John Kiriakou: Ex-CIA Officer CONFRONTED Over Zionist Accusations | PBD Podcast #783

John, great to have you back on. Great to be back. Thanks for the invitation. Of course. You're everywhere. I see you everywhere. It's crazy. And people are loving you on Manect apparently because I see you every day. You're getting Manects. People are asking you questions. You're actually getting back to people. All the time. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I looked at the Manect the other day. I'm like, why am I not in the super heavyweight yet? You're close, though, to super heavyweight. No? Are you almost there? Yeah. I think I am. Because you're first place in a heavyweight right now. So we have the heavyweight champion in the house right now. So I got a lot of things I want to talk to you about. But especially with recent stories with SPLC that you saw that story broke. I'm curious to know what you think about that. The FISA thing, which is like, hey, Nixon, Carter, we thought we were going to get away. But now we're kind of like, well, let's keep it. I want to know why you think we're doing that, what the motives are. I have my own ideas of why I think we're doing it. I want to know what you think about it. And then you said something about the vault, which was like, what is this vault? What was it called? Vault 17? Vault 7. Vault 7. I want to hear about Vault 7. and a few other things with the scientists. You saw the whole scientists where some of them are disappearing, suicide, you know, or, you know, missing or who knows? Like you can't find these guys, four of them being from NASA and then JPL. The other four were from nuclear fusion and weapon, and then three are apparently high clearance security, not really a direct contact. One of them recently, David Wilcox, who said he wasn't going to commit suicide in 2022 in a tweet, He apparently just took his own life, which is pretty wild. But I want to get into one thing right off the bat. You were on a podcast, and my phone started blowing up. And I'm like, why is everybody texting me this? Look what John said about you. I said, John is about to get on the podcast. So, Rob, if you have the clip, I want to start off with this. I want to address it one by one by one. I want you to cover this for me. So you're on a podcast. I don't know which podcast this is, but whatever it is, I was texted by everybody with this. So go ahead and play this clip. I was watching Patrick Bet David yesterday. Patrick is a hardcore Zionist. He's Iranian. I don't think he's Jewish. I think he's like half a Syrian and half Armenian. Yeah, hang on. But he's a hardcore Zionist and not just a Zionist. He is a like 1,000% backer of Reza Pahlavi to return to Iran and to assume the peacock throne and blah, blah, blah. And he was saying yesterday that it's not 60 percent of the Iranian people who support the overthrow of the regime. It is 94 percent. I don't know when I've ever said that, but OK, let's keep going. There are no polls. There are no polls. You just make this shit up to put your stooge in. The monarchists are crazy online. I mean, they are. I saw some. They've been passing around the message that Iran only became Muslim 100 years ago. What? No, that was a thousand years ago. A thousand years ago, yes. And I get that there are still Zoroastrians, and I get all that. Which is the funniest part. Oh, Elliot Covert, Patrick, but David is Jewish? Okay, I stand corrected. I wasn't sure. You're not Jewish? No, I'm not Jewish. But I know he's not ethnic Persian. He's Armenian Assyrian. What else is there, Rob? Is there anything else that goes on? Yeah, 94% of his friends. I'm curious enough because I want to get all of it out. Well, that's what they do, right? Literally, I've been asking online, like from these Persian monarchists. See, this is what I get from listening to people in chat. Everybody wants the Shah back. I find that very hard to believe considering how brutal the Shah was and the fact that he was overthrown by his own people, right? I mean, it wasn't like he was cooed out by any foreign power. Quite to the contrary. So he, but yeah, they literally, these Persian monarchists, they just, they do polls of like Is there anything else? Okay, you can pause it right there. Walk me through this. Oh, I owe you an apology. No, but tell me this. I'm not, I don't want an apology. I enjoy talking to you. Last time we spoke, I think out of the seven clips that we posted, three of them was upset Jews because it was comments you made that were bad against Mossad and we played, I thought it was very revealing. I thought it was great. But walk me through each of these. Number one, hardcore Zionist, 100% back or a Pallavi and then 94%. Tell me. Okay. The reason I said that is because of Netanyahu's appearance, number one. Yep. And the comments that you've made about Pallavi, like, why hasn't this guy called me back? I want him on the show. Like, why? He's irrelevant. He's a clown. Why hasn't he called me back? I had him on the show two times. Yeah, but when you first invited him. Do you know what happened there? He's asking for help. Because the Iranian interviewer that interviewed me is asking me, are you going to help him? Are you going to help Razak Pallavi? And we're speaking in Farsi and English. And I said, no. He asked me for help. I never heard back from him. But I made some very bad remarks about the guy. Have you heard what I've said about them? No. I'd love to. I don't know. You must not know how monarchists think of me right now. No. Do you know they can't stand me today? Good. No, no, it's not good. I like his father. I don't think he's a strong leader. He's not. He was following me. His wife was following me. His daughter was following me. Everybody unfollowed. The monarchists attacked me because I called him. Oh, it is in shambles with me and that relationship. Maybe play a clip of what I said in the podcast if you want to play down. That's a badge of honor. I'm going to leave Iran and go. By the way, you know what's the biggest thing that Iranian people are saying? Hey, Rezaf Halavi, why don't you go to Azerbaijan? and say a few words from there. Come closer to Iran. Show some stuff. He's not doing it. The one thing about Trump, let me tell you what was very crystal clear about Trump, about Milley, about Bukele. You know what it was? They're willing to do the legwork. They're willing to go out there. They're willing to pay the price. They're willing to drive. They're willing to work their tails off. It's very obvious. We, the market said, who is this crazy Elvis-looking guy from Argentina? There is no way he'll ever win making out with people on stage. Guess what? He won. Who is this Bukhele guy that's in his early, mid-30s? And by the way, let me give you what's going to be confusing. I have a painting of his dad in my house. So I'm a fan of his father. So this is not like a bash towards the family. No, of course. But this is towards, I was critical of him because for 47 years he's been talking about he wants to have Iran be free. And he didn't do it. And keep in mind, a part of me is, yeah, that's the painting of my house. That's a 15-foot painting. His father's right in the middle. My criticism is of him. But I was watching it. I'm like, why? Did somebody tell you I'm a Zionist? Yeah. Did you? Who's that? It was in the chat. No, no. I was reading the chat. Did any other influencers that you go and do interviews with, did anybody whisper to you off camera, hey, be careful with Patrick, he's a Zionist? Yes. Who was that? Oh, I don't want to out him like that. But he said, oh, you're going on PBD. I said, yeah. He said, be careful. Patrick comes out swinging on Israel. Is this a big name? Yeah, it's a pretty big name. One of the biggest names? So then I know who it is. I don't want to add him. Was his family in the CIA before, maybe? I've got to stop. Okay. But I want to apologize on the record because I was wrong. Okay, so that and the Bibi side, because you know who's the only person in the world that interviewed Bibi and Nick Fuentes within 30 days? It's got to be you. It's only me. It's got to be you. So you know what the problem is with me, John? This is the problem. the same people that want freedom of speech that pitch it yeah don't practice it yeah what do i mean by that they generally want to only talk to people that agree with them yes you and i don't agree on maybe a few things no which is why i love the conversation i love the conversation because my my thoughts are alicia just bring it to me it's totally fine my thoughts are it's like man, I don't know. He's a CIA guy. He's Muslim more than I do. He has some experience. I want to know. No, I'm wrong and I apologize. No, let's go to the other one because I want to clear all of this up. Let's go to the one about when you said 94%. I'd love to know when I said 94%. Rob, can you take one of the language learning models? As a matter of fact, why don't we do both of them? Take ChachiBT and do Grok and ask a question. How do you want to pose this question? What percentage of Iranians don't support the IRGC? What percentage of Iranians don't support the IRGC? Okay, ask the same exact question. So what we'll typically do is we'll ask different and we'll go do our own and then we'll look at the numbers that's being given. Okay. Wow. This is which one? What does it say? Around 80% to 92% of Iranians appear to not support the IRGC based on available polls, support they like them. Direct polling on the IRGC is a challenge and due to Iran repression, surveillance, and self-censorship. Okay, great. Leaked internal Iranian government poll 2025 commissioned by the presidency. A confidential report found 92% of Iranians hate the regime. And that's from Yahoo. Explicitly, including Supreme Leader Khamenei and the IRGC, not just specific officials or policies. This was cited by Iranian experts and aligns with widespread dissatisfaction. Gammon is the one that I saw. By the way, I haven't even seen the one above that we're reading for the go to the Gammon one. Gammon says what? Independent arts online poll 10,000 13 to 14 have confidence in the IRGC. So that leaves another 86. And what does it say? Broader regime rejection. Only about 15 to 20 percent want Islamic Republic to continue. 