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

You’re an ex-CIA operative. Why should anybody believe you? And how likely is a Trump pardon?

Fair question. People can take me or leave me. I have strong support from people close to Trump, but I’m told the agency will block a pardon because it could encourage whistleblowers to expose waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality.

You and Snowden are high on the persona-non-grata chart. How much control does a president really have over CIA?

A president should be decisive, but career bureaucrats outlast elected officials. They can say, “Yes, Mr. President,” then not do it. Congress cannot truly oversee a huge secret bureaucracy when it depends on that agency to report on itself.

Like absent nightclub owners: the people running the place build the relationships and eventually wonder why they need the owner.

Exactly. Career layers make foreign, defense, and intelligence policy. Show an inexperienced president dazzling compartmented material every morning and he’ll want the next briefing. Classification mushrooms into absurd compartments and often hides embarrassment; much of it never needed classification.

Could private data and media firms become as powerful as intelligence agencies?

They already are. After September eleventh, CIA had unusual latitude to invest in startups and became Palantir’s first investor. When companies hold government databases or vacuum up daily data, I don’t trust that it stays separate from NSA and CIA. Foreign intelligence is legitimate, but CIA and NSA are not supposed to collect on Americans—and they do.

Can powerful technology protect the country without being turned back on citizens?

In a perfect world, with robust oversight. I believe in the rule of law, not laws rewritten with politics. If technology protects Americans, God bless it; just don’t sell it to enemies or turn it inward without limits. If we’re the good guys, by God, act like it.

Who worries you most abroad? China, but not mainly as an occupying force.

China buys influence, co-opts institutions, builds dependencies, and lets us exhaust ourselves on defense systems while it buys ports, factories, airports, and technology. It spies seriously, pressures dissidents abroad, and pursues access to government and science. Israel is also an immediate covert-infiltration concern. Recruitment is basic: spot, assess access, develop vulnerability, recruit.

The recruit may be an ordinary insider turned by debt, ambition, ideology, or family pressure—like Philby, aligned with Moscow since university.

Philby was close to CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, then escaped from Lebanon to Moscow. Espionage also rewards nerve: a rare genuine walk-in may be a senior person quietly leaving a number with the right embassy, though most are troubled people, brokers, or probes.

Are revelations about technology’s reach paranoia, or are we already there?

Government and private surveillance work hand in glove—phones, televisions, everything. Vault Seven alleged CIA tools could compromise smart TVs and vehicles. Whatever the exact reality, our lives are digitally mapped. “Nothing to hide” is a grotesquely dangerous surrender. Hand civil liberties to government casually and you may not get them back.

What about brainwashing—the real programs, not remote-control fantasy?

Everybody chased it. MKUltra began in panic over an alleged Soviet capability and became a disastrous failure: LSD, reckless exposure, deaths, no meaningful result. CIA destroyed most records despite orders not to. Hypnosis may focus memory, but that’s far from programmable robots and creates counterintelligence dangers.

You can condemn an operation yet admire its mechanics—the pager operation, for example.

Technically, I thought it was a war crime because civilians and children were hurt. Operationally? Genius. It apparently took years of controlling supply chains across countries to reach intended Hezbollah people. Terrorist hunts are similar: intercepts matter, but human sources, money, luck, surveillance, and someone willing to sell information often matter more.

And torture gets whatever a prisoner thinks will stop the pain, not truth.

One hundred percent. People fabricate, analysts chase garbage, and the threat may already have happened. Kindness, respect, patience, and conversation work. A Jordanian man we thought tied to al-Qaeda checked out through documents and sources: he ran an orphanage and fled bombing. Torture contaminated prosecutions, including major September eleventh cases.

You exposed CIA secrets and condemn torture, but most officers aren’t cartoon villains.

Most are bright, patriotic, hardworking people serving the country. There are awful people, but not everybody. I loved the work: seventy-two countries, Greek terrorism, never knowing what happened overnight. I’m still paranoid—mirrors, careful words, encrypted apps. And I played Angry Birds daily for nine years, until a phone upgrade wrecked my streak.

From secret prisons to Angry Birds and Fashion Week, this has been wildly good. Where can people find you?

My books are on Amazon, with a new one out and another coming. John Kiriakou’s Dead Drop is on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; John Kiriakou’s Briefing Room is on YouTube. Thanks, man. This was fun.

I appreciate you, man. Until next time, goodbye, my beauties.