Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - CIA Whistleblower Arrested After Exposing This | John Kiriakou

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, recounts his path into covert operations, his role in counterterrorism after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and the events that ultimately led to his arrest and prison sentence after exposing controversial government practices.⁣ ⁣ John's links - ⁣ https://x.com/JohnKiriakou⁣ https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakou/⁣ Check out his books here - https://www.amazon.com/stores/John-Kiriakou/author/B002TPZIVA?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=CEgD3&content-id=amzn1.sym.7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pd_rd_wg=8xPI9&pd_rd_r=563f1981-08ea-4d0c-944e-88187ad15976&ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at https://RocketMoney.com/COX⁣ ⁣ Go to GoodRanchers.com and use code INSIDE to get free meat for life, plus $25 off your first order.⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS: ⁣ 3:00 - Unexpected Recruitment into the CIA⁣ 5:00 - Early Spy Operations & Double Agent Encounters⁣ 9:30 - Life as a Counterterrorism Officer Abroad⁣ 17:00 - High-Risk Double Agent Mission Turns Deadly⁣ 23:00 - Capture of Terrorist Operative & Weapons Cache⁣ 31:45 - Inside the CIA on the September 2001 attacks⁣ 37:30 - Immediate Aftermath & Call to War⁣ 41:00 - Deployment to Pakistan & Hunting Terrorists⁣ 48:30 - The Torture Program Revelation⁣ 1:00:30 - Arrest, Charges & Facing Decades in Prison⁣ 1:04:30 - Sentencing & Reality of Federal Prison⁣ 1:07:30 - Surviving Prison Using CIA Tactics⁣ 1:14:00 - Manipulation, Power & Prison Psychology⁣ 1:28:00 - Life After Prison & Rebuilding a Career Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And teams of FBI agents were following me. I get a call from and she said, he was just ordered to shoot you in the next meeting. Well, I was working part-time at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. At the time, it was the biggest union within the AFL-CIO. And I worked for this guy who I did not like or respect at all. He was a, he was a, he was a, he was a, bully and just an all-around asshole. So in grad school, I'm taking this class called the psychology of leadership with an eminent psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Post. And Dr. Post gave us an assignment where we had to shadow our bosses for a week and then write a psychological profile of our bosses. So I'm working for this asshole at the union. And I'm shadowing him for

that week. And on Wednesday, and he knew this was happening. Yeah, yeah. He didn't know that I was doing it for a psychological evaluation. Oh, okay. I told him I was doing it for a paper. Right. Because I didn't want him to, you know, freak out or yeah, it was true. True or misleading. That's right. So on Wednesday at the midpoint in the week, we got into an argument, a bad argument. And I called him a racist, which he was. And he got so mad. His face got all red and he bawled up his fists and he set a stance. And I remember specifically thinking, damn it, I went too far this time. All right. So I put up my hands to, you know, protect myself from the inevitable blow.

And he goes, my penis is bigger than yours. And I said, what? And he goes, my penis is bigger than yours. And I said, you're nuts. And I quit. And I walked out. I went back to my apartment, wrote my paper. And it wasn't just, you know, John recounting a story.

Right. This was like a serious academic paper with multiple citations, and I'm using, you know, the DSM. It ends with my penis is bigger than you. And I said he's a sociopathic and possibly violent tendencies. That was the bottom line. Passing the paper. You didn't put the... I told the whole story.

Okay. Oh, yeah. I told the whole story. I tried to make it as clinical as I could, but I told the story. So a week later, I get the paper back from Dr. Post, and he gave me an A. And in the margin, he wrote this long thing. He said, if you have not already done so, I urge you to quit this job. Please see me after class.

So I went up to him after class. I said, Dr. Post, you wanted to see me? And he says, come down to my office. We were on like the sixth floor. And I think his office was on like the third floor. So I go down there and he says, close the door. So I close the door. and he said, listen, I'm not really a professor here.

I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here. And I'm looking for people who might fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a CIA officer? The truth was, I was getting married in six weeks, and I had no job. I had no prospects for a job. And I wanted to see the world, and I wanted to go into public service. and I said, sure.

Why not? And one thing led to the other, to the other to the other, and I joined the CIA. Did you also get married? I got married. Okay. All right. My wife absolutely hated that I was at the CIA. Why?

She was a ballet teacher. And, you know, like I'd come home from work and she would say, how's your day? I'd say, great. Would you do? Nothing. Who would you talk to? Nobody. And then I'd come home sometimes, like, wearing a disguise.

She screamed and picked up the phone and called 911 one time because I didn't have time to change out of my disguise. Right. And she thought I was just, you know, a burglar that was going to do something to her. Right. So that didn't work out. That marriage? That marriage. I ended up going overseas.

I switched from analysis to counterterrorism operations halfway through my career. and she hated that I was even just in the CIA, even though it was just analysis. So when I switched to counterterrorism ops, and, you know, there are multiple guns involved and crazy training and then we go overseas, it just wasn't, I got to call one night at 11 o'clock at night, and this guy says to me,

he didn't literally say this. I can't tell you what he says. said, but what he said was akin to the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains. And I'm like, maers eat oats and dozy oats and little lambsied ivy. And we both hung up. And I said, I got to go. She goes, what do you mean you got to go? It's 11 o'clock at night. I said, I got to go. So that triggered a three-hour surveillance detection route, which then led me to a meeting in the parking lot of a closed business from 2 to 4 a.m. And then another two-hour surveillance detection route back home so that I could take a shower,

shave, get dressed, and go do my day job at the American Embassy. Well, part of that meeting was me sitting in a garbage dumpster waiting for another guy to drive by and throw a bag of documents in. So I got home at 6 a.m. And she's like, what's her name? Oh, my God. Mm-hmm. And I said to her, do I smell like I've been a woman with a woman?

All right. Seriously? I said, you got to stop, Joanne. You got to stop. I was working. You know I was working. Yeah, well, we'll see about that, you know. And we ended up getting divorced.

I don't know, 18 months later, I guess it was. where were you living at that at that time? Athens. Okay. The other thing is I thought you were, so you said you weren't an analyst at first. For how many years were you an analyst? Seven and a half years. Oh, geez, that's a huge.

That was a huge jump. So seven and a half years and then you moved and, okay. I was going nuts with the boredom. Right. It's Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, 24 hours a day, Iraq. And, you know, Bill Clinton was president at the time. And I'm like, well, clearly this administration's not serious. about Iraq. Right. Right. I got to do something different. Otherwise, I'm going to be here

after 30 years still talking about Iraq. So there's an internal classified job board in the CIA computer system and this job popped up. And it was for a counterterrorism operations officer in Athens. And it said that the successful candidate will speak either Greek or Arabic. And as it turned out, I was the only person in the entire CIA that spoke both Greek and Arabic. So I went down to the guy that was in charge of hiring, a recently returned, like, very senior station chief. And I introduced myself. And I said, listen, I don't have any operational experience whatsoever, nothing.

But I'm fluent in both Greek and Arabic. And he says, you've got to be kidding me. I said, no, seriously. I saw the listing. and he said, okay, listen, I want you to take a couple of operational tests, which I aced. But he said, it is a lot easier and a lot cheaper for me to take a linguist and teach him operations than to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic. Yeah, I'm sure.

So they gave me the job. I went through the training. It was something called the operations course accelerated because I didn't need what they called at the time CIA 101. this is what this office does. This is what this other office does. I had already been in for seven and a half years. I knew what all the offices did. So I went straight to the meat of the operational training.

And it's a lot of weapons and driving and explosives. And then the sort of day-to-day job of recruiting spies to steal secrets. I'm still focused on the fact that you were the only person out of the CIA that spoke both language. which is like, like, you would think, you would think, you know, and I understand after 9-11, that's the key right there. There was a huge shift where they kind of sat back and they said, all of our people look the same. They all have, like, we are not diversified enough to infiltrate or necessarily even to understand these other cultures. We're just monitoring right now, but we're not really able to do it properly because we're not diversified enough.

You know, it's all six-foot tall, blonde hair, blue-eyed. Exactly. Yeah, men with, you know, with degrees and, you know, with, with law degrees or whatever. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, that's an amazing. That's, that's interesting. And I understand that after that, they went and. After 9-11, literally everything changed.

So before 9-11, it was about 200 applicants for every one job. After 9-11, it became and has stayed as about 2,500 applicants for every one job. But before 9-11, if you had a language, yeah, good on you. If it was high school, French, German, Italian, Spanish, that's fine. After 9-11, very specifically, Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Punjabi, Tajik, Uzbek, Korean, Mandarin, and Russian. You got to have something. Because the other 2499 people, they're going to ask if they have something. You get a divorce.

Do you come back to the States after that? It came back to the States after that and started dating a senior CIA officer and traveled a lot operationally, even before 9-11. My expertise is the Middle East. And so I spent most of my career in the Middle East and was doing things like training Middle Eastern intelligence services in counterterrorism operations. and then I'd go back to Athens to, you know, do something, break into a house and plan a bug or whatever. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I was just seems like a lot of fun. Listen, when I was in Pakistan after 9-11, I worked so hard.

I was chief of operations in Pakistan after 9-11. And I was there for, I don't know, six, seven months. And I'm going to go back for a couple of months before returning to Pakistan. for three more months. So I hadn't been on a vacation in years. And my then-girlfriend, she later became my fiancé and then my wife. We had planned this trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'd never been. Everybody says it's so beautiful and great art scene and great restaurants. We want to go to Santa Fe. So it's like four hours before I leave for the airport. And I get this cable. And it says, don't come home. instead change your flight and go to this other country

because we want you to lead a team you're going to break into this guy's house and plant cameras all over I was like fuck so I called her and I said listen I am so sorry and she said no no she's got to understand she does a deal yeah I saw the cable go do your break in we'll go we'll go to Santa Fe some other time and so I went I did the break in and then I went back to Pakistan again for three more months and

never got the vacation never got the vacation what are you going to do I'm curious can you go into any detail about I break into the house and I bug this house with cameras like yeah I'll tell you one funny thing about that

so I meet up with with liaison that country's intelligence service it's a country of islands. So we have to take a boat to get to the island where this guy's, this guy was like a serious terrorism support guy, a money guy. Right. I used to avoid looking at my bank account, not because I didn't care, but because I knew there were stuff in there that I didn't understand.

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And so we get to this house. And the locks and picks guy says, this is one of these German security doors. He goes, this can't take me two weeks to get into this thing. You know, they've got these steel bolts that come out into the, you know, out of the door, into the door jam. It's a steel line. door. He's, we can't, we can't break into this. I was like, doggone it. I flew halfway around the world for this. So we're all standing there like, now what are we going to do? Like, we've been

ordered to do this. You reach over and turn the handle? I walked around the back of the house and there's a $5 Yale lock on the back door. It's like, why would people do something like that? So I come around and go, guys, you got to see the back door. We go back there, they're like, you got to be kidding. So bloop. We're in. We did our thing. Locked it back up. It reminds me of like a police officer's job.