70 to 80 percent favor regime change or major transformation. High agreement. 70 percent with designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization in Iran. Can you go to the Is this Chad GBT or Grok? That was Grok. Okay, let's see what Chad GBT says. Zoom in a little bit. Okay, so direct IRGC, 2019 Maryland poll, 80%. Maryland, Iran poll, so that's Maryland. So you can criticize that because that's from here, 80%. Gammon is the same one. I think Gammon is from Netherlands. 71% of Iranians oppose. 20% support. So you see what numbers we're repeating. We're repeating reports that are coming in. So it's not a... You're right, and I'm wrong, and I apologize. No, I appreciate that. And the last one I want to show you, which is crazy, to get this out of the way so we can have our conversation, is do you know who I brought on the podcast who never agreed to go on the podcast with anybody? And when he came in, he was the most suspicious guy here looking at me saying, why do you have me on the podcast? You know who it was? No, who's that? The co-founder of IRGC. No. That guy right there, Mohsen Sazegara. Okay? Do you know who he was? How did I miss that? So check this out. I'm going to show this for you. So if you go a little bit lower to see who he's the founder of, go a little bit lower, put IRGC, arrest, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can we find the IRGC there with him and Khomeini? Okay, right there in the middle. There he is. An Iranian journalist and political. He was the founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Iranian Revolution. He was the guy. It was between him and Khomeini that started the IRGC. He would do the intro to all the tapes where they would send in for Iranians to listen before the revolution happened to pin Pahlavi's people against him. This was the voice. Then you hit Khomeini. I had him on the podcast. And the claim was that Savak killed 100,000 people. Now, keep in mind, he's the propaganda guy. Sure. That's at Savak, which is, you know, Pahlavi's CIA. Pallavi's Mossad, right? At the end of the podcast, I wanted to ask him. It's been 40-something years now. You were involved. Was it a lie that Shah killed 100,000 people? This is not a fan of me. This is not a fan of the Pallavi. He did not come in knowing what we were going to talk about. Look at his answer here. Go ahead, Rob. Shah with Khomeini. Let me say my judgment now. That many documents have come out. You know, for instance, on those days, opposition claimed that 100,000 political prisoners, Shah has. There are 100,000 political prisoners in Iran. That was false. It was only 3,000. 3,500. 3,300. Right. This is the final one, RGC. Shah with Khomeini, definitely, I already said. First of all, his personality, Shah, was a better guy than Khomeini, first. Second, what he did for Iran, because that he believed in modernization of Iran, was definitely better than Islamic Republic. As I said... You can pause. I would suggest if you want to watch it, watch it. It's fascinating. I absolutely will. I'll text it to you. I think you'll enjoy it. But these are my positions. My concern is, John, people that have had good relationships, there's this one guy that I think he's the head of the snake, that behind closed doors is creating division and creating rumors and stories about it. And he's a very influential guy. Could be the same guy that told you stuff about me. Very heavyweight guy. Very, very heavyweight guy. I think we're talking about the same person. If I tell you I've heard 10 people that he said stuff about me behind closed doors, that's a small number. Wow. So this keeps coming back to me. I'm like, what is his issue? What is his challenge? We won't talk about the name because I don't want you to be in an uncomfortable position. I'm not going to push that topic. All I'm saying is I wanted to make sure I presented this to you. Thank you. And any pushback, yeah, please go for it. I'm all ears. No, no. I owe you an apology. As I said, you've shown me wrong. And I'm sorry that I perpetuated an untruth. And by the way, I don't even know what a Zionist is. What does a Zionist mean nowadays? What is it? It's like an N-word. Like people, God forbid, they say, what would you say Zionist is? I think that the definition of Zionism has changed. Now I think it's much more, well, depending on your point of political view, more reactionary or more radical than it was when it originated in the UK in the late 19th century. Now it is political Judaism strictly for political purposes, not for religious purposes, at the cost of everything else. I had lunch yesterday with Mother Agapia, who was on the Tucker Carlson show a couple of months back. She's a she's a Greek Orthodox. Actually, she's she's Greek Orthodox, but she's in the Russian Orthodox Archdiocese of Jerusalem. And and we talked about this and she said in the 25 or so years that she's lived in Israel, that it's changed dramatically. And she said it's changed dramatically because of politics. The religion hasn't changed in thousands of years. It's the politics that have changed and have made it so difficult. She asked me when was the last time I was in Israel. I said 2022 was the last time I went. Just a few years ago. Yeah, a few years ago. I was actually afraid I wouldn't be able to get in, but I didn't have any problems at all. Had a wonderful time. Was appalled at some of the social situations I saw in the West Bank. I've never been to Gaza. I've never seen it with my own eyes. didn't have a desire to go you know on my own and um and it's dramatically worse just since 2022 dramatically worse for palestinians yeah okay yeah got it yeah and you're in the west bank i mean in gaza obviously there's a war going on right but i'm talking about in the west bank yeah your experience when you went there i have to say i loved every minute of it so your experience was a good experience. So you think the criticism, because it's becoming such a nasty, like it's almost, I talk to people and some people are like, I don't even go on Twitter anymore. I actually dropped, I mean, I have a guy that runs my Twitter, but I don't go on Twitter anymore. Yeah, because it's almost like each of the social media accounts, they have their own nasty bots that you attack. You know, it's part of the game. You can't have an opinion and not expect people to push back. The moment you say, I believe LeBron James is the worst GOAT of all time. You're going to have people that are going to debate the moment you have an opinion on that. But I think I'm right. I think he's the worst, greatest athlete of all time because he whines so much and he bitches so much. And go ahead and talk about it. Watch the comment section, right? So we can't be like, oh, my God, don't call me out. It's unfair. I feel bad. I don't think that's the problem. We deserve to be called out. Like we deserve to like what we just did right now. Hey, you said it. Great. I addressed it. I apologize. Great. We move on and we can have our own conversations together. I just think it's creating division. I just think it's creating a level of divisiveness. Do you think a part of it is that guys are afraid of others getting paid? Like, would you trust people that are getting paid from a government you don't trust? So let's just say some influencers are getting paid from AIPAC or Israel. Some influencers are getting paid from Russia. Some influencers are getting paid from Qatar. Some influencers are getting paid. You think that's what the fear is, where the market believes that people are paid mouthpieces, that you don't trust them? I think that's probably a part of it. But I think that the other part and a very powerful part is professional jealousy. Yeah, I think I feel very strongly that a lot of this is professional jealousy. I hear it about you. I hear it about Tucker. I hear it about Sean Ryan. People are jealous. They're jealous of people's success. And, you know, what easier thing to do than to just go on Twitter and start yelling about somebody? Yeah. There's an influencer. I'm not even going to say her name because she doesn't deserve for her name to be said, who just out of the clear blue sky attacked me viciously a couple of weekends ago. I was never important enough to attack. And I've never met this woman and just came out and attacked. Heavyweight or middleweight? Heavyweight. So it's a heavyweight. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And I'm a communist. I'm decidedly capitalist first of all nobody's ever in my life called me a communist and I actually had to chuckle out loud when I read it that I'm a communist, I'm a spy for the Russians no, I have a TV show that is produced by a company in Miami and RT International happens to license it so they run it, other platforms run it all of a sudden I'm a Russian spy. Like, oh, you figured that out all by yourself, huh? Oh, he's got a TV show that runs once a week on this Russian network. He must be a Russian spy and a communist. Like Newsflash, have you ever been to a history class? There are no communists running Russia anymore. Not for a very long time. But, you know, she's rolled out of bed. I say this all the time, and my friends hate when I say it because it's mean-spirited, but any slob can roll out of bed, log on to YouTube or Twitter and criticize. That doesn't mean we have to respond to them. Yeah, it's going to be nonstop. It is not going to be, that's not going to slow down anytime soon. And I wonder what words no longer carry weight. I don't know if being called a communist carries the weight of the 80s. Exactly. I don't think that does. In the 80s, that might have stung a little bit. Yeah. Like bigot. Today, does bigot have the meaning today of the 90s? I don't think so. Do you remember this little mini trend on Facebook when COVID first started? Admit to prejudice. And I thought, okay, I'm going to do this. So I go on Facebook and I said, I admit I am prejudiced against Amish people. I am. I grew up with the Amish. I don't like them. They're mean. Mean-spirited. They talk about you. You posted this on Facebook. Yeah, yeah. And people jumped all over me. I'm like, people, I'm joking. It's a joke. What's wrong with you? People need to lighten up. Yeah. But this is the current situation we find ourselves in. We are. We are. And I hope, I don't know if with the, I do think we're going to get to a point where, you know how today, Las Vegas, I don't know if you've been to Vegas. I'm sure you've done them all the time. Vegas isn't what it used to be 20 years ago. Not a chance. You go to Vegas, it's like it's a freaking ghost town. Like it used to be packed. Yes, it did. And then you see the stats where they're saying, why is Vegas having a hard time today? And you'll see numbers where they're saying Vegas is having a hard time because they're no longer, kids are no longer drinking alcohol like they used to. Going and hooking up today, I don't need to go to Vegas. There's Tinder. so everything Vegas offered I now have access locally and I'm no longer interested in drinking alcohol like a lot of you know maybe I did back in the days and so to me I think we're going to come to a point where people are going to go on social media diets I really believe that I think people are going to go on phone diets I think people are going to be like dude I am setting this guy aside I'll come in to get my information that I need but I'm not going through it the way I was addicted just what do they call it is it death scrolling or doom scrolling Doomscroll and just kind of going through it, man. That can really – that probably has some effects on people today. I think it probably – you know what? I'll admit another thing. I doomscroll at night. But, you know, funny thing, the algorithm is relatively quick about determining what interests you. I have never seen one of my own shorts. Never. Not one. what i watch all freaking night long because i'm laying in bed is people filming in public yeah like taking pictures of people's license plates and then the people who are in the cars lose their minds and get out and then they have to get pepper sprayed and then the cops come i love that stuff yeah because it's all about the first amendment right but i've never seen my own shorts well i've seen a lot of your shorts one thing one thing i do is i i watch this this a Jamaican pastor. I've probably seen him preach a couple hundred times. Rob, have you seen that clip or no? Well, you know, I don't know if I'm going to find it or not. This guy just this this guy fires me up. He's so funny. But anyways, it just tells you the appetite and what things we're interested in. OK, so let's let's go into issues. Iran, war, U.S. I think you were the first one that said three days before the attack that it was going to happen. I think you said it on the 19th. Was it March 19th? And Mark is like, what's he talking about? Do you have that clip? I took a lot of shit for that, too. Well, you did, but you ended up being right when you announced it. You said, hey, here's what I think is going on. XCI agent reveals U.S. could attack Iran as early as Monday. And you said that on the 19th, 20th. I don't know the exact dates. And, Rob, if you have the video, I wouldn't mind showing it because to give him credit that he was the first guy that announced it and it happened. And so how did you know? Where did the information come from? The truth is I've got a friend at the White House. I have friends at the Pentagon, friends at the CIA, friends at the FBI. And this was the criticism to Patrick. A guy posted a comment like, oh, we're supposed to believe that people just walk out of the White House and walk up to this criminal and tell him classified defense secrets. And I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what you should believe because that's what happened. So I've got friends all over Washington. I've been in Washington for 44 years, right? We're all neighbors and we hang out together. I'm the only person in my church who's not a retired colonel or lieutenant colonel in the military. Seriously. It's like a VFW meeting at church every Sunday. And so, yeah, a friend of mine said, hey, listen, there's some shit going on at the White House. I said, yeah, what are you hearing? He said, we really are going to attack Iran. Is this a CIA guy or no? Is this a – I should probably protect his – If it's military or intelligence. Military. Military, okay. Military. And he said we're probably going to be attacking on Monday. And I said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. I said, I've been really hedging my language here. And what I've been saying – this is what I told him. What I've been saying is one of the very first lessons that I learned at the CIA is that if you want to determine American military intentions, watch naval movements. You know, we can fly troops out all over the place. It doesn't make any difference. If you're going to send an entire aircraft carrier strike group, you mean business. If you're going to send two of them, you're going to war. And we sent two. And that was the determination I made. Interesting. So that was given to you. Is this it, Rob? Yes, sir. Go for it. I have a friend, a former CIA officer who was at the White House this morning talking to his friends, and he says that a decision has been made to attack Iran on Monday or Tuesday. The president yesterday gave the Iranians 10 days to accept our proposals for an end to their ballistic missile program, an end to their uranium enrichment program. It's pretty wild. So let me ask you, when normally – because you're in a community and people talk, right? Like I'm in the financial industry. I was no longer. I saw my company almost four years ago. You still have friends? For sure. So when that happens, because there's two different ways of leaking information. The one information is leaking where it's like, talk about it, drop it. One information is, John, please don't say this to anybody else. Right. Which one was this? I think this was, please don't say this to anybody else, to him. To him. Because this was real military planning. He panicked and said something to me. But you're exactly right. There are two different kinds of leaks. First of all, the White House and the Pentagon leak like a sieve. But usually those leaks are authorized leaks. Let's get an idea what public opinion is going to be. That's right. Let's just see what the networks say if we do X. That's not what this is. That's been happening for decades. This is just don't tell anybody. And you ended up sharing it and then ended up being right. And this isn't Joe Kent that you were talking about. Oh, no, no. You and Joe don't have a relationship. No. That would be an interesting podcast of the two of you guys. I would enjoy that very much. Because – You know what I did? As soon as he went public, I called a producer that I know, and I said, any chance you have Joe Kent's contact information? Because I'm a member of this group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Vips, and we wanted to give him our – it's called the Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence. And so she sent me his info, and we gave him the award. Beautiful. But I've never spoken to the man. So what do you think where we are now? So if that was then that this is happening, is there any talks today of this coming to an end? Because it was supposed to be a ceasefire. All right, let's do ceasefire. I don't know if both sides committed to the full ceasefire, but let's just say it was a cease-ish fire that they did. Yesterday, yesterday at 445 in the morning, our time, Iran attacks three ships. They seized two of them. One is from Panama. I think one of them is from Greece, if I'm not mistaken. It is. So they take that. And so they and then President Trump is like the ceasefire is continuing indefinitely What does that really mean The negotiations