Transcription
Hi everybody, I'm John Kiryaku and thanks for joining us for another Q&A session here on Deep Focus. Before we get to the questions, I want to thank you again for liking, subscribing, telling your friends and family about it. This show is only succeeding because of you. And I, I mean it with all sincerity. It's just because of you. So, thanks for taking the time to do all these things. I'm really very grateful.
And now, oh, and I also wanted to apologize. I'm unshaven. I'm wearing a silly sweatshirt with a buffalo on it. Um, this storm has just been paralyzing and I literally cannot get out of the house. Please forgive my unshaven, uh, appearance. I'm going to shave next time.
Okay, so let's start with the questions. Our first one is from Michael Smith. He says, "John, how much of an impact would it would it make to stop corruption in government if a whistleblower's salary was guaranteed throughout the whole investigation?" You know, that is what the actual point of the federal whistleblower act was supposed to be, right? People didn't come forward because they're being suspended without pay. They're being fired. In some cases, they're being prosecuted. So, Congress passed this Federal Whistleblower Protection Act. It hasn't worked. So, yes, you're right. It, it would have, I think, a significant impact on stopping corruption if a whistleblower salary was guaranteed throughout the investigation, but it's more than just guaranteeing the salary. It's guaranteeing the job security.
Robert Mcllan is a great friend of mine. He is a major whistleblower from, uh, the FAA, TSA. Right after 9/11, Congress passed a law saying that all US airlines had to install steel-reinforced doors, uh, for the cockpit. So, I'm sure you've been on a plane. You know what these doors look like, but the secret is they're not actually steel-reinforced. They just look like they are. Well, Robert was a federal air marshal, and he said, "This is a violation of the law." Congress said, "Steel-reinforced doors, not pretend steel-reinforced doors." And so he blew the whistle. They fired him. He sued. He won. And they said, "Okay, fine. You win. That doesn't mean that we can't transfer you to Alaska." Which they did. And so he sued again and he won again and then they denied him promotion and he sued again and he won again and then they appealed and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court and last year the Supreme Court ruled in Robert's favor. Well, he's been in court for 21 years. No, that's not true. 25 years. He keeps winning, but they've wrecked his life. His wife left him. He had to take a job as a roofer just to make ends meet so he wouldn't lose his house. If Congress really wanted to do something about protecting whistleblowers, it would make sure that something like what happened to Robert Mcllan wouldn't happen again. Your idea is a good one. It is to guarantee the whistleblower salary throughout the investigation, but we need a whole lot more than just that. Good question.
Aztec Consulting says, "John, please take a second and speak about Charlie Wilson's War and Gus Avrakotos. Was he a mentor to you?" Oh boy, was he. Gus was my mentor at the CIA and he was, um, he was a very important figure in my life. Um, Gus was unlike anybody I ever met. For those of you who don't know who Gus Avrakotos is, uh, in the, in the film Charlie Wilson's War, Gus was the CIA operations officer who couldn't get along with anybody at the CIA. And in one famous incident, he punched the deputy director of the CIA in the face and put him right through a plate glass window and got promoted. Seriously, Gus was famous for saying that all he ever wanted to do was to kill Russians. And by God, he did. It was Gus's idea to give the Afghan Mujahedin shoulder-fired, shoulder-fired Stinger, Stinger missiles that turned the tide of the war. Once the Mujahedin could, uh, could shoot down Russian troop transports or Russian helicopters, the whole war changed. It was, it was Gus who, uh, forced the, the Russians out of, uh, Afghanistan. Gus's nickname at the agency was Dr. Dirty. And he would be the first one to tell you that he'd be perfectly happy to stab you right in the back. But what made him different from everybody else was that after he stabbed you in the back, he'd spin you around and stab you twice in the front just for good measure. It was better to have Gus on your side. And Gus was on my side for a very long time.
In, um, in 2003, just before I left the agency, a year before I left the agency, Gus had a stroke. And as I said, he was mean. Just as a, you know, in his regular normal life, on a normal day, he was mean. Well, this, this stroke made him so mean that he was impossible. And Gus got it into his head that I had told somebody that I had seen the police escort him out of the building. I said, "Gus, I wasn't even in the United States. I was in Pakistan for the last six months. What are you talking about?" And he told me he never wanted to speak to me again. And so he cut me off. And people came up to me and said, you know, it's the stroke. I'm like, I know it's the stroke, but that doesn't mean, you know, I can go up and say, "Hey, you know, you're not really crazy. You just had a stroke and it kind of made you crazy, so we're still friends." That's just not the way it worked. And so, he stopped speaking to me. I left the agency in 2004. I ran into Gus on the street in 2005 after he had had yet another stroke and he couldn't remember who I was, which is crazy because we sat next to each other for years. We worked together. He was my, my rabbi at the agency. I had dinner at his house all the time. I was friends with his wife and he couldn't even remember who I was. And then he died quietly about a year later. He was buried in, uh, Eloy, Pennsylvania. One of the, that was one of the reasons why we were friends because he saw in my personnel folder that not only was I Greek American like him, but I was from Western Pennsylvania like him. And, uh, we immediately hit it off. Gus is one of those guys who deservedly goes down in CIA history as one of the great heroes. You may disagree with, with some of his, uh, practices, but, um, but this guy was a, was a serious hero.
Jared Fischer says, "John, big fan here." Thank you, sir. You previously said you didn't believe the US would strike Iran because no strike groups were in the region. Now they're on the way there. Do you change your position on this issue? Yes, I do. It breaks my heart to even say this. I follow this Iran news very, very closely. And I'm seeing something that reminds me very much of what we were seeing vis-à-vis Iraq in 2002. And that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the other side. Let me explain. In 2002, it was all about weapons of mass destruction. Okay? The CIA said to the White House, "There are no weapons of mass destruction." The MI6, British Intelligence Service, said, "There are no weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction. And he found somebody in the person of Ahmed Chalabi to say in writing, "There are weapons of mass destruction." We knew there weren't. We said repeatedly there weren't. And when it proved to be true that there weren't, uh, Condoleezza Rice told George Tenet, quote, "George, you're just going to have to take one for the team." So, at the same time, this fundamental misunderstanding that we had was that we didn't understand that culturally Saddam Hussein had to be able to save face. He had to look strong and decisive and tough for his own people and not just his own people but other Sunni Muslims in the Persian Gulf region. We didn't allow him that. We wanted to humiliate him and destroy him. And so that's what we set out to do. So it was a fundamental misunderstanding of the other side.
What we're seeing now in Iran is, we're seeing people in the streets demonstrating. These demonstrations have been absolutely deadly. Even the Iranian government admits that the demonstrations have been absolutely deadly. But let's look at who's demonstrating. The demonstrations did not start in Tehran. They started in smaller cities all around Iran, but they were encouraged by members of the MEK, the Mujahedin, which is a, it used to be a communist group. Then it became a fundamentalist group. It's actually more of a cult than anything else. A cult of personality under the leadership of a, of a crazy woman named Maryam Rajavi. She took over the group after her husband, uh, mysteriously disappeared. I've always been of the belief that she killed him and she buried him somewhere, you know, out in the desert so she could take over. That's the kind of person that Maryam Rajavi is. For many, many years, for decades, the MEK was on the list of the State Department's, uh, you know, international terrorist groups. And, uh, it remained on that list until 2012 when Barack Obama took it off. Why? Because Howard Dean was a lobbyist for the MEK. Because Hillary Clinton became a lobbyist for the MEK. Because Rudy Giuliani was a lobbyist for the MEK. This is a bipartisan get-rich-quick scheme. So all you have to do is take them off the terrorism list and everybody can make millions and millions of dollars. Well, it's the MEK that inspired or that set up many of these demonstrations. How did they do that? They did that with the help of the Israeli government. And how do we know that? We know that because the Israeli government leaked the story to the Jerusalem Post bragging about it. So, we have people at the White House saying, "Oh my God, there are these demonstrations in Iran, and they want the exiled Shah's son to come back and to be the Shah, and it's going to be constitutional democracy, uh, constitutional monarchy, and everybody's going to live happily ever after." No, no, that's not the case at all. First of all, the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, which effectively runs the country, has 150,000 people. That's a lot of people with a lot of weapons. Number two, the country is genuinely split. Sure, there are some people who support the MEK. There are some people who are tired of living under these ayatollahs, but there are a lot of people who want to be left alone. I remember in 2003, the night before we invaded Iraq, hearing a senior director at the National Security Council say as we were wrapping up a meeting, he was picking up his papers to get up and walk out of the conference room and he said, "Tomorrow when we cross the border, they're going to throw flowers at us." And I said to the deputy director of the, of the CIA, "These people don't know anything about history." Well, we're seeing exactly the same thing in Iran. They're not going to throw flowers at us. They're going to see us as attackers and invaders and they're going to unite to protect their country. So, if we think that the Iranians are just going to roll over and their government's just going to collapse and the Ayatollah is going to jump on a plane and run to Moscow or wherever, ain't going to happen. It's going to be ugly.
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Okay, our next question is from Brody and Brody asks, "Hello, John. Love your work." Thank you, Brody. I'm wondering while you were in Pakistan or any other country for a mission, were all of your days top to bottom filled with only work or did you do something for fun as well?" Nobody's ever asked me that question. Um, most days were work from before sunrise to after sunset every day, seven days a week. But there was the occasional second day of the weekend, which in Pakistan was Saturday. The, the weekend in Pakistan is Friday and Saturday. The weekend in the Persian Gulf is Thursday and Friday. So there was the occasional Saturday where I'd have a half a day off. And so I did a couple things. I went carpet shopping a lot. And there was a year of Christmas of 2002 where everybody got carpets. They were practically giving them away. Handmade things of beauty, works of art. But I also had the chance to drive up into the foothills of the Himalayas, which was very exciting. And, um, and I saw things that I had never seen anywhere else. Trees completely filled with monkeys, for example. Mean monkeys that like bear their teeth at you and they start climbing down the tree like, "What are you going to do about it?" I had to jump back in the car, but I got some good pictures. Um, or wild boars. I had never seen a wild boar before. And at night they'll, they'll run down into the city. People hit them in their cars all the time. It totally demolishes the car. It's, it's not even like hitting a deer. It's like hitting a cow that's running at you at full speed. Very strange. Um, that was pretty much it. Very rarely. Uh, you know, a couple of the guys might walk down the street and get an ice cream, but, you know, we always had to worry about being ambushed and shot. So, you know, was it worth putting on a bulletproof vest and strapping on just to go buy an ice cream that's, you know, been made with unpasteurized milk and is going to give you the shits for the next three days? It just wasn't really worth it. So, it was, it was almost entirely work. Thanks for that question.
John N6H7M says, "Hi, John. Is there any reason to believe that Gary Webb committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice after being tormented and terrorized by the US authorities for years? The same US authorities that ruled it a suicide. How could anyone believe the coroner's verdict of suicide?" Um, just as background, for those of you who don't know who Gary Webb is, he was a, a brilliant investigative journalist for, I think it was the, either the Sacramento Bee or the San Jose Mercury News. Now it slips my mind. He's the one that found that the CIA was allowing cocaine from the Contras into the United States. That that became the crack epidemic and in exchange, um, uh, the CIA was sending weapons to, uh, to the Contra rebels. He broke the story in a big way and then the New York Times and the Washington Post on the very same day ran, um, front-page articles saying that he was a crock. He had made it up. His articles were BS. You can't believe anything he said. Everything that the Times and the Post wrote about Gary Webb was a lie. Gary Webb was, was an incredible investigative journalist. But because the Post and the Times had so worked to discredit him, he, um, lost his job and never worked full-time again. He became so depressed that he finally checked into a hotel room in Denver and that's where he died. Now, the coroner's inquest found that he had committed suicide. But nobody commits suicide by shooting himself in the head twice. With that said, I was the script advisor on a movie about Gary Webb and his life. It was called Kill the Messenger. It was the first, it was the first movie that I, I had ever advised on. And I believed then strongly and I continue to believe that Gary Webb was murdered. Um, a lot of people believe Gary Webb was murdered, but, uh, the CIA doesn't really want that story out there anymore.
Nick Saraphene, "Hey John." Hey John, I really like hearing you on the Dalton Fisher podcast. Thank you. I like Dalton. He's a very good guy. Like a genuinely good guy. Question. Which countries do you see falling in priority and which do you see rising when it comes to national security threats to the US over the next decade? Yeah. Right now, I, I see Russia falling in priority and China gaining. China should be gaining. Um, the Chinese are a grave threat to us, not as a military power, but as an economic power. The Chinese, very slowly, are coming to own much of the Western world. They already own Africa. They've made incredible inroads into South America. Uh, even in Europe. Just look at Greece. As soon as the Greeks announced that they were, you know, practically bankrupt, the Chinese went in and bought the port of Piraeus, the port of Thessaloniki, the port of Patras, the port of Heraklion, Crete, and they have them for like 99 years. Uh, they've done that all over the world. This Belt and Road Initiative, this is a serious, like, hundred-year-long plan to take over the world by just buying it, you know. And while the US defense budget is greater than the next eight biggest countries combined, the Russians have the best airports, they have the best train system, they have the best highway system, they have the best ports. Everything's a-okay if you're, if you're Chinese because they're not spending their money on, on weapons and foreign wars of choice like we are. So the Chinese, I'd say, will continue to rise as a national security threat. The Russians will fall. The Russians don't have any money. Their population is shrinking. Sure, they're winning the war in Ukraine, but does that really matter in the greater scheme of things? I just don't see the Russians as an existential threat. Um, I will say that we're going to have to do a lot of work once Donald Trump is out of office to rebuild our relations with, um, with the European Union, the UK, Canada, Australia. He's done serious damage to our, our international relations. And, um, and many of these countries, beginning with Canada, have gotten to the point where they're just not going to take it anymore. Uh, Prime Minister Carney at Davos last week, um, gave a speech in which he said that there's, that there's a third way, and the third way is without the United States. And so Carney went from Davos to China to, uh, have talks with Xi Jinping, Premier Xi Jinping. Uh, Donald Trump reacted by, by threatening a 100% tariff on the Canadians, you know, if they were to come to a trade agreement with China. They weren't negotiating any trade agreement. They just said, "We're no longer in the shadow of the United States. We don't trust the American government, so we're going to negotiate our own bilateral relationship between Canada and China." That's damaging to the US and it's a self-inflicted wound. Um, I also, I was trying to think the other day about when was, when was the last time I saw North Korea on the news? I mean, the North Koreans, like, didn't stop developing nuclear weapons. We just don't talk about it anymore. And I think that, you know, we have nukes, the Chinese have nukes, we have nukes in South Korea. I think that it's kind of a standoff. And I, I think that we're going to see North Korea fall in terms of, uh, of importance. Thanks for that good question.
Lucas says, "What do you know or think about the Brazilian intelligence agency? Are they professional? Have you ever heard about their methods?" I have never worked with the Brazilians. Um, so I can't really give you a, a straight answer, um, on that. I have heard through the grapevine that the Brazilians kind of use a heavy hand in some of the things that they do, but that's really the extent of my knowledge of the Brazilian intelligence service. My apologies.
Magic Humans says, "What do you think of the new Chinese mega-embassy opening in London? Do you think it's a threat to the UK?" Yes, I do. I've been following this issue. The Chinese tried the same thing in Washington and we said, "Nothing doing." So, they're kind of split up. They have, they have a large-ish embassy, uh, on a street of embassies. They're directly across the street from the Israelis. They're down the street from like the Vietnamese and the Guatemalans and, you know, people like that. But, um, their housing is in a different place just off Embassy Row in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of, uh, of Washington. They're sort of split up. The trade mission's in a different building. In London, they are planning this ginormous embassy. It would be the biggest embassy in the world and it takes an entire city block in London. There have been protests in the streets about this embassy. And for whatever reason, Kier Starmer said, "Now, well, I, I don't really care what the British people want. Sure, you can have your embassy." Well, this is going to be, you know, talk about the United States used to be accused a lot of, of having a spy den in their embassy. This is going to be the mother of all spy dens. Yeah, without a doubt. And mark my words, this is not a one-and-done. The Chinese are going to seek to build embassies like this all over the world. God knows they have the money for it.
