop is the property of the US government." Well, they used to have this spike, like a railroad spike in a piece of wood. And they would take the laptop and slam it down on the spike and destroy the hard drive and then give you your laptop back. It's like, "Why? We're supposed to be allies. What are you doing?"

• 1:28:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Didn't France help Israel get nuked? Or what's the relationship between France and nukes?

• 1:28:55Speaker 05

  That's the rumor, yeah. The rumor is it was the French and the South Africans.

• 1:29:01Patrick Bet-David?

  That worked with them.

• 1:29:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:29:03Patrick Bet-David?

  So, okay, so do you trust Russia's intel agency more than you trust Israel?

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  No, I don't trust either one of them. I will say that both of them are outstanding services, but I think the Israelis are probably the best in the world.

• 1:29:21Patrick Bet-David?

  And is that an element of how dirty they are? Or is that an element of envy that they're actually better than us in intel?

• 1:29:30Speaker 05

  It's a combination of the two. You know, I'll give you an example, Patrick. This thing with the pagers last year. Oh, my God. Can you imagine the complexity of an operation like that? Where you have to control literally every step of the way from production through the supply chain. It's insane. I got a call from a Russian TV network the next day, and they said, "Would you come on and talk about this pager operation?" I said, "Sure." And they said, "It's a war crime, right?" And I said, "It might be, because there were innocent people." But I said, "It was friggin' brilliant." I said, "I can tell you, even after 15 years at the CIA,

• 1:30:14Speaker 05

  nobody at the CIA would have come up with an operation that was this incredible and outside the box." Deep respect to the Israelis. Whether it was legal or illegal, deep respect. "Well, yeah, but can't you say it was a war crime or a crime against humanity?" And I said, "No, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say, somebody at Mossad's getting promoted today, because that's the most incredible operation I've ever seen in my life."

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  Kudos to them.

• 1:30:44Speaker 11

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:31:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. So, to me, I wonder if what they've done is they've been able to infiltrate and outmaneuver our agency, our intel, our politicians. And now, a lot of Americans are annoyed, and a lot of leaders are annoyed, that they outmaneuvered them.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  I think you've hit it on the head.

• 1:32:07Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't think-

• 1:32:08Speaker 05

  I think that's exactly it. Because it's not just intel. It's politics as well.

• 1:32:13Patrick Bet-David?

  Right. But guess what? You can be as angry as you want. You could have stopped it. You fell for it. You can say whatever you want about them. They outdid you.

• 1:32:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:32:24Patrick Bet-David?

  They outstrategized you.

• 1:32:26Speaker 05

  Exactly right.

• 1:32:26Patrick Bet-David?

  They outmaneuvered you. And you fell for it.

• 1:32:29Speaker 05

  You know, after I left the CIA, went to the private sector for a few years, and then I went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I was the senior investigator. And I was on the job for like, three days. And these two lobbyists come to the office, and this would happen all the time. You know, lobbyists come in for, you know, whatever, international shipping, or whatever. These guys were from AIPAC. Congratulations on your new position. I said, oh, thank you very much. We would like to offer you an all expenses paid trip to the Holy Land. I said, oh, thanks. No, no, not for me, but I appreciate it. Well, you know, we're taking a large group of people. We're going to take you to all the Christian sites.

• 1:33:14Speaker 05

  I said, thank you. I can pay for my own vacations. I'm not interested. And, uh, you know, I'd always, I'd always heard that they had, that they did things like that. Because they want to get you right off the bat. But so public and obvious and blatant about it.

• 1:33:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Guess what? I wish we would do that.

• 1:33:32Speaker 05

  And we should be.

• 1:33:33Patrick Bet-David?

  I wish Christians would do that. I wish America would do that. I wish we were, in the same way, proud to indoctrinate our kids to be proud to be Americans, as proud as they are to be Israelis.

• 1:33:46Speaker 05

  And that's an extension of soft power. It works.

• 1:33:49Patrick Bet-David?

  You know who else does that? Muslims do that.

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, very much.

• 1:33:52Patrick Bet-David?

  They're very good at indoctrinating and getting the mindset. They shape the mindset so well. America's gotten so soft in shaping the mindset.

• 1:34:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Patrick Bet-David?

  Because of how divided they are. One side is proud to be an American. The other side is constantly talking about the, the level of, um, proudness in other countries are higher than ours. And you saw some of the data that came out from Pew Research.

• 1:34:18Speaker 05

  Just this week.

• 1:34:19Patrick Bet-David?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 1:34:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, you're seeing that kind of stuff happening. So, okay. So, so let me ask you, on the CIA side, you know how CIA has, um, the CIA that we see, is there a shadow CIA agency? Is there like a, is there like a layer below the layer, below the layer, that it's such a small group of people, that there's a group of people that are in it, that none of us know about, who really, really, really have the intel?

• 1:34:44Speaker 05

  You could argue, yes.

• 1:34:48Speaker 05

  Yes and no. Yes, in that there are people under what is called "deep cover." So, "deep cover," cover is, you know, maybe you go overseas and you, you say you have a job at, you know, the State Department, or whatever, the Defense, or whatever.

• 1:35:09Speaker 05

  There's "deep cover," though. Emerilis Fox Kennedy, who I believe now is on the National Security Council, she was, she was Bob, she is Bob Kennedy's daughter-in-law, and she was a CIA officer, she was under "deep cover." And her cover was that she was a museum curator and advisor, an art advisor.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  That's kinda cool. You know, maybe your cover is you're a wildlife photographer, or you're a mutual fund manager. So you do your mutual fund managing job for eight hours, and then at night, you're doing your CIA job for eight hours. That's hard work. And the, and the problem that you're gonna run into is you don't have any support on sight. I'm a CIA officer, you're a CIA officer, I have no idea that you're a CIA officer. I went to a, I went to a party one time in Europe, and I met this guy. And we started talking, and he said, "Oh, I work at the port," and immediately

• 1:36:16Speaker 05

  I perked up, because, you know, what's coming in at the port? "Oh, I work at the port, and, you know, it's so interesting. We get ships from all over the world every day." And I said, "Oh, let me give you my card. You're so interesting. I would love the opportunity to take you to lunch." And, and so he gives me his card. I go in the office the next day, the station chief walks in, and he says, "Stay away from my port guy." And I said, "Oh, my God, is he one of us?" And he's like, "Yeah, deep cover, stay away."

• 1:36:47Speaker 05

  I made that up about the port, it was something else, but you get the idea.

• 1:36:49Patrick Bet-David?

  Of course.

• 1:36:52Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, I wonder, because, you know, we

• 1:36:56Patrick Bet-David?

  I've talked to so many of these guys. I talked to the former director of Mossad. What was his name?

• 1:37:04Speaker 05

  Danny.

• 1:37:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Old, old, from forty years ago. We're talking from thirty-five, forty years ago.

• 1:37:13Patrick Bet-David?

  If you pull up their names, I'll tell you exactly which one it is, Rob. Zoom in a little bit. Boom, boom, boom.

• 1:37:23Patrick Bet-David?

  Go to Shephtai Shavit. Go to that one right there. Yeah, that one right there.

• 1:37:27Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Zoom in a little bit.

• 1:37:28Speaker 05

  Oh, he's an old timer.

• 1:37:29Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, I think it was him.

• 1:37:31Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:37:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Can you Google his name and put it with my name and see if you'll find it on YouTube? Just go to YouTube if you could. Go to YouTube and type in

• 1:37:41Patrick Bet-David?

  his name and my name, yeah.

• 1:37:45Patrick Bet-David?

  I'm trying to go a little bit lower. Go a little bit lower, Rob. Is that it?

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:37:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Is that a clip or is that the actual interview?

• 1:37:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Skip, go fast.

• 1:37:56Speaker 05

  I think that's a clip, because it's only seven minutes.

• 1:37:57Patrick Bet-David?

  Fast forward a little bit, I just want to see his face. Yeah, that's him.

• 1:38:01Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:38:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, we had the conversation.

• 1:38:03Speaker 05

  Shephtai Shavit.

• 1:38:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Shephtai Shavit, yeah. Do you remember him?

• 1:38:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:38:07Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you know about him?

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  He was very highly respected. He's from the best my recollection during the Clinton administration.

• 1:38:14Patrick Bet-David?

  He could have been.

• 1:38:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember him.

• 1:38:16Patrick Bet-David?

  What time was he in, so if you look at the director? Director of Mossad, from what year to what year, Rob? Go a little bit lower.

• 1:38:23Speaker 05

  Sixty-four to ninety-six is the years of service. Okay, so say at the end of his career, he would have been, he would have been the director.

• 1:38:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Right.

• 1:38:31Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 1:38:32Patrick Bet-David?

  So it was very interesting.

• 1:38:33Speaker 05

  From Harvard, no less.

• 1:38:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, very interesting talking to him. On their methods and what they did and what things they came up with and who trained them and

• 1:38:42Speaker 05

  Remember, these are the guys who who got somebody placed as, almost as the Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria. Or as the advisor to Gamal Abdel-Nassr. I mean, these guys shot for the stars in those early days of Mossad. They were brilliant. But they had to be brilliant, because what's the alternative? Death.

• 1:39:07Speaker 05

  So you've got to be at the top of your game all the time.

• 1:39:09Patrick Bet-David?

  So America's a little bit more casual because we have a little bit too easy here with not enough tensions around us.

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Patrick Bet-David?

  For us to be tougher and more paranoid. Yeah, we have two, we're so, so comfortable and casual in America. What do you worry? When was the last time anybody went to sleep worried about Canada attacking us?

• 1:39:26Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:39:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Mexico attacking us. Nobody thinks about that, right?

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:39:30Patrick Bet-David?

  But these guys go to sleep every night worried about everyone around them that hate them. So

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Their element of survivaleness is a lot higher than Americans. Americans are softer. Because of how much more, there's a reason why we're the greatest country in the world, not only due to our constitution, not only, but a part of it is also geography. We don't give geography enough credit.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  You're absolutely right.

• 1:39:53Patrick Bet-David?

  We don't give geography enough credit. When I lived in Iran, it was like, holy shit, on any given day, tabajó, tabajó, aló, matek, gérmez, you know, the, the, the, someone's crossed the border, planes crossed the border from Iraq and you're going back on

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:40:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Seventy-eight to eighty-nine. So it's when I lived there. So that, that builds a certain level of resiliency in these guys. And when you want to go up against an enemy like that, like I remember one time Joker, uh, uh, uh, what's his name? Jokic? I don't know if you follow basketball or not.

• 1:40:22Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:40:23Patrick Bet-David?

  This guy from the Denver Nuggets.

• 1:40:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Patrick Bet-David?

  They asked him a question afterwards. They're like, so how do you feel about all the hate you got and, you know, and, and all the screaming and the fans were screaming at your face? And he says, brother, have you ever been to a game in Serbia? Have you seen this? Have you seen what he says?

• 1:40:39Speaker 05

  See, the Serbs are our orthodox brothers.

• 1:40:42Patrick Bet-David?

  He, he says, he says, have you ever been to a Serbia game? No, I haven't.

• 1:40:47Speaker 05

  They're trying to kill you.

• 1:40:48Patrick Bet-David?

  This is nothing. This is nothing. When he, when he talks about Serbian fans and, is this it?

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  I believe so.

• 1:40:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, go play this guy, play.

• 1:41:04Patrick Bet-David?

  I can't hear any of it, Rob.

• 1:41:09Patrick Bet-David?

  The boots from Andy's.

• 1:41:18Speaker 05

  Oh my god, they're gonna collapse the stadium like that.

• 1:41:21Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, that's a basketball.

• 1:41:22Speaker 05

  Wow, a basketball.

• 1:41:24Patrick Bet-David?

  And his brothers, I don't know if you've seen his brothers, what his brothers look like. Type in Joe Kicks Brothers, okay, when they walk in, everybody gets out of the way. Joe Kicks Brothers, okay? This is his brothers, if you see how massive they are.

• 1:41:37Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, and they're all tough guys, so nobody messes with their younger brother, with the Joker. But, no, I think, I think what happens when you're raised in streets of slums, or gangs, or... You, you create a certain element of...

• 1:41:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Where the other side just is not gonna have it. It becomes a luxury.

• 1:42:00Speaker 05

  Have you seen the Netflix series Fauda?

• 1:42:02Patrick Bet-David?

  No.

• 1:42:03Speaker 05

  Oh, you've got to check this out, it is a, it's an Israeli series, but it's done jointly with Palestinians. And it is, like, deep inside Shin Bet and their war against Hamas.

• 1:42:21Speaker 05

  It is so well-written.

• 1:42:22Patrick Bet-David?

  Can you text it to me, Rob?

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  Can you repeat the name?

• 1:42:25Patrick Bet-David?

  Fauda, I just found it.

• 1:42:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:42:29Speaker 05

  Oh my god, you're not gonna be able to pull yourself away from...

• 1:42:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Is it a movie, or is it a...

• 1:42:33Speaker 05

  It's a series, and it went three seasons, I think. Absolutely incredible. And the reason why it's so successful is that it actually humanizes the Palestinians. And so, you have to keep reminding yourself, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm sympathizing with Hamas here, I gotta, I gotta stop. And then, it gives you the Israeli side, again. And then you're like, yeah, go Israelis. And then you're like, no, I hope the Palestinian guy escapes. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute, what am I saying? That's how well-written it is.

• 1:43:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Send that to me, Rob. Send that to me, I'd like to take a look at that, yeah. To me, I, I, uh, when you're in a game, when you're in, in space of competition, and, and you watch everybody, and you size people up, and you try to do it in a non-emotional possible, way as possible, and I size you up and I say, okay, number one, what bias does John have?

• 1:43:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:43:30Patrick Bet-David?

  All right, I get it, he's biased, he's gonna be here, I don't blame him, that's the life he lived, he went to jail 23 months, CIA, boom, boom, boom, you know, waterboarding, totally get it, he's got bias. Who offended him? Quite a lot of people have offended you. So what happens when somebody offends you? You're gonna have a lifelong, internal desire for vengeance. By the way, we all have an element of that, it's not like anybody's innocent about it.

• 1:43:53Speaker 05

  Oh, I, I wear mine on my sleeve, I, I wanna tweet, God bless Donald Trump and his war against John Brennan, and Jim Comey.

• 1:44:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Go talk about that, because that story comes out with, uh, Comey and Brennan just yesterday, right? So FBI launches probe into former FBI CIA directors, Fox News reports with, go a little bit lower up for me to read and I wanna get your-

• 1:44:15Speaker 05

  How many years have we said, John Brennan has to be investigated, finally he's being investigated?

• 1:44:22Patrick Bet-David?

  Why do you think all these years, nothing happened? And why do, why, why are you happy about the investigation? Why, why, why are you glad this is finally happening?

• 1:44:28Speaker 05

  Because I believe that John Brennan has come as close to agitating for a coup as we have ever had in our country. Everybody knew that this Russiagate thing was fake. I had a radio show at the time, and my co-host was a communist, an actual registered member of the Communist Party. And we were in full agreement about this, for different reasons. I said, look, when I was at the CIA, on the analytic side, they taught us that we could not make an analytic decision, or judgment, unless we had evidence.

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  And I said, I'm not seeing any evidence of any Russian involvement with the Trump campaign, just because John Brennan and Hillary Clinton and, and Comey get up and say, oh, he's with the Russians, that's not evidence. There's no evidence there at all. If you've got evidence, and, and you can't say, you can't go in front of a camera and say, "Oh, if you could see what I see, because I have clearances, if you could, oh my God, you would know." Adam Schiff. What bullshit is that? Yeah. If you have evidence, lay it out. The American people are intelligent. We can figure it out for ourselves. So, those of us who actually dug a little deeper,

• 1:45:53Speaker 05

  knew that this was BS from the very beginning. And it should have been criminal at the time. So, finally, finally, an investigation is taking place. Having been through the, the justice system here, I am not one to celebrate prosecutors going out and targeting people, but, but this, imagine the danger involved. What we almost saw was essentially the denial of democracy, the potential overthrow of a democratically-elected president of the United States. It's, it's shocking to me, like, I, I get chills just thinking about it. That's how close he came.

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  Let me add one other thing. Let me add one other thing. Talking about lawfare. The, the former US Attorney for, uh, the state of Utah in the first Trump administration very, very graciously agreed to be one of the signatories on a letter to President Trump, asking him to pardon me. Tucker Carlson, Judge Napolitano, two former Deputy Attorneys General, um, and Attorney, uh, US Attorney Holman. And what he said, he said this on Fox, I think it was, "The Kiriakou case was the template for the Democratic Party's policy of lawfare. I didn't realize it at the time.

• 1:47:21Speaker 05

  But when I was arrested, we got discovery from the Justice Department, 15,000 pages of classified documents."

• 1:47:31Speaker 05

  In that tranche, we found three memos. One was from John Brennan to Eric Holder, the Attorney General, saying, "Charge him with espionage." You. Yes. And Holder wrote back and said, "My people don't think he committed espionage." Who wrote back? Holder? Holder. Eric Holder? Yes. Really? Mm-hmm. And Brennan wrote back again and said, "Charge him anyway and make him defend himself." That's documented? Yeah. It's, I mean, it's still technically classified. It's not been declassified. But there it is. So, this is a guy that I think was testing lawfare on me. He ruined me. I went bankrupt. I lost my wife and kids.

• 1:48:12Speaker 05

  I lost my job. Uh, I lost my freedom for two years, and they said, "Ha, it works." And then they went after Donald Trump.

• 1:48:21Speaker 11

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18+.

• 1:49:19Speaker 05

  So what do you think's gonna happen here? You think anything's gonna come out?

• 1:49:26Patrick Bet-David?

  No. Yeah. I hate to say. I know. So, so, but, but the part about the no is, here's where my no goes.

• 1:49:37Patrick Bet-David?

  So, you know, it's like, wow, the reason why President Trump is, you know, Epstein, because he's, he's implicated, he's in it. I don't believe that for a second. Of course I don't believe that. What I'm saying is, that argument is out. Mm-hmm. Because the left would have used it against him the last eight years. Exactly. And they would have had it no problem, because Epstein hung out with all of them. And they would have leaked it. Of course they would have done that, to destroy him. So that's out. So then, for me, it's maybe one of Trump's biggest allies, donors, money, somebody, and that was one of their favorites. Yeah, I got you, don't worry about it. Sure. Okay, I believe that, because Trump's the favorite guy, and he, you know, Roy Cohen, okay. Sure. Number three, is holding people hostage because you got the intel blackmail. I, that's my number one reason why they're doing that. That's about most people's pay grade, that they don't know about this kind of stuff, so, okay.

• 1:50:21Patrick Bet-David?

  So they're not gonna do that. So now, how much dirt has John Brennan have on the people that have helped Trump? How much to say like, what are you guys doing? We're all in this thing. We're all, we're all pigs, so relax. Nothing ends up happening to him, nothing ends up happening to Comey, because they all have dirt on each other. If Comey was there for as many years as he was, and he's an ally of Hillary, Mm-hmm. And Hillary's not happy about what Comey did, because Comey could have waited one more week. One more week. If you remember when Pfizer came out and said the vaccine is ready, three days after Biden won. If Pfizer could have announced that the vaccine is ready a week prior, Trump only won, right? So, but there, there is a lot of timing, and Comey effed up a little bit for Hillary, if you think about it. Yes.

• 1:51:05Patrick Bet-David?

  But we know how dirty he is, and we know how much his tentacles are still everywhere. Do you really think they're gonna be able to do anything for this guy? No. I don't know. I think, I think a part of the timing is also interesting, so the moment Epstein comes out, biggest fumble of all time, oh shit, we got a distraction, we gotta get the media to talk about something else. Yeah. You know what? Let's go after Brennan, and this is the time. Let's go after Brennan and Comey. Strategically, I get it. Strategically, I fully understand it, to distract. The podcasters, the media.

• 1:51:35Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:51:35Patrick Bet-David?

  The X community, "Hey, what? Epstein, number one trending topic? Oh shit, next story." I forgot about this.

• 1:51:43Speaker 05

  It happens all the time.

• 1:51:45Patrick Bet-David?

  And it happens very effectively.

• 1:51:46Speaker 05

  People, Americans underestimate the power that these Washington people have. They underestimate it. I'll tell you something else, too. The files that J. Edgar Hoover had at the FBI were legendary, right? And everybody knows that the night of his death, his secretary burned the most damning files. But that's not to say that there aren't files on everybody now. A very close friend of mine, senior CIA officer, 32, 33 years, told me that his very first job at the CIA as a, you know, 22-year-old guy was in the Office of Counterintelligence.

• 1:52:28Speaker 05

  So on his first day, he went in and they give him a tour of the office. Here's where you're gonna sit. Here's your desk. This is your computer, whatever. We didn't have computers back then. It was typewriters. But he said there was an entire wall of paper files. And the secretary told him, "Whatever you do, don't go into those files." He said, "Well, of course, the first night that he was there..."

• 1:52:54Patrick Bet-David?

  He has to find out.

• 1:52:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, he went straight to the files. He said every single file was on an American, which is patently illegal. But every single file, and he said there were thousands of them.

• 1:53:08Patrick Bet-David?

  Are you surprised?

• 1:53:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 1:53:09Patrick Bet-David?

  I'm not. I'm not surprised. So to me, I don't think much is gonna happen with this part. I think this was just a immediately, "Hey, guys," you know. And I don't know what's gonna happen with Bondi. Because this was a, you know, what happened with O'Keefe Media Group that they caught her saying what she said. And then afterwards, she comes out and says that. And it's not like O'Keefe doesn't like Bondi. It's like, you know, he's trying to protect her. "Hey, guys, you guys..." So I, I, I think her timeline is numbered. I don't know how much longer it could be. She may stay there for the rest of the time. But, um, and not because she's a bad person. I've met her, I've spoken to her a couple of times. I just think this was a big mishandling and now they gotta distract and go to the next thing.

• 1:53:52Patrick Bet-David?

  Uh, a couple of other things. CIA, what, what is the plumber squad? What is a CIA plumber squad, you know, Nixon, nineteen seventy something and Hitman? Was that a real thing?

• 1:54:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, crazy as that sounds. Yes, it was. So there are sort of two CIs, maybe we could even say three. There was the pre nineteen seventy five CIA, um, which just did anything it damn well pleased. Going out killing heads of state and importing, you know, heroin from Vietnam and doing anything it wanted. The Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House ended that nineteen seventy five. They created the Senate and House, um, Intelligence Committees to oversee the CIA, especially its covert actions.

• 1:54:34Patrick Bet-David?

  Is this the John Perkins, Economic Hitman, pre-era where they would go out there and say, here's what we're gonna do with this? Right. And they could get away with it.

• 1:54:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh yeah. And they did get away with it. Then from seventy five to September eleventh, the CIA very gradually reassumed some of its power and authority, but especially under Ronald Reagan. Um, then there's post nine eleven and the CIA just does anything it wants again. You know, I, I'll give you, I'll give you a little bit of a side.

• 1:55:07Patrick Bet-David?

  Patriot Act, all that.

• 1:55:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It opened up everything. When I got out of prison, um, I was invited to dinner at the Greek Ambassador's Residence in Washington. So I went and there was a senator there, um, who's a member of the Intelligence Committee. And he came up to me and he said, hey, welcome home. So glad you're back. Sorry things played out the way they did. And I said, I, I appreciate it, but Senator, I gotta be honest with you. I was very disappointed that you didn't stand up for me. I really expected more from you. And he got angry and he goes, look, it took all of my energy just to not lose my security clearance. And I said, oh, you're afraid of them.

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  Like now it makes sense. I thought you were the congressional overseers. You're afraid of them.

• 1:55:57Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  It put things into perspective.

• 1:56:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, so, but to go back to this, the White House plumbers.

• 1:56:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:10Patrick Bet-David?

  The unit that they had.

• 1:56:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:56:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Actual fixers.

• 1:56:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:56:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Like, actual, actual fixers?

• 1:56:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, actual fixtures, and in, by some accounts, even assassins.

• 1:56:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Right.

• 1:56:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Patrick Bet-David?

  Does that still exist today, or no?

• 1:56:23Speaker 05

  Well, you know, i- in a more formal way, I would have to say yes, because they've got organizations like, uh, Global, what do they call themselves now? Global Services, or whatever, the Assassination Squad. And John Brennan used to do this, uh, the Tuesday Morning Kill List. Did you hear about that?

• 1:56:42Patrick Bet-David?

  Uh-uh, no.

• 1:56:42Speaker 05

  He would meet at the White House with CIA reps every Tuesday morning, and they would come up with a list of people to be killed that week.

• 1:56:49Patrick Bet-David?

  John Brennan had a Tuesday morning meeting to go through with CIA who gonna, who they're gonna kill that week?

• 1:56:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:55Patrick Bet-David?

  What an interesting meeting.

• 1:56:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Tuesday Morning Kill List meeting.

• 1:56:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Seriously?

• 1:56:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think it was first reported in the Boston Globe.

• 1:57:03Patrick Bet-David?

  There it is.

• 1:57:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, there it is.

• 1:57:05Patrick Bet-David?

  So that's in New York for 2013, what's the genre concerning the legal frameworks? American government can't decide whom to torture. Brennan is a President Obama nominee, Director of General Intelligence. Last Sunday, name came up on my Twitter. I didn't get it because he seemed so close to the torture program perpetrated while he was senior official CIA. If he was, uh, has greater distances, only because the time passed. Was it Brennan? Twenty seven questions about those years.

• 1:57:26Speaker 05

  There it is.

• 1:57:26Patrick Bet-David?

  The kill list.

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  One of them is crafting the president's kill list, and then taking it to him for final approval. So they come up with a list of names, Obama would sign it, and then Global Resources and, and Special Activities would send their teams out, kill people, come home, wait for the next Tuesday meeting. It's pretty sick.

• 1:57:48Patrick Bet-David?

  Did you ever work with them?

• 1:57:49Speaker 05

  I, I worked in the same office, but I, we didn't do operations.

• 1:57:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Did you meet him?

• 1:57:54Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:54Patrick Bet-David?

  What was he like?

• 1:57:55Speaker 05

  Oh, Brennan?

• 1:57:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 05

  Oh, ho, ho. I've known Brennan since nineteen ninety.

• 1:58:00Patrick Bet-David?

  What was he like? From the lowest in the nineties, where he didn't yet have a lot of power, or maybe he did?

• 1:58:06Speaker 05

  Okay, I'll tell you a story that I've never told publicly.

• 1:58:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Go for it.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  So, when I got hired, John was a GS14 nobody. He was the Deputy Director of the, um, Arab-Israeli Analysis, uh, Group.

• 1:58:23Speaker 05

  And he worked for a woman who was really one of the great minds, the great thinkers on Syria. And they didn't get along. He had been sort of imposed on her. And so, he went to her one day and said, "I think I'm ready for a promotion. I'm ready for the senior intelligence service and I'd like your blessing." Her name was Martha Kessler. Martha, yeah, Kessler. So, she said, "Not only are you not ready for the senior service, I don't even want you to work for me anymore. You're fired." Well, at the CIA, if you're fired, you're not really fired.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  You have six weeks to walk the halls and find another job. And if you can't find a job in six weeks, any job, then they escort you out, they take your badge, and you're actually fired. So, this happened right around Christmas.

• 1:59:23Speaker 05

  There are no jobs open at Christmas. The job turnover is in the summer. So, he's having a heck of a time finding a job. Finally, he goes to the PDB staff, the President's Daily Brief. And it just so happens that they have an opening for a briefer, for the lowest-ranking person on the National Security Council who's entitled to a PDB briefing. That is, the Director of Intelligence Programs.

• 1:59:52Speaker 05

  That just happened to be, at the time, George Tenet. So, Brennan and Tenet immediately hit it off. They are both alpha dogs, you know, cigar-smoking, hard-drinking, pock-mark-faced, you know, guys.

• 2:00:12Speaker 05

  Hit it off totally. And, wouldn't you know, George gets promoted to become the Deputy Director of the CIA.

• 2:00:23Speaker 05

  He becomes the deputy director and he names John the director of the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, Martha's boss. He calls Martha into the office and he says, "Now, you're fired." And she retired. The office was reorganized and so John got squeezed out, but George made him station chief in Riyadh. Now, this is a guy who has not had five seconds of operational experience in his life, who's now the station chief in one of the most important countries in the world for the CIA. It was John Brennan who oversaw the granting of the visas to the 9/11 hijackers, for God's sake.

• 2:01:07Speaker 05

  So John comes back and becomes the executive director of the CIA, the number three ranking official in the CIA when George becomes the director. So it's George, John McLaughlin, John Brennan. Well, I'm the executive assistant to the deputy director for operations at the time. So John is in my briefings every single day. And John was just torture, torture, torture. We've got to torture these guys. We've got to do this, we've got to do that. We need to start killing more people. We need to get out there and start shooting and... He's talking like this. Oh, yeah. He never got along with the deputy director for operations.

• 2:01:50Speaker 05

  And the deputy director went to George and said, "Come on, man, you've got to get him out." So George made him the head of what was called the TTIC, the Transnational Terrorist Information Center. That became the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center. And John wanted to be the head of his own, um, his own agency because he was telling everybody who would listen at the time that he wanted to be Secretary of Defense. So he goes to the TTIC and it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And so he retires a year before George W. Bush finishes his second term.

• 2:02:33Speaker 05

  Well, then, and this is, this is the role of serendipity.

• 2:02:40Speaker 05

  Almost, there was a huge wave of retirements in, um, in 2008. And about half the people at the senior level who retired went to the McCain campaign. And the other half went to the Clinton campaign. John was the only one who went to Obama.

• 2:02:59Speaker 05

  And so Obama won. So John's the guy. John says, "I want to be CIA director." The liberals went crazy. They said, "Absolutely not." He was the, one of the godfathers of the torture program. Obama says, "Okay, I'm gonna make him Deputy Director of the National Security Council, Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism." Then he started doing the kill list. Well, by 2012, the liberals forgot, or didn't care, or whatever, were distracted. They make him CIA Director, and then he starts just wreaking vengeance on all of his enemies.

• 2:03:34Patrick Bet-David?

  Wow.

• 2:03:35Speaker 05

  This is a bad guy. John Brennan is a very bad guy. From day one, he was a bad guy.

• 2:03:40Patrick Bet-David?

  Who liked him in the CIA that worked with him? Who was he liked? Who was he liked by?

• 2:03:45Speaker 05

  You know, there was, there was a group, even on the analytics side, there was a group of, of guys who were,

• 2:03:52Speaker 05

  you know, these, these hard-drinking, most, most of them were single, but hard-drinking, you know, tough spy wannabes. And they gravitated toward John. And he took good care of a lot of them.

• 2:04:06Patrick Bet-David?

  In what way?

• 2:04:07Speaker 05

  He got them promoted into the senior service. Like, I, we would get these promotion lists, and I would say, "You've got to be freaking kidding me. So-and-so got promoted to the senior intelligence service? Seriously?" But, you know, they were proteges of John.

• 2:04:26Speaker 05

  It's an ugly story.

• 2:04:28Patrick Bet-David?

  Well... He just doesn't look like a friendly guy.

• 2:04:31Speaker 05

  He's not.

• 2:04:31Patrick Bet-David?

  He looks like a... He looks like exactly what you read about him, like that's the guy.

• 2:04:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:04:39Patrick Bet-David?

  The look fits the profile of how he would be.

• 2:04:41Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 2:04:42Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, the picture right there, the third one, not the first, the second, the third one. That kinda gives me the vibe of who he is.

• 2:04:48Speaker 05

  That's him.

• 2:04:49Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:49Speaker 05

  That's him.

• 2:04:49Patrick Bet-David?

  So, yeah, when you... By the way, if you're listening to this, folks, I'm sure a lot of you guys are enamored by the conversations we're having. You can manect John. John's officially on manect, you can ask him questions. I'm sure the audience's got a lot of other questions.

• 2:05:02Speaker 05

  I'd be delighted.

• 2:05:03Patrick Bet-David?

  Rob, if you can put the manect handle somewhere, QR code so they can go to him. And if it's in the description, you can go ask him questions. But let me continue with this. So, he is now where he's at today, where all this stuff's about to come down. The world knows, the public knows. Where is Obama and all of this stuff right now?

• 2:05:24Speaker 05

  That's a great question, too. You know, Obama, I never understood why Obama was always so untouchable. First of all, one of the things the CIA loves, I say this all the time. They love when a president, a new president is elected and he doesn't have any intelligence experience. Because they just suck him right in, right? They make him one of the guys. And Obama's one of those guys who thought he was smarter than everybody else in the room. And so, you know, people like Brennan were able to manipulate him so that Obama would make decisions and he would think that they were his ideas. And in fact, they were the ideas of people like John Brennan that he had surrounded himself with.

• 2:06:09Speaker 05

  And I don't know why there's this weird, inexplicable nostalgia for the Obama years. In my life, the Obama years were a living hell. I lost everything, thanks to Barack Obama. Everything. They even confiscated my pension. That's why I'm asking President Trump for a pardon. Yeah, it wasn't just I did 23 months with a bunch of pedophiles.

• 2:06:38Patrick Bet-David?

  You lost your pension?

• 2:06:39Speaker 05

  20 years of proud government service.

• 2:06:42Patrick Bet-David?

  You lost that entire pension?

• 2:06:43Speaker 05

  I'm gonna have to work till the day I die.

• 2:06:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Oh my god. And, and is it true with the whole you try to get a pardon? And you were told it's $2 million?

• 2:06:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52Patrick Bet-David?

  When did that happen?

• 2:06:55Speaker 05

  It's the very end of the first Trump administration. I had a friend who had a relationship with Rudy Giuliani. And so, I called him and I said, "Hey, can you get me with Giuliani? I wanna, I wanna ask if you can help me get a pardon." So, he put me in touch. I talked to one of Giuliani's, you know, major domos. And he said, "Well, we're gonna be in, in Washington next week. Why don't we meet at the Trump Hotel?" I said, "Great, I'm gonna be with my attorney." And my, my attorney, Bruce Fein, was, was Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. He's a serious guy, constitutional scholar. So, I said, "It'll be me with my, with my attorney." Um, I said, "How about, how about 2 o'clock?"

• 2:07:39Speaker 05

  And they said, "Oh, Rudy's not good by 2 o'clock. Uh, it's gonna have to be earlier." So, I said, "Okay." So, we met at like 11:00. I go to the Trump, and, um, and Giuliani's there with two other people. And I'm there with my lawyer. And we're sitting there, and Giuliani says, "Hey, how about those, uh, how about those Jets?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm a Steelers fan, but yeah, the Jets are pretty good this year." "Okay." He said, "You a Mets fan?" I said, "Nah, yeah, I'm from Pittsburgh originally, so I'm a, I'm a Pirates fan, but I, I follow the Nationals too." "Yeah, it's gonna be a good year for the Mets."

• 2:08:23Speaker 05

  I'm like, "All right, what are you talking about?" So, I said, "Well, Mr. Mayor, there's this issue I wanted to raise of a pardon." And he goes like this, he goes, "Anybody know where the pisser is?" And he stands up, and he walks away. I said, "What just happened?"

• 2:08:40Speaker 05

  His guy says, "You never talked to Rudy about a pardon. You talked to me about a pardon, and I talked to Rudy about a pardon." And I said, "Okay, that's fine." And he says, "Rudy's gonna want 2 million for the pardon." And I laughed. I said, "First of all, I don't have 2 million dollars. I'll never have 2 million dollars." But even if I did, why would I spend 2 million dollars to recover a $770,000 pension? And I look at my lawyer, and he's like, "We got up, thank you for meeting us, and we walked out." That night, a buddy of mine had a book release party at the Republican National Committee.

• 2:09:23Speaker 05

  So I go up to the RNC, and there's another whistleblower there, TSA whistleblower. He's a friend of mine, Robert McLean, awesome guy. And he says to me, "Just to make conversation, how was your day?" And I said, "Oh, how was my day? Listen to this." So I tell him, and he says, "That's a crime. That's a felony." And I said, "Yeah, of course it is, but what am I gonna do? I'm stuck. I don't have 2 million dollars." And he said, "Did you call the FBI?" And I said, "No, the FBI is not gonna give a shit about Rudy Giuliani trying to shake me down for 2 million dollars." Like, 4 or 5 days pass. I happened to be in my lawyer's office, and my cellphone rings, and it's... It was either Mike Schmidt or Eric Schmidt.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  I think it was Mike Schmidt from the New York Times calls me. And he says, "A little bird told me that Rudy Giuliani tried to get 2 million dollars from you for a pardon." And I said, "Oh, man, that Robert..." I said, "He was pretty upset when I mentioned to him that I had this meeting." And he said, "Well, we're actually doing a story, because Rudy's trying to get 2 million from a whole bunch of people who are seeking pardons. Would you go on the record?" And I said to my lawyer, I said, "Bruce, will I go on the record?" And he said, "Go on the record. You have nothing to hide." So I went on the record. Well, it was a front-page story on the New York Times. And funny enough, Giuliani's response was, "I never met this man. I've never heard of this man.

• 2:10:50Speaker 05

  None of this is true." And the New York Times called me for a response, and I said, "He forgot that we took a picture together that morning." So I sent them the picture. And then they put a little box, and they said, "The New York Times has seen documentary proof that the meeting took place." And then, like a year later, two years later, I get a call from Noel Dunphy, who had been his business development director at Giuliani Partners.

• 2:11:20Speaker 05

  He told her, the day that the New York Times article came out, "That damn CIA guy ratted me out to the New York Times."

• 2:11:30Speaker 05

  And I said, "Well, there it is."

• 2:11:35Patrick Bet-David?

  It's interesting, because at one point-

• 2:11:37Speaker 05

  Pardons for sale. Yep, and, uh, oh, that's me. Um, but it was a front-page New York Times article.

• 2:11:46Patrick Bet-David?

  At one point, this guy was-

• 2:11:48Speaker 05

  He was-

• 2:11:49Patrick Bet-David?

  One of the most powerful, could've been the king of New York.

• 2:11:51Speaker 05

  And universally respected.

• 2:11:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. He could've been a president. The ideas he had were so ahead of his time.

• 2:11:58Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, and he really did clean up New York.

• 2:12:00Patrick Bet-David?

  Oh, he, he, he was a, he, he was great. What New York needs today is a Mayor Giuliani.

• 2:12:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:12:07Patrick Bet-David?

  It needs somebody like that to clean up.

• 2:12:08Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 2:12:09Patrick Bet-David?

  It's a shame, when it comes down to all these pardons, these stories, you know? We had, uh, uh, Bogovic-

• 2:12:15Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:12:16Patrick Bet-David?

  Uh, uh, on-

• 2:12:17Speaker 05

  I wrote him a letter when he was in prison.

• 2:12:18Patrick Bet-David?

  Did you?

• 2:12:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I felt bad for the poor guy. Fourteen years? For a crime that was never consummated?

• 2:12:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, that's right, with the whole Obama. And that was Obama's doing.

• 2:12:27Speaker 05

  Obama, exactly.

• 2:12:28Patrick Bet-David?

  Uh, and he's out now. He's out now. He was on Tucker as well. We had him on. We've had him on multiple times. And he's been able to tell the stories. Documentary was actually pretty interesting. I don't know if you saw his documentary?

• 2:12:37Speaker 05

  No, I haven't seen it.

• 2:12:37Patrick Bet-David?

  Very good documentary. It was old, but it's a very, very good documentary. John, I really enjoyed talking to you.

• 2:12:44Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 2:12:45Patrick Bet-David?

  And I feel like we have, uh, uh, honestly, like, I'm looking at my time, I'm checking everybody. I'm like, "Listen, I can't talk to him for, God knows, uh, uh, so many hours. We have your Manac link out there. Is there anything?"

• 2:12:57Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 2:12:58Patrick Bet-David?

  If, and, and by the way, it's priced very reasonably. If you want to have a fifteen-minute call or a video from him or a text, ten, twenty, seventy-five bucks, send a Manac to him and have a conversation.

• 2:13:06Speaker 05

  Delighted to do it.

• 2:13:07Patrick Bet-David?

  Because I'm sure there's a lot of conversations people want to have with someone like you, who's experienced. And I'm sure many other people will send messages as well to invite you to their podcast shows, different things as well.

• 2:13:17Speaker 05

  Love it.

• 2:13:18Patrick Bet-David?

  Is there anything else you want to, is this your show? Is this what this is? Deep Focus with John?

• 2:13:21Speaker 05

  Deep Focus on YouTube, uh- We get deep into these, you know, Iran and Gaza and criminal justice and stuff like that.

• 2:13:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Fantastic, Rob. Let's put the link of that below as well.

• 2:13:35Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 2:13:35Patrick Bet-David?

  I love this. And John, we will have you back on.

• 2:13:38Speaker 05

  I'd love it.

• 2:13:39Patrick Bet-David?

  Very soon because I so enjoy this. Maybe the next one we do, we'll do like a home team and go through different issues and topics, but this was just for the audience to learn a little bit more about you. I appreciate you for coming out. This was fantastic. Truly, thank you.

• 2:13:52Speaker 05

  I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you.

• 2:13:54Patrick Bet-David?

  Anytime. Take care, everybody. God bless. Bye bye, bye bye.

• 2:14:07Speaker 11

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.