are going back and forth Where do you think we are today I think the situation is unique because Donald Trump is president Donald Trump has this innate ability to spin things better than any previous president, I believe. I could actually see Donald Trump saying in a nationally televised announcement, we won, it's all over, we're coming home. I could see that happening. I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow, but I could see it ending that way. Now, with that said, I think that this is one of those times where we need to let the diplomats do what they're trained to do. We have not made great use of the Omanis. We've not made great use of the Gutteris or the Algerians. I mean, these are all countries that we work with, work through over the course of decades to carry out diplomatic communications with Iran. I think the bottom line is we have one idea of what we want from Iran, but the Israelis have a different idea. You notice, for example, the president announces a ceasefire in Lebanon and boom, 24 hours later, the Israelis bomb. It's because we have competing interests. You know, there's this old saying in Washington, there's no such thing as permanent friends, just permanent interests. Well, our interests diverge with those of the Israelis on some of these issues, specifically Iran and Lebanon. So I think really, Patrick, the bottom line is at the end of this, we're going to end up with something that looks very much like the JCPOA. And we're just going to say, oh, we won. It's all over. We have this agreement. Peace is at hand. And I think the real sticking point is going to be what to do with the uranium that's already been enriched, even if it's only 60 percent or 80 percent or whatever it is it happens to be. The American position is that they have to give it to us. The old position was they could transfer it to China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia. We've changed our position on that. It has to come to us. They won't send it to us. That's going to be a sticking point. But otherwise, you know what, I think that this conflict has also brought to light some American weaknesses. And I think the most important one is that the conflict has pushed the Iranians deeper into the embrace of China, Russia, and India. All three of them, all four of them are BRICS countries. We also know that there are rumblings of a unified BRICS currency. It's probably 30 years down the road, but it's going to happen one of these days. I think this conflict is going to make it happen a little bit more quickly, and that's going to further weaken the United States. So if, for example, the international community either drops the petrodollar or begins trading, buying oil in yuan, we're screwed. It's going to have a long-term deleterious effect on the American economy. And I think that this conflict pushed things in that direction. Yeah, and behind closed doors, China apparently got caught sending a ship where the president said they send them a gift. What's in the gift? Well, it's secret. I can't tell you what's in the gift, but it was what chemical missile weapons, you know, kind of helping them out to have some missiles to defend themselves. That's right. So, you know, we've always known they've been close because when when China signed that 25 year deal with Iran, I don't know what the number was, 400 billion dollars, 300 billion dollars. It was a big number. We've always seen them being close and Iran being close to Russia because Iran would sell. Sure. There is a Shavit drones, the drones that they make. They pump those drones out like nobody's business. So it kind of reminds you what happened with Ukraine and Russia, where Ukraine was attacking with their small drones and they're the best producers of drones. So you see similarities there. But the difference is Ukraine was protected by NATO. Right. Right. So in us, because it was under Biden. So they got so much money and funding. So Russia has to kind of sit there and say, what are we going to do here? That's why everybody's so shocked at revelations that the Russians and the Chinese are giving the Iranians targeting information. Of course, they're giving them targeting information. I'm not shocked. We give the Ukrainians targeting information. Right. This is we the Russians did this to us in Vietnam. Yeah. But the difference is what you said is very important. You said the difference is the Trump effect, right? He knows how to negotiate. If there's anything we've learned from 2016 to 2026 in choosing presidents, if you ask somebody a question in 2000, what qualities do you want in a president? Top five. They would say diplomacy, you know, being presidential, you know, great orator. I don't know what else you put in there, right? You would probably put a few different things. You know, good understanding of foreign affairs and all this stuff. You know what people are realizing from 16 to today? Negotiation skills. And the guy's a phenomenal negotiator. Obama wasn't a negotiator. No, he wasn't a negotiator. Biden wasn't a negotiator. I'm not sure Biden knew he was president. You're right. I mean, that was like a very funny situation. So the part becomes Trump uses the pulpit to speak to his allies and enemies. You know, I thought G and I were friends. He said, but it's okay. Maybe that's what happens. We'll see what will take place. I hope he's not doing it. But if he is, I'll have a conversation with him. Who knows what we'll do. I have to add, too, the Democrats have consistently underestimated him. They treat him like he's an idiot, like he's some kind of a buffoon, and he's not. He knows exactly what he's doing. You still support him? You still support him? Do you think he is? You know, I. If no cameras on, we're out of place. no one's famous, people you trust, would you say you're happy he's your president today instead of anybody else? Yeah, I would say that. I would say that. I have very strong feelings about the Democrats. They're strongly negative is what they are. I believe that behind the smiling faces and the advanced college degrees, It's just a cabal of criminals coming out of that Obama administration and extending into the Biden administration. Yes, the Trump administration has had problems, too. But, for example, when Kash Patel was was named FBI director, I celebrated because the FBI is broken and it needed to be torn down to its studs. Same with the CIA. Now, that hasn't necessarily happened, but at least the idea was there. The thought was there. And instead, it's the Democrats that have become the party of the status quo. It's the Democrats that have become the party of the of the deep state. And we need to shake things up. I've been in Washington for 44 years, Patrick. I moved to Washington the week after I turned 18 years old to go to college. And back then, you know, Democrats and Republicans used to live in these group houses up on Capitol Hill. They'd play poker on Fridays. They'd go to church together on Sundays. Everybody was friends. 44 is what? What year is 42? 1982. Wow. So this is pre-Reagan. This is about. It was when Reagan was first elected. He had been president for a year when I moved to Washington. What a time to move to D.C. I'll say. What a time to move to D.C. Oh, my God. And I'll tell you a funny story. Don't think less of me. It was really cold one night, and I wanted to go for a walk. And nobody would go for a walk with me. I lived I was going to GW University, George Washington University. Two blocks, three blocks from the White House. It was December. It was cold. Nobody wanted to go for a walk. So my girlfriend said, OK, I'll go for a walk with you. So we walk around the White House when you could walk around the White House. Now it's impossible. But we noticed that the let me think that the West Gate was open. And I said, oh, something's going to happen. Let's stand here for a second. And sure enough, Reagan pulls out in the presidential limousine. And he's going, as it turned out, he was going to the Kennedy Center for the Kennedy Center Honors. I thought that I hated Reagan at the time. I was 18 years old. But it's the president of the United States. So I started to applaud. Even though you hate him, I think, because you were liberal at the time. He's the president. I was liberal at the time. He's the president. I started applauding him. They stop the limousine, and he rolls the window down. Stop it. I got chills. Look at this. Stop it. I got chills thinking about it. And my girlfriend's like, oh, my God. And so we said, keep. I go, keep up the good work, Mr. President. Even though you're not for him. And your girlfriend, I'm assuming, is also not for him. Afterwards, she's like, you know, you can't tell anybody that this just happened, right? I said, I can't believe he stopped the car. Did he step out or did he pull down the window? It was freezing cold. He just rolled down the window and he said, thanks for your support. Like that. Wow. And then years later, my brother's visiting me from L.A., and we're walking down Constitution Avenue. There used to be like a little tiny Barnes & Noble in the National Press Club at, what is that, 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue. So we're walking down the street, and we noticed two limos parked there. And my brother said, oh, I wonder who this is. I said, it's probably a cabinet member. You see him around town all