Skeers says, "Are you ever going to discuss your pardon or have the ability to also did I really see Erica Kirk in a documentary made by the CIA? She was talking cybersecurity. Why would she be in one?" Let's do the, uh, let's do the Erica Kirk thing first. Um, that is a popular meme that's kind of all over the internet right now. This was not a CIA video. Uh, she appeared in a video in 2015 before she ever met or heard of Charlie Kirk, and, um, she was talking about cybersecurity in this video. James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA for just a couple of years under Bill Clinton, um, from '93 to '95, also happened to be in the video talking about cybersecurity, which is his area of expertise at Booz Allen Hamilton. So the two of them just happened to be in this documentary. It's freely available on YouTube. It always has been. People are saying now, "Oh my God, this CIA video just resurfaced and, oh my God," no, it's always been there. Just nobody paid any attention to it. She's always been in it. It was not made by the CIA. That's it. It's a short documentary. That's all there is to it. Um, my pardon. I'm in a very sensitive phase right now. I will tell you I have, I've made it to the top. I looked the man in the eyes and I asked him to pardon me. I've made it to the top. And one of his aides told me, one of his aides told me it could come in six hours. It could come in six months or it could come never. Maybe he doesn't like your face. Maybe you said something that he doesn't like. He said, "We've made our recommendation. We can't force the man." So, I'm just kind of sitting by with my fingers crossed as time passes, waiting for the right thing to happen.
And we have one final question that was emailed. Um, "John, your story has been," this is from Ev. "John, your story has been deeply interesting to learn about and you've been great to listen to over the past few months. Thank you very much for that. What do you think about the recent ICE shooting of Alex Prey and what do you think it will mean for our current government's administration?" I think that Alex Prey was executed in cold blood by ICE agents who were ill-trained, overly excited, and with no business being armed if they can't control themselves. Um, listen, Alex Prey was, uh, I watched the video just like everybody else did. Um, Alex Prey did not have his hand on a gun. He, he, first of all, Minnesota is a concealed carry state. So, he was perfectly within his legal rights to have that gun. Perfectly within his legal rights, right? If we're going to be this, you know, Second Amendment loving country, everybody's got a right to be armed. He never pulled the gun on the ICE. Uh, ICE agents saw the gun. An ICE agent grabbed it. A gun, the gun went off. The gun was a Sig Sauer, which is manufactured without a safety, right? They've been sued because of this. There's no safety. The gun went off. It appears to have gone off by the ICE officer when he was pulling it out. And as soon as that first shot was fired, everybody else just opened fire and they hit this poor guy like nine or 10 times. Died right there in the street. That was an execution.
On a bigger scale, I'm 61 years old. I do have a memory of the Vietnam War. I was a little kid, but four members of my close family, um, first cousins, uh, served in Vietnam, all of them in combat. And, and I remember Kent State. I remember Bobby Kennedy's anti-war, uh, campaign in '68. I remember him being killed. I remember sitting on my father's lap and asking, we were watching the news or he was watching the news. I was sitting on his lap and I asked him why all these buildings were on fire and he said because a very bad man killed Martin Luther King and people were very angry. I remember Kent State and Governor Rhodes ordering the National Guard to just kill them all. And I feel like we're seeing history repeat itself. ICE out of control. They have to be confronted, but at the same time, they have to be confronted in the courts because they're going to continue killing people if they know they're going to get away with it. Now, there's no statute of limitations on murder, and Donald Trump isn't going to be president forever. This is clearly a state case. It's not a federal case. It's not up to the FBI to decide whether or not somebody's going to be, uh, investigated. It's up to the state of Minnesota. The FBI is stonewalling. Apparently, they've even destroyed evidence. Um, but some of these things can be reconstructed, and I would hope very, very much that when the state of Minnesota is able to, it can investigate fully and file charges against the ICE officer or officers who killed Alex Prey and who killed, um, uh, this, this poor woman, Good, a week or so earlier.
So, that's all we have for today. Thanks again for liking, sharing, subscribing, telling your friends and your family members about it. As, [music] I said, we can only do that because of you. I really deeply appreciate it. I'm John Kuryaku and thanks again for watching Deep Focus. We'll see you next time.