CIA Whistleblower: “The Shadow Government Is Real” - John Kiriakou - #1160

Chris Williamson (0:00)

You are an ex-CIA operative. Why should I believe anything that you're going to tell me?

John Kiriakou (0:06)

Well, that's a good question. I get it with some frequency. And all I can say is, I have a very long track record, and my track record is one of telling the truth.

So I can't force people to believe what I say, but they can certainly choose to believe me or choose to not believe me. I won't lose sleep over it either way.

Chris Williamson (0:26)

You've mentioned that you're looking for a pardon from Trump. How's that going? Do you think you're going to get it?

John Kiriakou (0:35)

No. If I'm being fully honest, let me back up by saying that I have fantastic support from people in the inner circle around Donald Trump, and I'm very grateful for it. Household names.

But I am told by one of those household names that it's not going to happen because the CIA hates me. And I responded, this is just three weeks ago, I responded by saying that I've never met John Ratcliffe, the CIA director. I've never exchanged a harsh word with John Ratcliffe. And this cabinet member said, it's not about John Ratcliffe as a person, it's institutional. They fear that if you get a pardon, it'll open the door for other would-be whistleblowers who want to go public on issues of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality.

And they're not willing to entertain that.

Chris Williamson (1:34)

Is there anyone else that is more persona non grata than you, do you think?

John Kiriakou (1:38)

Ed Snowden.

Chris Williamson (1:39)

Okay, so that's the sort of one and two of...

John Kiriakou (1:42)

Yeah. You know, when I was still at the CIA, Philip Agee was still being talked about.

Philip Agee was a CIA case officer in the 1960s, who was serving in South America. I think it was Chile or Peru, one or the other. And he walked in on a torture session that the CIA was doing with the host government intelligence service and decided to resign from the CIA. But more than just resigning from the CIA, he wrote a book called Inside the Company, in which he documented in an appendix the names of every undercover CIA officer that he ever met. And it was something like 1,200 names that he came up with. They wanted to execute Philip Agee. Even years and years later, when I was at the agency, the old timers were still talking about, you know, how do we get Agee? He ended up fleeing to Cuba and lived most of his life in Cuba.

But yeah, until Snowden, Agee was number one.

Chris Williamson (2:48)

He could give Andrew Tate some advice. I think he needs to flee to Cuba.

John Kiriakou (2:51)

At least if you're going to get caught, don't be caught wearing those silly clothes.

Chris Williamson (2:56)

Well, I think he was actually, the reason that he was taken away was for crimes against fashion.

John Kiriakou (3:03)

There you go. That actually makes sense to me.

Chris Williamson (3:06)

Correct. Yeah. How much is speaking? So President CIA, how much oversight does the president have over the CIA? How compartmentalized are those two things?

John Kiriakou (3:14)

Well, that's an issue that is debated.

It shouldn't be because the president should be the definitive word, and the president's not the definitive word because there really is such a thing as the deep state. And I say this all the time, you don't have to call it the deep state, you can call it the federal bureaucracy, you can call it the state, whatever you want. But the fact is that it exists, and presidents come and go every four years or every eight years. And the deep state, you're there for 25 years, 30, 35 years. I used to sit next to a guy who is now one of the top four or five officers, he's been there for 37 years.

So they know that if a president orders them to do something they don't want to do, they just say, yes, Mr. President. And then they ignore him.

Chris Williamson (4:10)

It must feel a lot like being a hotelier and having guests that come and go, medium stay guests compared with you, who's been there for decades.

John Kiriakou (4:22)

That's exactly right. And there's a bigger problem too.

And that's the lack of congressional oversight. Between, well, starting in 1975, the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House, they transformed into oversight committee. So it became, the Church Committee became the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Pike Committee became the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. But the thing is, how does a staff of 40, 50 people oversee an organization of 20, 30, 40,000 people?