the time. And he says, well, let's wait. Let's wait. I want to see who it is. I'm like, okay. So we're standing there. And then out of the Barnes and Noble comes Bill Clinton with Chelsea. It's a Sunday morning. They just went in to buy some books. And I didn't know what to say. So I just shout, keep abortion safe and legal, Bill. You didn't say that. And he goes, I'm trying. And he comes over and shakes hands. He, by the way, he is the smoothest out of all of them. Oh, I've got some Clinton stories, man. Do you? Like face-to-face? face to face from my CIA days. What happened? Oh, my God. I was assigned to the American embassy in Athens, Greece from 1998 to 2000. This is immediately after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Wolsey, was Wolsey the director of CIA? Wolsey had left. Because he was only there for two years. Yeah, he left in 94. Okay, so that's after. Right. Got it. And was replaced by John Deutsch, who was horrible. So we get this notification from the White House, the president's going to come to Greece. We ask the ambassador asked him as Nick Burns at the time, please don't come on the 17th of November because 17 November is the name of the big terrorist group that's active in Greece because that's the day that the that the military attacked the Athens Polytechnic University, killed dozens of students. He comes right on the 17th of November. It's like the worst possible day of the year. But anyway. The ambassador had us pull jobs out of a hat, like literally he had a hat. and with jobs written on scraps of paper. I was the luckiest guy who hit the lottery that day. I pulled out – my job was to be the note-taker in the president's meeting with the prime minister. So the meeting is at the Intercontinental Hotel in the presidential suite, almost the entire top floor of the hotel. And it's Clinton, Secretary of State, Albright, National Security Advisor, Berger, the ambassador, and me. and for the Greeks it was the prime minister, the defense minister, the foreign minister and the Greek note taker. So we go there, there was a table almost the whole length of the room just covered in food and coffee and tea and drinks and anything your heart desired was there so everybody comes in and they sit down I'm standing against one wall with my notebook, the Greek note taker is standing against the opposite wall with his notebook and the president says to the prime minister can I offer you a cup of coffee a tea something to eat no and this one says no and then he turns to me and he says may I offer you something to eat I said oh no thank you Mr. President I'm good and he goes are you with me I said yes sir I'm with you and he said I thought you were Greek and I said I kind of am but I'm not but I'm with you so I'm ready to take notes in this incredibly important meeting and it's we love you you love us we have lots and lots of greeks in america they own all the diners they're all successful you're the birthplace of democracy and mathematics and medicine and we love you and then the greeks are like we love you too when our economy couldn't handle all these greeks in the 20s and 30s they went to america and you gave them a chance and we love you. And I'm like waiting for something important to write down. There's nothing. So at the end of it, everybody stands up. They all shake hands. Clinton hugs everybody and they leave. Then Clinton walks out with Albright. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. And then Berger walks out with the ambassador. So I walk out after them. I'm standing about two feet away from Clinton and Albright. They finish their conversation. Albright goes to the other two. So I'm just standing there two feet away from Clinton. And just as she walks away, the elevator at the end of the hall opens up and Hillary walks off. There we go. Story's about to change. She has this puss on her face like this. She walks right up to us. And one thing about Clinton, I noticed it from the very moment that I met him. He hates silence. he wants to be joshing and joking and laughing and telling stories and and she's just standing there looking at him and so he says we sure had a good time at the parthenon this morning didn't we hill she's just staring at him so he repeats himself we sure had a good time at the parthenon this morning didn't we hill and she says jesus christ bill it's raining all day. I'll be in the room. And she walks between us and I'm looking at him like, you poor man. Wow. You have to sleep next to that every night. He looks right at me and he goes, let's get out of here. So the two of us walk to the elevator. The Secret Service runs after us and then everybody else files in. We go down to the basement. There are 500 screaming women from the Greek, Greek American Business Women's Association. And he gave this raucous, you know, vintage Bill Clinton. It was that Clinton magic that people used to talk about. I saw it with my own eyes. Yeah, it's funny that I can't tell you how many stories of people you ask of Clinton, Bill. How many of them is positive of how he was and how it is with Hillary? Oh, she was just awful. Is that the only experience with Hillary? No, no, no. I encountered her a number of times. After I left the agency, I was the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she had just left the committee to become Secretary of State, so she used to come back all the time, and she was impossible. Impossible. I mean, they all are at that level. John Kerry was the one who, see, now you've got me on a roll. I'm going to be criticizing everybody. But John Kerry hired me just as he became the chairman in January of 2009. He called me and said, I'm going to reconstitute the investigative function at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Would you like to be the investigator? And I said, I'd love to be the investigator. So he said, I want to make an impact. We want to root out wrongdoing. I said, great. Nothing could have been further from the truth. and I'll tell you why if you don't mind me rambling on for a moment before I went up to the hill I struck up something of a a proper friendship with Mac McLarty who had been Clinton's chief of staff Mac had partnered with Henry Kissinger to make Kissinger McLarty Associates that became McLarty Associates and Mac gave me an office in his suite of offices it was a very generous thing to do So Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, congressman, secretary of energy, ambassador of the United Nations. He was also at McLarty Associates. And Bill and I totally hit it off. I love this guy. I even voted for him for president after he dropped out of the race. Stop it. I did. He's just a wonderful guy. He's passed away now, but he's a wonderful, wonderful man. So he came up to me one day and he said, hey, listen, can you keep a secret? I said, of course. and he said, I invited Obama to my house to watch the Super Bowl. This was in January of 2008, before the primaries. He said, at halftime, we went for a walk. And he had like a thousand acres of wasteland out in New Mexico. So he says, Obama, he put his arm around my shoulder and he said, Bill, if you endorse me and you bring the Hispanics, Secretary of State. And I said, oh, my God, that's fantastic. It's what Richardson always wanted. He said, I want you to be my deputy chief of staff. I said, done. I want to be ambassador to Greece in the second term. And he says, yeah. He says, great. Everybody's going to have a good time. We're going to make an impact. I said, great. I run home. I tell my wife, oh, my God, I'm going to be the deputy chief of staff at state. So fast forward a year and Obama wins the election. And I'm in the shower one day. I get the radio going to listen to the news. And they said, former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson was named by President-elect Obama today as the Secretary of Commerce. Not state. Uh-uh. So I go into the office. And I go, Mr. Secretary, congratulations. And he comes up to me and he goes, what the fuck do I know about commerce? And I said, no, no, no, no. you're looking at this wrong. We can make this into something. There's the Foreign Commercial Service. There's the International Trade Representative. Tough it out for four years. You become Secretary of State in the second term. This is good. We can make this work. Week later, he quits. Just drops out. Okay, so fast forward. What do you mean he drops out? He dropped out. He was never Secretary of State. He withdrew a month later as he was being investigated for possible improper business dealing. Yeah, they never indicted him. There There was always this rumor that he had done something improper and nobody ever could vocalize it. So I go to Capitol Hill. I become the chief investigator in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And one thing about John Kerry, Kerry always thought, always, that he was smarter than everybody else. And so his speechwriters would write these speeches and he would always go off script and just start winging it. And he always made himself look foolish. So I go with him to this speech at the Brookings Institution. And he's given the speech. He's reading the speech. And then he goes off topic and he says, you know, I was supposed to be the secretary of state. I invited Obama over to my house at Christmas. Stop it. And he says, we went for a walk after dinner. Kerry sang