Like everybody thinks it's so cool and exciting and everything. It's like, no, no, it's 99% paperwork and pure boredom. And then it's 1% of absolute adrenaline-filled excitement. And then it's right back to, you know, for every hour of excitement, there's 12 hours or 15 hours of paperwork. Yeah, it's like hurry up and wait. Right. You know? But then when you look.

back over your career of 20 years, you can sit down for four hours straight and tell one amazing story after amazing story. And people are like, my God, you lived a life. You're like this. But all those stories were over the course of 15 years. Sounds great. You know, it's like when you talk about flipping houses in real estate, you're like, yeah, yeah, I bought the house for $40,000.

I put $10,000 in. I sold it for $200,000. You're like, oh, my God. I got to get a piece of that. Yeah, that was six months. I didn't tell you about the guy that fell off the roof. I didn't tell you about three air conditioners getting stolen. and the kids throwing rocks through the windows.

You know, it sounds great. Lots of things sound great. Yeah. So what happens at that time? Has 9-11 happened yet? No, so I get back from Athens in August of 2000. I start training these Middle Eastern services. And then I'm handling a couple of sensitive cases.

I got a call in the spring of 2001. From a buddy of mine who was a station chief in the Middle East, and he says to me, hey, could you do me a favor? And I said, of course. He goes, we've recruited a double agent who doesn't know that we know he's a double agent, working for one of our greatest enemies on the planet. he's been instructed to insist that he meets only with me, the chief.

And I said, okay. And he says, it's too dangerous for me to meet this guy. I have to live here. Can you come out here every month and pretend to be me and handle this guy? I said, oh, that sounds like fun. I said, I'm bored. They don't know what he looks like?

No, they don't know what he looks like. They were trying to draw him out. Like, they knew that there's a station chief, a CIA station chief somewhere in the embassy, they don't know who among these, you know, 20 people is the station chief. So. Did he want you to wear a t-shirt that had a big, a big target? I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to. That doesn't sound exciting at all.

Ah, I know. It's exciting. I was an adrenaline junkie. I, you know, sitting in a cubicle in headquarters like this, it's just, it's not for me. Yeah. So, I'll pick that over. Can you please pretend to be? be someone that these guys definitely are trying to kill and want to kill?

So I fly out. I meet with a guy and I said to him in our very first meeting, I said, listen, the fact that we're meeting is dangerous. Not for me. If we get caught, I'm going to get thrown out. And I don't care. If you get caught, you're going to get arrested because you're working for the Americans. So we need to go over something called a surveillance detection route.

And I explained to him what it was. You drive here. You make a stop. You buy an apple. You go over here and you buy a newspaper. You go over there and pick up your dry cleaning. So I laid out a map of the city and I gave him a sample of, you know, what you do. So I said, always leave two hours before our meeting.

Drive around. Come to the meeting exactly on time. When you walk into the lobby, call me and I'll tell you what floor to come up to. And then you come up to that floor. I'd give him a big bear hug to just pat him down, really, for weapons. and then I'd say wait here five minutes and then come up to room, you know, 605, whatever. That way, if he brought people with him to kill me, you know, I at least have a fighting chance in the elevator lobby. So we did this.

We had our first meeting and I said, now remember, you do a surveillance detection route back to your house. Okay? Okay, okay. Gave him an assignment. Rent a post office box. In case we lose contact, you can leave a message in the post office box. I'm going to check it twice a week, and then that'll trigger the emergency meeting. Okay.

He goes directly from the hotel to the hostel embassy and says, I just met the station chief. This is his description. So. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move.

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anywhere that I was in the world, but you just dial it as a local number. Now every phone does that, but that back then, and this is 26 years ago, this was a big deal, 25 years ago. So we would set up our next meeting. It's called the Mad Minute. As soon as you walk in, I give you the bear hug, I pat you down, and I said, were you followed here? No.

Have you had any problems since I met you last? No. Our next meeting is going to be a month from tonight. at the Marriott. Okay, just in case somebody bust in the door and, you know, grabs you and that way, at least you've got the bona fides established. So the next month I fly out. Same thing.

The month after that, I fly out. And he's given me bullshit information. So what I would normally do is finish the meeting. And he didn't know we had like four security guys in the lobby. We had a guy down at the end of the hall. Everybody's armed. I'm armed. And he's just going straight to that hostile embassy and reporting back on what we said or what I said in the meeting.

So I go home and I get a call from NSA. And the woman says, are you handling this double agent case out in the Middle East? And I said, yeah. And she said, I got to tell you, he was just ordered to shoot you in the next meeting. I said, oh, please, this guy's afraid of his shadow. He's not going to shoot me. Then my boss comes busting out of his office. Oh, my God, I just got a call from NSA.

I said, I know, I know. They called me too. He said, we have to abort the operation. I said, absolutely not. I said, Doug, this guy is 25 years older than I am. He's 50 pounds overweight. He's afraid of his own shadow. He's not going to kill me in the next meeting.

So I said, just hear me out. I have a couple of ideas. He convenes this panel. It's like the director of counterterrorism, the deputy director for operations, a whole bunch of people. I said, please, just listen to my idea. Let's do the next meeting at the Marriott. Because every Marriott in the world looks exactly the same.

And so you walk into a Marriott room and the bathroom is right there. on the right or the left. We'll get in a joining room so our liaison counterparts and our security guys can be in the next room. I'm going to prop the door open. He's going to call me from the lobby,

and I'm going to say, instead of coming up to the, you know, sixth floor, I'm going to say, just come straight into room 425. I'll prop it open. You know, those latches. I'll just open the latch so that the door's propped open.

He's going to knock on the door. I say, come in. He comes in. I grab him. You guys bust in from the, the next room and we take him. They're like, well, okay, but only if you wear a bulletproof vest. I said, fine. So I fly back out to the Middle East and sure enough, our security guys are in the lobby. Well, the bad guys also had their security guys in the lobby. So it's four of our guys, four of their

guys. They're all giving each other the stink guy. Everybody's armed. Like, who are all these people? The Marriott people are oblivious. So he calls as he's walking in the embassy, I mean into the lobby. And I said, come on up to room 425. So our security guys told me he left his house. He went straight to the hostile embassy and straight from the hostile embassy to the Marriott.

So I said, okay, he's loaded for bear. I'm ready to go. probably picked up the weapon. Uh-huh. Exactly. So he comes up to the room. He knocks on the door. I said, come in.

He comes in. I come out of the bathroom. I grab him, like in a bear hug, and I just slam him down onto the ground. And he's like, Allah, Allah, Akbar. So I'm sitting on him.

Our guys and the liaison guys bust in from the next room. I wrestled the gun out of his hand. He was so scared. He never even actually got a grip on it. He was fumbling trying to get it out of his waistband. But I got the gun from him. And I'm sitting on his chest.

I have his arms pinned on the ground. And I said to him, Do you really think I'm so fucking stupid that I didn't know that you came here to kill me today? Allaha Akbar. I said, do you think I'm such a fucking amateur that I didn't know from the very beginning that you were at double.

agent. I said, I'm offended. I did. He's screaming, he's swearing. So one of the dirty little secrets of hotels is people die in them every day, right? So there's a standard operating procedure for when people die. You call an ambulance, they go to the back to the loading dock, you bring the gurney up to the room, you cover the body up in a sheet, you take it down the service elevator. So we gave him up. Quick shot of Demerol, knocked him out, put him on a gurney,

covered him up like he was dead, took him down the service elevator, put him in an ambulance, and took him to the intelligence service headquarters. His guys are still sitting in the lobby. Yeah, and they start talking to each other. Like, where is he? What's going on?

Why has this taken so long? We haven't heard any shots. Something went wrong. Do you think he's flipped? Do you think he's dead? Did they kill him? Are they on to him? We were already.

you know, gone from the hotel. Finally, our security guys just leave. No reason to hang out there. So when he wakes up like four hours later, he's tied to a chair in the intelligence service headquarters. And I said, look, this can be easy or it can be terrible. It's up to you. Where are the weapons?

That's all I want to know. he was the founder of a terrorist group in that country that was causing the government there some significant problems we needed to nip this shit in a bud i said where are the where are the weapons he goes fuck you i said again this can be easy or it can be terrible yeah that was the wrong answer where are the weapons i fuck your mother he says i'm like okay my liaison counterparts just start wailing on him. And then they finish. Where are the weapons?

He's all like, I fuck your sister. I'm like, okay. So. Yeah, I don't get that. In the end, you're going to talk. You can talk. You can talk without, you can miss some teeth and have some

broken bones and talk. Or you can be completely intact and have a hamburger and talk. We can talk over hamburgers or we can talk while you're sitting blood out. Bring a cup of coffee. We can sit like gentlemen. Nobody doesn't not talk. Exactly.

So I said to my counterparts, I said, listen, why don't we have a locks and picks team on standby. Let's just go into his house and just see if the weapons are in there. They said, can't do it. He's got a maid. She never leaves the house. She's there now. I said, okay, then let's say, let's say we declare a gas leak in the neighborhood. and we evacuate everybody.

He lived in a little cul-de-sac with six houses. We evacuate everybody in the cul-de-sac. They said, can't do that. We don't have natural gas lines here. We have propane. We use propane. I'm like, my God, you guys, do I have to think of everything? Bring an 18-wheeler into the cul-de-sac, which we did.

I turned this giant wheel. The propane gushes onto the ground. I close the giant wheel. We call the equivalent of 911. I think it was 1-1-5. and the fire department comes to hose down the propane, and they declare an environmental emergency, and they evacuate everybody from the houses.

I'm like, seriously, was that that hard? So we go into the house, and he's got this safe, like a six-foot high, like a gun safe kind of thing, but deeper. So the locks and picks guys, they have their stethoscopes and they're listening. We're all being very quiet, and they open the safe, and it's empty.

except for one thing, there was a hand-drawn map. And I'm not exaggerating when I tell you, there's an X on the map, and it says, the weapons are here with an arrow. I'm like, you got to be kidding. So we all get in these two land rovers,

and we start driving out into the desert. So it's like, you know, you go 1,500 meters, and then you make a left at the palm tree, And then you go another 500 meters and you make a right at the giant rock. This is a treasure map, right? Yeah, it was a treasure map. So we go out there and we find a bunker, like a dugout bunker with every weapon, every explosive and landmine and bullet that this entire terrorist group had.

We completely put them out of business. the group doesn't exist anymore. And then, I don't know, five years ago or so, I ran into one of the guys that was on my team at the mall in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. And I'm like, whatever happened to that dude, we took down? I was just wondering what happened to the guy. There comes a point in life when you realize you need to be more intentional about what you're eating every day. That's actually why I started using good ranchers.

