Transcription
Does the CIA make people disappear? CIA spy reveals.
Does the CIA listen through our phones and laptop cameras? Yes. I hate to say it. They can uh take over your smart television and turn this >> what changing the channels. That's why I keep waking up to the same Family Guy episode every night. >> Speaker into a microphone so that they can listen to what's being said in the room even when the TV is turned off. That's freaky. They could do that.
Hello, I'm John Kuryaku. I'm a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. And I'm here today to answer questions from the >> Yeah, I don't I don't I I don't want to I'm not going to call Cap because then I feel like they're going to test that. [laughter] I believe everything this guy says, but I will play devil's advocate for the sake of playing devil's advocate. Are they really able to turn a speaker into a microphone? Aren't they two different things? Like, I don't think you could make something that emits sound into something that receives it technologically. Like, the hardware isn't there.
Honesty box speakers always have microphones. That's just not true. The first one is what did the CIA actually do? They're >> Isn't the CIA Central Intelligence Agency? I don't know what they do. I know the FBI does like inner relations like US mainly of like highprofile crimes, serial killers, and like safety things. Isn't the CIA more like intelligence on like potential terrorists, foreign relations, and other like the CIA more deals with like world stuff?
Are several answers to that question. What the CIA is supposed to do, what it is legally tasked with doing is very simply to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and then to analyze those secrets to give the president and other senior policy makers the best information with which they can make policy. Now, in real life, it's not that simple. The CIA does whatever the president tells it to do. That could be to overthrow foreign governments. It could be to implement covert action programs to influence the foreign media to even kill people. It just depends on who the president is and what >> Yeah, but like who do you think the CIA's killed is the thing. Cuz if the CIA is in charge of basically assassinating like foreign government officials, that means they've done it. So who? JFK. See, but that doesn't make sense because JFK was the president. So why would the CIA assassinate JFK? I've heard Yeah, I have heard the theories about Charlie Kirk, but I'm saying MLK maybe, but that's even like that's people in the US. I'm saying people outside of the US. Who's somebody that's like a foreign leader that the CIA's assassinated, but like we they cuz they you wouldn't know. It wouldn't be somebody that the milit It's not like Osama bin Laden where it's like they killed him and then announced that the military killed him uh in like the Navy Seals, right? That's different. It's like the CIA would somebody would die and the CIA would not they would be so secretive that it's like not even blamed on them. Like the US isn't involved even though they are. It's just like it kind of just seems like the guy died.
Policy he wants to implement. What skills make a good agent? You might be surprised by the answer. Actually, the CIA when it recruits spies, when it recruits operations officers, doesn't necessarily look for the big buff guy who works out, you know, every day or six days a week. They look for people who have sociopathic tendencies, not sociopaths. Sociopaths are impossible to control because they have no conscience. They blow right through a polygraph exam, but they won't take orders. People who have sociopath, >> so they want somebody that is borderline sociopathic, but still manipulatable. They're outwardly saying, "We don't want a guy that's a sociopath that'll just do whatever he wants. We want a guy that's kind of crazy, but will also listen to us."
The tendencies do react to a polygraph. They do experience regret or remorse. They will respond to directives and orders. I'll give you an example. When I first was recruited by the CIA, I was asked in a group of new hires.
CIA admitted to trying to kill Fidel Castro eight times. I heard about that. I heard that they tried to kill Fidel Castro with an ice cream cone cuz they knew that he liked a certain type of ice cream shop and they had it all pre-planned. And I forget what happened, but like it didn't work. like they swapped the cone. He didn't show up. Something happened and they were like planning to kill him with like a Yeah, it was like a milkshake or some [ __ ].
Uh what we would do if we got a cable from CIA headquarters ordering us to collect information on the Indonesian economy. You recruit the Indonesian economic secretary. You make him your best friend. You spend money on him. Your wives become friends. You vacation together. But you learn that he is just not recruitable. So what do you do? Well, one of my colleagues said you double down, work the case another six months and hope for the best. A second colleague said, "Maybe you work it through your wives. Maybe your wife can convince his wife to give you the information." I raised my hand and said, >> "Just shoot him in the face." I raised my hand and said, "Why don't we just kill him? You know, why don't we just kill him and take all the the information? We just take the stuff."
You break into the Indonesian embassy and YOU STEAL IT. [laughter] WHY ARE WE EVEN GETTING A relationship with the guy in the first place? What the [ __ ] You just you just [ __ ] break into the place and steal it. All right. Well, we don't we don't even we skipped step number one.
And the instructor said, "That's exactly what you do." That's a sociopathic tendency. What's the coolest piece of spy tech you ever got to use? You know, there's kind of a dirty little secret about spy tech.