it. And he says, Obama put his arm around my shoulder. And he said, John, if you endorse me and if you do it before the Kennedys do it, secretary of state. And he says, I got screwed out of it. I was supposed to be secretary of state. So I'm in the front row and I'm going like this. To him. Yeah, like discreetly, like you're off topic and this is not an issue you should be talking about in public. So afterwards, he says, I know I shouldn't have said that story. I know. And I said, Bill Richardson has exactly the same story. I said Barack Obama promised half a dozen people that they would be Secretary of State. That's the kind of person he is. He duped all of you guys. Wow. Yeah. So it's not like he was telling Bill's story. It's that Obama told this to a bunch of people and didn't keep the promise. Nope. He lied to everybody. Unfreaking believable. Now you wonder how much of that is a pattern that happens often. I wonder. or if it was specific, if he's some kind of sociopath. But I'll tell you, the reason why I started telling you the story is, as the investigator, he wouldn't let me investigate anything because he didn't want to piss off Obama. He so desperately wanted to be Secretary of State. So I'm doing like the Dashti Leli massacre in northern Afghanistan. I go to Afghanistan. I go to Dashti Leli. They're like bones sticking out of the ground, still have the clothing on them. I come back. I'm like, we have to investigate this. He's like, you're going to kill that investigation. I said, Senator, you're the one who told me to go on the investigation. Well, you know, it's it happened a long time ago and all these years have passed and it's time to look forward. And it's like, OK, all right. And then somebody emails me and says, hey, you know, in the new American passports, they have these smart chips in them. I said, yeah, the chips are made in China. I said, seriously, yeah, you have to investigate it. So I investigate it. I go to state. I go to the manufacturer. All the chips are made in China. And the passports are assembled in Thailand. They're not even assembled in the United States. American passports. So I write up a memo. And I said, look, this is potentially a problem. I'm not saying the Chinese have hacked into our passports. I'm saying that this could be a problem. Maybe, just maybe, we should manufacture our own passports in the United States. He's like, don't release that investigation. I said, why not? and we don't want to embarrass the White House. I'm like, are you going to let me do anything? I ended up resigning after two years. He wouldn't let me do anything because he wanted to be Secretary of State. Yeah, I mean, he almost became a president until he did the flip-flopping thing. What was it? He went to one place. I don't know when it was, but it was the flip-flopping where it's like, it's over for this guy. He gave two different messages. He did. Was he going against Bush? He was going against Bush, right? Bush in 2004. And the only reason he didn't become president was Ohio. It was that close. Didn't they go to Yale together? Yeah, they went to Yale together. What an interesting matchup for both of them to be part of the Skull and Bones. Yeah, at the same time. And funny enough, because Kerry was supposed to be such an intellectual, Bush's grades were better than Kerry. Bush's grades were better than Kerry. It was like an inside joke for us. Let me tell you one other John Kerry thing. the first time I met him he he called me and invited me to come up to the office for a conversation so I said oh I'd love I'd love to come up and have a conversation he was in the Russell building which is the historic senate office building the oldest one it's where all the big hearings have been held through history so I go up there and you go into his private office with these you know 15 foot ceilings and literally from the floor to the ceiling covering an entire wall and it's about the size of your wall here there were framed pictures of him with every leader in the world from Gorbachev to the Dalai Lama everybody that matters but when you first walk in right here on the side there was a credenza it had three things on it that struck me immediately one was a picture of him in an embrace with John Lennon and they're like goofing very cool who wouldn't want a picture of himself with John Lennon like that then on the other side it was a picture of him with Peter, Paul and Mary the folk singers and I knew that they were close and he gave the eulogy at Mary Travers' funeral and then in the middle was a shadow box and in the shadow box it had his silver star his bronze stars and his purple heart but he famously threw those medals over the White House fence to protest the Vietnam War. So I'm looking at that like, what? Like everybody knows, everybody in America knows he threw those medals over the White House fence. So we did the meeting. He offered me the job, and I accepted it. And the chief of staff says, well, how did it go? I said, it went really well. He offered me the job, and I said, yes, but I got a question. I said, the shadow box with the medals. I said, what's up with that? Everybody knows he threw those medals away. And he goes, are you kidding? He said, those medals are the most important things in his life. He went to the PX that morning and he bought copies. Wow. And he threw the copies over the White House. Wow. I said, nobody in America knows that. Wow. Has that story been told? Mm-hmm. Wow. So that was a whole spectacle to just get. All for Joe. Wow. But it put him on the map. He ran for lieutenant governor of, he ran for Congress and lost, ran for lieutenant governor and won, then ran for Congress and won. And then when Paul Songas retired, he became a senator. Well, you know, he'll go down as one of the biggest heavyweights. He's a heavyweight on the Democratic side. And the bill guy that you were talking about, I think the bill guy was, I don't know what happened with him, but there were some recent files that came up with him and Epstein, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Oh, it broke my heart. Nine times he reached out to Epstein and whatever, even after he was convicted and he even visited the island. I don't know if he, including a visit to Epstein's island. Heartbreaking. Richardson scheduled meetings with Epstein as late as 2018, according to emails, including a batch of more than 3 million documents released. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, everybody. I'm John Kiriakou, former CIA officer. Please find me on Manect. We have a lot to talk about. CIA, FBI, DOD, torture, secret prisons, international renditions. Maybe you or your child want to apply for a job at the CIA and are looking for some tips. Let me know. There's a lot we can talk about. You pick the subject. We'll make it happen. Again, it's on Manect. Thanks, and I'll see you soon. How do you handle some of this stuff yourself? Because you spend a lot of time with these guys. Oh, yeah. I spent a lot of time with these guys. You know, when I was a kid, well, a kid, when I was in college, I used to buy this, this book every two years called the Almanac of American Politics written by Michael Brown and Brant Fujimori. It's, it's the Bible of American politics, the, uh, the Almanac of American politics. There it is. And I was just so thrilled to be in Washington, going to school in Washington every Friday. I never had Friday classes. So every Friday I'd take my almanac of American politics. I'd go to Capitol Hill and I'd get autographs from congressmen and senators. At what age? 18. And I was working for my congressman, Congressman Joe Coulter. He was a conservative Democrat from Western Pennsylvania, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-labor, the old school kind of Democrat. Got it. And he came into the office one day. The woman I was sitting next to, she was engaged to a lobbyist. He happened to be standing there. And the congressman came in the office one day and he goes, I got laid last night. And because I was an innocent kid, I turned to the woman and I said, he's lying. Mrs. Coulter's in Pittsburgh right now. And I was like, oh, shit. Mrs. Coulter's in Pittsburgh right now. And then the lobbyist said to me buddy you got to stop idolizing these guys They all scumbags and they all put their pants on one leg at a time And that was the first time that I ever started putting these people on Capitol Hill into perspective. Who was the one that at least maintained some strong character and values and principles? That was John McCain. John McCain became a hero for me. john mccain of all people really of all people i know i know people people kind of look at me oddly every time i say this but just as an example six weeks before i got out of prison i was allowed to call my wife every other day for 15 minutes so six weeks before i got out of prison i call her and i said how's your day she said it's great and i said really why great what made it so great and she said the senate torture report was released today and it proved that everything you said was true and she said john mccain got up on the floor of the senate and he named you by name and he said that if it wasn't for you the american people would have never had any idea what the cia was doing in their name this is the waterboarding the waterboarding yeah you became the whistleblower and i think obama obama