S2E18 Whistleblower's Roundtable with Tom Drake

IN THIS EPISODE We draw the curtain on season 2 with a preview of season 3 wherein we'll ask "What Makes A Whistleblower Tick?" To get us kicked off, John roundtables with whistleblower Tom Drake. A longtime member of America's intelligence community, Tom had just become an official at NSA when 9-11 happened - literally on Tom's first day. But, as America's "War On Terror" ramped up, Tom noticed NSA was gathering intelligence that it shouldn't - information pertaining to American citizens. NSA doing that was both outside its charter and flat out illegal. Tom chose to go through authorized channels to report what he saw. When, a decade later, the problem was still a problem, Tom finally took what he knew to the news media. What makes a whistleblower tick? Judging by Tom Drake - the right stuff. SHOW NOTES If you're enjoying Dead Drop, please sample our other podcasts at Costard & Touchstone Productions costardandtouchstone.com. Your next great podcast obsession is just a click away! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 08

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• 0:32Speaker 07

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

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Prosecutors today dropped nearly all of the charges against Thomas Drake. The former US intelligence official who walked out of the Baltimore courthouse today had been charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling sensitive information. It's a high-profile failure for the Justice Department, which is cracking down on government leaks. Prosecutors claimed that Drake had betrayed his country. But in his only television interview on 60 Minutes, Drake told us the only thing he betrayed was a gigantic waste of taxpayer money.

• 1:22John Kiriakou?

  I'm John Kiriakou, and this is Dead Drop: What Makes a Spy Tick? With this episode, we're bringing season two to a close. Not to worry, though. Season three is starting immediately, as in with the very next episode. The way that we're putting a bow on season two is with an episode that previews an important part of what season three of the podcast is going to focus on. For starters, my story will pick up with both my reentry to my life and, as it would turn out, my reentry to the world of spies and spying. If ever it became clear to me that "once a spy, always a spy" was at least sometimes true, it was at this point in my life.

• 2:05John Kiriakou?

  It might be the closest thing I have to a superpower. Funny thing, I was about to learn that the same applies to being a whistleblower. Once you've seen how the Realpolitik sausage gets made, you can't unsee it or unknow it. Something inside of you suddenly seems attuned to the corruption. It's not unlike a familiar but deeply unpleasant smell that the back of your throat just knows. As clubs go, and being a whistleblower isn't unlike being in a club, I can honestly say that I'm honored to share this space with so many remarkable, courageous people. But I doubt there's a one of us who really wants to be here in this club.

• 2:47John Kiriakou?

  To begin with, it means there was something super rotten in the state of Denmark that demanded attention, someone's attention. Then, once you've picked up the whistle and considered putting it to your lips, you have to know that it will mean putting your family, your finances, and your future through all kinds of painful gyrations that neither your family nor your finances nor your future were ever meant to handle. But there's that damned compulsion inside of you to just do the right thing. Yes, we make a choice to blow the whistle. And yet, in a very profound way, we don't, we can't. Because doing the right thing isn't a choice, it's an obligation.

• 3:31John Kiriakou?

  It's a responsibility, a way of thinking. And so, we blow the whistle. Hell, anyone with access to the same information could do the exact same thing. They should, yet they don't. That's really what we want to explore with the series of roundtables we're going to have over the course of season three. While we continue to explore what makes spies tick, we'll also now ask the question, what makes whistleblowers tick? To kick us off is one of the members of the Mount Rushmore of whistleblowers, former NSA executive Tom Drake. Tom blew the whistle on the NSA's Trailblazer project,

• 4:09John Kiriakou?

  which, at an astronomical cost, violated the NSA's charter and the law by spying on Americans. In the early 2000s, NSA was developing two electronic tools capable of collecting intelligence from the growing flood of information pouring from new digital networks like the internet. The first was called ThinThread. ThinThread was put through rigorous testing in 1998, and it performed each task well. It sorted through massive amounts of data, and it located threat-related communications with far more success than the existing system. It used more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and email data

• 4:52John Kiriakou?

  to identify suspect communications. It identified US phone numbers and other communications data, and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy. And it used an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information. That prevented misuse, and it improved efficiency. ThinThread was hands-down the way to go. Well, the second tool was the aforementioned Trailblazer, which cost billions of dollars dwarfing the cost of ThinThread. Not that the wild costs really mattered. Trailblazer had political support because it was initiated by NSA head Michael Hayden

• 5:35John Kiriakou?

  when he first arrived at NSA. That, apparently, was worth everything. Enter Tom Drake. Although he had worked as a contractor for NSA for a few years before NSA finally hired him, Tom was delighted to go to work as a full-on staff employee of the agency. And indeed, he entered NSA as part of the Senior Executive Service. But alas, Tom's first day of work was 9/11/2001, the day that changed everything. ThinThread had been discontinued three weeks before 9/11, and Trailblazer had been given the green light. But as he got down to work at NSA,

• 6:20John Kiriakou?

  Tom witnessed the abuses and illegality piling up, and he felt compelled to act, which he did via the prescribed legal channels and institutional processes. But nearly a decade into the prescribed process, with all the illegality continuing throughout, Tom saw clearly that nothing was going to change unless someone with deep knowledge personally took action to change things. No one ever said doing the right thing was easy. There's a reason. It's hard. But once you've been compelled to do the right thing, not doing the right thing simply stops being an option. Tom and I recorded this conversation in the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

• 7:05John Kiriakou?

  Although it wasn't exactly what I wanted to talk about with Tom, 9/11 will always be the gorilla in every room it's in. So that's where our conversation began.

• 7:16Alan Katz?

  It's crazy to think that 25 years have passed.

• 7:18John Kiriakou?

  But then, when you think about 25 years having passed, you also realize we're talking about an entire generation plus that came after 9/11, that didn't live through it. No. And I think that's why it's incumbent upon us to keep telling the story. Because we know that the official narrative is nonsensical. I'm not talking about controlled demolitions and dancing Israelis. I'm talking about the fact that we should have seen it coming. We should have defended against it. We knew it was going to happen. The entire system was broken.

• 8:03John Kiriakou?

  The FBI and the CIA hated each other. You had Richard Clark and George Tenet screaming from the rooftops that it was going to happen. You had the White House slapping them down and saying, "No, the real threat is China. It's not these Arabs with no shoes." And in fact, it was the Arabs with no shoes. I wonder, after 25 years, if we've learned our lessons. And I fear that we haven't.

• 8:30Speaker 14

  Well, the problem was we didn't learn the lessons then because it was looked forward, not backwards. And then it was used as what I call a reverse false flag. It triggered all kinds of secret executive actions that we both got caught up in and became whistleblowers against.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  I mean, you hold up the mirror, the torture regime.

• 8:51Speaker 14

  And for me, even though I became aware of the torture regime, which actually came out before the even deeper, deep state secret, which was mass domestic surveillance.

• 9:03John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, mass domestic surveillance.

• 9:05Speaker 14

  But all triggered by 9/11, right? It was just, that became the excuse. And of course, Cheney, five days after 9/11, said, "We're going to go to the dark side." You had former CIA executive Hope Black saying, "We're going to take the gloves off." It was pretty clear that this was now, "Hey, we have our excuse. We can now restore the imperial presidency, and now we can do all kinds of things that we really couldn't do before. But we got our excuse." But that was a failure, a fundamental failure, to keep so many people out of harm's way. And then look what it led to. For me, it became the first order effect. That's what you see on TV. But then there's the second, third order effects. And this was all, "We have our excuse now. We can actually go back into Iraq."

• 9:49Speaker 14

  Oh, what, before? Like, that was the first thing they were thinking of right after that. I remember the intelligence briefings. People, Arab linguists that I worked with, I used to be a crypto linguist during the Cold War. Yep. An intelligence officer in the Navy after the end of the Cold War, on the terrorism desk of all things at the Pentagon. So it's those effects, we are still paying an incredibly high price. Oh, without any question. On the geopolitical stage. And there's also the curiosity. I haven't really talked to you at length about this in a while,

• 10:23Speaker 03

  but given the looming anniversary, right? Yeah, yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 14

  In what I still is the shadows of 9/11, which really go deep.

• 10:35John Kiriakou?

  Here we are after all these years too, and so many of the major players have died. Oh, yeah. The lawyers, some of the lawyers involved in this decision-making, Cheney is dead. Woolsey is dead, and there's just so many of them who were involved. John Rizzo, the CIA General Counsel, he's dead. Jim Pavitt, the Deputy Director of the CIA at the time, is dead. But their legacy, this hideous legacy that they left is alive and well. And we see it in the intelligence budget. We see it in the defense budget. We see it in the fact that Americans are not in the streets when we say we want to begin wars of choice. But before we get into all that, Tom.

• 11:20John Kiriakou?

  Sure, sure. One of the things about your story that has always just fascinated me in a head-shaking kind of way is your very first day at NSA as a senior executive was 9/11. There was. And it started, I mean, just as the workday began, the first plane hit. What in the world was that like? You haven't even probably chosen a desk chair yet. I had not.

• 11:50Speaker 14

  And 9/11 happened. This was interesting. I was an outside hire, even though I had been a contractor there for quite a while. And of course, I had my previous intelligence background, which was quite extensive, both in the military, both Air Force, Navy, and then I was actually supporting the DIA, the J-2, in the Alert Center, the National Military Joint Intelligence Center. And I walked in that day, just to give you a little, sort of with some trepidation, here's why. Guess where I was sitting? What desk I was sitting on in 1993 in the Alert Center at the Pentagon?

• 12:28John Kiriakou?

  Oh, no. And it probably doesn't even exist anymore. It was vaporized.

• 12:33Speaker 14

  I don't know that, but I was on the terrorism desk, which in itself was a backwater desk even there, because obviously you had all the military components, you had CIA, you had state. Obviously, there's all this, sort of the supporting agencies as well. And of course, terrorism, as we well know, asymmetric warfare, had been going on for quite a while, especially if you go back previous years with all the hijackings.

• 12:56John Kiriakou?

  I expressed an interest in counterterrorism in the early 1990s. And I was told in plain English, "That is a career-ending move." And then by 1997, I said, "No, you know what? I'm really interested in terrorism. I really want to do this." And my boss pulled me aside and he said, "Middle East, definitely. Trade craft, you can go into tradecraft, definitely. But terrorism, you're never going to get promoted again." I said, "You know what? I have 20 years, 25 years ahead of me. I'm going to go into counterterrorism." And I did. And it was fun and rewarding, and then 9/11 happened. And all of a sudden, it wasn't a backwater. And they needed people who knew what they were doing.

• 13:41Speaker 14

  Yep. I was originally on the, because of my NSA background, well, military, but tied to NSA, they put me on the electronic intelligence desk. But they realized I obviously had other skill sets. And so I actually ended up on the terrorism desk, on watch, it was rotating watch. I was actually an individual ready reserve, but as a commissioned officer. So I was fully integrated with not just the desk, but the Alert Center schedule as well. And sometimes we would do extra shifts, sometimes someone got called out. I would just put on my uniform and go down to the Pentagon. Well, remember when they tried to drop the World Trade Center towers the first time?

• 14:25John Kiriakou?

  1993? I sure do.

• 14:28Speaker 14

  I was there on that desk. That was February. I was there. We were sending out reports. And it turns out, and there were subsequent studies, if they had positioned the trucks with the bomb just a little bit differently, they may have succeeded in what their terrible plan was, which was to basically tip one of the towers over and drop it onto the other. Now, as it turns out, it almost succeeded. About half a dozen people actually died, and upwards of 1,000 were injured. People don't, it's just they don't remember this. Almost 1,000 were injured, many of them quite seriously. We were sending out reports.

• 15:14Speaker 14

  This is what I walked in with on my first day at NSA on 9/11, 2001. We were sending out reports. We were using at the time, very sophisticated technology, but we had access to all kinds of intelligence, lots of it compartmented. And of course, for obviously specialized compartments as well, depending on the source. Some of them were hypersensitive sources. Yes. We were sending out reports.

• 15:42Speaker 14

  And it was all being ignored. I remember I was literally on watch just after this happened. The J-2, the senior military intelligence officer, at the time a two-star, comes down into our spaces, makes his way over to the alert desk, the main desk, right?

• 16:05Speaker 14

  Usually it was an 05, I mean, 06, but an 05 could fill in. It was a military position. It was rare that a civilian, even though we had civilian intelligence officers, would actually fill it, given that it's the Pentagon. He said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm reading all the reports." He said, and he's shaking his head, and I'm sitting there, my mouth is just all into the floor. I'm just like, I'm arrested, because the next, is what he then says that came out of his mouth. "Who cares?" This was a direct quote. "Who cares about some raghead spouting off fatwas in the desert underneath a fig tree? Who cares?" Wow, the ignorance. "Our reports were saying they're coming back.

• 16:50Speaker 14

  This is what they've initiated. Spectacular attacks that get the attention of the entire world. They're coming back, and we even made reference to the use of airplanes as weapons."

• 17:05John Kiriakou?

  You're listening?

• 17:07John Kiriakou?

  All ignored. I talk about the Bojinka plot.

• 17:10Speaker 14

  Eight and a half years prior to 9/11.

• 17:13John Kiriakou?

  I talk about the Bojinka plot a lot, because most people don't remember the Bojinka plot. Nope. The Bojinka plot was supposed to be hatched from Manila. It was conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom we knew only as Muhtar. And the idea was to hijack 14 Boeing 747s and to fly them into buildings all the way up and down the West Coast of the United States. The plot was foiled by accident when a cleaning lady stumbled on the plans as they were laid out on KSM's dining room table. He was out getting lunch, and she called the police.

• 17:58John Kiriakou?

  And the police called the Philippines Intelligence Service, they called the CIA. KSM went on the run, and there was no Bojinka plot. But that confirmed what you just said, that Al Qaeda intended to use aircraft as weapons. And we still didn't pay attention. Still didn't.

• 18:19Speaker 14

  And then we, then all the other subsequent attacks took place. Kaibar Towers. Yeah. Kanzania, Kenya, the nightclub.

• 18:28John Kiriakou?

  USS Cole. Yep. Mm-hmm. Absolutely true. So you are in NSA on your very first day. It happens to be 9/11, and then the first plane hits. And then what do you do?

• 18:42Speaker 14

  I was actually in the, I was in, I was actually in the Legislative Affairs Office.

• 18:46John Kiriakou?

  Oh, of all places.

• 18:47Speaker 14

  And he's actually been hired in from the outside as well, because NSA realized it had a problem with their overseers. It was, it had become a huge problem. They really didn't like it to be overseen.

• 18:59John Kiriakou?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 14

  Despite all the scandal that came out during the 70s, when I was a very young teenager, and that was my own civic awakening, realizing your government going way off the rails, violating the Fourth Amendment, engaging in state-sponsored assassination, CIA. And of course, that led to a number of reforms, just given all the exposures and revelations. Right? Church Committee, Pike Committee, and a number of others, including the Ford Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. And under Ford, you couldn't do state-sponsored assassination, right? Let ops, quote unquote, at that level was supposed to not occur anymore, because of all the trouble we got ourselves into. Yeah. As you well know, the history, sort of the darker side history of that side of the CIA.

• 19:45Speaker 14

  So I walked in that first day, and the arrangement was I would spend about a month with the Number Three at NSA, the Signals Intelligence Director. I reported directly to her. Wow. And I was brought in, guess what my title was? It was, this is, it's so, it's so surreal. Senior Change Leader, ha, ha, ha.

• 20:10Speaker 14

  Because NSA, all these, all these studies have been conducted. We were talking really high level studies, both internally and externally, saying NSA was way behind the times, woefully inadequate for the demands of the 21st century. You need to bring in outside hires. You need to shift all your legacy thinking. You've got to meet the future because you're growing, increasing relevant and you're drowning in all the, in all the data, drowning, quote unquote drowning.

• 20:37John Kiriakou?

  Right.

• 20:37Speaker 14

  So the arrangement was I would go around just to get a feel, because I was also going to be serving as sort of a de facto communications officer, to get a feel for what her responsibilities were, what things we could like, where are sort of the edges, the interfaces? Where are the fault lines? Where are the issues? Where are the challenges? How can we meet them? And I'm also coming from a very technical background as well, although I'd done a lot of management and technology consulting during my go-go times out at Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the nineties and the early aughts. So I walk in at O'Dark 30, which O'Dark 30, I realize there was a movie that was O'Dark

• 21:19Speaker 14

  30, but in this case it was O'Dark 500.

• 21:25Speaker 14

  Just as the sun was coming up on that fateful day, making my way down Route 32 in Howard County. I pull in to my designated, I'd been given a designated, because I know it's CIS, but I was the Dicey's Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service at NSA. I pull into my spot, I walk into their old headquarters building and I showed up in her palatial, a palatial for NSA, this old school wooded, wood paneled office, quite large expansive desk sitting area, a mini conference corner, all that. My calendar became her calendar, except for the very top deck, which was the top tier.

• 22:10Speaker 14

  We're talking half dozen at the very, very top. I was part of what they considered the top 40 at NSA and other than supervisory's counseling sessions. So we were at the legislative affairs office and she was trying to convince a sissy, the Senate Intelligence Committee tag team, a technical advisory group team, why and what the country would get for the billions and billions that had been programmed for the Trailblazer program. They're having great difficulty explaining what would the nation get in terms of national security for all the many, many billions that were already programmed at that point in time, again, prior to 9/11. Well, this is on 9/11, of course.

• 22:54Speaker 14

  So I'm sitting there and she's, she was considered to be sort of the voice of NSA. She was usually wheeled in, even though most people in NSA were highly introverted. The joke was, you can tell the difference between somebody who's introverted and extroverted in NSA. If they're looking at their own shoes, right? They're introverted. So if they're looking at your shoes, they're extroverted.

• 23:18Speaker 14

  Yeah. So it was one of those jokes.

• 23:22Speaker 14

  Well, her executive assistant, who I'd known before in a prior capacity when I was a contractor, when she was also in the technical space, opens up the door, says one of the towers had been hit by an airplane. And I alerted right away because of what I came, that, remember when we just shared?

• 23:47Speaker 14

  Oinka, all this, it's like, yeah, my time had down at the Pentagon. I said, uh-oh, is this what I had feared all along? A landmark building, spectacular landmark, and a plane's crashing into it. And the first, that's the first thing, but then it's like, oh yeah, I remember there was some B-25 bomber that had hit the Pentagon.

• 24:11John Kiriakou?

  The Empire State.

• 24:12Speaker 14

  The Empire State Building, that was back in 1945, caused a lot of damage. And as a side note, the actual design, the architectural design of the twin towers, both the north and south, far different than the Empire State Building. Far different.

• 24:29John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, mostly aluminum.

• 24:31Speaker 14

  Yeah, that is correct. And very open and it had basically, you know, it was, you had the base of the columns that extended all the way up, four of them. That was the primary means by which it was spectacular design. There's no question about that. Of course, dominated in for a number of years. It was considered the tallest building, buildings plural in the world.

• 24:55Speaker 14

  Not too long after, without going, all of a sudden the door opens again, the other towers hit. I, I knew we were under attack. I literally stood up, said out loud what everybody was thinking, but hadn't said, "America is under attack."

• 25:13Speaker 14

  The next four months are a blur, John, because Sure. we went into crisis response and I didn't even come to until, you know, like in terms of feeling even half-human again. I mean, just 16, 18 hour days, hardly getting any sleep.

• 25:32John Kiriakou?

  Every day. I used to sleep under my desk. I would just ball up my jacket and use it as a pillow and sleep under the desk, sleep two hours or so, get up and then just do more work until But it's what

• 25:44Speaker 14

  fell apart. Well, we had people, they, the workforce, we call it the NSA, they just kept referring to the workforce. That's how basically the seniors, the high level managers would refer to the people that did the real work, was the workforce. They knew we had failed the nation. They knew we had fundamentally failed to keep people out of harms way, which was the prime directive. Well, there was also another prime directive, which was, you can't fire Americans, US persons, corporations, legal residents, legal residents, aliens, visitors without a warrant. Fourth Amendment, Constitution, fundamental to how America was even, came about 250 years ago now.

• 26:30Speaker 14

  And then, of course, the Constitution 12 years later. To formalize all that.

• 26:36Speaker 14

  What was then unleashed though, is what I had to quickly confront.

• 26:41Speaker 14

  It was clear, because the failure was used as an excuse to not just clawback executive power, but under the cover of national security and using 9/11, the failure as an excuse, we're gonna, we're gonna start doing all kinds of things that would, would normally not be permitted, or we would have to get permission, or we'd have to pass special legislation. All that was just, all those guardrails, the guardrails that existed that morning when I walked in, just disappeared.

• 27:15John Kiriakou?

  I've heard you tell the story where you say that the hair on the back of your neck stood up because you recognized immediately what path NSA and the larger intelligence community were going to take. And it was not the path of respect for the rule of law.

• 27:34Speaker 14

  No. Rule of law was in the way, Constitution's the way. I had several moments of truth, but the primary one was not, it was basically barely three weeks, it was three weeks after 9/11. I already knew that they were starting to shift technology, IT systems onto domestic networks to just, and they were, I'll just say this quietly, not loud, that they were leveraging their special relationships with certain telecommunication concerns that they had existed for quite a while. That became greatly expanded after 9/11. Some of them went back decades. And you get into executive orders and a whole lot of other things.

• 28:15Speaker 14

  And then whispers, because I was very well-connected, whispers, as I made, because I was also responsible for putting the very best of America at NSA into the fight. So I was being introduced to all kinds of basically skunkworks

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:32Speaker 14

  projects that weren't part of what they called the production chain, meaning they weren't operational, but they either had demonstrated themselves as a demonstration platform, they were a pilot or a test bed. And I remember CIA Director George Tettit had issued a memo, this is before the big huge reorg, to the entire intelligence community, say, "Hey, whatever you got, I don't care. We need it. Put it into the fight. We don't know where the next stack's coming from." Whatever. So that was part of my tasking.

• 29:07Speaker 14

  Yeah. And so I was going around campus while the whispers were, they were engaging in just simply breaking the Fourth Amendment.

• 29:20John Kiriakou?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 14

  And, and I'm saying, oh my gosh, the impact, the downstream is, we don't even know yet what that's going to mean. We doubt, and now we're, we're seeing it's all normalized. But then this was, but the excuse was the failure. The excuse was, we need ability unfettered, no restrictions. It didn't matter what rights existed, didn't matter what a piece of paper, what it said written on a parchment, didn't matter. So to answer your question directly, I confronted the number three. She said, she was the SIGINT Director, she demurred, she, a very conflicted person, as

• 30:06Speaker 14

  it turns out, she didn't want to acknowledge what I knew she knew, okay?

• 30:13Speaker 14

  That we got off the rails and it was going to come back to bite us, the whole thing called blowback, right?

• 30:19John Kiriakou?

  Yes, indeed.

• 30:20Speaker 14

  Might not get us right away, but it's going to catch up with us at some point. And for this kind of deep state secret, there was going to be a point, just like there was with the torture regime, it wasn't going to remain secret.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:35Speaker 14

  So she said, and I realize it was that she was handing, she was sort of handing it off, right?

• 30:44Speaker 14

  Go talk to general counsel. Well, there was one attorney at the time, because the special domestic surveillance program, the mass surveillance was so secret, it was authorized by the president. And that, the authorization was a memo kept in David Addington's safe.

• 31:03John Kiriakou?

  Yes.

• 31:04Speaker 14

  Okay.

• 31:06John Kiriakou?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:07Speaker 14

  And he was basically the lawyer, chief of staff.

• 31:12Speaker 14

  Well, he was basically his counselor, right? He was. Yep. But he was intimately involved in, hey, what else can we do? Well, yeah, we can take the constitution, throw it out the window. And John Hughes involved and, you know, others. But it was a very small set, a small cabal, as I will call it, who were engaged in a conspiracy. She was a coup against the constitution, I'm being very direct here, because that's what it was. All unnecessary, all the tools that necessary existed, we didn't have to draw the line way over to the side of security, because guess what? Franklin was right, you're going to sacrifice both, both liberty and security. So I confronted him. I said, what are we doing violating the Fourth Amendment?

• 31:55Speaker 14

  What are we doing engaging in un, and this is warrant less? Yes. Surveillance. He says, you don't understand, Mr. Drake. This has all been approved by the White House, we're the executive agent, it's legal. And as soon as he said legal, the hair went up in the back of my head, because guess where I was thrown back to? As a very young teenager.

• 32:22Speaker 14

  Nixon administration.

• 32:26Speaker 14

  I remember the famous interview, a couple, three years after he resigned.

• 32:32John Kiriakou?

  The David Frost interview?

• 32:33Speaker 14

  David Frost, the Frost Nixon interviews, when they came right to the point, that last interview, and it's legal if the president says so.

• 32:42Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 32:42Speaker 14

  Really, it's not illegal if the president says? What? This was no simple creep, problem, break into the Watergate. It wasn't the rogue CIA thunders, all that, right? I had followed that as it unfolded over a couple of years, it led to the resignation of a president. This was far more consequential, way more consequential. I knew when I hung up the phone, oh, and he said, don't ask any more questions. There was clearly a more than tacit threat.

• 33:20Speaker 14

  Because he's recognized, this guy's asking questions that not, not only do we don't want them asked, we're not going to answer them.

• 33:28Speaker 14

  And I, I read that, in that moment, I know. In fact, I was already basically tagged by my supervisor, the number three. Yeah. Simply by asking the question and say, what are we doing? We're violating the constitution of all things.

• 33:45John Kiriakou?

  And that makes you a malcontent. You're a guy that's just not going to do as he's told, you're not going to play by the rules. And you, you said something a minute ago that I want to reiterate. Sure. You go to the general counsel. In fact, you really couldn't go to the general counsel, because the general counsel's in on it. I had exactly the same experience. My general counsel at CIA was one of the architects of the torture program, one of the ones that worked with John You and Jay Bybee at the Justice Department to justify the torture program. So I went to the media, you played by the rules, and you went to the Pentagon and then to the oversight committees.

• 34:26Speaker 14

  I went to every single, I went to every channel, all the formal disclosure channels entirely. Yes. And the designated channels, whistleblower channels. In my case, there was actually two. The first one was under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. Even, even though there were special constraints, depending on which agency you belong to, this came out in 1998, because they realized there were, one that had been designed earlier, the regular whistleblower protection act, was insufficient, did not cover the intelligence community. Even though there was these other restrictions, I, at that time, had the authority, under

• 35:10Speaker 14

  the law, you know, passed by Congress, signed, signed into law, by the president.

• 35:19Speaker 14

  I could go to the designated intelligence oversight committees.

• 35:27Speaker 14

  I could go to an individual congressperson, I could go to an individual staffer, or, or there was, there was another, there was actually another way to go directly to the committee. And at that time, it's important to say this, or they change it later, you did not have to get clearance from your home agency first, you could go directly. I made contact with one of the permanent staff members who had oversight responsibilities in terms of the day to day account, they called it the, the staffers would have their accounts, they were basically considered the experts, they were typically senior GS15

• 36:08Speaker 14

  level is what they were, but, you know, on the congressional payroll, they were the ones that were the direct liaison and interface to the various, to the agencies in which they would have relationships for oversight purposes.

• 36:25Speaker 14

  Not too long after, I was pulled aside by the number three and said, oh, they're looking for leakers. That's the press, they're looking for leakers to Congress. They even set up a war room at one point. Oh, my God. A war room, the war room wasn't about terrorism and real asymmetric threats, it was, Congress was considered to be the threat. Oh, my gosh, we don't want them to know what we're doing, because obviously they had to hide what they were violating, had to hide the violations of the law. They had to cover it up, and actually, the cover up became far more extensive, as it turns out, because where the cover up worsens a crime in many cases, and we go back again to the Watergate era.

• 37:03Speaker 14

  So, you know, this, this, I mean, I, you're, it sounds interesting, the paralleling with your experience, because I knew after I left that conversation with the general counsel, one of the few read in, read, it had its own compartment, at the time, it was known to stellar wind, it was referred to later as the president's surveillance program, although when it first, when it came out four and a half, almost four years, three months later, oh, it's the terrorist surveillance program. Well, that was, we always had free rein when it came overseas, it wasn't like you're restricted. You still had the Fourth Amendment restrictions, but you certainly didn't have any restrictions when it came to foreign intelligence.

• 37:44Speaker 08

  Okay?

• 37:44Speaker 14

  It's, it's what it applied to US persons. And so I went, there was in my office, I remember, it's still to this day, this early October, and I didn't know about the memo, I already knew that they had all, that it was authorized, I didn't know what the memo, he was confirming what I had already discovered organically.

• 38:06Alan Katz?

  Mm hmm. It's Alan, Dead Drops producer, and it's time for our October meeting of the Quince Fan Club. John, is there a piece or a couple of items in your closet or chest of drawers that your hand always finds first?

• 38:21John Kiriakou?

  Actually, Alan, there are a couple of Quince pieces in my growing collection. There is a sweater that I absolutely adore. It's actually the first Quince piece that I bought, it's cashmere, and it is the softest, yet lightest, cashmere sweater I've ever owned. And I just bought a pair of linen trousers. I'll tell you, when I go to the doctor, I always wear jeans, and then I get on the scale, and the doctor's like, oh, you should lose three pounds. Well, my jeans are three pounds. And so I bought these linen trousers, I wore them to the doctor, and he says, hey, buddy, you lost a pound or two. The truth is, these linen trousers are light, they're beautiful, they're comfortable, and now they are my go to pants.

• 39:06Alan Katz?

  For me, it's my two 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I love how they feel. I love how they make me feel. And because they go with everything, they make getting dressed easy. And being somewhat lazy that way, I think you and I both love the easy part, don't we?

• 39:23John Kiriakou?

  Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like that 100% Mongolian cashmere we were talking about, or organic cotton and merino wool.

• 39:36Alan Katz?

  Everything is timeless and versatile. As we've said here, Quince makes classics, but without all the stodginess that often comes with them. And we haven't even mentioned how reasonable everything at Quince is priced.

• 39:48John Kiriakou?

  Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60, giving you the softness and the quality you'd expect from a luxury brand, without the luxury price tag.

• 39:59Alan Katz?

  Not to go all Game of Thrones, but winter is coming, and when the temperatures start to drop, Quince is the perfect destination to find everyday clothing staples like premium down jackets and classic wool outerwear.

• 40:12John Kiriakou?

  All versatile layers designed to keep us warm and comfortable all season long, and always priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.

• 40:21Alan Katz?

  Quince does that by working directly with ethical factories that cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for high quality, not brand markup. The ethical part is very important. In these here times, it absolutely is.

• 40:35John Kiriakou?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Dead Drop. It's the best way to support the show.

• 41:03Speaker 00

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• 41:37John Kiriakou?

  If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone family. Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job, taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the Photographer will put you right there, on the ground, right next to David. Inside his head, in fact. It's a hell of a podcast,

• 42:22John Kiriakou?

  and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts, or at costardandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone, like The Donor, a DNA horror story, The Hall Closet, Sage Wellness Within, and the How Not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows? Your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now, back to Dead Drop.

• 42:53Speaker 14

  I knew I faced, this was my moment of truth. Would I remain silent and act like I never heard what he told me? Pondered it momentarily, moment of truth, and said, you know what? I'm eyewitness to the subversion of the Constitution from inside an incredibly secret agency. And if I don't do something, guess what? I'm complicit with the crime. I took an oath. I had taken an oath a number of times in my extended government career. Air Force,

• 43:31Speaker 14

  twice, CIA, and to the Navy. And then, the final time was the fifth time, as a senior executive, entering service at NSA. I knew I could not violate the oath. And that's what led to me going through all the channels. But of course, those channels, let's get real here, let's be completely honest. As you just mentioned, the counsel itself, the fact that I even raised it with my supervisor, I don't know, and remember, I'm an outside

• 44:09Speaker 14

  hire. I didn't come up within the ranks. I wasn't elevated, as they say, to the lofty level of executive, executive level, the supergrays, as they used to call them. And so, I was already marked by her, no doubt, the word was already going out, we gotta get rid of this guy. And that's a whole story in itself, how far they went to get rid of me, over a six-and-a-half-year period. So, going to the general counsel, obviously, that's red alert. It's like, oh.

• 44:45John Kiriakou?

  You put a target on your own back.

• 44:47Speaker 14

  Yeah, I put it, but that was a choice I made. I owned the choice, John. I owned it. I didn't have to do that. I could have just played the game, did my job, quote-unquote, did my job, followed orders, and retired, and made tons of money. And that's a whole other story in itself, how much money I could have made. But there's a lot more to life than just acquisition, as the Fringy would say in Star Trek, in gold, gold press latinum. Okay, like somehow, it's never enough, right? It's just, you can't get enough. Really?

• 45:26Speaker 14

  Oh, okay. So, that's when I became a whistleblower, because, but I also knew I was gonna play by the rules. And I also knew And you did. There was the third rail. There was a third rail. I knew this from Millsburg, growing up as a even younger teenager, when he went to the press, after he went through the channels that existed then. Here's a problem. All the channels that I ultimately exercised, all of them, were exposure channels. And guess what? Unfortunately, there was people within the oversight committees that had already been co-opted.

• 46:03John Kiriakou?

  Yes. And at the Pentagon, in your case. Yes, well, I was the DoD level. Yeah. You went to the inspector general. And the inspector general turned on you.

• 46:17Speaker 14

  Yeah, that is an extraordinary story, is how far they went. And it actually came to a head during the pre-trial proceedings, the extended pre-trial proceedings, when the government ultimately charged me for daring expose. And that's really why they came after me. It really ticked them off. It wasn't, I did ultimately go to the press with unclass of information. They used that as the excuse and cover. What they were really ticked off about was the fact that I'd exposed the mass domestic surveillance program. That was really,

• 46:47John Kiriakou?

  they were ticked off of. Yeah. So, you had, you had a bunch of colleagues that were sucked into this as well, the likes of Bill Binney and Kirk Weeby, and others. Can you tell us about how you ended up working with them, partnering with them, and what happened to all of you collectively?

• 47:08Speaker 14

  Yeah, the very best of America. They really are. Necessity is the mother of invention. This goes back to the early days of the industrial age. You got a problem, let's fix it. You got an issue, let's take it on. It was always against the backdrop that we, especially at a secret agency, we owed the very best of who we were and America to provide for the common defense, as designated as one of the two primary responsibilities of the government in the beginning of the Constitution. The other one's promote the general welfare, we sort of always forget about that. That's the people's side, right? You gotta take care of the people as well, the citizens. But there's also the side, and it's defense, right? The common defense. Not common offense, it's common defense. I mean, I used to play in sports, it's always like, the best offense

• 47:52Speaker 14

  is a good defense. I sort of forgot about all that. So, I had known about them from my technical background, and they were actually one of the first, it was the Signals, the Signals Intelligence Analysis Research Center, again, a skunk work, sort of like the SR-71, Kelly Johnson, I was very familiar with that from my Air Force days. And a lot of breakthroughs in the 50s and 60s, even in the 70s, sort of the foundation of the modern military, that we basically just kept living off, living off of, for quite a while, right? F-15, I mean, there's some just really, of course, then you get into the corruption, the military

• 48:33Speaker 14

  industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. So, but they're, they're one of a number of these very small, backwater, non-operational, attempts to solve the most critical intelligence challenge problems faced by, not just NSA, but also faced by the intelligence community at large. And this was particularly critical because of the digital age, the incredible, the extraordinary expansion, explosion of internet. And they, they had taken on the biggest challenge problem, one of the biggest challenges, there was these top five, every year, they would come out, publish their top five challenge problems.

• 49:17Speaker 14

  One of them was big data. How do we deal with the extraordinary amounts of data? People forget, the analog era, it was basically hard boxes, hard targets, and you, you had these specialized, sometimes one-off solutions, depending on what you wanted access to. Or, as you well know, John, you've seen him in, in his guises and forms, open, and then you have maps, and all the different covers, okay, without going into detail, all the different covers, I met some of them when I was in the bubble at CIA, which was fascinating, during some of our assemblies, right? It was like the one place where they could say, oh yeah, we're married to each other, but you can't even, you can't even acknowledge us when

• 50:02Speaker 14

  we leave outside the bubble, not even in the halls of the CIA.

• 50:07John Kiriakou?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. An entirely different persona. I mean, this is, yeah, I've been watching the agency,

• 50:14Speaker 14

  by the way, I don't know if you've seen the series, it's kind of remarkable. It's like, yeah, I bring back memories of certain things. I used to help train people, like what you ended up doing, we were actually sort of, you had a chance, when I was going through my own training, you could augment, you get extra pay for it, of course, because like extra duty, never mind, you could even sign up for the paramilitary at the CIA if you wanted to. We actually helped train the operatives. It was fascinating. Dead drops, and how to break, you know, people trying to track you, all that. So, I see. So, yeah.

• 50:51John Kiriakou?

  So, all of a sudden, there's this, I'm using air quotes here, leak investigation. In fact, nothing has been leaked. It's been, a crime has been reported to the appropriate oversight committees. New York Times article.

• 51:05Speaker 14

  New York Times. Take us from there.

• 51:09Speaker 14

  I know there was, I never went to the press before I did go to the press. And it was not prior to the revelations, which is the tip of the iceberg. They acknowledged later that they had 12, at least 12 sources. I was not a source. Never was a source. That was an earthquake underneath the entire intelligence community, but in particular NSA.

• 51:35John Kiriakou?

  Because, because it turned out, while they're focused on Tom Drake, there were a lot of other people who objected to this thing. Correct. In other parts of the government as well.

• 51:49John Kiriakou?

  Right.

• 51:52Speaker 14

  And I've, you know, it's well, that's a whole story in itself because I ended up as, you know, in my capacity, I had a lot of liaisons, liaisoning I did after nine 11, especially when I became a troublemaker. And ironically enough, they would send me on these missions. Some of them I volunteered for because it was sort of out of sight, out of mind. They didn't really want me involved in NSA activities.

• 52:15John Kiriakou?

  Right.

• 52:15Speaker 14

  But because I was a senior executive and I was reporting to the number three, they couldn't just get rid of me. I would be too obvious, like, rid of me. So interesting enough, I'd be sent to the school to have to sig it 101 for new recruits. I would be sent to the CIA to talk about new ways, even innovative, even nonlinear methods for predicting the future and the challenges that we would face going forward into the 21st century, and particularly in the aftermath of nine 11 and all the questions that were being raised, never mind the investigations that were being launched. That was part of my tasking. But you were asking me, because I want to, I gotta close a loop on what you had asked me before that. Go ahead.

• 52:58John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, no, I just wanted to ask you, all of a sudden, and excuse the terminology. The leaks, the leaks. And then the shit hit the fan.

• 53:06Speaker 14

  Right. I just skipped, yeah, I skipped over a whole bunch of stuff as well. This is, you know, Kirk and Bill and Ed Loomis and Diane Rourke, who is my primary, not the only one, I don't talk about the other, but was my primary contact under the, under the Intelligence Committee was the lower protection act. So I had ray, I had brought thin thread was what the program, this breakthrough program, it met the key challenge problem, but it was a three, a little over $3 million program, but they had already decided. Pocket change by NSA. Pocket change, but it was a breakthrough solution. It worked. We're talking about a dozen people focused, skunk works, we're going to solve this problem. And they did during a three-year period. They solved the big data problem while ensuring

• 53:51Speaker 14

  we were always compliant with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and still find the real, the real threats. Not dodge, pile everything up into one haystack or multiple haystacks and treat every straw as a needle, find the real needles in the haystack.

• 54:12Speaker 14

  So when the New York Times article was published, I mean, it just, it was an earthquake. I knew, because so few people have been read into an extraordinarily compartmented program. We're talking one of the most compartmented of compartmented programs that I had been involved in a number of them, not just at NSA, not just at CIA, when I used to work at NPK in building 213. Oh, boy.

• 54:43Speaker 14

  With national technical means to use that euphemism. I had also been involved in a lot of military ops where it was SAR SAP, so special access required, only the people that were briefed in were read in, were knew about it and or the details. This one was unbelievable because it was the president was authorizing it. It was his imprimatur on the program and NSA was executive agent. I knew I would get picked up. I knew that. Picked up, meaning I would be immediately put on a very, very short list. And there was, there was a series that came out some years ago called person of interest. I knew that I had become a person

• 55:26Speaker 14

  of interest, but more than that, I had become a target because so few people have been read into the program. Armony of our needs, I was never read into the program, but I had people that were, who I've obviously had protected all these years for obvious reasons, who were in my to and fro about NSA, who would share and whisper certain things to me and things I found out technically that made it crystal clear because people were, like you said, there were people, even if they weren't going to become whistleblowers, were asking questions about what are we doing, Tom? This is not who we are.

• 56:12Speaker 14

  And then when did this all fall on your head? Well, massive national security leak investigation, two weeks after, end of very end of December, multimillion dollar, 25 full-time FBI agents, five full-time prosecutors from the DOJ, and they drew people, because I ended up having to deal with them. They took the best of the best at FBI, the ones that are specially trained, and you'll get a kick out of this, John. I don't know if I've ever shared the details about this one. They actually pulled quite a few of them from their mole hunter unit. Oh, my. The special, the specialized unit at the FBI that literally is trained to go after

• 56:57Speaker 14

  real spies, like Aldrich Ames type spies.

• 57:02John Kiriakou?

  Traitors.

• 57:02Speaker 14

  And others. Yes.

• 57:05John Kiriakou?

  Wow. Wow. They took them off, off their real investigations, looking for real traitors and had them focus on you.

• 57:15Speaker 14

  Yes, because I became a designated targeted enemy of the state.

• 57:21Speaker 14

  And so there was a massive leak investigation. They started doing, and again, a lot of details here that I wouldn't go into, both extraordinary electronic surveillance of me, a whole story in itself, I could write half a book about it, and later, physical surveillance. They even bragged about it when they, so it all culminated in a raid of Diane Rourke and Bill Benny and Kirk Weeby and Ed Loomis in late July of 2007. Bill and Kirk came to me shortly

• 57:59Speaker 14

  thereafter and said, Tom, they're asking all kinds of questions about you. You're next. Turns out I was the last one that we know of because I had had the bullseye on me. They considered me the ringleader. So guess what? Late November, I'm getting ready. I was teaching at the National Defense University. This is part of, we eventually, they're eventually, I got lateral arrow best. They kept, they finally got, you know, they were able to find a way to pull all my teams, enterprise teams, all, all the money, all the projects out from under me. And all I was left with was an office and a desk and a computer and a

• 58:40Speaker 14

  flag. So I ended up at the National Defense University, teaching information technology, strategic leadership. And I was getting ready to go down to Fort McNair, where the campus is located, beautiful, it's a beautiful location. And I look out the bedroom window and there's a dozen FBI agents streaming across the front lawn. And, you know, that's when the nightmare began.

• 59:12Speaker 14

  So I was interviewed, I, I, I knew people say, you're not, you're stupid. You, you're, I was read my Miranda rights, but I decided to cooperate. Why? I wanted to continue reporting high crimes and misdemeanors is defined by the Constitution up to and including decisions made at the very highest levels of government, including the president. They didn't want to hear that. So we're not here to hear that. We're not here. They made it very clear why they're there. Of course, they were, they were doing their job. They were following orders. So I cooperated with them over three separate interviews until it was obvious

• 59:51Speaker 14

  in the third one, when I'm down in the mole hunter unit in their conference room at the DC field office, the FBI field office, where I was confronted for the first time, and they played bad cop, good cop. I was confronted, the bad cop was the chief prosecutor. It was Kafkaesque. This room had no windows, but it's just Kafkaesque. So that was in April, that was April 2008. I resigned from NSA because they had already suspended my clearance. They were moving to permanently revoke it. I already, at that point, had hired, I had hired a criminal defense attorney, who I spent many, many tens of thousands of dollars

• 1:00:35Speaker 14

  and of course went into much, much more debt after that because of what happened. And then

• 1:00:43Speaker 14

  multiple attempts to get me to plead out.

• 1:00:45John Kiriakou?

  Mm hmm. And they had charged you with a whole bunch of felonies, like life-ending felonies.

• 1:00:51Speaker 14

  So this is April 2010. So two and a half years after I was raided, when you use that term, I wasn't visited.

• 1:00:58John Kiriakou?

  No. I was raided. Well, yeah. You know, you know what that's like. Yeah. When they, when they break down the door of the house and, and a dozen or a dozen and a half FBI agents pour in and tell you, sit on the couch and don't get up. That's a raid. Yep.

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• 1:02:50Speaker 14

  It was clear I, you know, and I didn't know. I mean, even then it's possible because, but I was, I was the first, as it turns out, under the old espionage, the old, the world war one era espionage. I was the first one. Yes. I had become the scapegoat. I was the one they're going to make an example of.

• 1:03:09John Kiriakou?

  And they were going to use your case as a template to go after other whistleblowers. And they did.

• 1:03:15Speaker 14

  And they did. Yeah, they did. So, yeah, I mean, so what happened? I was working for Apple. It was the only job I could find. It was retail job selling computers and iPhones and, you know.

• 1:03:30John Kiriakou?

  And it was my understanding at the time that when you applied for the job at Apple, that it had gone all the way to Steve Jobs for his approval.

• 1:03:38Speaker 14

  Yes. Is that true?

• 1:03:39John Kiriakou?

  There was, yes. Wow.

• 1:03:41Speaker 14

  At the executive level, they actually brought out the head of HR with the store leader to ensure that as long, unless I was convicted of a felony, they were going to stand behind me all the way. Wow. And they, and they did. I am actually, I am indebted to Apple for how far they went. And it was extraordinary. It became a safe place for me.

• 1:04:08Speaker 14

  People, you can imagine, people were calling up, people were calling Apple. You've got a, you've, you've got a criminal, you've, you've got, you know, you've got a Benedict Arnold, you know, tree, a tree, you had a traitor working for you.

• 1:04:24John Kiriakou?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:04:25Speaker 14

  They protected, they protected me. They said, yeah, if you're, if you're convicted, that's, you know, then we have a different conversation.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:32Speaker 14

  Right. Um, so it was extraordinary, but so, so, and of course, because once I got indicted, it was clear that intrepid reporters, especially the ones that were still the old saw gum shoe on the beat, were going to find out where I worked. And then they would find out, although Apple would not acknowledge where, it got out that I worked at the Apple store in Bethesda, Maryland. And everything is the kicker. Bethesda, Maryland, high rent district, a lot of people with the government, very, very senior personnel live in Bethesda and then the Apple store.

• 1:05:07John Kiriakou?

  I can't tell you how many senior leaders of the CIA live in Bethesda, Maryland. And of course they use that Apple store.

• 1:05:18John Kiriakou?

  How many members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees live in Bethesda, Maryland?

• 1:05:23Speaker 14

  I, I can start naming, if I started naming names, you would instantly recognize who they were before or who they are today. Or some of them are retired or still quite prominent. It would come into the store. So often, many times, of course, they either had a very discreet security detail, depending what part of the government they worked in, or they had the full blown one, like the Attorney General Holder. He showed up with the black vans and they were very, they, there was basically a bubble around him.

• 1:05:52John Kiriakou?

  I saw him a number of times. I actually saw him, I guess it was with his kids, his wife and kids at the, at the mall in, in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. And you couldn't get within 40 feet of the guy. Nope. In the mall, they made a bubble around him. But Tom, getting back to this situation, they charged you, was it seven felonies? No, 10. Nine, 10, 10 felonies. So 10 felonies. 35, I think, go, oh, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry, we should say something to our, to our listeners. Go ahead. This is, this is a common tactic that they use. It's called charge stacking, where they will charge you with five, 10, 20 felonies.

• 1:06:36John Kiriakou?

  They will drive you quite literally into bankruptcy. And then they'll come back in the spirit of kindness and generosity and say, take a plea to one or two or five and we'll drop the others. And you never even considered.

• 1:06:54Speaker 14

  No, and they tried initially because when the, when I had extraordinary face to face confrontation with the chief prosecutor back, all the way back to April of 2008, down at the mole hunter FBI. Right. Field office mole hunters conference room. He made it crystal clear, you better start talking. We have more than enough evidence to put you away for the rest of your natural life, Mr. Drake. That's what I was facing at that time. Well, isn't 20 years better than the rest of your life? But no guarantees. So when they indicted me, I was facing 35, 500 of the espionage act, 793E, the same one that Ellsberg was charged with. Four, and this is, this is just still surreal, 1,001 charges felony for making false statements,

• 1:07:39Speaker 14

  when in fact they were false themselves. One for obstruction of justice. The four false statement charges and the obstruction of justice were the ones they had maximum flexibility on. Those were the ones they put in your back pocket. He said, charge stacking, because even if they couldn't prevail. Right. But they could still get me for several years, potentially before a jury.

• 1:08:05John Kiriakou?

  Yes.

• 1:08:06Speaker 14

  In prison.

• 1:08:07John Kiriakou?

  Yes.

• 1:08:10John Kiriakou?

  Yeah. I was, I was behind several eight balls. And, but you never, this is a thing, you and I met in the immediate aftermath of my own arrest. And we were introduced by our friend and mutual attorney, Jesslyn Radak. And one of the things that.

• 1:08:27Speaker 14

  Extraordinary attorney.

• 1:08:28John Kiriakou?

  Extraordinary attorney and a great.

• 1:08:30Speaker 14

  I am indebted, I can begin to tell you, I even have a special dedication to her in my book that I just got cleared from the government, which was not just NSA. And you know what that means.

• 1:08:41John Kiriakou?

  Oh yeah, it's, that's hard work. That's hard work and not easy to do. Jesslyn, I, I champion Jesslyn at every opportunity. She, and, and she, she, God knows she doesn't do it for the money because she's not making any money. She does it because it's the right thing to do and because that's the kind of heart that she has. And she was a whistleblower herself. And she's a whistleblower, a noted whistleblower on a major national security issue. And we'll, we'll get to that when we have our conversation.

• 1:09:11Speaker 14

  Sure, go ahead.

• 1:09:11John Kiriakou?

  But, but the one thing that, that struck me from the moment I met you was that you never considered a plea. Did not. No. Incredible.

• 1:09:22Speaker 14

  And even, even when the case was collapsing, the last thing I was going to do is I told the chief prosecutor in April of 2008, I will not, this, this has become in some ways tied to me directly. I will not plead bargain with the truth.

• 1:09:41John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:09:42Speaker 14

  But, but that's a whole story in itself. We don't have time to go into it. And I go into great detail in the book about how, how, because people, it was clear. I was headed for, I was headed for trial. It was clear. And as my criminal defense attorneys and I had public defenders, I was declared indigent before the court, by the way.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 14

  When I was arraigned, I was declared indigent. So the, and no, no, my original criminal defense attorney, he kept the government in bay as long as he could, but he wasn't willing to continue without getting paid. I had no money left. I had no liquid assets left. I'd already expended them all. And so, and no, no other, even though there was law firms are willing, there were individual attorneys willing and knew it was a critical first amendment case like Ellsberg. They knew that history was ringing in their ears. But the, their firm said, you want to represent Mr. Drake? You have to, even though they had pro bono, they were, they, because they were big enough to do that. Conflict of interest. We represent certain agencies and individuals. You cannot represent, if you want to, you have to leave the firm.

• 1:10:46Speaker 14

  Well, why would they want to give up? I mean, you can imagine, this is where you get into that security thing.

• 1:10:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 14

  Where they give up the lucrative practice that they had, which, you know, they're making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to defend with no guarantee, right? That I could prevail.

• 1:11:03John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, no guarantee.

• 1:11:05Speaker 14

  So. And then. So you, you met me, you were, go ahead, right? One of the things, yeah.

• 1:11:10John Kiriakou?

  And one of the things that Jesslyn is really, really good at is in her relationships with the media. What she did for me is what she championed with you. She got you in front of the right media personality. Yes. People who took you seriously, who listened to what you had to say and who believed you when you said it, so that your side of the story could get out there. You ended up in 60 minutes.

• 1:11:41Speaker 14

  You tell us about that. Yeah, that's a whole, the, the, she, she knew when I first met her, what was at stake. But she also knew that we would have to, and I knew this before I even met her. I knew once I was indicted, I had to find a way to influence a court of public opinion. I knew that was critical. That would involve the press directly. But remember, the government, as you well know, in your case, they had the high ground.

• 1:12:09John Kiriakou?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 14

  They held a lot of cards.

• 1:12:14Speaker 14

  And I'll say mainstream media, who by default, accepted the government narrative.

• 1:12:22John Kiriakou?

  And they almost always do.

• 1:12:24Speaker 14

  Yep. And it's under Obama, no less. Why Obama? Why would his own, his, his, it was more, it was more dependent then. Why, why would the DOJ, right?

• 1:12:39Speaker 14

  Go after you. You must, I was told by family members, I was dealing with family dynamics. This is the thing people don't realize. Yeah. Huge, massive impact that occurs. The, the incredibly high cost you pay with your own family. Yeah. I was headed for divorce. I was separated for quite a while. I had my own adult children questioning who I was as their father.

• 1:13:08John Kiriakou?

  Yep.

• 1:13:09Speaker 14

  I had a father, World War II veteran.

• 1:13:13Speaker 14

  Couldn't, he just, he was having a hard time accepting that his son, who had been an officer in the military, was now a senior executive in the government. Why would the government be charging him with espionage of all things?

• 1:13:30Speaker 14

  Maybe he didn't know his own son either. I mean, it was extraordinarily difficult time. It really, really was. So they had, they held the high ground. Justly knew when I met her, we have to establish a strategic campaign, a media campaign. And so, because I could, this is the other restriction. I could not say anything publicly, pre-trial.

• 1:13:54John Kiriakou?

  Right, nor could I. Not a single word to anybody.

• 1:13:58Speaker 14

  And you know why? I mean, it was clear. They really was. It's against you. Impeachable, impeachable, right?

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:14:07Speaker 14

  So she had to become my voice. And I don't understand why they didn't want to engage with the media. But my public defenders are extremely reluctant to have any contact with any media. Cause they kept saying, and it's true, we don't want to have undue influence of the jury.

• 1:14:26John Kiriakou?

  I did. I wanted to have undue influence with the jury. Sure.

• 1:14:32Speaker 14

  So as much as they didn't like it.

• 1:14:36Speaker 14

  And this is where I'm indebted to her because I mean, it could have very, it's very, could have easily become a different outcome. If my case had not gone public in the court of public opinion through the press. So did I have

• 1:14:56Speaker 14

  offline meetings with a number of reporters and journalists in the national security space? Yes. But it was like I wasn't there. Could they ask me all kinds of questions? Yes. But they could not go on their record. It was all, it was all filtered through her as a lawyer. Yeah. Because remember, that's the only protection I had. And that was, that was a very thin protection, as it turns out.

• 1:15:20John Kiriakou?

  I'll tell you something. She, she did the same for me. We met with several journalists. They were not all necessarily friendly, but I was able to get my side of the story out there on, on background. One of the things that she did, and I know she did this very successfully with you. With, I believe it was Jane Mayer at the New Yorker. Oh, yes, yes. Jane, Jane wrote a beautiful, beautiful expose. Well, she connected me with an Israeli journalist named A.L. Press, who wrote the same kind of article about my case for the New York Times. The New York Times then rejected it. Then he sent it to the New Yorker and the New Yorker rejected it.

• 1:16:02John Kiriakou?

  And then the London Review of Books. So I'm getting to the point where 10 or 15,000 people around the world are going to read this. Nobody's going to pay any attention. And then the London Review of Books killed it because they said that they did not want it to impact Barack Obama's reelection campaign.

• 1:16:21John Kiriakou?

  Yep. But you ended up not just with this glowing, wonderful expose written by the great Jane Mayer. Oh, yeah. Phenomenal. You also ended up on 60 Minutes.

• 1:16:34Speaker 14

  Wholesome behind that, yes. And it turned out.

• 1:16:37John Kiriakou?

  The case started to fall apart against you.

• 1:16:39Speaker 14

  Well, because that became, again, the Jane Mayer article, it's New Yorker. She's been a long time, a long time investigative journalist for them. A lot of breakthrough stuff over the years, right? Including the early, the early revelations of the torture regime. She had heard about surveillance, but no one would talk. She had more people talking offline and she was really good at getting sources to talk, even if they would not go on their record.

• 1:17:11Speaker 14

  So through another contact, partly me, but also because the strategic communications campaign, media campaign of Justin was now beginning to get out there. 60 Minutes at a producer level brought it to Scott Pelley and his team. And there was all this back and forth, right? Cause again, Jane Mayer is working on this. She spent several months. She had dropped everything else that she was working on to focus on just me and the background and interviewed a whole lot of people, both on the record and off the record. That led to 60 Minutes.

• 1:17:55Speaker 14

  And when Scott, when I first met Scott Pelley and we hit it off really well. I, I, part of my youth, I grew up in Texas. That was our common connection. Okay? So, and, and he said, this is the most important story I'm working on right now. But they didn't know at the time, and I heard this from the camera crew. They didn't know at the time, okay, you run across people and this is the history of 60 Minutes. They've had a lot of whistleblowers. You go back to big cigarette companies and all the exposure there and a number of others.

• 1:18:30Speaker 14

  They didn't know whether or not I could tell the story. It was much more powerful when you have the very person, in this case, under the gun, facing basically the rest of his life in prison. And trial was now scheduled for 13 June of 2011. Can he tell the story? And this was my first time

• 1:18:53Speaker 14

  on this, this level of exposure.

• 1:18:57Speaker 14

  And I told myself, I'm just going to be myself. Wow. What a huge risk. It was huge. I realized that. And of course, Justin was there because there were risks to say anything at that latest stage, even though people didn't realize how far the case was starting to collapse. But this was, this was April, when all the filming, early April, when all the filming was taking place.

• 1:19:26Speaker 14

  So that got all kinds of attention. There's no question. I mean, yes, the careful reader, those who enjoy the long form investigative pieces, they come from investigative journalists like Jane Mayer. That step, that goes into far greater detail in terms of the background. But TV has an enormous impact. It's the combination of the visual. It's a combination of the very person who's under the gun and about, could very well end up in prison. And there's Scott Pelley of all people.

• 1:20:00John Kiriakou?

  Right. Who at the time was one of the most highly respected journalists in America. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 14

  So, so that, that, that was broadcast. So the Jane Mayer, the agreement, there was all back and forth. The agreement was New York would, New York would publish first. And then they would broadcast, it was the very last week, that's that Sunday. But it was, it was right before sweeps week. It was a two hour and I was at the top, top of the hour. So it was a 14 minute, 27 second. It was the full segment.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  You know, they do their segments, but this is the full version.

• 1:20:45Speaker 14

  Huge impact. There's no question. And then the Washington Post weighs in. Like, what are you doing, government? Do you remember Watergate? And then remind you, sort of, do you remember our roles, the press?

• 1:20:58John Kiriakou?

  To their credit.

• 1:21:01John Kiriakou?

  And it was almost like magic after that. The entire case just fell apart.

• 1:21:07Speaker 14

  Yeah. But I was still exposed because of what you said, the stacking, right? The charge stacking. My public defenders knew that. They knew that I was still exposed. And that's a whole story in itself because I was not going to plead to any felony of any kind. I wasn't going to plead it to anything. Why should I? What they had put me through ruined literally. I don't have a retirement. I'm on fixed income. I have a very small annuity because of the time I did serve in the government. And of course, I was cut short, right? I didn't, I didn't, I didn't work even for, I mean, my government, my military background, which is extensive,

• 1:21:48Speaker 14

  is all cut short. I never had a full career, okay, in terms of a full retirement. So I'd never got to the point in my case where I could actually retire, which would be a rather solid pension. And then I could still go out, right? Of course, that's, that's a route, what are you willing to give up? In the defense of the constitution and the oath that you took to defend and support it. So the good, I mean, this is on the very, I mean, it's dramatic. In the book, I go into extrudient detail how that all happened. Because no one, up until it all began to publicly collapse, there was no indication that, that I was, there was, we're going to trial.

• 1:22:32Speaker 14

  It was, that was clear. And I said, I kept, and then there was a whole story there, the last week and a half. But it turns out the government realized they were losing. They were. They weren't going to be able to go, because to the judge, they tried to play the judge as a fool. I, it turns out, one of the key, this is, this has been less, been less publicized over the years in my case. I actually ended up with a judge who knew, no matter what I was charged with, I still had rights under the constitution.

• 1:23:08Speaker 14

  He made that crystal clear from day one. And then the government, in typical fashion, overreach.

• 1:23:17Speaker 14

  They tried to play him as a fool. And to his credit,

• 1:23:22Speaker 14

  he wasn't going to be played, played as the fool. They even got to the point that we're the only ones, we're the only ones who can say what is classified or not.

• 1:23:33Speaker 14

  You can't. Well, you know, he, people don't realize that at the court level, they have their own researchers. They have their own staff, the court staff.

• 1:23:43Speaker 14

  So it was remarkable. And so on the eve of trial, this is literally the Thursday before the Monday. We've, all, the jury is already sequestered. They already have the alternates in place. They're already, they're already being given all the instructions, all the restrictions. We're, we're going to start doing the formal selection on Monday, start of trial. There's a break in the afternoon. And I know, and in the book, I, it's a really, it's pretty dramatic. It would make for a great, a great stage play. It really would. Because you don't know until that moment, until that moment, which is basically the last day before the, the formally scheduled day to trial, that I'm going to trial. There doesn't seem to be any other off-ramp.

• 1:24:28Speaker 14

  And then, for the first time, and after all those years, an off-ramp emerged. And so I used to play competitive chess.

• 1:24:39John Kiriakou?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:24:40Speaker 14

  I, yup, competitive chess. I was actually rated by the US Chess Federation. I even, I, I stopped playing in the military because it just got too time-consuming to stay competitive. I was a pretty good player. Probably if I'd stuck with it, I would have been even better, but it took, it takes a lot out of you to get really good at it. Bringing back to Jess and Radak, she was on the phone

• 1:25:05Speaker 14

  because there was a rather interesting conversation that took place between her and the public defender, one of them, and then me.

• 1:25:13Speaker 14

  And I said, "You want to make a plea deal? These are my terms."

• 1:25:18Speaker 14

  I knew in that moment, because the government was desperate, it turns out, to get out from under. The problem was, they still had interlocutory review available to them.

• 1:25:35Speaker 14

  They could have instantly said, "We're going to take this up at the appeal, the Fourth Circuit, the appeals level." That would have, they did this with Jeffrey Sterling, another CIA employee. They did that with Jeffrey Sterling. He was willing to take his chance, but then they put an interlocutory review with the same prosecutor that I had, who did not play by the rules at all. And guess what? It sat up there for almost two years before they made a decision. I risked the same thing, John. I risked that they would either stall over. I, well, guess what they'd do in the meantime? You'd take it right off the white-hot heat of the press, because the press was like, all on my case.

• 1:26:17Speaker 14

  Remember, it's so rare, people don't realize how, how incredibly rare it was in American history. I was only, I was the first whistleblower since Ellsberg charged in like manner. And there had only been two other instances

• 1:26:31Speaker 14

  of an Amer- Americans being charged on the Espionage Act.

• 1:26:34John Kiriakou?

  Yes.

• 1:26:35Speaker 14

  I was the first whistleblower since Ellsberg. It just was so, it didn't become rare, as we all know too all too well. Eight people were charged espionage under Obama alone. We have seven now under Trump between the first and second, second administrations. Seven. Never mind all the other investigations. And that doesn't count all the other leak investigations that even the Obama administration engaged in. Eight. I was the first under the S, the, the World War I era Espionage Act. There was another minor one, another one, uh, not too long before me, where they were trying out, "Hey, you know, we might be used one of these other espionage like." Was that the case in West Virginia?

• 1:27:19John Kiriakou?

  Yeah, I thought so. I was the sixth.

• 1:27:20Speaker 14

  Shemai, Shemai. Shemai Libowitz. But it wasn't, he was under 798. And it was involving a podcaster. Yeah. And he actually ended up in prison.

• 1:27:34Speaker 14

  People don't realize all the others, by the way, that you don't hear about, that were also charged. They tried, because they considered me an enemy of the state, John. They actually, I mean, they said that I had not just damaged national security, it was the highest level of, of damage.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  Exceptionally gray. Not just gray.

• 1:27:57Speaker 14

  Exceptionally gray. Exceptionally gray.

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  Like the Rosenbergs.

• 1:28:01Speaker 14

  Yes, that was the category. There was a gallery put out some, a couple of years later. They began brief, this, this is what they did, a joint DNI, DOJ task force. Me and Snowden were placed on that as a rogue gallery of those who would do us harm. We were mixed in. Remember the shooter down at the, the Navy Yard? Oh, my God. Remember, we were put on the same list.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 1:28:28Speaker 14

  Robert Hanson. We were put on the same rogues' gallery. Ironically, the picture they used for me was the one they took of me when I accepted my Ridden our truth-telling prize.

• 1:28:42Speaker 14

  But that's where I was embedded in a garden. They literally painted me. That's how, it wasn't just a caricature. That's how I was viewed.

• 1:28:51John Kiriakou?

  Well, the joke was on them, because things worked out for you in the end. And now, look at you. You're on the Mount Rushmore of national security whistleblowers. And nothing's ever going to change that.

• 1:29:05Speaker 14

  Well, I don't, I'm very

• 1:29:11Speaker 14

  I don't, I have to say, I'm very, um, I don't,

• 1:29:17Speaker 14

  you know, it's funny, I'm very uncomfortable with any other labels that are placed on the courage, or people have said all kinds of things, right? And they use the word hero. Yeah. All I did, John, and this is really important, and this is where I keep discarding my ego. I do. Even with all the attention, all I did was raise my hand

• 1:29:41Speaker 14

  with great solemnity, and I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

• 1:29:44John Kiriakou?

  Yes.

• 1:29:45Speaker 14

  A piece of paper that establishes fundamentally what it means to be an American. And I, the aspirational nature, the actual articles of that Constitution, I did not take lightly. My father retired. He was, World War II, he was a hero, a long story. He actually was supporting OSS missions.

• 1:30:06John Kiriakou?

  Wow.

• 1:30:07Speaker 14

  As Obama Dear Navigator, um, God, that reminds me, I gotta send you the book he wrote called Down in Greece. Because he was doing all this, all that you would, because of your, your, your, your Greek background. Yeah. With the partisans, and of course, he was occupied, he was occupied Greece, Donovan, his precursor to the CIA, Wild Bill.

• 1:30:28Speaker 14

  He went down in northern Greece. And this, he was not, the number of planes went down, highly modified B-25s. It wasn't just, it wasn't, it was not configured as a normal bomber, for obvious reasons. It's flying highly classified missions for the OSS. In fact, as you know, they, he was put under a different cover, right? It was, he was actually a guard unit. The guard unit was actually used out of Louisiana, was actually used as cover for OSS, the airborne mission. So he first started out in North Africa, and then he moved to, to, to Italy. He started flying across the Adriatic.

• 1:31:09Speaker 14

  On his 44th combat mission, 41st combat mission, plane was struck, engine caught fire, and remember, they're flying at low altitude anyways. One of the risks at night, no less. And the Germans, of course, you can imagine, he's technically, he's considered, yeah, he's a flying sergeant. He would be a real catch. High-value target, right?

• 1:31:37John Kiriakou?

  Right.

• 1:31:37Speaker 14

  And a number, a number of them would get shot down, blown up. Many of them were executed. There was a secret underground that the British had.

• 1:31:51Speaker 14

  Churchill, that Churchill, basically executive action on the Churchill side. And he was down in Greece, um, Macedonia, that region, six months, lost 50 pounds. I don't know if you know the full history of, there was an extraordinary trust network set up, at incredible risk for the locals to bring people out, American airmen.

• 1:32:19Speaker 14

  Bring, bring American and British airmen out, who had found themselves, as we use, as I used to say later, when I was an aircrew member, denied territory.

• 1:32:31Speaker 14

  And extraordinary risk.

• 1:32:35Speaker 14

  So, the reason he doesn't, he never, he never ate yogurt after he came back.

• 1:32:38John Kiriakou?

  Oh, I bet. Oh, my God.

• 1:32:40Speaker 14

  You can imagine the PTSD and everything else, which we have to live with as a family in the intervening years after. That's part of my own heritage, right? I gotta send you the book. I mean, it's just.

• 1:32:49John Kiriakou?

  I'd love to see it. Oh, my God.

• 1:32:52Speaker 14

  But remember, he couldn't, he couldn't talk about it. You, you know, from your operational, the operational side of CIA, even though there was compartments, I lived inside of it when I was in the DI, right? Even though technically, it was interesting, it was an S and T branch, but I was actually in the analytics side for highly, for weapons of mass destruction. That's the part of the DI that I, that I was assigned, I think partly based on my background, right?

• 1:33:23Speaker 14

  To what was the end pick at the time.

• 1:33:26John Kiriakou?

  Right, National Photographic Station Center.

• 1:33:29Speaker 14

  But I couldn't, he couldn't say anything about his experience. A lot of veterans didn't talk about their World War II experience anyways. Very few did. They just wanted.

• 1:33:39John Kiriakou?

  His was classified.

• 1:33:41Speaker 14

  Highly classified. He was sitting around the poker, penny-amy poker at his retirement home, community in San Antonio with his buddies from the, the community, his retirement community. And he gets to talking, and he's in his 80s. He said, "Bill," he said, "Bill, you gotta write about this." So he engaged with a military publishing house and got it out.

• 1:34:04John Kiriakou?

  Great. Yeah. That's great. And what about you? What about you? What's, what's next for you now? I know that you retired officially, formally, but you're still a young man. So, what next?

• 1:34:18Speaker 14

  Well, I'm 69, so.

• 1:34:20John Kiriakou?

  Well, I'm 62, so I still think you're a young man.

• 1:34:26Speaker 14

  So I just spent a pretty intense 16 months writing what is a two books in one memoir and mirror on the abuse and pathology of power. Fantastic. Growing up in America and then my time overseas and my time at the CIA and my time in NSA and then the aftermath and, and then I take a big go to, we go to the sort of the 200,000 foot level and say, what does this all mean going forward? You know, in terms of what I call the base human condition. So that's been my focus. This has been my focus. I'm still available. I'm actually not in the same manner as you, because it's like, wow, just about anywhere on social media, there's John Kiriakou again.

• 1:35:11Speaker 14

  But I've noticed an uptick and partly because, well, I went through a very severe health crisis for a while where I almost died. I was stage four cancer and the good news is I'm stable. And you look great. Yeah. So I've started, I've started to make myself available again. And, and then you've got a lot of surveillance stuff, as you can imagine, flock cameras and Palantir and it's just like, oh my gosh, yes, all the hacking that's been going on and artificial intelligence. And it's like, what are we doing to ourselves? And now you've got this war of choice that we never should have chosen in the Middle East. You've got the Middle East itself.

• 1:35:53Speaker 14

  And I've been invited and to a number of conferences and symposiums and

• 1:36:01John Kiriakou?

  Good.

• 1:36:01Speaker 14

  more recently. And so I certainly will continue with that. I'm really hoping to get a chance here in the very near future where I get, as I did in the past, in front of the younger generation that were either just born or barely born or hadn't been yet been born on 9/11 to bring it all the way back to, to that fateful day.

• 1:36:21John Kiriakou?

  Please make us part of that ongoing mission, Tom. This seems like one of those lessons that history teaches that we would be stupid to not learn or worse, to forget. Thanks again, Tom, for round tabling with me. As I think you'll see with our whistleblower roundtables, inside each whistleblower, there really is this greater good compulsion to do the right thing. The costs and the consequences be damned. Over the course of the season, you're going to meet some real heroes. Hopefully will inspire even more whistleblowers to step forward. The world needs whistleblowers now more than ever. As governments around the world harness technology to gather more and more information about us, we need to fight back in every way we can.

• 1:37:07John Kiriakou?

  Thank you as always for making Dead Drop part of your ongoing podcasting experience. Please remember to enhance that experience by liking, rating, reviewing, or commenting on the podcast wherever you happen to catch it. We'll see you in season three. Until then, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

• 1:37:50Speaker 07

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

• 1:37:56Speaker 09

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• 1:38:32Speaker 10

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• 1:39:14Speaker 10

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