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Yeah. I was going to say, all right. I told him, this can be easy or it can be terrible. He wanted terrible. So here we are 25 years later, and he's still in prison. Well, then 9-11 hits. Oh, okay. I was going to say.

I go back. I forgot the question was 9-11. Yeah. So then 9-11? I go back. I'm back for, I don't know, a few months. And 9-11 hit at that time. Where were you when 9-11?

I was at headquarters. Funny thing, I say this all the time. That morning, Koffer Black, who was the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and I had a meeting scheduled with Condoleezza Rice. She was the National Security Advisor. It was for the silliest reason. There's this little-known government agency called the GPO, the government printing office.

And they were going to print a volume of declassified cables called Foreign Policy of the United States, 1949 to 1967, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus. Literally nobody on Earth is going to read this there. Right. Right. But three of the declassified cables contained the names of CIA sources from the 50s, who happened to be still alive at the time. We have a law in this country

that if a CIA source's name is outed, we have to offer them American citizenship to protect them. Now, they're all going to say no, they're like a hundred years old. Yeah. And it doesn't matter anymore. But we thought it would be easier and cheaper to go to Connie Rice and ask her

to remove the three cables from this giant volume that nobody's ever going to read, nobody's ever going to miss them, nobody's ever going to know. So I got a call at my desk from the driver. Can you just redact it? No. No, they have to be declassified.

Okay. There's a mandatory declassification law. No, I'm saying you can't just redact their names? Well, it's already been printed. Oh, okay. Yeah. So the driver calls and says, I'm at the west entrance ready to take you to the White House.

So I go up to Kover's office. And those were the, days before you could watch TV on your computer. So his secretary had a little teeny tiny, like four-inch screen TV on her desk. And the World Trade Center's on fire. I said, what happened in World Trade Center? And she said, plane hit it. And I go, you know, that happened once before. In 1931, a bomber flew into the Empire State Building. But it was like really foggy and it was heavily raining that day. It's so crystal clear today.

How can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center? And then as soon as I said it, the second plane hit. And then she turns to me and she says, did you see that or did I imagine it? And then all hell broke loose from then. So you were in the White House when 9-11 happened? I was still at the CIA. We hadn't gotten into the car yet, but I'll tell you what. Everybody ran up to the front.

The office is gigantic. It holds a couple of hundred people. So there are private offices all the way around the perimeter and then just this mass of cubicles. We called it a cubicle farm. So there were so many people we had to actually name the aisles. There was like Bin Laden Boulevard, Hesbala Highway, you know, so you could say, oh, I work just off the intersection of, you know, whatever and whatever.

So hundreds of people were all just standing there in silence watching. There were TVs hanging down from the ceiling. Like one was on CNN, one was on BBC, one was on Canal Plus, one was on the Russian channel, the Chinese channel, and they're all showing exactly the same thing. Kofar stands up on his desk, on the secretary's desk, and silence. And he says, he says, today we're at war. We're all going to have to do our parts. Not all of us are going to come home. If you want to leave now, no one will think less of you.

Nobody budged. Right. So finally one of the cops, CIA has its own police force called the Special Protective Service, SPS. And the cop came and said, everybody evacuate. You got to go. Everybody evacuate. Nobody budged. He came back about 40 minutes later.

If you don't evacuate, you will be arrested, which they actually have the authority to do. So we all evacuated. I was able to get halfway home. I lived seven miles from the agency. By this point, had the Pentagon been hit? Yeah, and the Pentagon was hit. So it's not. Yeah, no, it's clear what's happening.

Yeah, yeah. And we had been predicting it for months, right? And the White House, they just wouldn't listen. It was all China, China, China. It's like, no, it's not China, actually. It's these guys. So I had to abandon my car on the Georgia Washington Parkway and just walk the last three and a half miles to my apartment.

and my girlfriend met me at my place we went up to the roof and watched the Pentagon burn but anyway, I get to the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and I see the deputy national security advisor

crossing the bridge with this massive people he's got no shoes and I was like what the fuck is happening this is the guy that's supposed to be running the government

in this crisis and he ran from the way White House without shoes. Like, this is the situation we're in. Yeah. So we watched the Pentagon burn for a little while, and then we went out and we tried to give blood, but the lines were so long. It's, you know, it's 24-hour line to give blood.

I said to her, this is ridiculous. We got to get back to work. So we walked back to my car, three and a half miles. I drove across the median and turned around and I went back to CIA, and then I stayed there for the next four days. I just slept under my desk. So what were the marching orders at that point? Like, how long did it take them to kind of rally together and say, okay, and were you,

you were 100% sure when it happened? We already knew this is what we've been predicting. This is what happened. This is who's behind it. So this guy standing behind me, he's like, he whispers, this has to be Hasbala, right? And I go, are you retarded? No, it's not Hasbala. Like, do you not read the papers?

Even if you're not reading the classified traffic? Like everybody in America knew this was al-Qaeda. They kept telling us they were going to do it, like goading us into trying to do something to stop them. So it took a good 24 hours before we were able to snap out of it. Funny thing was that my Arabic was excellent. And I kept volunteering. Like every day, volunteering.

You got to send me to Afghanistan. You got to send me to Afghanistan, right? Because I heard this rumor they're putting a team together. You got to send me to Afghanistan. Well, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, this like bona fide American hero named Billy Waugh. Billy lived here in Florida. Billy had 17 Purple Hearts,

which was one short of the record for the United States. Billy and I were doing this cool thing in the Middle East together just the week before 9-11. I just got back to headquarters on September 9th, and then Billy disappears. So, like six weeks later, I see him in the hall. I said, I said, Billy, where are you been? And he goes, been in Afghanistan.

I said, really? What are you doing in Afghanistan? He goes, I've been killing people. What do you think I've been doing? And that's when I finally realized, well, that's why they haven't taken me. They're not interrogating anybody. They don't need translators. They need killers.

Finally, I got so frustrated. I went to the deputy director's office, and I said, he was a friend of mine. I said, listen. This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms.

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and I am not looking back. He's like, will you relax? Okay. All right. Can you go to Pakistan? I said, yes, when? He said tomorrow. I said, yes.

What do you want me to do? I want you to be chief of counterfeit. chairs and mops. I said, okay, I called my girlfriend. I said, I got to go to Pakistan tomorrow. She said, okay, how long? I said, I don't know. Three months, six months, nine months. I don't know. She said, okay, I'll meet you at your place. I'll help you pack. So we met up at my place. I packed a suitcase the next morning. I went into headquarters just to say goodbye because I'm thinking, you know, is this it? I don't know. So I go to say goodbye to everybody, getting big bear hugs.

My boss gives me a hug, and he lends in and he says, kill them all. And I said, really, John? We're already at that point? And he says, kill every one of them. So I went out to the airport. I went up to the United counter. The guy says, where are you going? I said, I put my passport on the counter.

I said, Islamabad, Pakistan. And he looks at me, goes, better thee than me. Right. I said, just hope I come back. And then I went. How long were you, how long were there? Six months. And, um, and what's happening there?

All hell was breaking loose. We were bombing the shit out of Torabora in Afghanistan. And so the bombing was so relentless that literally all of Al-Qaeda was running across the mountains into Pakistan. So my, on my first day, yeah, I arrived at 4 a.m. I had to be at the embassy at 7. I begged the driver, said, please, I'm begging you. Just let me, let me sleep an extra.

hour pick me up at eight so at eight he bicks me up and um i go into the into the embassy to meet my chief and he says here's what i want you to do i want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down a terrorist safe house i said okay so i go back to my office i have a legal pad and i'm like okay so if i'm going to take down a terrorist safe house what would i do and i wrote oh 200 at the top of the paper right i was want it to be dark. I would want everybody to be asleep, my targets to be asleep. And then I thought, I need guns, ammunition, battering rams, bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, ammunition, secure communications, scrambled walkie-talkies. So I go to gauze.com, this police supply house in

Kentucky with my CIA credit card, and I spent $50,000. And a week later, It all arrives in the diplomatic pouch. And I started putting together the teams. I went over to Pakistani liaison, ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service. And I had already gone over there to introduce myself, but we had, you know, equal numbers of CIA, FBI, ISI. And then after the first week, I got a tip that there's this safe house and there's some Al-Qaeda guys in it.

So I said, okay, guys, let's give it a try. See what happens. Oh, 200, we go over there. We bust down the door. Two 18-year-old kids, and they both burst into tears. So we cuff them. One of them asked me if he can call his mom. And I'm like, no, you can't call your mom.

And I said to this FBI friend of mine, I go, this is al-Qaeda. These children, this is, what we're so afraid of. Like this was a revelation for me. So we took them to the safe house, we interrogated them, and then we put them in the Rawhalpindi jail. Raul Pindi's a massive city that's attached to Islamabad. It's the headquarters of the Pakistani military. But those kids are cogs in a wheel. They're just tools. Like they're not running. They're not they're not the person. They're not the puppet master. They're just the puppet.

They're the grunts. Yeah. But then at the same time, in our minds, we had built these guys up into being Superman. They just took down both World Trade Center towers and shut down the Pentagon for all intents and purposes. I just expected a little bit more of a fight. And there was nothing. But that's what you get. You're 18, 19, and you're old.

You're stupid. You don't know anything. You're idealistic. And that's exactly what it was. I mean, that's what our troops are 18, 19, 20, you know, because they don't ask a lot of questions. No, they just do as they're told. Right. So I get a call. You're broke, and this is...

And they're giving you $500 a month. That's a king's ransom. So I get a call from a friendly Arab intelligence service, this Brigadier General. And he says to me, I understand that you're the man when it comes to safe houses. And I said... I've got a vast experience. Yeah. I'm the man.

With a 218-year-old. So he said, I have an address to pass to you. I said, why don't you come over to the embassy? We'll have lunch. So he comes over to the embassy. We sit and have lunch. This guy was one of these, he was not wearing his military uniform,

which struck me as kind of funny. He was wearing a beautiful suit. But where are you? I'm in Islamabad. Does he want to walk around in his suit? I mean, in his uniform? Is he? He's supposed to.

Is he? Yeah, because he's a brigadier general and he's in a military position in his embassy. But how safe is it to do that, though? Well, I mean, you're in the back, so you're in an armored car. You've got a driver. You and the driver both have weapons.

It's as safe as it's going to be in Islamabad, Pakistan. It's not like you're on vacation there or anything. Right. So I realized very quickly, he's afraid. That's why he doesn't want to do this himself. Just give it to the Americans. He's afraid. That's why he's not wearing his uniform.

So I take the address. I say thank you. I call the FBI. I call ISI. We gather for the raid that night. We bust down the door. And this one was serious. This one we caught a member of E.I.J.

Egyptian Islamic jihad. They were the ones that killed Anwar Sadat back in 1981. And they merged with Al Qaeda in like 1995. Iman Azuahidi was the founder. he became bin Laden's deputy. So this one was kind of a big deal. This was a good tip. Right.

And then we did a couple nights where we had two raids in the same night and those were successful. So my boss calls me into the office and he says, he said, you know, we've got these officers all the way up and down the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

And they're just not having success catching these guys as they're taking what we call the rat lines, you know, through the valleys. And they're successfully getting into Pakistan and they're hiding. What do you think we should do? I said, you know, I don't think we need all these guys on the border. I don't think we need anybody on the border because they're not going to catch anybody. And the villagers are hostile. Let's pull everybody off the border.

We'll let al-Qaeda come into the country because we know they're going to make. a mistake, which they always did. They get to Pakistan. They go into their Gmail account, which gives us a physical location. We bust down the door. We grab everybody. You've already had success doing that at this point. Yeah. And so now they're giving us their locations because they won't stay off the phone. So that was successful. And then we got a tip that Abu Zabedo was in the country. We believed Abu Zabedah was the number three at the time. And so we set out too. It's a very long story.

You've heard it a thousand times. He was further down the line, but he was still. He was still a bad guy. Yes. But not the number three in Al Qaeda. But we caught him and then he just went right back to the one-off raids, one, two, three a week. I returned to headquarters in May of 2002. And a colleague in the counterterrorism center approached me when I was in the cafeteria.

And very nonchalantly he said, Do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques? I said, what is that? I never heard that before. He goes, we're going to get rough with these guys. I said, what's that mean? He described these techniques. I said, buddy, that sounds like a torture program.

He goes, it's not a torture program. The Justice Department approved it, and the president signed it. We're going to do it. Are you in or out? I go, you know what, give me an hour. I need to think about this. I went up to the seventh floor of the agency, the executive floor. and there was a very, very, very senior officer up there for whom I had worked in the Middle East 10 years earlier.

And so I knocked on the door, no appointment. I said, I need some advice. I was just asked if I wanted to be trained in these enhanced interrogation techniques. What do you think of that? And he says, first let's call a spade, a spade, this is a torture program. They can call it whatever euphemism they want, but this is a torture program. and torture is a slippery slope. And you know these guys.

He said, they're cowboys. They're going to kill somebody. They're going to beat somebody to death. Then there's going to be a congressional investigation. I was just going to say, yeah, I think you're going to be talking in front of Congress in three years from now. And then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation. And then somebody's going to go to prison. You want to go to prison?

And I said, no, I don't want to go to prison. I say all the time, as it turned out, I was the only one who went to prison. But I went back downstairs. I said, this is a torture program. I want no part of it. So that was when I first started to realize that we took 9-11 so deeply personally that the law meant nothing anymore. You know, if you want to torture people, you and I can agree to disagree, but if you want to torture people, you got to change the law because the law is clear. You can't do that.

Right. So I started thinking, maybe it's time to move on in life. And I stuck it out for another year and a half, a little bit more than a year and a half. And I resigned. And then, you know, even after I resigned, I kept waiting for somebody to go public and say, this is happening. This torture thing is happening. There were rumors everywhere.

All the networks were talking about it. All the NGOs were talking about it. But nobody would actually come out and confirm. it. Finally, in December of 2007, now I've been out of the agency for about three and a half years. Brian Ross calls me from ABC News, and he says that he has a source who said that I tortured Abu Zabeda. I said absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zabeda. Well, he says, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. I didn't know that that was a reporter's trick. I had never spoken to a reporter before.

Right. In the meantime, George W. Bush is looking right into the camera, and he's lying to us. We do not torture, he goes. I'm like, he's a friggin liar. So in the end, I was able to deduce that Brian Ross's source was at the White House and that they were going to try to pin this torture program on me because I was the only one who said no to it, and they were getting outed.

And so I called Brian and I said, I'll give you your interview. And I decided in the days leading up to the interview that whatever he asked me, I was just going to tell the truth and let the cards fall. And boy, did they fall. So the CIA filed a crimes report against me

with the Justice Department saying that I had revealed classified information. The FBI investigated me for a year from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and then closed the case. they sent my attorneys a declination letter declining to prosecute. Nice. Yeah?

That almost never happened. Usually they might drop it, but they don't tell you. They just let you be, exactly, lose a lot of sleep. So my wife and I actually went out that night and celebrated. We were so happy. But you'd married the girlfriend. Yeah, I had married the girlfriend from the agency.

And three weeks later, Barack Obama becomes president. He names John Brennan. first as CIA director, but he couldn't make it through the process. So he becomes the Deputy National Security Advisor. John and I always hated each other. And he's one of the creators of the torture program. He secretly asks Eric Holder, the Attorney General, to secretly reopen the case against me.

I had no idea that for the next three years, my phones were tapped, my emails were being intercepted, and teams of FBI agents were following me everywhere I went. So finally in January of 2012, they arrest me. They charged me with five felonies. Three counts of espionage. One count of making a false statement.

We were never really clear as to exactly what the false statement was supposed to have been. And one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. That was the only person ever charged with that crime. And how did, this is all, this is all statement. from the one interview with with ABC News okay what was the espionage portion like what what did you say that was I said secrets I said that the CIA well was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy and I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself okay is it this is a

death penalty charge okay yeah and that's espionage? Like, I don't understand, but isn't all that? This was what the Obama administration did. Of course, that's not espionage. You know it. I know it. It's not espionage. But they redefined espionage. My case set a precedent. The judge in my case, Judge Liennie Brinkama, said that she was not going to respect precedent set in other federal district courts, that she was going to redefine espionage as, very simply, providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. And my lawyer got up.

Yeah, how do you determine who's not a lot of see it? Who determines what national defense information is? Right. It's never been defined. The law doesn't even mention classified information because the classification system hadn't been invented yet when the law was passed in 1917. So my lawyers got up and said, Your Honor, are you saying that a person can accidentally commit espionage and she said that's exactly what i'm saying and then she says to me mr kiriaku you either

did it or you didn't do it and i think you did it and i think you need to talk about a plea well that's not a good sign at all no not not with a death penalty on the table they offered me 45 years i said i'm not doing 45 minutes so my lawyers are like we're going to fight this we're going to go to trial, we're going to, you know, do this, we're going to do that, we're going to make these motions. We, we blocked off three days for 150 motions. We go into court and she says, let me make this easy for everybody. I'm denying all 150 of these motions, right? And they were to declassify 150 documents that I needed to defend myself. To present a case, yeah. And she goes, plea Mr. Kiriaku.

Like, what kind of fair trial is that? Yeah. She's already determined you're guilty. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we went 10 months like that with this hanging over my head 45 years. And then after 10 months. But you're out on bond. Yeah.

Okay. And are you, and these are paid attorneys from you? Oh, boy, are they? I mean, 11 of them. This is what? This is, are they? Are they taking it on pro bono? Or are you just...

Half of them were. Okay. The Washington Post called my attorneys legal titans. These were the guys who had represented Monica Lewinsky and Aldrich Ames and Attorney General John Mitchell during Watergate. And these guys are giants who are on the front page of the Post and the New York Times all the time. But they've wiped you out. Financially. Wiped.

Yeah. I gave him everything I had and ran up a bill of another $1,150,000. thousand dollars so um 10 months pass with this hanging over my head like an anvil and doj comes back and they said take a plea to an espionage charge 10 years i said absolutely not that was on a monday on wednesday they said eight years and i said i'm not doing it and then on friday they came back and said, five years, we're not going any lower. I said, I'll go to trial. I'll go to trial, and I'll testify on my own behalf,

and I might accidentally talk about some of the hideous crimes against humanity and war crimes that I witnessed in 15 years at the CIA. Then they come back the next week. First, my lead attorney, legendary figure named Plato Cacheras, he's dead now. But he said, you know, I've been an attorney in this city for 52. years. And this is the first time I've seen them come down in their offers. Usually they offer you 10. You say no. The next offer is 15. Then the next offer is 20. I said, why are they coming down in time?

And without missing a beat, he says, because they have a shit case and they know it's shit. And that's why we're going to trial. I'm like, okay, let's go to trial. So they come back and they say, Three and a half years, best and final. Shit, I was thinking five was good. So my wife and I stayed up all night long. Now remember, nobody in American history has ever been charged with the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. So there's no precedent. We stayed up all night.

We found two articles in the Harvard Law Review that talk about this case. They're saying this, I'm not this case, this law. This law is unconstitutional. It should never have been passed. But nobody's been charged with it. So there's nobody to have standing to challenge it in court. Right. But you have to challenge it post-conviction, right?

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Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Thanks. So at 7 o'clock that morning, I emailed the attorneys, and I said, I'm turning it down. I want to go to trial. And Plato, one of the other attorneys emails me back and says, put on a pot of coffee. We're coming to the house. So they arrive at the house. Plato was the first one in.

Plato was a mean old man. And he says to me, he gets right in my face. He goes, you stupid. son of a bitch. Take the fucking deal. I said, you're the one who told me to go to trial. You're the one who said they have a shit case. He goes, I said that just to keep your morale up.

So there were three lead attorneys. The second one, Bob Trout, one of the loveliest men you'll meet. Beautiful suits, southern gentlemen. He pulls me aside. And he says, if you were my own brother, I would have asked. you, I would beg you to take the deal. And then Mark McDougal, he was the head of white-collar defense at Aiken Gumpin-Strauss, the biggest law firm in the world. He says to me, and he's the guy that I liked and respected the most. He says to me, angrily, you know what your problem is?

Your problem is you think this is about justice, and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage. Take the deal. So I said, Mark, if I don't take the deal and I'm convicted, what am I realistically looking at here? He says 12 to 18 years, take the fucking deal. So they called DOJ and they said, 30 months he does 23. And they said, all right. And so instead of 45 years, I got 23 months. And Mark said one other thing. He said, this is the right thing to do. He goes, this could be a blip in your life or it could be the defining event of your life. Oh, yeah. Make it the blip.

Yeah, you get 20 years and you can tell everybody in prison for 20 years, you shouldn't be there. Yeah, exactly. How'd that work out for you? Was that like, I mean, I don't know. There's lots of things that change. I mean, was that binding on the judge or was it all a, that's a great question.

A low-in recommendation. That's a great question. So the recommendation. Because I don't like this judge. No. at all. So they dropped all three of the espionage charges. I hadn't committed espionage. They dropped the false statements charge. I didn't make any false statement. Right. So the IIPA, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the guideline was like just under five years. It was like four years

and four months or something like that. And every national security reporter in America is in the courtroom on the day of my sentencing. So my attorneys negotiated something called an 11C1C plea. An 11C1C plea is an agreement on time between the prosecution and the defense. The agreement is written in stone. So the judge only has the choice of accepting the plea or rejecting the plea and you go to trial and start from scratch. And the trial's going to go for another year then. Yeah. So she says, I have been a judge since 1986. And this is the first time I have ever seen an 11 C1C plea.

She goes, I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. She goes, Mr. Kiriaku, if I could, I would give you 10 years. Well, the truth is, she could. All she had to do was reject the plea. Yeah. But she was performing for the cameras. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So she says, I hereby find you guilty and I sentence you to 30 months in prison, 23 months to be served at the, you know, Bureau of Prisons, whatever of their choice. So my lawyers say, Your Honor, we ask that you send a Mr. Kyriaku, recommend the minimum security work camp at Loretto. And she says, any objection? And DOJ is like that. We don't object. So I have to report February 27th of 2013. I go up there, I go to the camp, I knock on the door, tailed by a documentary film crew and four of my lawyers and my cousin and his son.

And they said, oh, you have to go across the street to the prison. They process you. They bring you back over here. So I go over to the prison. I say I'm John Kariak. I'm here to turn myself in. they put me through the, uh,

through the x-ray. And then, and then they start leading me around to the back of the actual prison. I said, no, no, I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street. And the guy goes,

ha, not according to my paperwork, you're not. All right. I was like, shit, don't do anything, don't say anything.

You'll end up in solitary. I didn't say a word. Yeah. Yeah, the judge can recommend whatever, but the bureau of prisons, yeah, they take,

go fuck yourself. Yeah, they're the ones running the bureau of prisons. And as it turned out, we learned through the Freedom of Information Act that the CIA was livid that they had agreed on this deal. They wanted me to die in there.

They were livid. 23 months? It's like a joke. So... I bet it didn't feel like a joke, do you? It did. In fact... 23 months, since it was a lifetime

at that time. You have to go into a prison that you feel like you don't deserve to be there. I was walking around the basketball court. There was so much snow that they closed the yard. We could just walk around the basketball court. I was walking around with the number three in the banana family. We lived across the hall from each other, and we became good friends.

And he said, how much time do you have anyway? I said, 23 months. Feels like 23 years. And he says, let me give you some advice. When somebody asks you how much time you have, you tell them five years. Because if somebody hears that you have a sentence that's so light, like 23 months, they're going to kick your ass. They get upset.

Yeah. They get jealous. I mean, you really really see. that in prison because people are, you know, they're serving these, what, Buck Rogers, you know, dates and they're upset. And they get, it's, it's childish, but, you know, you're not dealing with the, it's the reality. It's the reality. No. No. That was good advice. So what, did you, so you didn't go to the camp, you went to what, did you go to a low? I went to a low. Okay. It took me about four days to get, to get access to a phone. And, um, and I called Mark McDougal,

the, the, the attorney that I liked, and, I mean, I liked all of them, but I liked Mark the most. We connected the best. And I said, Mark, I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison, like with the mafia dons and the files. What do I do? And he goes, oh, my God. Well, we could file an appeal, but it'll be two years before we get a date. You'll be home by then. He said, buddy, I'm sorry.

You're going to have to tough it out. And then I thought, you know what? I'm trained for this. I've lived in way worse places than Loretto, Pennsylvania. Right. I'm going to run this place by the time I'm done. And so I just set out to be the biggest asshole I could possibly be. To what? The Bureau of Prisons? Yeah.

Or just the inmates, I was going to say. The inmates, you know, I wrote this book that won two literary awards. I wrote it in longhand in prison called Doing Time Like a Spy, how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison. And I won the Penn First Amendment Award with the Penn Faulkner, the Pulitzer, and the Edgar Alan Poe, it's one of the big four, right? And I won the forward, uh, forward reviews memoir of the year. So I take these 20 life lessons that I taught, that I learned at the CIA and I show how I applied them in prison. Well, some of them were like a joke. Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.

And I'll give you an example. The whites didn't control any of the TVs. The Hispanics had half the TVs and the blacks had half the TVs. So you watch whatever they, you know, you know, Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, I'm going to read a book instead of watch that. But anyway, these two guys got into a scrap over what to watch one day. Well, I'm watching the Steelers game, right? So these guys start duking it out. It's like a foot and a half away from me. Well, I'm busy.

I'm watching the game. This fight isn't about me. Well, of course, you know, as soon as the fight breaks out, everybody just bolts and they run back to their cells. Well, I'm watching the game. So I'm just sitting there while these dudes are scrapping it out. Next thing I know, you know, the red light comes on. And then karaoke, lieutenant's office immediately. This is why everybody bolts, by the way.

Yeah. Because sometimes the COs will come in and they'll grab anybody around there and they end up going to the shoe. Yeah. Too. Like I had nothing to do with it. Yeah, but you were there. And we're throwing you in the shoe.

Keep you there for a week or two. you'll tell us what happened because you didn't I didn't do anything I was there these this guy punched so and so and I didn't do anything I want to go back to myself but that's why everybody immediately takes off they don't gather around and no way yeah like in the in the movies nobody makes a circle around the guys fighting that doesn't never happens like oh fuck never I'm done I gotta go back to myself so I'm just sitting there watching the game so I get on a lieutenant's office and they're like why don't you tell us about the fight I go what fight the fight in Central 1.

I go, there was a fight? I don't know. I was watching the Steelers game. Oh, you're going to be smart guy now. I go, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I didn't see any fight. We saw you on the cameras sitting there in the middle of the fight. Then what did you talk to me about? You saw it on

the cameras. I said, and your question is, what was the fight about? I go, what, you want me to do your job for you now, too? Kiroaku, you're this close to the shoe. Tell us about the fight. I go, you know what? Maybe it was you that was fighting.

Huh? Maybe it was you that was on the cameras. How the fuck am I supposed to know? I didn't see anything on the cameras. Maybe you're the one that started up the fight. He goes, get the fuck out of my office. And I go, exactly. Fucking asshole.

And I went back and they're like, oh my God, you survived? I said, these guys are so stupid. They don't even know what to say. back to you when you tell them that you can't believe what your lion eyes have seen, you know? There was another one. I said in the book, always let others do your dirty work. Okay? Simple.

So there was a serial killer in my pod. We called him truck. He had been a long-distance truck driver. These are the days before DNA testing. He would drive all the way across the country in an 18-wheeler, pick up prostitutes at roadside. What they call him, chicken heads? Yeah, pick up one and nobody misses her.

No. And he would kill him, he'd strangle them, and throw him out of the side of the truck. So he got 40 years. And for whatever reason, I'll never understand why this guy constantly sought my approval. Hey, John, the Steelers are on at 1 o'clock. I saved you a seat.

Thanks, truck. Hey, John, I know you listen to Classic Rock. There's a new station at 1600 a.m. Okay, thanks, truck. So I'm sitting there one day. Well, there's this other guy that I didn't like at all. We had an empty bed in our cell. And he wanted to move in.

Well, no pet animals, no rats. Okay? So he says, I want to move into your cell. I heard it's a good, it's a good sell. I said, what's your crime? Murder for hire. I said, I don't think I like that very much more than being a pet for a rat. I said, what are the circumstances?

He goes, I have a gambling problem, and I owed the mob $100,000, and I couldn't pay it. So I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner, and I hired a hitman to kill him. And I got caught. And I go, and then what? Like, how are you not in a maximum? Well, I got 20. I said, how did you get 20? Well, I said, you ratted out the hitman.

Cooperated against the hitman, of course. Which he did. And I said, nope, you can't move in here. No, pails, no rats. So I'm sitting watching the Steelers with the truck. Uh-huh. And this guy had this oddly elongated head, the murder for Harry guy. We called him Cat in the Hat, because that's what his head looked like.

So it was like a birth defect, right? There are a lot of fucked up people in prisons you know. Yeah, yeah. So I'm sitting there with truck watching the game, and this guy, Cat in the Hat, he's like two feet away from me. He's right here at the email terminal. He doesn't see that I'm sitting two feet behind him. And he says, hey, did you hear Kyriaku got called to the lieutenant's office today?

He goes, that guy's a fucking rat. He went down there to rat us out. The truth is that Jake Tapper had done. driven up from CNN to the prison to interview me that day and I had to go down and sign the waiver to do the interview. Okay. So I'm just sitting there and truck says, did you hear that guy? He just called you a rat. I saw my opportunity. And I go, an hour ago, I heard him call you a, and without saying a single word, truck got up and beat him almost to death. They had to land a helicopter in the yard. to lifelight this asshole to Pittsburgh to save his life.

Truck got five more years added onto his sentence. So I was done with him. Oh my God. That's horrible. Done with him. And then six weeks later, Cat and the Hat gets out of the hospital, comes back.

Everybody had told him what I had done. Right. So he comes up to me, he's got his head down. He goes, I just wanted to say, I'm sorry that I called you a rat and I'll never do it again. And I go, hey,

look at me i said if i ever hear my name cross your lips ever again you're dead and you'll never see it coming he's oh okay i'm sorry i became like legendary and the mob guys are like shit you are a psychopath i said no that's the issue you're a psychopath that's why i get you guys to do my dirty work for me So you wrote this book in prison. You have all the rules. Yep. Did you – well, you didn't publish it in prison. No.

Okay. I had a little bit of a problem because the cops would shake me down. And if I had, you know, pages written, they would tear them up. Really? Yeah. So what I ended up doing was every day I would write. And again, it's longhand. It's frigging hard to write 120,000 words in longhand, right?

Right? So every day I'd write, and then I would put in an envelope, I would mark it legal mail, and I'd send it to my lawyers. Okay. And they just held them for me. And so when I got out, I hired some college student just to type the whole thing. And then I started the edit. Now, there were whole chapters that I wrote twice, just because I forgot I had written it, right? It took me a year and a half to write it longhand. I started off with a story. There was this guy. There was this frigging Italian Ponzi scheme guy, degenerate gambler, not connected.

So he's like, he owes every bookie in the prison money, and he's barring from this guy to pay that guy just so he doesn't get his legs broken. And the whole thing's going to collapse. But at the same time, he had been in People magazine a couple times because he was dating an eight. list Oscar winning star. She broke up with him when he was arrested for this Ponzi scheme.

And he's always talking about his yacht in the Mediterranean and his villa outside of Rome. And everybody's going to be invited to the villa. And we're going to take a cruise around here. Oh, can I borrow 10 bucks? Can I have a couple of max? So I said to one of the Italians, the one who became my best friend and is still like a brother to me. I said, I'm going to fuck this guy up. I said, I cannot listen to these stories anymore.

You're a real tough guy in the low. In a low, yeah. In the low, right. Because I knew I could get away. Yeah. So he goes, are you crazy? He goes, they're going to send you this shoe for months, and then they're going to put you in a medium.

And then what are you going to do? I said, I would be, I would never be so crude as to physically fuck him up. Right. I'm smart than that. Give me some credit. Right. So one of the guys in my cell, he was a Mexican guy, he worked on the laundry. And I said, Jose, can you get me a laundry bag?

And he said, sure. And I gave him a Mac and he stole the laundry bag, gave me the laundry bag. And then there was another guy, Jorge. I said, Jorge, are you going home soon? He goes, yeah, yeah, I got my merry-go-round. Remember the merry-go-round? Yeah, yeah. You get everybody to sign off just before you leave.

Yeah, it's not for any reason other than to keep you occupied that last day. so you don't settle scores. So I said, can I borrow your merry-go-round? So he gives it to me. I make a photocopy. I white out his name and his number, and I type in the Italian guy's name and number. And I wait till 5 o'clock on Friday afternoon.

I put the laundry bag and the merry-go-round on his bed. So he comes in, he goes, hey, guys. We're like, hey, man, how you doing? Good. How are you? Yeah, we're good. He goes over to his bed, he goes, I go, what?

He goes, I'm going home. I said, what are you talking about? He says, the merry-go-round. I won my appeal. I go, what? Nobody wins their appeal. He holds up the laundry bag and the merry-go-round. He says, I won.

I'm going home. I have to call my lawyer. He runs to the phones. Well, even fancy New York lawyers go home by 5 o'clock on Friday after. He goes to the unit manager. He's long gone. The counselor left at like two o'clock and had somebody else clock him out. So there's nobody around. So my Italian buddy says, hey, let us have a dinner for you. We got to have a dinner tomorrow night. Sunday night. Sunday night even better, the night before you leave. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghost bed is here to help you fix. that. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, durable, and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features premier materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces

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Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what happens. They give it their shoes, they give anything, because they don't need any of this stuff. They don't need the radio. They don't need their empty. Nothing. I took nothing home with me. Sunday night with this big bash, big party.

The Italians, the way they ate, it was just like in Goodfellas. I've talked about this. I gained 35 pounds in 23 months. Oh, my God. They were very, very good to me. Yeah. So Monday morning, we all walk him down to R&D, receiving a discharge. The rest of the story, I got from the cop in R&D.

So he goes in there, and the cops, says, who are you? And he says, his name. Did he go get everything signed off on? Oh, yeah. Okay. He went to every office. So he showed up that that actually, that's like an escape.

That looks like an escape. The cop says, turn around, you're under arrest. Fucking serious. For what? Attempted escape. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. It was an escape attempt.

Why, he didn't know it. Yeah. He burst into tears. They cuff him. They take him to the shoe. And then they ended up sending him to. Elkins. And he just did the rest of his...

That's ingenious. So one of the... It was the actual boss of the Gambinos came up to me. And he goes, that was some sick shit. And I said, I thought that guy

would never shut his fucking mouth. And the Gambino guy says, I'm not saying you didn't do us a favor. I'm just saying that was some sick shit. You know what? You know the sovereign citizens?

Oh, boy, do I? So there was a sovereign citizen that I was locked up with that he had, and I don't even know how he did that. You know, they incorporate their name. They did the whole thing. Somehow or another, he had filed something, and he got a federal judge to say that the Bureau of Prisons did not have jurisdiction over, and then he had his incorporated name. Now, what the federal judge probably thought he was saying was, like, over this corporation.

Right. And so he gets this letter, but it's still his name. It's all caps and, you know, whatever. And he gets... They're always big on the all caps. Yeah. So he gets the piece of paper. This is a federal, you know, this is a federal judge has written this, this letter.

And so he's got this letter, packs up all of his bags. Oh, my God. This was, he was at the low. I met him in the medium. He told us the story. He goes to the low, right up to the gate, not to R&D. He brings his stuff up to the gate. You know, the front, I don't know every person's, but...

But they usually have a big gate. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're, it's out of bounds. Yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to be up there. Yeah, exactly. There's a red line around it. Oh, yeah. He walks right up.

Wow. And so, you know, like the lieutenant or somebody comes up and goes, hey, man, what are you doing? He's got his stuff in a couple of laundry bags. He's like, I need to be released. I'm, you need to release me. This judge just declare that you don't have any jurisdiction over me. I'm ready to go. And, you know, and they're delusional.

Sure. And so he looks at me, he grabs the letter and reads it. He goes. Okay, okay. He holds that, he said, hold on. I think he calls whatever, calls the warden, whoever, assistant warden, whoever's in that, in the low at the time. They come out, walk over, takes a paper and reads it, and she goes, hmm, okay. Are you a sovereign citizen?

And he says, yes, I am. She goes, okay, all right, got it. Folds it up and says, handcuff him, and cuffs him and brings him straight to the shoe where he spends six months in the shoe and then they move him to the medium. And he had to check in every hour. He had to find a guard. So if you have escape charges, he had to go find a guard every hour and say, hey, and show him his ID. And then they would call him in to say, yeah. So this went on for the whole two.

I was in the medium for three years. But for the last year and a half, two years, he was every single hour he would check in. And he got a charge, you know. And he even, I was in there was a couple of sovereign citizens that got charged with. they had made a new law where the, because the sovereign citizens will, they'll file like judgments and shit against judges and everything. And liens. Yeah.

And they'll try to take your house. So you're like a judge. And you've got this sovereign citizen who's locked up trying to fucking put a lien against your house and foreclose on your house. Yeah. Yeah, they do. So they found out there's a law. They'd charge them. So they had a new law that they were.

So some of these sovereign citizens, they'd scoop up, reindite them, bring them back to court. And they'd come back with three more years. You know, and they're like, I can't believe it. It's like, what are you doing? Like, you're here on tax evasion. You had three years. You just got yourself and you were walking out the door in like a year. You just got another three years.

But that's it. They can't control themselves. Right. They really believe this crazy stuff. You know, I used to always tell them too. I said, look, I, I, no, you don't understand. The IRS code was never ratified by the guy. I get, I get it.

The Ohio Indian Treaty of 1812. I'm like, please. Yeah. I can't. And I used to always tell them, listen, let's say you are 100% right. These people have the manpower, the guns, and the prisons, and they say you're going to stay here. And you can spend the next five years of your sentence telling everybody how you shouldn't be in prison. But when you get out, you better pay your fucking taxes, bro.

That's right. Like, stop thinking. It's kind of like what your lawyer said, which I absolutely agree, is that it, you're thinking this is about, justice. It's not. Like, whether it's drug, whether you're, whether it's espionage or you're a drug deal, like, I get it. Look, I love law and order. Sure. And I love, I love when McCoy finds out, I love that McCoy finds out that they, they sentence the wrong man. Yeah. And they call the judge, and we're going to rush over there and we're going to get him out tonight. And they, and they, and they, it's not real life. It's not real life. What they do is they go, huh, it's not his DNA. And they go,

well, he must have had a partner. It must be his partner's DNA. He's guilty. What are you talking about, bro? You just spent the whole trial saying it was his semen. You said there was nobody but him. You said it was his footprint, his semen, his fingerprints. There was only him.

And now the semen, now you got the DNA and it doesn't match. And now you're just saying, well, that was his partner. You just went to trial saying he didn't have a partner. Like, it doesn't stop. It's just about winning. Yeah. It's just about winning. That mitigating damage.

Yeah. Thing that he said. That was that was one of the most important and impactful things that anybody has ever said to me in my life. And I've repeated it. He actually teaches now. He's semi-retired. He teaches at Georgetown Law School. And I speak to his classes.

And I tell that story. When you were locked up, did you have a plan for getting out? Like, were you thinking to yourself, you know, when I get out, I'm going to, you know, write books for the right? Like what is your plan for the rest of your life? Like, are you, because – Well, you know, so many of us think that when we finish our sentences, we can just step back into our lives again. And that's just not true. It's not possible.

Right. You're not the same person. Did you know that, though? No, I did not. Okay, because a lot – I knew it. Like, I knew because I – You were more self-aware than I was. I knew that I had a lot more time to think.

Right. I knew that when you looked on the internet, you know, I knew that when you looked on the internet, I knew. that it was devastating. Yeah. And so I was aware, like, you know, and I would talk to these, the other con men who were locked up. And they were always, they were always like, because, and I know you don't know, you don't know my story, but like one of, one of many, many things I've done was one time I,

don't judge me. No, no judgment. One time I, I stole the guy's identity. And then I had his name legally changed. Because, you know, and I have drivers, I had a driver's license, passport, everything in his name. But I had it legally changed. But so people knew, like, you know, Cox had somebody's name changed. So a lot of the con men would come to me and be like, how do you do this?

How did you have his name? How hard was it? I was like, it's $1,500 to a lawyer as nothing. It was a joke. I had had like two people say that they'd known me as this person for two years. I said, both of the people that signed those papers, I said, knew me for two months. Like I told him, oh, I'm changing my, I had a reasonable reason to change the guy's name. I was living as Michael Eckert.

And I wanted to change my last name in Michael Johnson. And I happened to know, had made a couple people. I don't know a month or two. And they knew me as Michael Eckert. I wasn't in, of course. And I explained to him that I wanted to change my name because the guy that raised me was named, Mike, was named Johnson. I don't even know this Eckert. I don't know my real dad, but I want to change it.

And it's important for him and my mom. And I was wondering, you know, would you mind signing this affidavit saying you've known me? Says you know me for two years. And they're like, yeah, no problem. They sign it and get it notified, whatever. We give it to the lawyer. I give him 1,500 bucks. And I think 20 days later, he calls me up and says, hey, here's your paperwork.

You can go to the DMV. Get your name changed. So, but I'd done that. So these guys would come to me. How hard is it? And I, and they tell me, you know, because then there's like 30 articles on me or this or that. And, you know, they ran a pond. scheme. They ran up to pump and dump, whatever. And then it was, then there's something called

An, no, not Ancestry. It's called Reputation.com. Oh, yeah. Reputation or com. Yeah. That will yeah, that will. And they were like, I'm going to go to this and I'm that. And I used to always look at them and think, you're, like, you sound like you're working on your next indictment. Yeah, seriously. Like, you're just, you know, they're like, yeah, but I, you know, I don't want to follow me around. And I was like the only person in prisons. They were like, what are you going to do? and I'm like, I'm leaning into it. Oh, I wear mine on my sleeve. I made a living from it.

That's what I'm, and that's exactly what that was my thing. I was like, I'm going to lean into this and I'm going to figure out a way to make a living being me. And they were like, well, what does that mean? I was like, like, maybe, you know, and I didn't know I was going to give keynote speeches and I didn't really know about this. I knew, you know, I wanted to write books because I had written when you say writing it out long.

Yeah, it's hard. Well, you know what I would do. I would write it out. I would type it into Core Links into the draft. Yeah. And that way I could print it. We could edit it,

print it, print it, and now you could only do so many words. And then I would put like Chapter 1A because each chapter was like five. You know, you can only fill it up so much, always so many characters. So I'd get like Chapter 1A, B, C, too.

And then I'd email it to someone who would take it and put it into Word. And then they'd mail it back and we could go over it again, make sure it was okay. And I'm building a book. Oh, that's smart. Yeah, expensive.

Yeah, expensive. Right. But so I just remember thinking I was going to figure out some way to just not run from this the rest of my life. But even, which made it harder on me, of course. But that's what I'm wondering is like, you're not, you're not stupid. You know, you had to know. You just, you didn't realize how that the deck is just stacked against you. I did not realize it.

I did not realize that I just had convinced myself that enough people out there knew the truth of my of my case and my situation that I could step back into my life again. And from the outset, I was home a day and Vice News came to the house and we did this long interview and then BBC asked me to do an interview. I was on this BBC cross talk. It's like their version of 60 minutes. And the guy's like, well, you. You don't seem sorry at all for your crime. You're not contrite. You haven't said that you regret doing it?

I said, no. I don't regret doing it. I would do it again tomorrow if I had the opportunity. I said, if you're looking for me to apologize, that's just not going to happen. Who is harmed? Exactly. What am I sorry for again? Yeah.

So I got a job at a think tank. The oldest liberal think tank in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies, and they said, you're going to have to raise your own salary. We don't have any money to pay you. So I had this constant go-fund me, and I'm barely making like $18,000 a year. I said, there's got to be more than this. In the meantime, I got a call from the Sputnik News Agency, the Russian News Agency. Would you like to have your own radio show?

I said, no, I don't want to work for the Russians. Thank you, though. but I couldn't find a job. I got turned down by Uber. They were like, we don't hire felons. I got turned down by the one where you do grocery shopping for people. We don't hire felons. So the Russians called me again, like eight months later.

We'd really like to offer you your own radio show. What year is this, by the way? This was 2017. Okay. So I said, well, I'm happy to come in for a conversation. I said, what does it matter? It's your radio show. It's not like it.

And I said that to them. I said, I want the freedom to say anything I want, to criticize anybody I want, including Vladimir Putin. They said, done. I said, put that in the contract, done. And they did. And so I had a radio show for seven years, which led to my own TV show, which led to a podcast, which led to, you know, speaking engagements.

And one thing led to the other. And it's taken me a little while. But now I'm, you know, famous. I'm still talking. about these human rights issues. My detractors are all either dead or retired or in a couple of cases under indictment. God bless Donald Trump for that. I can say that.

And I came on on top. Yeah. I was going to, I was because I mean, you know, so it took a few years. But I mean, everything takes two or three years. You know what I'm saying? Everything does. Mm-hmm. Everything.

I think it's the, I actually like the Jeff Bezos where he says, most over, I think it's Jeff Bezos. Most overnight successes take 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. I said that yesterday. I said, I'm an overnight success and only take, it only took me 18 years to get there. So I wrote five books when I was locked up.

You wrote five books like that? Yeah. Well, 13 years. What I got to do. Oh, my God. And listen, I was ordering so many Freedom of Information Act. Oh, my God. I did the same thing.

And they would come in. And so it was SIS would call me in. So SIS is calling me in saying, you got a freedom of information act from someone from John Boziac. He's an inmate here. I'm like, yeah, yeah, oh, I need that. And he's like, this has got his, this is his legal paperwork and this is, yeah, everything on him. I'm right.

Freedom of information. Right. And I go, I'm writing a book on him. But once I got a couple guys in Rolling Stone magazine and I got a book deal, then they would just, they would, as they, SIS would be walking by me. And they could go, hey, Cox, come by SIS, we got a bunch of stuff for you. Because they kept, sometimes they wouldn't get it. Sometimes they'd come right to me. Sometimes the mailroom would find it and they'd give it to them.

They go, hey, what is this a book? And I go, yeah, they go, what's the book about? And I go, okay, so listen to what happened. And I tell them with this guy, boom, boom, boom, boom. They'd be like, that sounds like a good story, bro. And they give me this. So it got. Oh, that's very cool.

Right. So, but I wrote all these books while I was there. And I knew I wanted to do a podcast. So I got out. I was in the half, real quick. So I was in the halfway house. And a buddy of mine was like, you know, there's a guy that runs a podcast around where I live. And I was like, okay.

And I was working for him. He's a childhood friend hired me at the gym. He was owned. And he's like, you should go talk to him. He interviews this guy, which was Ben Mala. He's like, he interviews him. He's a real estate guy. He might want to talk to you.

And I go, I just got out of fucking prison for bank fraud for real estate related bank fraud. He didn't want to talk to me. He's like, well, you said you want to start a podcast. Maybe you could talk to him. He goes, I can get you his email. So it gets me the email. I sent him an email. He called me back in like 20 minutes.

Wow. And I said, hey, what's up? And I said, oh, I appreciate you. calling. He said, bro, that may be very well be the best email I've ever read in my life. I go, really? Because I get a lot of emails. I said, why? He said, just the opening. And the opening was, my name is Matthew Cox, and I'm a con man. I was recently released from federal prison. No, and I was in federal prison for bank fraud and bank fraud related charges. I said, I'm 100% guilty of them all. And then I said, I was recently released. I'd love to talk to you about

my story. So I, and he was like, bro, that opening is no. That's very powerful. It was great. So he called me and so he gets me to come on the podcast. I kept putting it off because I didn't really know. I don't even understand how YouTube worked. Sure. I made the mistake of buying an Android.

It keeps fucking freezing up. I'm like, I don't know how to work it. So, but eventually I get out of the halfway house and he asked me to come on. And I come on. And I tell the story. It takes about two hours. And I remember after the story, I was, I'm driving this piece of shit vehicle. And I'm like, listen, man.

I'm like, I got, I said, I don't even know if I'll make it across the bridge. You got to buy me lunch. I may be walking across the bridge. Like, I have no money. And this vehicle is a piece of garbage. So he, we go to Waffle House and we're eating. He was, listen, you want to start a podcast? I'm like, right.

He goes, listen, he said, I mean, I can't tell whether this story's going to be great. He's about, the story you just told me is, is amazing. He said, and I think it's going to be big. He's, I think it's going to do really well. He said, you need to start a podcast. podcast now. And I was like, how? And I go, I don't have any equipment.

I don't have anything. He's like, well, you got a phone. I was like, a phone. And I had an iPhone by then. And he goes, I guess, yeah, it's got, it's got an iPhone. It's got a good camera. I'm not starting a fucking podcast with an iPhone. Like, you know, and here's what always cracks me up.

I'm living in a, in a rooming house. And I'm telling the guy who's making a living doing what I want to do, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, how fucking arrogant are. a prick, are you? Right. And so I blow it. So I always say, he told me, said, put it up, just start putting out videos on your

fucking channel. That way, he's, that way if this blows up, you'll get a ton of subscribers and then you can buy better equipment. He gave me, I would say, the best piece of advice that I 100% ignored. And we would have two million fucking subs right now. Yeah. If I had listened to him. I didn't listen to him for another six months.

I went on like five or six more podcasts. all of them you know his his his part his podcast by the way got like 2.3 million and that's 2 million next one 2.8 million next one's two I mean didn't have anywhere to go I had a couple thousand subscribers on my on my YouTube account not one video these guys don't even know if it's me I don't even have a photo it just says macawks oh my god and they're just subscribing and and so Danny one day he taught he said the fuck are you doing what are you fucking doing Yeah. He's hit the sweet spot. He's, yeah. And look, and here's the thing about what I admire about Danny is that, listen, he did it for nothing for years just because he loves it.

He's quite good at it. No, he's good at it too. You can be good. But he loves it. You can be amazed. You can be amazingly talented at something and still fail. Oh, yeah. Without a doubt, it happens every day. Right. But I think that what I love about it is that he did it. He did it and he wasn't making money. He did it simply because. he loved doing it. And that's pretty impressive. And, you know, that's inspiring that that paid off. He was the first big podcast that I went on.

I'm going to say it was 2019 just before COVID started. And I've been on, I don't know, four or five times, I guess, over the years. But then that led to Julian Dory and then to Tucker Carlson and Patrick Bet David and Sean. on Ryan and Rogan finally last year, and then Diary of the CEO, which really broke me out. So one led to the other, to the other, to the other, and it's all worked out. It's funny, you know, Bustamante.

So Bustamante, he, I had written a book and I needed to kind of fluff it up, right? So I knew a guy that said he knew some former CIA guys, and I said, do you know one that would talk to me? He was like, oh, that got this one guy. He just started a podcast, which was, you know, his podcast. Okay. So I said, yeah, I'd love to talk to him.

I said, could I send you some questions that you can read, some paragraphs or pages you could read and then you could comment on them? I could show, yeah, sure. So I sent him to him. It was a book about a guy that was locked up. But it's kind of an international thing. And it's all true. These are true stories, true crime.

So he does. He wrote the whole thing. And we talked on the phone several times. We emailed a bunch. And then I was like, hey, look, you know, I can know a guy who I'm. of podcasts, and Bousamani lived close. And I said, I could probably get you on the podcast. He's, oh, my God, that would be great.

That would be so, well, thank you so much. That would be amazing. He's like, I just started my podcast. Like, it's not doing, you know, he's like, it's doing okay, you know. And he's like, yeah, I would love that. I really need some exposure. He hadn't been on anything. Wow.

And so I called Danny. I said, Danny, I got this guy. He's former CIA. He just helped me with this book. And, you know, he let me interview him. And I didn't interview a few people. And he was like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. No doubt. I said, right down the street. Here's his number. Oh, yeah, yeah. I said, you should have him on, you know. Okay. Fucking two weeks later, Busamante text me and says, hey man, your guy never called me. And I was like, really? Okay, okay, I called Danny. Danny. He's like, okay, I called Danny. Danny. He's like, okay, he called. Who's, who's, who's going to fucking lie about that? Come on. He's right down the street from you. Okay. Two weeks later, Andrew goes, same thing. Same thing. Same thing. Hey, man, man, I haven't heard from this guy. I call him Danny up. Same thing. He's like, okay. Do you even know that this guy was in the CIA? I said, look, he was in the fucking CIA. He was in the CIA. Yeah. I'd be surprised. Yeah. I'd probably. I'd probably. I would. I would.

all be would be. But, and I, and he goes, okay, okay. And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like a week later, two weeks later, Danny said, listen, man, he said, I had two guests fall off. I have nothing. I need you to come and do a podcast. Can you come tomorrow and do a podcast?

And I go, what about boost him on? He goes, who? I go, motherfucker. I said, he's, he's fucking 15 minutes from you. What are you? I know, it's probably an hour. But what are you? He's like, who?

I go, fuck, at least call the fuck. guy. Oh, I'll call him. So he calls him. Bustamante goes on. And I mean, has blown up ever since then.

Blown up. I mean, just that was on like three different TV shows. Oh, it's insane. And never says anything. I mean, he takes a lot of shit.

He and I debated each other. I know. I saw, I thought that was great. I, I thoroughly enjoy it. You know, Alan Dershowitz called me the next day.