prosecuted six of you guys he is eight i was more than all All the presidents combined. Three times all previous presidents combined. Three times. In American history. On freaking bull. The espionage. Was it the espionage act? The espionage act. So you were the sixth out of the eight. I was the sixth out of the eight. The espionage act was written in 1917 to combat German saboteurs during the First World War. between 1917 and 2009 three people were prosecuted for speaking to the press just under Obama eight of us were prosecuted for speaking to the press eight of us I remember a friend of mine at the White House saying be careful of this guy Obama has his words Obama has a Nixonian obsession with national security leaks. And I said, why? He said, because John Brennan's whispering in his ear every single day, prosecute, prosecute, prosecute. And so he did. Eight times. So you're going through with your wife 15 minutes. Hey, you won't believe McCain had your back. McCain, you know, got up on him, named you. And when I got out of prison, well, you know what, before, when I was working for Kerry, Kerry's office was directly next door to McCain's in the Russell building. and every time Kerry and I would be walking out of the office like for a vote McCain would be walking out of his office and he would always go out of his way to come and shake my hand how are you John? I'd say doing well Senator how are you doing? and we would always shake hands and then Kerry one time said why don't you and McCain get a room or something and I said no no he's serious he's a sincere guy they had this weird love hate relationship they respected each other but they didn't like each other I said no McCain's a sweetheart he really is when I got out of prison this is this is the especially painful part I got out of prison I was out four or five days and I get a call from a guy on McCain's staff a very serious guy and he says Senator McCain says welcome home and he wants to know how he can be helpful to you and I said oh my god tell him thank you so much he can be helpful by giving me my pension back. I said, these Obama people confiscated my pension, 20 years of proud government service. This is a $780,000. Correct. Yep. So my attorney, who's also one of my best friends, was the deputy attorney general under Reagan. And he said, I have an idea. We went up to meet with McCain's people. He wrote an amendment and it was hilarious. It was like one sentence. And it said, every American who had his pension confiscated for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act between October 1st and October 31st, 2012, shall hereby have that pension reinstated. I'm the only person in the world. So McCain says, I'm going to slip this into the National Defense Authorization Act. He said that thing's like 3,000 pages long. nobody reads them he said i'm gonna put it down in the bottom nobody's gonna pay any attention we're gonna get you your pension back so he said i said well but it's gonna be in the senate version it's not gonna be in the house version he said i'll get myself appointed to the conference committee and i'll ensure that it is in there in the final bill and then he got brain cancer and so he couldn't be on the conference committee he was too sick and so they pulled it out and three pages all the way in the back and they pulled it out the 780 and they pulled it out so here i am you mccain is number one on the list yeah go go with the stuff that we're talking about the espionage act yeah and the stuff that obama did go go to fISA because fISA oh yeah goes back to what fISA starts off with teddy ted kennedy if i'm not mistaken and he pitches it and he proposes it and i think carter comes in and the concern at the time this is right after watergate if i'm not mistaken. Okay, this is the way for us to catch terrorists. And then Obama ends up using that to go after people like you and also going after people like Trump. And then we're seeing look at Carter Page, the poor guy. Exactly. They ruined his life. Yeah. You know, you make a very important point here that bears repeating. FISA is not new. FISA has been around since the Carter administration. Ted Kennedy was instrumental in the passage of FISA. They believed back then that there was a real danger of foreign involvement in American political machinations. And so they passed FISA that would allow this secret court that sits on the top floor of the Justice Department. It's off limits to everybody. The judges are constantly rotating in and out. They're sitting federal district court judges from around the country. And the CIA and the FBI can go there and say, we need a secret warrant to tap the phones of X, Y, and Z people. And they get it. And there's nothing in writing, nothing that can ever be released to the American people. So you don't have any idea if maybe there's a FISA warrant on you. There's not supposed to be because you're an American citizen, but so is Carter Page. these are supposed to be warrants on foreign nationals in touch with americans well you know when the fisa court turns down something like whatever it is 19 one hundredths of one percent or whatever where's the oversight who exists in government to say wait a minute this is wrong you're abusing this program to make it worse section 702 is being debated right now section 702 is something that has to come up for reauthorization every two years. And what Section 702 does is it allows these continued secret here it is, secret warrantless wiretaps on people. But again, on whom? And what's the threshold? We don't know what the threshold is. Nobody will tell us. And so you get somebody like Carter Page who was doing what he thought he was supposed to be doing as a mid-level Trump campaign person talking to an Australian ambassador. And the next thing you know, he knows – or he didn't know it actually. The next thing he is experiencing is he's under investigation. There are FISA warrants against him. And then the FISA warrants were repeatedly renewed. Even though there was no evidence that he had ever committed a crime. I believe, I think many Americans believe, that this was done at the behest of John Brennan. And it was all part of Brennan's plan to deny Donald Trump the presidency. I really, honestly believe that that's what this is. Well, they failed miserably. They failed miserably. And now it's going to be their turn to have the tables turned. And you think they're going to use it? God, I hope so. You know, there has been news this week about... Cash, you're talking about, you know, Todd Blanche, what they're doing? Yeah. I'm genuinely worried now that they're not going to prosecute John Brennan. I think John Brennan is a malevolent figure in modern American politics and government. John Brennan, I believe, really did attempt to carry out a coup, not with tanks in the streets. He tried to do it through rumor and innuendo, and he tried to deny Donald Trump the presidency. He tried to deny the choice of 51% of Americans. Yeah, so DOJ's – US abruptly rescinds. Yeah. day before yesterday. I'm deeply worried about this. What's their reasoning? What argument did they give? They didn't give a reason. They just did it. Just as they named Joe DeGeneva. Do you remember Joe DeGeneva? He was a U.S. attorney under Reagan. He's a real go-getter, like a real thinker. But he's kind of, you know, he's an older guy now. He's in his 80s. DeGeneva. Yeah, Joseph DeGeneva. strong Trump supporter and just at the beginning of the week he was named the lead investigator in the Brennan case in South Florida which was great, he's a giant but then all of a sudden these subpoenas were rescinded why do you think? speculate, why do you think? I've been told that the The alleged crimes that are being investigated are what are called process crimes. Crimes you and I probably already committed three, four times today without even knowing it. Those are really hard to prosecute because then you have to argue criminal intent. And, you know, one of them is lying to Congress. Yeah, that's a crime. Almost nobody gets prosecuted. all the Trump people did because the Democrats, you know, lost their minds at the end of the first Trump term. But that's one of those ones that, you know, grand juries are kind of loathe to put people in prison for. I have argued that the Justice Department should be looking at a conspiracy charge because clearly there was a conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency. And if there is a conspiracy, just the fact that you're covering up the conspiracy ought to be enough to reset the statute of limitations literally every single day. And that's a serious crime. That's you know, you could get 10 years in prison, 20 years in prison, whatever it is for conspiracy. Yeah, part of it, I'm thinking so the FISA, if you know, concern some people, well, you know, he could have stopped it. Why didn't he stop the FISA? And, you know, he knows this isn't, you know, what's going to happen for the next president to come in that they're going to investigate. But then the party have to think about to say, so you want me to stop it now after they used it against me? Right. So. But, you know, I think it's even I think that his thinking is even more pure than that. It's not just, you know, they used it against me. He said something this week that I was like, oh, OK, I've seen other presidents, you know, kind of fall