The DeVory Darkins Show - CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou drops brutal truth about America's torture program

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou shares brutal truth about America's torture program. In this interview, he shares how and why he was sent to prison for exposing America's torture program and directly identifies the people solely responsible for it.FOLLOW ME:⁠https://www.x.com/devorydarkins⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/devorydarkins⁠⁠https://www.rumble.com/c/devorydarkins⁠⁠https://devory.wtf.tv⁠BUY ME A COFFEE:⁠https://buymeacoffee.com/devorydarkins⁠SHOP OUR MERCH STORE:⁠https://store.devorydarkins.com⁠BUSINESS INQUIRIES:⁠[e-mail]⁠

Welcome back to the DeVorey Darken Show. We have a special guest here that I get to interview. Very privileged, matter of fact, because of his story. And the best way to describe this, he is a former CIA officer who told the truth about torture and paid the price so others didn't have to pay. And the others I'm talking about are the people in power. And so I want to introduce everybody to John Kariuku. How are you? Doing well, thanks.

How are you? Doing good. Doing good. Thank you again for making the time. One of the biggest things I just have to ask right up front here is you went to prison and the people who ordered the torture did it based on my understanding of your story. Why is that exactly? Well, I mean, just to just to be direct about it because the White House protected them. The Obama administration made a decision that, that, to use the president's words, They would look forward, not backward. And what he meant by that was that the torturers would be protected. The people who came up with the idea of torture would be protected. The people who implemented the torture were protected.

The people who funded the torture and approved it on Capitol Hill were protected. Everybody was protected. But I broke ranks and I went public and going public was unforgivable. Yeah. And just so we're clear, and I think I know what the answer is, but do you regret telling the truth? Yes or not? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I would do it again today, even if it meant going back to prison. Yeah. Then why do so many people inside the government stay quiet? I mean, even during that time, why did they stay quiet? Well, to quote one of my

attorneys, he said, this case is so much bigger than John Kyriaku. He said, this case is meant to frighten everybody else who's thinking of blowing the whistle, were opening their mouths to talk about waste, fraud, or abuse, because you lose your freedom, you lose your pension. I'll never work for anybody again other than for myself. My friends walked away from me. Some of my family members walked away from me. Do people really want to go through that? And so far, the answer has been mostly no. Now, for my audience, in case you guys live under a rock, John is the one man behind exposing the water board, correct?

I have that accurate, right? That's right. And so what did the CIA tell Americans at the time about the torture techniques? Well, the CIA didn't tell anybody anything because the program was so highly classified. But the president was the one telling people. George W. Bush looks right in the camera. and said in response to a reporter's question, he said, we do not torture, which of course was a lie. And they kept up the lie as long as they could. And then I blew the whistle in a nationally televised

interview on ABC News. And the next day the president said, his exact words, he said, I don't know this man. I don't know why this man would throw me under the bus. I don't know this man's motivation. which essentially was an admission that what I had said was true. And then, of course, when the torture report came out, it proved that everything I said was true. Now, let me make sure I understand your position here. Was it that the torture was the problem or was it that they were lying to the American people about it? Oh, the torture was the problem. We've got multiple laws in the United States on the books right now that ban torture.

We have the Federal Torture Act of 1946. It banned exactly the same techniques that we were using against our prisoners. We are signatories. We were the authors, frankly, of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. But even more than that, in 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. That was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody. And then in January of 1968, the Washington Post ran a photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. That soldier was convicted of torture and sentenced to 20 years in Leavenworth.

And then in 2002, like magic, it's all suddenly legal. And it wasn't because the laws never changed. Congress never amended the laws. We changed. Yeah. I want to share something with you personally. So I am so obsessed with these spy TV shows. And the two ones that stand out to me that I watch the most of, it's so funny because it's actually in this ballpark of our conversation, Homeland and 24.

And there was a part of the 24 TV series, which is, it was hitting home to the American people. And whether you call it propaganda, whether you call it messaging, they dedicated at least two seasons to getting people to see how bad torture was. Like they were on the other side of it, if that makes sense. Yeah. Do you, did you see it the same way? I don't know if you are familiar with those shows. I did.

The reason why I'm bringing them up is because did they accurately depict some of these situations? They did. First of all, both of those shows are outstanding. There are so many absolutely terrible, unwatchable CIA shows out there. It's ridiculous. this almost as a almost almost as a rule of thong anything on broadcast ABC CBS NBC usually Fox unwatchable um those two were terrific course homelands on or was on showtime the only thing that was inaccurate about Homeland is when when she went nuts they just kept

her in the field yeah in real life when you go nuts they bring you back they send you to a hospital they get you better better again then you go back out um but 24 yeah that's how I saw as well. They were trying to show the horrors of torture, the horrors of waterboarding, and then compare that to something like the film Zero Dark 30, which was a lie from beginning to end. Zero Dark 30 made it look like the torture program led to the location of Osama bin Laden. That is absolutely not true, completely made up. What it was was outstanding analysis that led to the location of Osama bin Laden. Simple is that.

Yeah. So you would probably represent the thinking that intelligence should come first, that analysis should come first before torture. I'm saying in the world of where people are defending it, essentially. Absolutely, yes. Do you think there was ever a moment where torture is justified or at least understood as far as the outcome that we were able to achieve. No, because the argument that most people use to justify torture is in the ticking time bomb scenario.

What's called the ticking time bomb scenario, where there's a bomb, it's almost ready to go off. It's somewhere in American City. You've got to get the information right away. And the only way to do that is torture. First of all, number one, never happened in real life. That's just from the movies. It just never happens in real life. Number two, when you torture somebody, they're going to tell you what you want to know,

but it's going to be mixed in with so much garbage that you're going to need six months for your analyst to go through the information to figure out what's true and what's not true. And the reason for that is that your prisoner is going to tell you literally anything he thinks you might want to hear just to get you to stop torturing him. John McCain, Senator John McCain, it was the 2008 Republican nominee for president. Not 2000. Yeah, 2008. He was infamously tortured mercilessly in North Vietnam at a torture chamber called the Hanoi Hilton.

And they would ask him for the names of everybody in his unit. And he said he would just name the offensive line of the, you know, 1965 Green Bay Packers. and they would dutifully write everything down and they would say, good, good man, we're going to stop this session then, good for you. You see what happens when you answer our questions? You see, well, he didn't answer the question. But it's going to take them months to figure out

that this is the offensive line of Green Bay Mountains. And so that scenario just never, it's never appropriate. Yeah. What you're saying is it's not 24 in that way. Because every episode was exactly that scenario, ticking time, bomb, only had 24 hours. Not true.

Another thing that's just not real from 24 is when you jump out of the metro with your gun like this. First of all, you'd never put your gun in the air. You face it down so you don't actually shoot somebody in the face. And he jumps out of the metro station at Arlington Cemetery with his gun like this. It's like, oh, come on. That's what I decided. I just couldn't watch it anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. I started to catch it and I was like, all right, this is a little. But the core of the, which the only reason why I brought it. up is just the core of the actual debate of torture as it means to gather intelligence as what I was looking at. So at that time, who actually decided who would get torture or punish? Was it in Washington?

Was it, you know, how did that all? Yeah. Yeah. In the CIA's counterterrorism center, we had a group called high value targets, HVT. And they had a list of, you know, what they believed to be the most. most important terrorists on the loose in the world today, all of whom were with Al Qaeda. And as we started capturing those guys one at a time, they were sent to secret prisons that we had set up all over the world, and they would undergo torture at these secret prisons, so that

nobody knew where they were, nobody knew what was happening to them. Even inside the CIA, the compartment was very tightly held. Only a handful of people knew that any of this was taking place. In many cases, even the presidents and prime ministers of the countries where the, where the secret prisons were, had no idea that there was a CIA secret prison in their country. These were handshake deals between the director of the CIA and the director of that country's service. And so it was all done in secret, all of it. Wow. And that's why they had to deny it ultimately. And this kind of segues to my next question, which is in, I guess, behind closed doors, were you applauded by some of your colleagues? Did people say, hey, listen,

I know you're going to get asked for this. We don't have the heart to do what you did, but, you know, like was there an silent acknowledgement here? Yeah, I actually saved one email from a retired deputy director of the CIA. And he said in this email, you've chosen a difficult path. I'm glad somebody did. I only wish I had had the courage to do it myself. And I saved it as a souvenir because just when I was at my lowest point, that email saved me. Yeah. Yeah, that is really good. Do you think it still happens today?

Well, that's really a good question. The conventional wisdom is no. But how do we know? It's not happening. We're just going to have to take the CIA's word for it. I'm still hopeful that the House and Senate Oversight Committees, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are actually carrying out oversight like they're supposed to.

In the past, they've been really little more than cheerleaders for the CIA. But I'm hoping that they're doing the right thing and stopping the CIA from carrying out programs like this. But the bottom line is we really don't know. We just have to take their word for it. What would happen if a low-level agent did that type of torture, meaning waterboarding, without approval at that time? Would that person have been in trouble? Like, would there have been an investigation?

At that time, he probably would have gotten a rap on the knuckles and, you know, a stern talking to that you have to do this in channels within the program. If it were to happen today, I would think I would expect that he would be prosecuted. Yeah. Where do you think it originated from this paradigm essentially at the CIA to do these type of tortures? I mean, it had to start somewhere. Oh, yeah, I could tell you exactly where it started. It started at a cocktail party in October of 2001. It was about four weeks after 9-11.

and a senior CIA officer went up to George Tenet at this cocktail party, George Tenet being the CIA director at the time, saying that he had two friends who had been contractors with the Department of the Air Force named James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both psychologists, and they had reverse-engineered the Air Force's Seer training. This year training taught our pilots what to do when they were shot down. You're going to be waterboarded. You're going to be tortured.

You're going to be gas. This is what it feels like. This is how you respond to it. This is what you do to try to maintain your sanity. They reverse engineered it so that we could do it to our prisoners. Tenet thought that was a good idea. We ended up paying them. There are competing figures out there.

One is $80 million. One is $108 million. but we made them rich beyond their wildest dreams. And they came and trained officers to carry out these torture techniques. And in the case of that was the beta, it was the first high-value target. They're the ones that actually did the torturing. So let me just make sure I'm straight here. Was there ever a successful outcome from torturing?

I mean, there has to be at least one, right, where they got what they were looking for, or it was all bad? No, it was all bad. And it's well documented, very well documented in the Senate Torture Report. Or not even the Torch. We don't know what the Torch Report says. The Torture Report was 5,000 pages. It's never been released.

What was released was the 500-page executive summary of the Torch Report. But even that is easily 50% redacted. But if you read the footnotes, you can fill in the blanks with the footnotes. So what happened was, you know, we began torturing up as a beta. He was our first one. And he had already been talking to the FBI. He had spilled his guts to the FBI because the FBI treated him with respect. You know, they sat across the table from him.

They had a conversation. They established a rapport. They built a relationship. And he started talking and answering their questions. And then the CIA took over and began torturing him. He immediately clammed up. about six weeks later the FBI came back, had to start from scratch again,

and then the CIA started torturing him again, and he clammed up. And then we caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his son-in-law, Amar Abaluch, started torturing them. Then we caught Ramsey Bittishib, started torturing him, all these different guys.

As soon as the torture began, they either would stop talking if they had been talking to the FBI, or they started giving us gibberish. And so if anything, this torture program set us back and put Americans in more danger than they had been. Excuse me, which is why we continue to have Americans that were killed. I mean, you know, whether there's a lack of intelligence. I believe that's the argument that you're making.

You know, I'm kind of having an epiphany here because I kind of feel like Americans have been programmed to believe that torture, there has been some level of success. Yes, it's immoral, unethical, and against the law, but we have found different ways to use it to our benefit. And it doesn't sound like that from your point of view. First of all, that's just a giant lie that's been perpetrated by the torturers. They came out with their own book, a bunch of them, like six of them. They co-wrote a book in response to the Senate Torture Report. And they tried to, to justify their support for torture. All they did is they sealed their own fates, you know, in life.

They'll always be known as the torturers. Secondly, you know, Ronald Reagan said that the United States was a shining city on a hill. We were a beacon of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties. or we're not. We can be the place that has torture chambers and dungeons where we keep people who've never been charged with a crime or we can be that beacon of hope. But we can't be both. We have to choose.

And, you know, when I was serving overseas in the State Department, I was the human rights officer. I had to write the annual human rights report, which every, which the State Department does for every country in the world with which we have diplomatic relations. It's congressionally mandated. And we send that to Congress every year. Well, if we're going to, you know, yell at other countries about human rights, don't you think we should be respecting human rights too? Otherwise, we look like fools.

You know, and I say another thing, and this is hypothetical, I want to make clear. But if I go into a country's minister of interior and I say, Your Excellency, you cannot be to death a 15-year-old boy because he marched in a pro-democracy. demonstration. You can't do that. I have to report that to Congress, and that may jeopardize the sale of weapons to your country. But then, an hour later, the CIA station chief goes in and says, don't listen to the human rights guy. If you set up a secret prison, we'll give you $5 million, and you can torture people, and then just send us a transcript of whatever they say. Is he going to listen to the human rights guy, or is he going to listen to the CIA station chief? because in my mind that's an easy decision.

So we can't be both. We're going to have to choose in which country we want to be. Yeah, you know, as an American, I'm very grateful and privileged, of course. There's no doubt about that. But, you know, once you really study, you start to realize we are probably

one of the biggest hypocrites on the planet, you know, especially based on our history. And that's not to be a doomer or something. It's just to tell the full picture here, which demands you're saying why you know, we should learn from our mistakes. Okay. You know, I was at a, if I may, I was at a Christmas party one time with a whole bunch of CIA people.

And one of the women there, CIA secretary, was married to an Iranian American guy. So he came up to me and he said, so you're the, you're the whistleblower. And I said, yeah. And he said, you know, you seem like a nice guy, but I just think you were dead wrong on that. And I said, I said, are you saying you're pro torture? And he said, yeah, I am. And I said, well, you know, I'm old enough that I understand and realize that reasonable people can disagree on this issue. But I will say, if you want to torture and you want the CIA to be an organization of torturers, you're going to have to change the law because the law is clear.

You can't just pretend that the law doesn't exist or that somehow because you're so special, you're exempt from its cover. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, these are very bad people. They're murderous people. And I said, allegedly, they've never been charged with a crime. Another thing, if you want to be an American, I told them, then you have to charge them with a crime. You have to allow them to face their accusers in the court of law and to be judged by a jury of their peers. Again, you can't just go in saying, constitutional protections for me, but for these people whose politics I don't like, we're going to torture them, we're going to keep them in cages for the rest of their lives, and we're not going to tell anybody about it.

That's not America. And he just decided to walk away. He wasn't going to win that argument. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because that's the great experiment, right? Our founding fathers, I think they knew what they were doing. They had certain things built in that would reel us back, essentially, you know. And here is the actual ride. and don't go past that, you know.

So I see both sides as far as why logically someone would believe, hey, if we put the pressure or the screws to this guy, he's going to give us some information. I could see that. I guess it begs the question, why not let the intelligence agencies and the analysts on the ground do their part? And if they're doing a better job, we shouldn't even have to end up doing it. in that. See, at the CIA, yeah, the CIA doesn't have any classes in interrogation. Because the CIA doesn't interrogate people. The FBI interrogates them. But the CIA was so

humiliated that it allowed 9-11 to happen. It was the greatest intelligence failure in American history. There was this sense that we needed revenge. We had to get revenge on these guys. Well, if the FBI has been trained since 1945 in how to carry out interrogations, don't you think the professionals should just do their interrogations? Yeah. You know, another thing, too, people say, well, you know, waterboarding, it never really hurt anybody. He actually did.

I was abated his heart stopped while we were waterboarding. I mean, he had to be revived with CPR so that we could torture him more, number one. Number two, where do you stop? What's the line? What about if you start cutting his fingers off one by one? What if you, you know, rape his wife with a broomstick in front of him? him or you beat his kids until they're unconscious in front of him. Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line? If you've made a policy decision to just simply pretend that the law doesn't exist

or to simply pretend that the law doesn't apply to you, then there's no point at which you have to stop. And then that's, you know, that's no better than Saddam Hussein's Iraq or, you know, any of the other countries that we claim to be morally superior to. You know, hearing this, story reminds me of just how dangerous. And I'm not saying the people of the CIA, but the agency as a whole technically has been to our country if you're talking about what this country is all about. I mean, if we go back to JFK, what they have been accused of doing or being a part of or whatever, you know, multiple times in history, they keep coming up as, or some would argue, CIA has been on the wrong side of history. I think that's fair to say on a couple of points.

But I just want to just really focus on you personally. Well, I guess tell us the moment you realized you were going to be the one that was going to be sacrificed. Nobody else. It was going to all fall on you. Yeah, it was January of, actually it was earlier than that. I was going to say January of 2012. That's what I was arrested. But when I realized that they were going to try to pin it on me, it was December of 2007.

And that's what made me decide to go public. Because when the president said, we do not. torture. A couple of days later, two days later, he's walking from the South Portico, the White House to the helicopter to go to Camp David for the weekend, and a reporter shouted a question at him about torture. Because just in the previous couple of weeks, Amnesty International Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross had all come out with papers saying that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. So word was leaking out. But Bush turned in response to the question, and he said, well, if there is

torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer. And I thought, oh, no, you don't. You're not putting this arm me. And so in response to a call from Brian Ross of ABC News, I called him back and I said, I'll give you your interview. And I decided just simply to tell the truth. Yeah. As a prisoner, because that's ultimately what happened, you were sent to prison, what was the biggest lesson you learn about how you were treated because you were labeled as a whistleblower who ended up in prison? That's actually a very complicated question to answer. And there are multiple answers. On my very first day, I was walking past one of the guards, and he just whispered traitor as I was walking past him. I just turned and smiled, shit my head, like, you fucking retard.

But then another prisoner, another, sorry, guard pulled me aside and said, Hey, I think what you did was really brave. I wanted to ask you, how can I apply to the CIA? And I was like, oh, okay. And so I answered this question. So I got both sides. The warden, I was really, I was really, you know, a burr on the butt of the warden. He didn't like me.

I didn't respect him. And just to sort of get a little bit of revenge, I never turned down a media request, which made them have to jump through hoops every time. Jake Tapper drove up to the prison to interview me. I gave multiple interviews to NPR and Time Magazine and the New York Times. And it was just constantly journalists coming to the prison, which just drove them nuts. I enjoyed every minute of it. As far as the prisoners went, the other prisoners.

Shout out to Mark Lanzalati, who became my best friend in prison and remains one of my best friends in life. Mark read in the New York Times on a Sunday that I was reporting to that prison on a Thursday, on the following Thursday. And he took it upon himself because he's a good guy to go to every one of the Italians, Italians named Gambino, Duquesi, Bananao, Genevice. And he explained to them, there's a CIA guy coming here on Thursday. there's a difference between the CIA and the FBI. He said the FBI is rats and cops.

The CIA protected us from the Muslims. That's his words, not mine. And they welcomed me with open arms. Somehow a rumor got started among the Arians that I was a Muslim killer. And one of them actually came right up to me and asked me, Is it true that you were a hitman for the CIA and you killed Muslims? And I was ready for the question.

And I said, look, it was wartime and we all did things we weren't proud of, which is not an answer to the question. But he was like, cool. Okay. And so the Aryans left me alone. Four of my five cellmates were members of Mexican drug cartels. And one of them asked me if I would write his appeal because he was destitute. So I wrote his appeal. How hard could an appeal possibly be? He lost the appeal. He was guilty. But I didn't charge him any money. And he told all the other Mexicans that I was a stand-up guy. And then there was a very fortuitous comment made by Lewis Farrakhan of all people saying that I was a hero of the Muslim people because I stood up for their civil rights, their human rights. And it happened to be published in the Nation of Islam's newspaper, the day. that I arrived at the prison.

And so word got around, you know, the bloods, the Crips, and the nation of Islam guys that I was okay. And so, knock on wood, I never had a single problem. Well, the only problems I ever had were with the crooked, retarded guards. That was it. I never had a single problem with a prisoner that I couldn't handle. Yeah, you were one of one essentially. Your story was one of one. Right?

That's exactly what it was. Yeah, that is, that's, that's, it shows you the, the, the, humanity side of this type of situation, especially if you end up in prison. And was it like a max prison? What type of prison exactly? No. At sentencing, my attorney's asked the judge to sentence me to a minimum security work camp. There are no bars on the windows. The doors are unlocked. You're free to just come and go as you please. The CIA was furious with that. And so after the judge ordered that I be sent to a minimum, they upgraded me secretly. And so when I got there, they put me in the actual prison with the concertina wire and the armed

guards and all that stuff. And I called my lawyer. It took me about four days to get access to a phone. I called my lawyer. I said, hey, they put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the drug king pins and the mafia dons. I said, what do I do? And he's like, oh, my God.

He said, well, we could file a motion, but it'll be two years before we get a hearing. He said, you'll be home by then. I'm sorry, buddy. You're just going to have to tough it out. And so I thought, now, you know what? I'm trained for this. I'm trained for a lot worse than this. I can make this work.

And I did. I actually wrote a book about it called Doing Time Like a Spy, how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison. And I won two literary awards. I won one of the big four. I won the Penn First Amendment Award, which with the Penn Faulkner, the Pulitzer, and the Edgar Allan Poe,

or the four big, big literary words. And I won the Forward Review's memoir of the year. So I was ready for him. So I really appreciate you going into depth about that personally. Because again, this is a story, I think, one to one. Okay. Yeah.

So the CIA FBI, it seems throughout history, have been an opposite of each other. Oh, yeah. You know, they have different missions, you know. and who do you think is more to blame for 9-11? Do you find it at the CIA or the FBI? There's plenty of blame to go around. The CIA and the FBI are equally culpable. Equally culpable.

But so is the State Department because it issued visas to every one of those hijackers in the first place. What are you thinking? You can even put some blame on Congress. like what the head was Congress doing they're supposed to be oversight committees were they overseeing nothing what are they overseeing their belly buttons and they're allowing this terrorist planning to take place

and and what about what about the FAA like did they really not care at all about airline security that you could let 19 guys onto planes with box cutters and not a single one of them set off a metal detector So there's plenty of blame to go around.

Let me ask you this as well, because the other whistleblower that's probably more famous than you, Mr. Snowden, right? Do you find any similarities in your guys' stories, or do you think it's two different separate? Oh, no, no. I do. I do. I think he's a bona fide American hero. I really do. You know, it's against the law for these organizations to spy on Americans.

and thanks to Ed Snowden, we now know that most of what they do is spy on Americans. They just pretend the law doesn't exist, and they spy on us. So we wouldn't know that without Ed Snowden. Now, he took off. I didn't. I challenged them right to their faces. But I think what he did, nonetheless, was very brave. And I'm glad he did it.

I think that the American people are better informed because of him. So it begs the question, do you believe, and I don't know if this is the proper way to phrase it, but just be patient with me here. Do you believe breaking the law is justified to show the American people that the government has been breaking the law? And I'm not, I don't know if that's the proper way to phrase it. I get it. I get exactly what you're saying. And I think the answer is yes, and I'll tell you why. There is a legal definition of whistleblowing. It is bringing to light any evidence of waste, broad, abuse,

illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety. There is also a law in this country that makes it illegal to classify a crime. So if there's a criminal act like torture, it is illegal to make that a classified program. And so I think it's a patriotic duty to go public when the government is breaking the law. Yeah. So, yeah, essentially what you're saying, if the action that's being exposed, there's no way to protect that action legally. Absolutely, you have the authority to go ahead and blow the whistle. You have to.

And both of you guys were charged with the same crime, essentially, the Espionage Act, correct? Yeah. In my case, all of the espionage charges were dropped. I hadn't committed espionage. What they did is they charged me with three counts of espionage. They waited until I went bankrupt from legal fees. And then they dropped the charges, which is, it's what they do. It's called charge stacking.

And I'm not unique in any way in that respect. They do that with every national security defendant. Ed's got a whole bunch of espionage charges pending against him. And I'll tell you what, I was in touch with him pretty closely for a while. his dad even came to prison to visit me. And I told him, the first thing you need to do is hire the best lawyers money can buy. Hire my lawyers. So I introduced them and he hired my lawyers.

Now, this is almost 11 years ago. No, that's more than that. It's almost 13 years ago. So he hired my lawyers. They negotiated with the Justice Department. Ed was willing to come home and he was willing to take a plea and serve 20 years in prison, which is 20 years too long. He said that all he asked for in return was that he'd be allowed to stand up in court

and explain why he did what he did. And DOJ said, absolutely not. And so he hasn't come home. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. So is there anything or is there like a warning you have for people in the government it today based on what you are seeing in our political landscape.

Yes, I made one critical mistake, and that was hiring a lawyer after I blew the whistle, rather than before. So be proactive. Don't be reactive. Don't open your mouth until the lawyer is sitting in the chair next to you. If there's anything you could say to the people who are responsible for locking you up, essentially, and blaming it all on you, and making you really the center of attention, what would be your message to them today? Oh, my message is, you know what,

nobody's ever asked me that before. My message is, I'm on the right side of history, and they are not. And that was by their choice, not mine. I'm grateful for the way things turned out. You know, one of the things,

one of the things, to worry that that is so clarifying about an experience like this is you really genuinely get to see who your friends are and who they're not and you might even be married to the enemy right but it's very very clarifying and i appreciate that i've had that opportunity i genuinely know who my friends are so i have to based on that that state but alone, who do you think should have been in prison for that program? George Tenet, Kofa Black, Jose Rodriguez, Rick Prado. I mean, I could give you a list of two dozen people.

Mitchell and Jessin, there are a lot of them. Another thing that stood out to me just quickly here was it happened under two different presidents, correct? George Bush and... No. We don't think so. It started in 2002, and the CIA claims that it ended the program in late 2005, so it would have all been under George W. Bush. But the Obama administration covered for it. And not only did the Obama administration cover for it, Barack Obama named John Brennan, CIA director. And John Brennan was one of the creators, one of the fathers of the torture program. how does that how does how does how has that impacted your political values essentially oh yeah oh buddy let me tell you oh my god i was a third generation democrat

my grandparents when they immigrated to this country immediately joined the democratic party because their view was you know franklin roosevelt gave them citizenship and franklin rosal gave them jobs at the steel mill and we owed everything we had in life to franklin roosevelt and so my grandparents My parents were Democrats. My parents were Democrats. I was a Democrat. The Democrats today are no more, literally no more than apologists for the neoliberal leadership. They're corrupt. They're liars. They don't care at all about human rights or civil rights or civil liberties. It's all lip service. They have no ideas. And I like to say that I left the Democrats. Party because it moved so far to the right. I think Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan would be very comfortable in today's Democratic Party. And I think they would be thrilled to have him.

Wow. And so, yeah. In 2016, I got on a prison 2015. And in 2016, Gary Johnson, who had been the Republican governor of New Mexico and was then the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, he asked me if I would travel with him and introduce him at. each of his campaign stops. And so we went to 12 states out west and I introduced him at every at every campaign event and I became a libertarian. I consider myself to be a libertarian leftist for what that's worth. But I've come to really believe in something that Ronald Reagan also once said. He said that government is the problem. It's not the solution to the problem. And that certainly has been my experience.

Yeah, you know, we talk about politics every day on this show, and I've already reached that. That'd be up to me. You know, in the beginning. They're so corrupt. In the beginning, you know, I was like, yeah, left versus right. And then I come to find out, I'm like, well, the left is just crazy, okay, and the right is just incompetent.

I mean, so you have two sides that aren't doing anything for the average American. And no wonder people are so, I guess, discuss it might be the word today. But I love your story because it reminds me, and maybe you think differently about this, but it reminds me today might appear to be very crazy. But hearing your story, I mean, that's a different error there. That is on a whole other level than what I'm seeing today. Yeah, it's bad. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

And I'll tell you another thing. Between 1917, when the espionage act became law and Barack Obama's presidency 2009, three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the media. Just under Obama, eight of us were charged with espionage for speaking with the media. Almost three times all previous presidents combined. And keep in mind that in many cases, the Espionage Act as a prosecution is a dead. death penalty case. Is that really the country? We want to be? Probably not. Probably not. I would think. I would think now. And that actually sums up my main statement about Democrats today is they're the very thing that they accuse everyone of being essentially, especially when I hear your story and especially under Obama. And here's the other thing. Today we live in a time where there's alternative media. Everybody has a camera. Everybody has an opinion, you know. Imagine if

that existed during Obama's presidency. I mean, that was. would have been. Seriously. Just to give you another indication where the Democrats are, too. I had a congressman here in Northern Virginia, Jim Moran, one of the loveliest guys, just a good-hearted, kind, and very generous person. And he gave a couple of speeches on the floor of the house calling for my release from prison and for a pardon, neither of which, you know, took place in any kind of timely fashion. I stayed in touch with Jim for a long time. He's still in the area.

He's the lobbyist now. And I said to him one day, what if we go to Senator Warner? Senator Warner at the time from Virginia was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. We asked Warner to ask Obama to pardon me. And Jim said, I have been in the room

when Warner has said that you should be hanging from a tree. you said Warner's not going to help you. But that was the view of the Democratic Party. John Podesta goes to my church. And, you know, the word was Hillary was going to win in 2016. Podesta was going to be chief of staff. So I went to Father Steve up in St. Sophia's Cathedral. And I said, hey, father, can you put me with Podesta?

And he's like, Podesta. He says, Podesta is no friend of yours. You don't want to talk to Pedest. So what? I'm going to get to the, final part of all of this. What years were you actually in prison? February of 2013 to February of 2015. Got it. Okay. Okay. So that was before the election with Trump and Hillary, essentially. Did you ever have any experience with the first Trump administration when you got out?

I did. I actually hired a lobbyist to help me try to get a pardon. She essentially took my money. I never heard from her again. But then I struck up a friendship with Tucker Carlson. And Tucker put me on his show 11 times. And each time he would tell me,

just look directly into the camera and speak directly to the president. And there was one night that I did that. And the president was one night. president was watching and he told Jared Kushner, look at this clip of this guy and tell me what you think. The next day, Jared Kushner's attorney, Abby Loll, called my attorney, Bruce Fine, and said, my client wants to see your client. I was so excited. I wanted to jump up and down. So my lawyer and I went to Abby Lull's office and we met with Abby and with Jared Kushner. And at the end of the meeting,

Khrushche said he wanted a one-page paper, three-quarters of the page. He wanted me to tell my story. And the last quarter, he wanted me to explain why it would help, how it would help Donald Trump get reelected. So we did that. And then we never heard back again. And then on the last day of the Trump presidency, Tucker called me and said, or it was the night before. Tucker called me and said, are you sitting down? I was like, oh, now what? I said. He goes, he's going to pardon and Little Wayne. And I said, Little Wayne, and he said, yeah, he said,

you have to come on the show one last time. So the night, it was January, the 19th, 20, 21, I go on the show and I'm like,

please, I'm begging you. Pardon me. And it just didn't happen. I'm, I'm closer this time. I've applied again. I have fantastic support

within the Republican Party. see this is this is what i love about maga you don't have to agree with everybody on every issue but on these issues of war and peace and civil liberties we're in total agreement no question you know total complete agreement and so i i have a lot of really solid support among high level maga people

and so we've we've sort of planned this out we've written a strong letter I know that the letter's been delivered to the president, and I'm hoping for the best. Yeah. As we come to a close, well, actually first, I do want to say for whatever MAGA is and what people believe it is or isn't, I think one thing's for sure, they are disruption in the two party system. Yeah, and we need for it to be disrupted. Yes. And there was a poll by CNN that essentially said that when the president leaves, they will still exist after the fact. And, you know, we'll see what happens there.

But your family, just really briefly tell us about what happened to your family. Where are you now with your family? How does that all look? Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries, don't have to be.

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It's been a very high price to pay. Yeah. I you know what I would tell you more but there's a court order that privates me from doing that understood no I understood understood I guess so then it leads me to probably a better question what are you hoping that your kids learn from you ultimately if there's one lesson at all that that that that they come to the realization oh yeah okay I get why my father did this or now I understand what he wanted me to to to learn could you share that with us yeah it's And this is something I've tried to instill in all of them.

It's all about telling the truth. It's all about protecting other people's human rights, people who can't protect themselves. You know, this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And I took that very seriously. These politicians, they work for us. And by extension, the civil service employees work for us. if we're going to have rules and laws in this country, then they have to be abided by in every example.

And so, you know, if you believe in your heart that what you're doing is right, then you have to go for it. You really do. It's all worth it. I love that. John, it's been really good. I appreciate you sharing the story, one of one. Thanks for having me.

That's how I have. Thank you. Definitely. Great questions. Yeah, I appreciate that. Great questions, DeBore. No, I appreciate you. Thank you.

Yeah. We'll link your books below this video and your contact information. But just to end it off on a positive note, what's one positive thing you'd like to say to the American people about our future? Oh, we can fix this situation. And don't be wrapped up by partisan splits. The idea that we've got either Democrats or Republicans, that's a, false division. The ideological spectrum is not a straight line from left to right. It's a circle. And at one point, it meets. And it's at that point that we can all work together. So let's do that.

I love that. Thank you so much, John, for your time today. Thank you. Good to meet you. Absolutely.