Oh, that's funny. And he said, you gave that kid a master class in the Constitution. I said, I don't understand Bustibate. He's like an apologist for the CIA.

Yeah. They've never done anything wrong. No, never. Never. Never. Never, never, never. It's the part, and that's why it's funny because like Julian and Danny said they'll be like, I think he's still a, I think it's a sci-op. I think it's a sci-up. I think he's out there. Stranger things have happened. I'll tell you

another story, too. You know what? To be on the safe side, and maybe I should. I shouldn't. You don't have another 30 months in you? I'll tell you a different one. One of the, not one of, the first thing that CIA people ask each other when they meet up for the first time is what directorate were you in? Okay, there are four answers. DO, D-I, D-S-N-T, D-A, Directorate of Operations, Directorate of Intelligence, Directorate of Science and Technology, Directorate of Administration.

Okay, that's it. Four answers. The inevitable second question is, what division were you in? And there are about three dozen. It could be Near East operations, Africa operations, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, whatever. So I'm a regular on Fox News. And Tucker Carlson and I became good friends well before COVID. Around 2015, I started going on his show regularly on Fox.

I'm always, always the only person there. Because most people are either in the New York studio or they're remote. So I'm always the only one in the green room and then the only one in the studio. And he was doing the show from Washington. So I go in the green room one day and there's this guy there. Looks to be about five years older than I am. And I said, hello. He says, hey, how are you?

I sit down. He said, you're going to go on Tucker? I said, yeah, I'm on at 820. He said, oh, I'm on an 835. And he says, what are you talking about? And I said, oh, CIA stuff. And he said, oh, you're CIA? And I said, yeah, former CIA.

You? He goes, yeah, I'm former CIA, too. And I said, what directorate were you in? And he said, I was in ops. Okay. That's not the way we would normally say it. You'd say I was in the DO. Right.

But maybe he was a contractor, I thought. Maybe he was in just for a year and he just didn't pick up on the lingo. I'm like, okay, whatever. So I said, what division were you in? And he says, I did black ops. I did wet work. I did all that shit. And they're like, nobody's going to say all that.

This is not, right? Not even in frigging Hollywood would somebody say something so stupid and ill-informed. Black ops and wet work and all that shit. Okay. So I go into the studio. we're on commercial. And I said, Tucker, I got to tell you, this guy that's in the green room that's coming on after me, I think he's a fake.

And he said, oh, shit, are you kidding me? He said, why? I said, he doesn't know the lingo. And when I ask him the most basic questions, he just doesn't know the answers. And he goes, okay, well, I'm committed. He's on in 15 minutes. Six months later, I see this guy in the front page of Washington Post. He's been arrested and charged with mortgage fraud.

So he bought a house in Annapolis, Maryland, which is very nice and very expensive. And they said, okay, you're applying for this mortgage. We need six months of bank statements. He's like, no can do. Deep cover, CIA, wetwork, black ops, top secret. And they're like, oh, okay, we'll just give you the million dollars. Yeah, come on. So they give him the million dollars.

and he can't make any payments because he's never worked for the CIA or CIA adjacent or anything. He just made the whole thing up and so they have to foreclose on the house and then they grab him and charge him with mortgage fraud. Like how do people, especially people in the Washington area, fall for something like that?

When I left the agency, I went to work for Deloitte & Touche. I was the deputy director of the competitive intelligence practice. It's very boring, but the same skills that I learned at the agency. So we're spying on Ernst & Young, KPMG, IBM, stealing their pricing models and stuff like that. So because we're based in McLean, Virginia, and the CIA's in McLean, Virginia,

we get like dozens, hundreds even of applicants who claim CIA employment. So the managing partner called me one day and said, you would do me a great favor. If you would just take every one of these applicants who claims CIA background to dinner and vet them for me. I said, sure. So the very first one.

He's this young kid in his late 20s, and I take him to dinner, and I said, so what directorate were you in? And he goes, I was D.I. and D.O. And I said, wrong answer. And he goes, well, I said, what directorate were you really in? And he said, well, I'm an analyst. I'm in the DI. I said, then why would

you say you're in the D.O? Well, I do some work for the D.O. I said, we all did work for the D.O, but you can't say that you're in the DO. And I said, what division were you in? He said, CTC, I was running Middle Eastern operations. And I said, really? Now, that's fascinating. because I was in CTC and I was running Middle Eastern operations and I never heard of you. And he goes,

I'm not going to get this job, am I? And I said, no. No. No. I don't even think we ordered. Yeah, he just fell apart. Yeah.

Yeah, a dinner at this point. Yeah, yeah. He just fell apart. But we would get people like this all the time. All the time. You know, in the military, stolen valor? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the same thing, but so many people are undercover that it's

that much harder to prove that they weren't in the agency. For me, it's always about the lingo. You either know it or you don't. And so help me, God, if anybody ever says to me, I was in the company. You're going to get a punch in the face because nobody, nobody ever says the company under any circumstances. So I have a prison story that's similar. Colby's heard this and you'll appreciate this. First of all, it bothers me that when when the chos come in and they're asked what they're there for, obviously they don't say I'm a cho. No. What they say is, and this, they always say fraud. Like, for God's sakes, say, why do you have to pick my industry? Yeah, exactly. You know, like come, like, exactly. And so paperwork, please.

Yeah, so these guys would come in and, you know, of course, initially they don't have paperwork. You know, they come in to, they're there. They get assigned a cube. Right. Right. Did you have cubes at the low? Yeah, we had cubes. Yeah, they weren't cells with doors.

No. Okay, yeah. Well, it depended on which unit you were in. Mine was in central one. It was the only one that was new. It wasn't original to the prison. So we had cubes. Right.

Others had cells. Okay. Yeah, like Coleman was all built at the same time. So they were all cube. Like the low. See, ours was a Catholic monastery. Oh, really? And they just put heavy steel prison.

indoors on. jeesh. Yeah. So, guys would come in. They'd get their assigned cube. And then if it's a white guy, which almost all the shows are white, I'm sorry to say that. But it's true.

It's true. And so the white guy was named Kenny King. Kenny King would walk over to the guy and say, what you? Hey, hey, so what are you here for? And they, of course, the guy say, oh, I'm here for fraud. and he go, oh, okay, okay. And then they go over to me and he go, Cox, Cox. And I go, yeah, what's up?

And he go, this guy says he's here for fraud. Go talk to him. And I go, I don't want to go fucking talk to him. You're going to vet the fry? Yeah, I'm like, come on, man. I'm sure he's here for fraud. He's a little soft white guy. I'm sure, no, go talk to him.

He don't look right to me. He don't look right. He don't, he don't. The big choma glasses? Yeah, of course, the Cho two thousands. Right. And so I'd walk over and I'd go, hey, man, you're a, he don't look, you're here? And this is one specific guy because he just always kills me. So Kenny walks with me. He's

right up here with me. And he goes, hey, he said, I said, oh, I hear you're here for fraud. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm here for fraud. I went, oh, okay, I said, me too. I'm here for bank fraud. I said, what kind of fraud were you here? He was credit card fraud? And I went credit card fraud. I said, was, was that the charge? Yeah, it was credit card fraud. And there's no such thing at charge. No, it could be wire fraud. Yeah, well, it could be wire fraud. It could be access device fraud. It could be, it could be financial institution fraud. There's lots of it, but there's no credit card fraud. So I'm like, oh, okay.

And so already I'm thinking, mm. And I like, well, what were you doing? He's like, well, I was, I was charging lots of people of small amounts on their credit cards. And then I was, I was getting paid. That's how I was making my money. And I went, well, I understand.

Did you work for a financial institution? Like, how were you having, how did you have access to people's credit cards to charge them? Like, I don't understand what how. He's like, well, um, He said, did you were going to bang? Did you, you know, any, any, he, well, he says, it's not a learning experience. I'm not going to go over the whole thing. And I went.

Oh, wrong answer. And I know. I looked at my, oh, okay. I go, he's a show. And Kenny goes, bingo, I fucking knew it. And I turned around. I just walked off. And Kenny came up to me a little, he and a couple guys came up to me a little bit later.

And they go, how did you know he was a show that fast? I said, listen. I said, first of all, I said, there's no, the charge is wrong. I said, which okay. Okay, that's fine. I get it. I said, like, I'll tell people I'm here for, what are you here for? Oh, mortgage fraud. I said, it's really bank fraud. There's no mortgage fraud. It's bank fraud. But I said, you know, whatever. I said, and then when I asked him, it was a charge, he said, okay, that's not true. I said, but then the second thing, when I asked him what he was doing, he didn't know the lingo. I said, and thirdly, I said, he shut it down right away. I said, Kenny, I said, I've never met a fraudster that didn't want to talk about it. Didn't want to brag. Yeah. I said, I don't know if, you know, and Kenny, he'd, we've been locked up four or five years at this point. I said, Kenny, I don't know if you ever notice this, but if you asked me to describe what I did, I said, you can't shut me up. I said, I get excited about it. It's thrilling to me.

I love it. I get energized. I don't get energized about anything else. I said, but that, it's in my bones. I love it. I said, it's the narcissism of being a fraud to that you have to brag. I said, which is also how most of these guys get caught. I said, he shut it down.

He didn't want to talk about it. I said, come on, man, this guy's a show. He's a show. And listen, I mean, there's a bunch of other ones where he'd be like, you know, Same thing over it, but it's the same thing. Like you, what is? A fisherman knows a fisherman, right? Exactly right.

So I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff right now. I've got, I've got three podcasts. One, to my great surprise, it's on Apple podcast. It's called John Kiriaku's Dead Drop. We're actually number 98 in the world, like among two million podcasts. And it's just me telling stories. I've got one every day on YouTube and Rumble called deep program. It's just about the news of the day. And then I have another one on YouTube called

Deep Focus, where it's more in-depth interviews with people like professors and attorneys and activists and, you know, experts on different issues. I've got a website, john kiroaku.com. And if you want something more fun, I'm on cameo, John Kirooku, can barely keep up with it. I got my eighth book coming out in a couple of weeks. My ninth book by the end of the year. I decided to do something completely different, but everything's available on Amazon. My first seven books were about the CIA, and I decided to do one called Remains of the Day, a definitive guide to Washington, D.C.'s historic cemeteries. And the publisher liked it so much, they commissioned four more.

So I've got one called, well, I forget what it's called now. I don't pick the titles. They pick the titles. But anyway, it is a definitive guide to the Moffield. Graves of New York City. And then I've got one coming out on Chicago, one on the country western graves of Nashville, and one on America's serial killers. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching.

Do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell, so get notified a video just like this. Also, we're going to leave all of John's links in the description box. You can go there, click on them, follow him, and subscribe. Thank you very much for watching the show. And if you know anybody to be interested, please share it. Subscribe. Thank you. See you.