into this in the past. He said he talked to three dozen generals and admirals, and every single one of them said we need FISA 702 because it keeps America safe. I personally think that that's not exactly true. I think it should be tightened so that the civil liberties of Americans are protected. But I think that three dozen generals and admirals did tell him that this is a week of this, the one you're talking about here. Yes, this is it. When the dirty cop, James Comey, failed the head of FBI, went after me, he was using FISA Title I, the domestic collection, not FISA 702, the foreign collection, which needs to be extended today. While parts of FISA were illegally and unfortunately used against me and the Democrats, disgraceful witch fund and attack in a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and perhaps would be used against me in the future. I'm willing to risk the giving up of my rights and privileges as a citizen for a great military and country. Our military patriots desperately need FISA 702. And it is one of the reasons we have such tremendous success on the battlefield. I've spoken with many military leaders who say FISA is necessary in order to protect our troops overseas, as well as our people here at home from the threat of foreign terror attacks. It has already prevented many such attacks. See, but that's kind of apples and oranges. FISA 702 isn't leading to battlefield victories. FISA 702 is identifying individuals or small groups of people who are planning terrorist attacks overseas. That's why we need FISA 702. What we don't need is the CIA, the FBI, and NSA then saying, Huh, this Patrick Bette David guy, he looks like an interesting character. We're going to check him out. Why? Why are they checking you out? You're an American citizen. You have constitutional rights. You know, Tucker Carlson, he's talking to, you know, a Russian to interview Putin. He's talking to an Iranian to interview Pazeshkian or whomever he interviewed. What, he's not allowed? He's a journalist. He can interview anybody he wants. So there's no reason to use 702 against American citizens like that. We need tighter controls. You think we're going to see something? You think we're going to see something, them going after anybody, Comey, Clinton, anything? Obama? I don't. Nothing? No. I think it's wishful thinking. So no one's getting arrested. No one's going to be – Well, especially not Obama because these recent Supreme Court decisions clearing Trump also through the back door cleared Obama of just about anything that he's been accused of doing. So Obama I think is free and clear. Hillary – I've actually looked into this. The statute of limitations has expired on just about everything that you could possibly accuse Hillary of doing. So I think she's scot-free as well. John Brennan, however, like I said, this is a very bad guy. This is a guy – I've known John Brennan for 35, 36 years. He's a bad guy. And we need controls on what some of these intelligence people or former intelligence people are able to do. Do you remember the first term when President Trump suspended the security clearances of the 51 signatories to the Hunter Biden? None of those people should have had security clearances in the first place. If you retire from the CIA and then you go to MSNBC to be a talking head, why in God's name do you have a security clearance? Still. Still. What do you need a security clearance for? So you can parrot it back on MSNBC? Uh-uh. No. Once you walk out that door on your last day, that should be the end of it. Unless you're transferring to a defense contractor where they can hold your clearance and work with CIA security and you do classified work. That's different. That's how people make a living. But to go to the media, not a chance. None of them should have had security clearances. I'll tell you what. I knew every single one of the 51 of them that signed that letter, every single one of them. None of them should have had a security clearance. Why do you say that? Because they became political people. Got it. But time was, you're going to laugh when I tell you this. When I first joined the CIA, I had literally no idea the political affiliations of the people that I sat with 10 hours a day. No idea. It never came up. It never needed to come up. We were there to serve the American people. in 1996 I sat like three cubicles down from this woman who very discreetly put up a Bob Dole for president bumper sticker in her cubicle they came down on her like a ton of bricks she was suspended for a week without pay she was denied promotion for a year and they put a letter in her file saying that she had violated agency regulations I remember her bawling as she was walking out to her country. Or a sticker of Bob Dole. Or a sticker. So politics was verboten at the CIA. Now, they're signing letters and going on TV and jumping into campaigns. Every single one of those 51 people was working for Hillary Clinton, either directly or indirectly. Every single one of them. That was unheard of. And this is how John Brennan became somebody because John Brennan was a nobody. Around 2007, there was a gigantic exodus of people from the Senior Intelligence Service at the CIA. 9-11 was six years behind us. People decided to retire. There they are. People decided to retire. And so almost, well, they were pretty much split 50-50 down the middle. Half of them went to the Hillary campaign. Half of them went to the McCain campaign. For whatever reason, John Brennan was the only one that went to the Obama campaign. And then lo and behold, Obama wins the thing. So he's the guy. And that's how he became somebody. He wasn't any smarter than anybody else. He was just better placed for a year. And he turned it into something. Gained a lot of power. And that was the problem. He gained a lot of power, destroyed a lot of people's lives, and people have long memories. And now the tables are turned. If they do something. The reality is if they do something. Which, you know, then, okay, so to me, the way I process this with FISA on why they're doing this. It's an insurance policy to keep everybody in check for the next two and a half years. Yeah. That's one, the way I look at it, because at the end of the day, what's your over under? If you're a gambling man, what is the likelihood that the president is going to pardon everybody, including his family, the last month before he leaves office? I hope he does. So 90 percent. I, I, I, yeah, I hope so. I think so. I hope so. I think so. And I'll tell you why. I'm biased. and I will freely admit my bias. Oh, I didn't see that. Thank you for that. Trump promises mass pardons to staff before leaving office. I have been working very hard to get in front of the president, figuratively speaking, because I've asked for a pardon. I filed the paperwork. I did all the right things. I've talked to everybody I can possibly talk to. Yesterday, I discovered, do you know what Calci is? Of course. So I discovered my name on Calci. How likely is it that I'm going to be pardoned? Really? Yeah. So there's a Calci on you? Yeah, and it's actually, my odds are pretty good. My odds were 20% the other day. There I am. 19%. It wouldn't let me bet because it said I have a conflict of interest. I tried to put 20 bucks. It said no. How much money has been volume is $152,000. So it's a real thing. It's a real thing. Okay. So I'm praying to God every night that Donald Trump wakes up and says, this Kiriakou guy, the Obama people screwed him, and Brennan screwed him. You know, I had five seconds with the president at Mar-a-Lago a year and a half ago. I went with a friend of mine for lunch, and sure enough the president walks in everybody politely politely applauds and he you know waves and sits down he has lunch he was with mark zuckerberg and um finally he gets up and they tell you when you're walking in i know you've been there they tell you when you're walking in um no pictures no videos no hats and don't ever approach the president if he wants to talk he'll approach you. Some with my buddy. We both want pardons. And very honest, we're here for a pardon. And so he gets up. I'm like, oh, my God, he's going to come over here. So he comes over to our table. I jump up and I said, Mr. President, my name is John Kiriakou. I'm the CIA torture whistleblower. And then I used my my go to line. I said, Barack Obama and John Brennan ruined my life. And you are the only person who can give it back to me. And he goes like this. He goes, Tucker Carlson told me about you. And I said, yes, sir. Tucker's been a great supporter. And Judge Napolitano, Dr. Phil, a couple other people that I mentioned, they wrote a letter. And he said, talk to Pam Bondi. She'll get the paperwork done. I said, thank you, Mr. President. He moves on. I didn't have any path to Pam Bondi. I have a friend of a friend of a friend of Pam Bondi, and nothing happened. But I've been able to speak with the U.S. pardon attorney, a lovely, lovely man named Ed Martin, and a couple of other people close to the president. There's literally nothing else I can do. I don't know what to do. What would a pardon do to your life? It would give me my pension back. That's it. And give me my gun rights back. Pat, I want my guns back. So wait a minute. You don't have, you can't, you haven't been able to carry since. Felon with a gun is a mandatory five-year minimum. Mandatory five-year minimum. