John Kiriakou, a former CIA case officer who became the first agency official to publicly confirm the use of waterboarding, discusses the reality of intelligence work, the institutional power of the deep state, the abuse of classification, mass surveillance, torture, foreign infiltration, and legendary operations — arguing that the CIA often operates beyond democratic control while most of its officers are patriotic professionals.
Why Kiriakou’s Credibility Matters
Kiriakou acknowledges the skepticism toward ex-CIA officers but points to a long track record of truth-telling; he cannot force belief but invites judgment based on his public record.
The Pardon That Won’t Come
Kiriakou sought a presidential pardon from Trump and has strong support from Trump’s inner circle, but a cabinet member told him it will not happen because the CIA institutionally opposes it — fearing a pardon would encourage other whistleblowers to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality.
Edward Snowden is the only person more persona non grata; historically, Philip Agee — who published the names of 1,200 undercover officers — held that spot.
The Deep State Is Real and Runs the Show
The president is not the definitive authority over the CIA; a permanent bureaucracy of career officials who serve 25–35 years simply ignores presidential orders they dislike, saying “Yes, Mr. President” and then doing nothing.
Congressional oversight is structurally impossible: a staff of 40–50 cannot oversee an agency of 20,000–40,000, so oversight relies on self-reporting — which is routinely ignored.
Kiriakou recounts a station chief instructing him not to report a lost source to Congress because “Congress has enough to worry about,” illustrating routine non-compliance.
The real power sits one layer below political appointees — career bureaucrats who make foreign policy and intelligence policy run day to day and have a vested interest in the status quo.
New presidents with no foreign policy experience are especially vulnerable: the PDB briefing seduces them with “cool things we’re doing all over the world,” effectively recruiting them into the system.
How CIA Classification Works — and How It’s Abused
Classification levels: Unclassified → Sensitive But Unclassified (internal memos) → Confidential (embarrassing if exposed) → Secret (serious damage) → Top Secret (grave damage) → dozens of compartments above Top Secret (e.g., TS/SCI/SITK/Gamma).
Compartments like TALENT, KEYHOLE, GAMMA, and ephemeral codewords (e.g., “ZARF,” “JELLY JAR”) restrict access even among cleared personnel; codewords are computer-generated and change per operation.
DARPA projects represent the highest classification; Kiriakou never met a CIA officer with access, and the president likely only learns of them if he asks.
The president can declassify anything with a stroke of a pen, but classification is abused: a Bush-era classification czar turned activist estimates 75% of classified documents should not be classified — they are politically inconvenient, personally revealing, or embarrassing.
Authorized leaks happen daily from the White House and Pentagon for political purposes, technically violating the Espionage Act but never prosecuted.
The CIA’s Most Secret Operations
DARPA works on technology “you and I see only in science fiction movies”; many UFO sightings may be experimental DARPA or Chinese equivalents.
The CIA invested in tech startups after 9/11 via a congressional waiver — unprecedented for a government agency — and was the first investor in Palantir, which now holds government security contracts worldwide (e.g., Sweden) and likely feeds all data to NSA and CIA.
Big Tech Has Become an Intelligence Arm
Private data and media companies (Oracle/TikTok, Paramount/CBS, Palantir) already rival or exceed intelligence agencies in power; Oracle’s name originates from a CIA project its founders worked on.
The CIA-Palantir relationship exemplifies the fusion: Palantir’s global government contracts mean “literally everything is going to NSA and CIA.”
Mass Surveillance of Americans Is Routine and Illegal
Both NSA and CIA are chartered to not collect on Americans, yet both do so daily.
Post-9/11, the FBI no longer needs a warrant; a National Security Letter compels service providers to hand over all data and gags them from disclosing the request — the target never knows they are investigated.
Vault 7 (2017 WikiLeaks release by CIA engineer Joshua Schulte) revealed CIA capabilities: remote car hacking, turning smart TV speakers into microphones while the TV appears off, hacking allied classified systems and leaving false-flag code in Cyrillic or Farsi.
A 2023 survey found 30% of Gen Z favors government surveillance cameras in every home — a product of “informational nihilism” from growing up trading data for services.
Kiriakou warns that conceding civil liberties to the government is a slippery slope; the “nothing to hide” argument was first publicly posed by Goebbels in 1933.
China Is the Long-Term Strategic Threat
China does not invade; it purchases, co-opts, and builds infrastructure (ports, airports, factories) worldwide while the U.S. spends $1–1.5 trillion annually on defense — more than the next eight countries combined — much of it wasted on 210 bases in 144 countries and inefficient systems like the F-35.
China’s economic power buys friends, isolates the U.S., and frees cash for technology development; its end goal is containment and isolation of the U.S., hoping for internal collapse (U.S. debt now exceeds $40 trillion; interest payments are the #2 budget item).
Simultaneously, China runs aggressive espionage: a deep-cover cell in NYC threatened dissidents’ relatives in China; they recruit Capitol Hill staffers, FBI agents, and infiltrate hard-science PhD programs.
Foreign Spies Inside the US Government
The greatest immediate infiltration threat is Israel, operating covertly: 187 Israeli intelligence operatives were identified infiltrating U.S. defense contractors 35 years ago; three weeks before this interview, the DIA director warned all officers of ramped-up Israeli infiltration attempts.
The asset acquisition cycle: Spot → Assess → Develop → Recruit. Vulnerabilities exploited include debt, family illness, children’s education — rarely ideology.
Almost no foreign agents enter U.S. service as sleepers from the start (unlike the Cambridge Five in the UK); they are turned after placement.
Kim Philby (KGB, MI6 chief of counterintelligence) was recruited at Cambridge as an overt communist; his best friend was CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. Philby fled to Moscow in a coffin after a KGB source exposed him; his half-brother Abdullah Philby became a Saudi citizen via their father, the king’s physician.
Carlos the Jackal (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez) was caught when legendary CIA contractor Billy Waugh spotted him in a Khartoum vegetable market, staged a fight to photograph him, then broke into his house, put ground glass in his toothpaste, recruited his dentist, and rendered him to France via dental sedation.
Legendary Intelligence Operations from History
Juan Pujol García (Garbo): Failed chicken farmer rejected by British intelligence, volunteered to spy for Nazis, invented a 27-agent network from Lisbon using newspapers and imagination, became Germany’s most trusted agent, then flipped to Britain — central to Operation Fortitude (D-Day deception). Decorated by both sides.
Adolf Eichmann: Mossad kidnapped him from Argentina in the early 1960s without diplomatic relations, flew him to Israel for a televised trial in his Nazi uniform; he was hanged.
Operation Grim Beeper (pager attack on Hezbollah): A decade-long supply-chain operation across half a dozen countries to embed explosives in pagers delivered to Hezbollah operatives — “an act of genius” that intelligence services will study for years, regardless of ethical debate.
Mir Aimal Kansi hunt (1993 CIA headquarters shooting): Kansi killed two CIA officers at the gate, fled to Pakistan. CIA developed wild ideas (renting an Ottoman fort, fake radio station), narrowed via intercepts and HUMINT, recruited an agent who lured Kansi out; FBI made the arrest but CIA did the work — Time magazine credited the FBI, infuriating CIA officers a decade later.
The Pager Operation: A Masterpiece of Supply-Chain Subversion
Took ~10 years, control of a dozen companies across six countries, ground personnel to distribute pagers to targets — surgically precise compared to blowing up apartment blocks. Kiriakou calls it “incredible” and “brilliant” despite civilian casualties.
Legal Kidnapping: Rendition and Extraordinary Rendition
After DEA agent Kiki Camarena’s 1980s murder by a Mexican cartel, Congress passed a law making it legal for the U.S. to kidnap foreign nationals extrajudicially and bring them to the U.S. for trial — violating other nations’ laws but not U.S. law.
Rendition: Grab a foreign national in a third country, send them home (e.g., Egyptian in Pakistan → Egypt).
Extraordinary rendition: Grab them, send them to a third country (Syria, Morocco, Algeria) for torture until death, receive a transcript — “nasty.”
Host countries cooperate because intelligence is a cash business; Pakistan built a new ISI headquarters with bounty money from Abu Zubaydah ($10M) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ($25M); local officers barter for night-vision goggles, guns, office carpeting, refrigerators.
9/11, the Bojinka Plot, and the Missed Warnings
9/11 evolved from the 1996 Bojinka plot (Manila): Ramzi Yousef (“Mukhtar”) planned to hijack 14 747s into U.S. West Coast buildings; his cleaning lady found plans, alerted police, who called Philippine intel, who called CIA.
After capturing Abu Zubaydah, interrogator Ali Soufan (FBI) learned “Mukhtar” was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — unknown to U.S. databases until the FBI discovered he attended high school in North Carolina and self-radicalized.
MK Ultra, Brainwashing, and the Limits of Coercion
CIA panicked over a false report of KGB remote brainwashing (actually a Chinese program) and launched MK Ultra (1952–1975): dosed employees and unwitting civilians with LSD, pumped germs into San Francisco air, spiked a French village bakery’s flour — causing mass psychotic episodes.
MK Ultra was a “complete and utter failure”: damaging, lethal, and produced zero usable results.
CIA Director destroyed 85% of MK Ultra documents after Church Committee ordered preservation; only 15% survived.
Kiriakou believes brainwashing is theoretically possible with modern tech/substances but remains unproven.
Hypnosis as an Operational Tool
Kiriakou witnessed a hypnosis session on a Greek walk-in who witnessed the assassination of British defense attaché Stephen Saunders. Under hypnosis, the source held his arm rigid for 4.5 hours without strain, recalled the van’s license plate (a stolen police plate), and provided actionable intel — but later fabricated stories to impress handlers.
Hypnosis can retrieve accurate memory but is unreliable for ongoing use; adversaries could weaponize it in reverse.
Vault 7 and the Total Infiltration of Consumer Tech
Government and private industry work “hand in glove”; surveillance is “completely completely infiltrated” — TVs, phones, cars.
Vault 7 documents (CIA “crown jewels”) are freely available on WikiLeaks; Schulte represented himself at trial and got 40 years without parole.
The Patriot Act as the Ultimate Mass-Persuasion Campaign
The most successful mass behavioral engineering campaign: the Patriot Act convinced Americans to voluntarily surrender civil liberties; complaints focused on airport shoes, not warrantless library records, email, or metadata purchases.
Early CIA covert action (1949 Italian election): $150K to Christian Democrats to rent journalists who placed pro-conservative articles — communists lost.
Most psyops fail: a $150K pirate radio station in Yemen playing jazz with pro-U.S. call-in hosts was “the stupidest fucking idea I’ve ever heard.”
Nestlé spent decades seeding coffee-flavored sweets to Japanese children to create childhood memory imprints; by the time they were adults, coffee consumption hit record highs — “the long view.”
Torture Doesn’t Work — and It’s Illegal
Torture yields false confessions: victims say anything to stop pain (John McCain gave Green Bay Packers’ offensive line as his unit names).
Analysts then spend months separating wheat from chaff; by then, the threat has executed.
Legal framework: Federal Torture Act (1946), UN Convention Against Torture (U.S. authored), 1945 execution of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Americans, 1968 court-martial of U.S. soldier for waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner (20 years Leavenworth). The law never changed; the U.S. changed.
“Taking the gloves off” after 9/11 should have meant lethal force against clear-and-present dangers (bin Laden, Zawahiri, KSM) — not torture of captives who then deserve constitutional rights and trial.
The Most Shocking Interrogation Tactics Used By the CIA
Waterboarding: Strapped to angled board, cloth over face, water poured — induces drowning; Abu Zubaydah’s heart stopped, revived to torture again.
Cold cell: Naked, chained to ceiling eyebolt, cell chilled to 50°F, bucket of ice water thrown hourly — killed prisoners; never approved by DOJ.
Sleep deprivation: DOJ authorized 12 days; APA studies show mental collapse at day 7, organ failure at day 9; industrial lights, 11-volume music loops (BG’s 24/7) — unsurvivable.
Unauthorized techniques: Cockroaches in a coffin for Abu Zubaydah (bug phobia); “walling” — slamming into concrete walls without the approved plywood/towel safeguard, causing traumatic brain injuries.
Consequence: Guantanamo military judge recently threw out KSM’s and two co-defendants’ confessions due to CIA torture — no trial, no closure for 9/11 families, no executions.
Guantanamo: A Prison Full of Innocent People
Peak population: 770; now ~17 (“worst of the worst”: KSM, Abu Zubaydah, al-Baluchi, KSM’s son-in-law, Ramzi bin al-Shibh).
Most were innocent: villagers turned in by neighbors over personal debts — “you borrow money, don’t want to pay, tell Americans he’s al-Qaeda.”
Uday Hussein: A Case Study in Unchecked Evil
Uday (Saddam’s eldest son) was a true psychopath: raped women snatched from streets, threw them off hotel balconies, crashed weddings to rape brides.
His brothers-in-law (Hussein and Saddam Kamel al-Majid, married to Saddam’s daughters) defected to Jordan out of fear; CIA delegation met them, but they demanded air cover and weapons to overthrow Saddam — talks collapsed, they returned after Saddam’s public forgiveness, Uday shot them both at the border.
Fear-based leadership only works until the oppressed rise up; hereditary succession guarantees eventual incompetence/tyranny (three generations to blow a fortune — Vanderbilt, Rockefeller).
Dominance vs. Prestige in Leadership
Evolutionary sociology: two leadership paths — dominance (fear, authoritarian) and prestige (competence, respect).
War favors dominance; peace requires prestige. Dominant leaders surround themselves with sycophants/enforcers who distribute power (Hitler model); prestige leaders’ compassion becomes a fragility vector.
Lessons known for decades but ignored due to “historical narcissism” — every era believes its challenges are unique (printing press, TV, social media, AI all provoked same “pervert the masses” fears).
Saudi Arabia banned TV until 1970s over “graven images” debate; compromise: 24/7 Quran on two channels.
Personal Reflections: Angry Birds, Fashion Week, and Life After the CIA
Kiriakou loved CIA work: 72 countries, kings/presidents/prime ministers, “exciting every single day” — especially Greek terrorism desk.
Paranoia persists 22 years later: scans mirrors for surveillance, uses encrypted apps (assumes backdoors), never drinks during meetings (operational training: pee first, no distractions).
Lie detection: reduced blinking, looking down vs. up when thinking; Whitey Bulger’s brother (MA Senate president) testified before Congress with zero blinking — training video for deception.
Walk-ins: 95% crazy (one claimed Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Cousteau, Frank Sinatra ran 17 November per an angel), 1% intelligence brokers, 2% probes (casing embassy security), 1% genuine — historically the best recruitments (KGB counterintel chief, NK nuclear director).
Best interrogation: respect, kindness, patience. FBI method (cigarettes, apples, letters home) works over weeks/months; CIA torture failed.
First capture in Pakistan: Jordanian who opened an orphanage in 1996, fled Tora Bora bombing — everything he said verified; he told Kiriakou, “I’m your prisoner. It doesn’t help me to lie.”
Mohamedou Slahi (Mauritanian, The Mauritanian): 14 years in Guantanamo, innocent, now married with kids — “Martin Luther King of our time.”
The Christa Pike Execution Debacle
Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike (first woman in 200 years) via pentobarbital; she survived two doses (7:41 AM, second at ~7:49 AM after curtain closed/reopened), remains on ventilator.
First person in modern U.S. history to survive after drugs were administered (previous seven survived only because IV access failed).
Possible causes: IV in tissue not vein (intramuscular), drug degradation, Pike’s physiology.
Lethal injection causes severe pain masked by paralysis; Malcolm Gladwell argues no humane execution method exists — “bring back the guillotine” (instant, painless).
Where to Find John Kiriakou
Books on Amazon (new release weeks prior, another due in 10 days including How to Live Off the Grid).
John Kiriakou’s Dead Drop on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