Oh god, this is going to be bad. It's actually this. It's called a funny gun, and it makes you forget how to speak any language that you originally learned. It basically makes you uh mentally incapable of doing anything. So, when you hit somebody with it, it's it's a funny gun, you know, they can't do anything for the rest of their life.
And it is that 95% of it is purchased from Amazon.com.
What? What? Seriously because it is cheaper and it is quicker just to go online and buy it and then use it operationally than it is to invent it from scratch. The coolest piece of spytech that I ever used was uh it was a leather briefcase. I just went into the local marketplace in Pakistan and bought it. I think it cost the equivalent of like $10. And over the course of three days, one of our technical officers pulled the threads out of it, installed a wire all the way around the briefcase, which could act as a listening device, and then packed the area around the wire with these little teeny tiny batteries that I had never seen before. And then he sewed the whole thing closed again. So I walked into a meeting with my little briefcase. The bad guy took the briefcase from me, opened it up, looked through it. It didn't have anything in it because it was all sewn into the lining, and we sat there and had the uh had the meeting while my colleagues half a mile away were able to listen to the entire.
I feel like that's cool, but there's got to be other [ __ ] they have to kill people. Bro, in the 80s they in the 80s or the 70s, bro, they had to declassify some heart attack gun that they made 50 years ago, they had a gun where you would shoot somebody, it would leave a little prick and you would die like an hour later and there would be no cause of death. The autopsy would say that you just had a random heart attack. Like there's no way that the coolest thing is a [ __ ] a sewnin [ __ ] microphone. Like there's got to be maybe the coolest thing he used, but there's got to be other [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] they have.
I think it was very cool. Does the CIA listen through our phones and laptop cameras? Yes. I hate to say it. There was a dramatic leak. Uh
I the way that I assume is it's like if you're suspicious, they'll listen to you because there's not like some guy monitoring every single thing that you're doing. I think there is a system that might be flagging certain things for, you know, potential risks. I think if you and your friends are jokingly talking about killing someone, that might [ __ ] throw up a red flag. You know, your PlayStation 5 group chat is probably flagging something that what you guys are what you and your friends are [ __ ] saying on on on Discord at 2 am. And then maybe they look at you, they go, "Ah, they're not serious." this and they [ __ ] move on. You know,
in 2017 that the CIA came to call the Vault 7 disclosures, gigabytes worth of documents leaked by a CIA technology engineer. What he told us was that the CIA can intercept anything from anyone. Number one. Number two, they can remotely take control of your car through the car's embedded computer to do depends on the car. If you drive a modern car, if you drive a 2006 [ __ ] Honda, you know, Honda SUV, I don't think the CIA is remotely hacking into your car. I think if you drive a 2025, you know, [ __ ] Grand Cherokee with a [ __ ] touchscreen. Yeah. Maybe they'll be able to Yeah. Cyber Truck.
Do what? To make you drive off a bridge INTO A >> WHAT? THEY CAN remotely take over your car and make you veer off a road and to do what? to make you drive off a bridge into a tree to make you and make it look like >> editor believe that >> an accident. They can uh take over your smart television and turn the speaker into a microphone.
I don't believe that. I don't understand how that works. That part I'm not getting. How are you turning something that outputs audio to something that receives it? That'd be like you're you're turning my headphones into a into a speaker. You can't do that, can you? I don't know. That's like a Lionus Tech Tips question. That'd be like saying you're going to output audio through this. Yo, this is a Brady question. Oh, Brady, are you here? Brady. Brady. Brady. Brady. [clears throat] Brady's the type of guy to have tried that. turned a speaker into a listening device >> so that they can listen to what's being said in the room even when the TV is turned off. God knows what else that they can do that uh that hasn't been leaked. Are hitmen real? Yes. At the National Security Council, there is a committee that meets every Tuesday morning.
Okay, follow-up question. Is Jason Staithm just a movie star or also actually a hitman? at 9:00 to drop something called the kill list. They sit around a table and they make a list of all the people that they want to kill that week. And then they take it back to the CIA which has a dedicated unit. I won't tell you the name, but it has a dedicated unit that takes receipt of the list. They say, "Okay, number one." They drive to the airport, they get on the plane, they go out to that country, they kill the person, they come back, and then they go to number two on the list. That happens every single week.
Wow. Do you think those guys get paid well? And how do you do you think their family knows what they do? I wonder about that. If you're a hitman for the CIA and you have a wife and kids, your kids probably don't know your job, right? Like you you probably go like, "I'm a part of the CIA. I can't tell you, you know, like I just have to go to [ __ ] you know, Kazakhstan for a week. I'll see you later and you disappear. Come back. I'm good."
Now, we can have a conversation about whether that's right or whether it's wrong. It's certainly immoral. It's illegal, but it's been tasked by the president. Uh, at the same time, they will tell you there hasn't been another 9/11, has there? Maybe it's cuz we're out there killing people.
What kind of people would be on that list?
Oh, the the most dangerous terrorists in the world.
Or at least people that the CIA deems to be the most dangerous terrorists in the world. How does >> what? But how are they how is the CIA finding these random people across the world that they're deeming as the most dangerous terrorists? I think it's technically possible since a mic and speaker are just converting electricity to vibrations, but I feel like it wouldn't work for every device because the signal would be so much worse than on a fake speaker mic.
The CIA recruit spies.
Like they could do it, but the quality would be really bad >> in foreign countries. Ah, that cuts right to the to the very heart of what the CIA is. The CIA trains its officers in something called the asset acquisition cycle. It has four steps. spot, assess, develop, recruit. So, let's say you're a brand new CIA officer overseas. You get out there and mingle and go to diplomatic cocktail parties or go anywhere where there might be a viable target for you. You spot the target. You go up. Hi, how are you? I'm the new officer at the American Embassy. I'm covering political affairs or economic affairs or trade or whatever it is you're >> and then they grab him by the collar. I'm a part of the CIA. I need you to get this information for me. Please, please, the world's fate depends on it.
Doing you exchange business cards. That's spotting. Assessing is I say, "So, what do you do for a living? If you tell me that you do something that I'm operationally interested in, that's my assessment of you. Then I develop you. That's actually the fun part. That is us going to lunch and going to dinner and I spend money on you because I have literally >> manipulating the person into agreeing to spy for you. I feel like he's just saying that in like a lighter term. Like what the [ __ ]
Really an unlimited budget to do so. And maybe we go on vacation together and our wives are friends and you mention off-handedly that you like to go fishing, let's say. So, I charter a boat for $4,000 and I take you deep sea fishing because you could never afford to do it on your own.
This kind of seems like a lit ass job, bro. Like 80% of the work is kind of just like glazing a guy, you know? Yeah. Let's go on a [ __ ] Dude, let's go on a [ __ ] 3-week trip to Key West, man. That sounds awesome.
And then we become best friends.
Government pays for it. Yeah. Last day, you're like, do you mind putting this rice strip on Kim Jong-un? I know you're going to see him next week. And he goes, "What? But John, I thought I need you to do this. Think about the good time we have, man. Unlimited fishing trips await us. All you got to do, kill Kim Jong-un."
And because we're best friends, I say to you, "Hey, would you do me a favor? Um, yeah. I'm sorry to ask, but you know, the Russians have this new tank."
Yeah. Yo, literally. Yo, they honey dick him. That's what it is. This is the CIA honeydicks other men into being a spy for them. Honey, what [laughter] what is that? It's like it's a phrase that they use in the interview. It's like honeypotting. It's basically the idea of like having somebody that you perceive as attractive like approaching you and basically asking cozying up to you, asking you to do a favor to them and your stupid animal pee brain doesn't recognize that they're they're just manipulating you because they're insanely attractive and also really nice and rich and helping you that you just do whatever they they want you to do. And I know that you guys have access to the plans and I would >> they do it in the interview. In the interview, they bring like this really attractive woman. She asks one of the characters, "Hey, we need you to kill Kim Jong-un." And he just goes, "Oh, yeah, sure. Sure, whatever. What? Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. No, for yeah, but like in a more long drawn out way.
Would really appreciate it if you could just make me a copy of those plans. I know that sounds kind of funny, but it would help me a lot. So, hey, thanks. I appreciate it. give me the I I'll pick them up uh tonight. And then maybe I start giving you a little bit of money. And then finally, when it comes to the recruitment, I say, "I haven't been totally honest with you. I'm actually a CIA officer undercover. Are you okay with that?" [laughter]
Yo, the heart racing as you got to reveal that, bro. Three months into the [ __ ] relationship, you're like, "I'm actually a part of the CIA. This whole relationship's been fake.
You're a great guy and you're my best friend and how about if I give you $5,000 a month and you just answer my questions, right? That's cool, right?" And you undoubtedly will say yes and the rest is history.
$5,000 a month sounds pretty good. All you got to do answer a few questions. You don't even got to change how you live. $5,000 a month. You Hey, sure. Got to be a good >> why not >> actor to do that.
That's mid. Bro, you're basically getting a living salary for just existing 5k though. You're getting $60,000 a year untaxable because they're not putting that on a [ __ ] tax form, buddy. You're getting that in cash under the table. You're getting 60k untaxed every year just to answer a question every other month. Hey, what did what conversation did you have with this guy? Uh yeah, you know, he was talking about, you know, maybe like blowing up a tower. I don't know.
Pull that off. Yeah.
And a sociopath. [laughter]
Do you ever fear for your life? Not now, but over the course of my career, I did several times. And I'll give you one example. There were two active assassination attempts against me. In one, I just got lucky. And unfortunately, my next door neighbor was killed instead. He was the British defense attaches. There were two active assassination attempts.
He almost got assassinated, but they killed the wrong guy and it was this [ __ ] neighbor >> against me. In one, I just got lucky. And unfortunately, my next door neighbor was killed instead. He was the British defense atache in um Athens, Brigadier General Steven Saunders. I think about it every single day. In another
Wow, dude. The guild on that is probably insane. a country sent one of its officers and a double agent to kill me, but we had advanced warning that it was going to happen and we were able to >> well we were able to neutralize the threat as >> kill the guy >> as they say in the movies. But there was another experience that I had that troubled me deeply. I was serving in Pakistan at the time and I was staying in a small guest house because it was safer than a big uh hotel. Sure enough, the big hotel was blown up and 45 people were killed while I was living there. But I left my guest house at a different time like I did every day and took a different route like I did every day TO GO TO WOW. THEY CAN'T get on a routine because of the fact that people might be stalking them and then planning how to kill them. What the [ __ ] dude? The anxiety of everyday life sounds terrible. I know he's in Pakistan working a job, but like having to physically do different [ __ ] every day sounds awful.
Do work and I noticed that a man on a motorcycle wearing a red helmet was trying very hard to stay in my blind spot. I worked 12, 14 hours, whatever it was that day and I left and it was dark and sure enough there he was again. There's a definition of surveillance. It's multiple sightings at time and distance. So, I've seen him multiple times at different times of the day and at different places. I'm definitely under surveillance. I got up at 5:00 in the morning, got in the car, drove a block, there he was again. So, when I got to the uh to the office, I said to the security officer, "I am under surveillance. I'm 100% sure that I'm under surveillance." He said, "Well, let's wait until the uh the chief comes in." When the chief finally came in, I told him the story and he said, "Well, you know what you have to do?" I said, "I know."
So, I pulled out a Glock and I shot him in the head.
I'm going to kill him.
Oh my god. Yo, what? You're not even going to ask him like who's making you watch me? He's just going to kill the guy. if I see him this afternoon. I was worried about it all day. And all my co-workers came up to me that day to slap me on the back and say, "Don't worry. We're all going to be out there. We're going to have a whole security team." I said, "I know, but I never killed anybody before, and I'm so worried that he's going to kill me before I get a clear shot at him." That afternoon, I had a meeting at a safe house that we shared with the local service. And on my way out at the end of the meeting, and I don't know why I did this, but I turned around and I said, "General, are you following me?" And he said, "No, why?" And I said, "Because I'm under surveillance, and if I see this guy again, I'm going to kill him." And I never saw him again. I learned later that several of their officers were sitting around and saying, "You know, that new American guy, he's such a nice guy. Nobody's that nice. I wonder if he's being nice just to try to make us drop our guard." And they >> What? So, they had a guy, the people they were working with were watching him, and he told the guy that was watching him, "Hey, like I'm going to kill this guy if I see him again." I wonder if he's being a guy. He's such a nice guy. Nobody's that nice. I wonder if he's being nice just to try to make us drop our guard. And they decided to put the worst surveillance officer in their entire intelligence service on me. And if I hadn't said something that afternoon, >> that guy would have died on the ground today.
And and it wouldn't have even been his fault.
The UK and Europe's back. No. What did that say?
Does Trump have the UK and Europe's back? No, >> he doesn't. When we hear from journalists or political figures that Donald >> It's to a tea. I feel like the US has other countries backs as long as that that country is able to help them in return in some fashion, whether it be in the future or in general.
Trump doesn't like the Europeans. He doesn't like NATO. He doesn't like the European Union. We should take the man at his word. I don't think he does have Europe's back or even the UK's back. When he says America first, he means America first, whatever that means. He has an idea in his own mind. Uh, but I don't think he cares one wit about Europe. Which film or TV series portrays spy work the most accurately? Great question. I will tell you that at the >> Probably Spy Kids. Probably Spy Kids, maybe. What's another one?
CIA. >> Yeah, Men in Black.
We watch every single spy movie and spy series. All of us do. I'm proud to say that I have been the script.
Gadget, Mr. Bean, >> on the Born Ultimatum, on Kill the Messenger, on True Lies, and on Burn Notice. We love this kind of thing. Most of them have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of the CIA except a couple. In terms of TV, Homeland, wow, they got it right. The only thing that they got wrong was if you go crazy, they send you to the hospital until you're not crazy anymore. Um, in movies, there was a movie that came out in 2004 called The Recruit. the first half of the movie where the lead character is uh going through training 100% accurate except for one minor difference. They didn't beat us in training. Everything else that he went through, we went through it in spades. Most other movies stinkers. And listen, just as a general rule, if somebody calls the CIA the company, turn it off. [laughter] Like that movie is going to be a dud and it's just going to be just insanely inaccurate. Oh my god. Wait, hold up.
Social media, the biggest intelligence gathering tool today. It is absolutely one of them. Yes. You know, I I I was always amazed when I was at the CIA at how targets, legitimate intelligence targets, would literally put their entire lives on LinkedIn and Facebook. Incredible. You don't even have to do any research. They'll lay it all out right there on on the screen for you. So, uh, the answer is yes. If you >> on LinkedIn, the CIA is finding most of the [ __ ] they need on LinkedIn. I feel like Facebook for sure because a lot of people overshare.
Value your privacy. If you don't want to pop up on the radar, you have to stay away from social media. The problem is if you're not on social media as somebody in Gen Z, everybody's going to think that you're a serial killer. Not in the sense that you're like, "Oh, I don't have Tik Tok." If you if you're trying to like have a conversation and you're like, "No, I don't have Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, uh, Discord, nothing. Twitter, no. Reddit, no. You have nothing." They'd be like, "Bro, are you a real person? What are you doing? That's me. You just don't have any socials."
What was 911's impact on the world? You know, I was in the CIA's headquarters on the morning of 9/11. Well, we knew we were at war. And one of the first thoughts that I had that morning was, does Osama bin Laden have any idea what he's done? Does he have any idea how many people are going to die? We all knew what the American response was going to be. It was going to be merciless. The question is what was 911's impact on the world. It was dramatic and lasting. We're almost 24 years after the 9/11 attacks and we still can't go through airports uh with our shoes on. Untold truth.
I can't What are you talking? That's a lie. That's a lie. I've been shocked that every in the last two months, every time I've gone to the airport, they don't make me take my shoes off anymore. Why is that? I'm still going through the same [ __ ] weird scanner where I go and it goes and they go step out and then there's a little box and they click it and it says okay and they go next. They don't make me take my shoes off anymore.
Trillions of >> better scanners. That's what I'm assuming. They're really pumping radiation into me when I step into those scanners and just turns me green.
Dollars have been spent on counterterrorism and defense and that is probably never going to change. Why are there so many wars in 2025? Well, do you want my real answer or do you want my diplomatic answer? My real answer is the US has a defense budget that is bigger than the next eight largest countries combined. After 911, the US entered into something like a permanent wartime economy where if we didn't have a war to fight and to finance, we would actually go into recession. Now, we see ourselves as the world's peacekeepers. In many cases, we're not. We tend to be places where we're not wanted or welcome, and we end up forgetting to leave. There's an old joke inside the CIA about Iran. Like, why would Iran put its country right in the middle of all of our military bases? There you have it. Why are there so many wars? It's because the US has an activist foreign policy. And uh and sometimes we make uh friends on the wrong side of issue.
I think it's a mixture of things. I think it's our our spending is so high that there has to be a there has to be things that we get involved with to justify it. But it's also other countries decreased spending and reliance on us, which is another thing that is going on in Europe's economy right now where a lot of European countries are dedicating more of their GDP towards their own militaries so they don't have to rely on the US anymore because they don't trust us. Because it's like after after World War II, we ramped military spending so much and we've continued to have high military. It ain't that deep. It is that deep. Uh we spend so much on the military, it's incompar, it's unfathomable from a foreigner perspective. The amount of money our government spends on the military seems normal to you, but to anyone that's not a part of the US, it's insane how much money we spend on the military. Can the CIA make someone disappear without a trace? You bet they can. And they do all the time. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA created, for example, an archipelago of secret prisons, and they would just disappear people. We would capture people in al-Qaeda safe houses, for example, let's say in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and we would ship them off to these these secret prisons. And when I say secret prisons,
I think it needs to be noted on the other end though that the CIA and the US government and military tortured and maimed people wrongfully. Like not only is like torture wrong, but like you could look into men that were profiled, kidnapped, tortured for years and had nothing to do with terrorism. They were literally just Middle Eastern people, like just regular guys. And they were [ __ ] hooked up to car batteries, had their teeth pulled, you know, [ __ ] kept up for days on end, tortured over and over and over and over for literally years, and then randomly just being like, "Oh yeah, you're not the guy. Sorry." And then they just let you go back. I mean in many cases they were so secret that even the presidents and prime ministers of the countries where this where the prisons were based didn't know that there were secret CIA prisons in their countries. So the CIA can make people disappear in that respect. Uh they can kill people and just bury them, you know, in some crazy foreign land and nobody would ever know.
They would kill you at that point. They didn't. There was multiple people that did it and they talk about it today and they have the scars from it and all this other [ __ ] They talk about it. There's p There's pictures, bro. What? There's pictures. There's pictures of US military agents smiling next to a naked Middle Eastern man with a bag over his head with his [ __ ] hands. You could look into this [ __ ] There's so many images of like [ __ ] people being tortured and Americans just like like right next to it. But if you're a CIA officer, or better yet, let's say you're a KGB officer and you want to defect, the CIA will give you a completely new identity, more money than you can ever count, and you and your family can live happily ever after, you know, under the name uh John Smith, and nobody would be the wiser. How does the USA track terrorist threats? They use something called the terrorist matrix. Uh, it's also called all source intelligence. Believe it or not, members of terrorist groups actually give press interviews in which they telegraph what they're going to do in their next attack. That's one way. The media, electronic surveillance, it could be intercepting cell phones, intercepting emails, intercepting encoded messages, uh, even intercepting messages from game platforms. We have satellites that track these things. We have spies providing what's called human short for human intelligence. So, you use literally every source at your at your dispense and uh and put this matrix together to try to disrupt that next attack. Can you be a spy and have a moral compass? What a great question that is. I'm going to say yes because I had a moral compass. Uh it cost me my freedom. It cost me my job. It cost me my family.
What do you mean? Like he ratted on the CIA or something.
But it was worth it. There are some things that you are tasked to do as a CIA counter intelligence officer that you just have to say no to. There's >> Oh, you're allowed to say no. Like you don't have to do it. some things that are so immoral, so unethical, in many cases, so illegal that you just should not do it. What is the most controversial thing you've worked on or heard about? It has to be the torture program. I went >> He was a part of the torture program after 911. >> Went to prison for 23 months for going public with >> Oh my god. He was a whistleblower about that [ __ ] Was he one of the guys that that [ __ ] released that [ __ ] >> The CIA's torture program. Uh, I went on ABC News in the United States in December of 2007 and I said three things. I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners. I said that torture was official US government policy. And I said that, >> well, isn't it what is it called? Enhanced interrogation is what they call it. It's torture. But they use enhanced interrogation as like a guy's like to hide that >> the policy had been personally approved by the president himself. The FBI investigated me. They determined I had not committed a crime. Then Barack Obama became president. They secretly reopened the case against me. I was indicted and charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage for giving this uh this interview. Remember, espionage can be a death penalty charge. I had three of them. Well, I hadn't committed espionage, and finally, they dropped those charges, but I ended up taking a plea to a lesser charge just to make this thing go away. I had five kids at home. I had gone bankrupt from from the legal expenses, and I was facing 45 years in prison. They offered me 23 months, and I took the deal. But I would do it again today if I had to because somebody had to stand up and say that this was wrong. Shouldn't torture be legal if we are protecting American lives? Absolutely not. Not under any circumstances. Torture doesn't work. Torture is >> Yeah. torture is pro Isn't torture proven to not work? Like if they're if they're going to tell you, they're going to tell you. If they're not going to tell you, they're not going to tell you. And a lot of the time you're torturing people that don't even have the information that you need. And so you're basically just torturing a guy for no reason whatsoever.
Legal internationally, it is immoral. And you end up making a recruitment video essentially for your greatest enemies. For example, when it became apparent that the US was torturing uh military prisoners at Abu Grae prison in Iraq uh and video was leaked showing those prisoners in orange jumpsuits. ISIS bought orange jumpsuits and made its kidnapping victims who were mostly aid workers and uh and American journalists wear orange jumpsuits and then beheaded them on camera. Yeah, I saw that [ __ ] too, dude. In middle school. That like that's like the traumatic, bro. I don't know if it's like guys and girls, but I remember I saw that when I was in middle school. I saw the ISIS paddings and that [ __ ] scared the [ __ ] out of me. Like scared the [ __ ] out of me. And it motivates that. Like because if you if you start torturing them, everybody everybody's going to match you. Like the people you're trying to fight, it's like if you start torturing them, they're going to start torturing innocent Americans or anybody they [ __ ] capture. They did that only because the US was torturing its prisoners. So torture does not work. Torture is illegal. It is immoral. It is unethical. And no one should be in the business of doing it. What's the most dangerous country in the world right now? Also a good question. There are several. Um, and I've been to all of them. I never got to go to the nice places. I went to 72 countries with the CIA. And all of them were dog [ __ ] The worst. Oh my god, bro. Before you had to become a whistleblower. Oh yeah, you got to travel. Where am I going? North Korea. Oh [ __ ]
Almost all of them were just awful.
Where are you going, dude? You're going to a Caribbean island country, but it's ran by war criminals.
Oh, some of the most dangerous >> [ __ ] places in the world are Yemen, Somalia, Gaza, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan. uh you have to sleep with one eye open. You just never know how bad things are going to get. And I'll give you an example. I went to uh I went to Yemen five times. And every time I went, it was worse than the previous time. The fifth and final time that I went, we were only allowed to stay at one hotel. The hotel had a 30 foot high wall around it to protect it from bomb blasts. You couldn't stay in any of the other hotels by then. Well, the day after I arrived, a group of South Korean diplomats arrived. And on the drive from the airport to the hotel, they were ambushed and they were all killed, six of them. A couple of days later, a group of South Korean intelligence officers arrived to investigate the murder of the six diplomats, and they were ambushed, and they were murdered. And so, the South Koreans just closed their embassy and went home. That's a pretty dangerous country. What do YOU MAKE OF >> WOW. WOW. SOUTH KOREAN DIPLOMATS go to Yemen, all get murdered. Intelligence officers all get murdered. They go, "Yep, and we're giving up." And they just leave. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. There's no point in [ __ ] still trying.
This foreign policy right now, a complete and utter disaster. I've never seen an administration that works so hard to to offend and alienate our friends. Threatening to invade Canada. That's an act of war. Canada is not just a NATO country, but it's a >> or the [ __ ] tariffs we place on countries because we buy more of their stuff than they buy of ours. And that dumbass [ __ ] poster he held up. And he was like, "This is what we're going to do. This is what we're gonna do." Okay, that's the plan. That's the [ __ ] plan. Hey, everybody that we're good with, let's make them hate us.
Five eyes country. Five eyes being the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The closest alliance in the entire world. And what?
IT WORKED THOUGH. NO, IT DIDN'T. THE US IS IN the worst [ __ ] [ __ ] scenario it could be in right now, bro. They do. Do we raise interest rates or do we lower them? Either way, we're shooting ourselves in the [ __ ] foot. The average American is [ __ ] The job markets are down. Big corp is firing tens of thousands of people by the day and everyone has no idea what to do. We're lying on television saying that the statistics are just skewed when in reality everybody's just getting fired. It used to be an economy during COVID where nobody was getting fired, but nobody was getting hired. Now, no one's getting hired and everyone's getting fired. The US dollar is worth less than it was 6 months ago. Gold is up 60%. So, if you're somebody that bought that, you're you're [ __ ] living large. But if you outside of that, oh, the stock market's up. Okay. Yeah, it's a [ __ ] big bubble landing on tech and AI. And if that doesn't pay out, everybody's going to lose money. But we're going to send an army to Canada and overthrow them. It doesn't make any sense. Even if you're joking, why would you even joke like that out loud? We don't coordinate with our European allies. Uh we we're threatening to invade Panama to take the Panama Canal. We're threatening to invade and annex Greenland. It's craziness. So, I'm not a big supporter of US foreign policy right now. Does China actually pose a real risk to the West? I think no. And I'll tell you why. China simply does not have a history of expansionism. If you put aside Tibet, which the Chinese have always claimed to be a part of China, the Chinese have never invaded another country. They had a little border skirmish uh in uh with the Vietnamese in the 1970s. They had a little border skirmish against India in the 1960s, but they they don't invade countries. And they have only one military base outside of China. It's in Djibouti. And believe it or not, they share it with the United States. It's the US that sees China as the big threat. And Australia and the Philippines kind of see China as a threat. But the Chinese are perplexed at Philippines kind of see China as a threat. But the Chinese are perplexed as to why we so distrust them. Is there a threat from China to Taiwan? Of course there is. Taiwan is also seen by the Chinese as being a legitimate part of China, but there's no indication that the Chinese are preparing any offensive measures against Taiwan. I just don't see what the big threat is. Is the CIA or MI6 more elite? H MI6 is an absolutely top tier first rate service, but it's like comparing six. Is the CIA or MI6 more elite? MI6 is an absolutely >> what is MI6? >> Top tier first rate service, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. At the CIA, we used to say how much we wished we could be like MI6 because MI6 is >> British CIA >> small and it's lean and when they decide to do something by God they go out and do it. At the CIA, when we decide to do something, we have six layers of bureaucracy that we have to go through to finally get permission and then the attorneys get involved and then you have to send it to the president and then he has to sign it or change it or reject it or do whatever it is he has to do. They don't have that kind of a problem at MI6. They just report directly to the prime minister and they can get things done. The CIA has a budget that absolutely dwarfs the MI6 budget and we have our own, you know, high level technology budget, satellites and spy planes and all kinds of crazy things. So, they're both great services, but but they're different at the same time. Are sleeper agents real? Yes, they are. And the country that is the >> This video is g I'm gonna I'm gonna die watching this video, bro. This is insane. >> Best at using sleeper agents is Russia. The United States doesn't have a a pro >> like movie sleeper agents. Like movie sleeper agents like some like No, they're talking about sleeper agents that live a regular life and then randomly get a call and then now they have to [ __ ] do [ __ ] Not a sleeper agent like they hit a switch and it's like Mus Gil John F. Kennedy like some it's not like that >> of sleep agents. And I'm frankly unaware of any Western intelligence service that has sleep agents or that uses sleeper agents. The Russians have an army of sleeper agents. In fact, just in the last two or three years, uh a group of Russian sleeper agents in Northern Virginia, including one in my neighborhood uh were were disrupted and um arrested. So, what a sleeper agent IS IS >> WHAT? There were Russian sleeper agents in Northern Virginia and they activated or not activated, they were told to do something.
Somebody who is trained as an intelligence officer who is then sent to the United States or the UK or Brazil or Paris or wherever um and told to just get a job, any job, and be a national of that country. And so you've got people who in the case of what happened in Washington recently um one was a was an elementary school teacher and um one worked for an airline.
Everybody thought they were Americans and in fact they're collecting classified information mostly from US defense contractors and secretly transmitting it back to Russian intelligence uh in the evenings. They were disrupted and expelled from the United States. Is Chief of Disguise a real job? You bet it is. They have the most fun in the world. On the day that I got hired, you >> imagine you find out your teacher's a Russian spy. Yeah. You're in second grade. Where's Mr. Adams? Mr. Adams got sent back to Russia because he was he he actually wasn't he was it's not like he was an illegal immigrant or anything. It was more He was He was a sleeper agent. What's a sleepo agent? He might have killed you. No.
His name's actually Stefan Blinkyov. His name's actually not Mr. Adams.
And I sat down. I said, "Hi, my name's John. It's nice to meet you both." They said, "Um, what are you going to do here at the agency?" I said, "I'm going to be an intelligence officer. I have degrees in Middle Eastern studies. What are you guys going to do? The woman said to me, "Oh, I just graduated from the Falls Church, Virginia Academy of Beauty." Academy of Beauty. She ended up becoming a master disguise maker. And the guy on my left was a cartoonist for his college newspaper. He drew a little cartoon that was very popular. He became a master forger. So, it doesn't really matter what your background is. If you're good at it, >> HOW DO YOU FIND THIS [ __ ] JOB? Is it on LinkedIn? How do you apply to become a [ __ ] CIA forger? You know what I mean?
There's a place for you. >> Yeah. Local cartoon. How are you finding that? It's on Indeed. Yeah. Like it's just like popup position >> at the CIA and many of >> It's got to be connections, man. You got to know a guy that knows a guy >> places.
They find you. That'd be crazy. Like some Harry Potter [ __ ] You get an owl that drops off a letter.
We're welcoming you. We're welcoming you to the Pentagon.
Working for the director of disguise. What made you decide to blow the whistle? It's very brave. Thank you. Uh, you know, at the CIA, we are trained to believe that everything in life is a shade of gray, and that is just simply not true. Some things are black and white. They're they're right or wrong. And the United States has laws that ban torture. We have the Federal Torture Act of 1946. We are not just signitories to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. We wrote the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In 1946, the United States executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American PS. In 1968, an American soldier waterboarded a North Vietnamese prisoner and was given 20 years at hard labor in a military prison after being convicted of torture. The law never changed. So, how is it then that from 2002 to 2005, torture was somehow magically legal? It wasn't legal. We were committing crimes against humanity. And so it was something that I I having known the details, I couldn't sleep at night. And I believed and and in retrospect I I was right that the American people had a right to know what their government was doing in their name. And I'm proud to say that because of my revelations, the McCain Feinstein amendment was passed into law and it formally and permanently banned torture.
Have you? >> But that doesn't mean they don't do it, does it? Like that's that's the thing though. It's just like, okay, it's not allowed anymore. We have something that bans it, you know? You're the [ __ ] you're the guy that makes the rules. You You don't really have to follow them, you know? You could [ __ ] do what you want. Like it's Yeah. Formally it but that's what like But now you're overseas, you know? It's on a [ __ ] I like Do I think it happens as much as it did after 911? No. But do I think people still get tortured at the hands of the US? Yeah, for sure. [music]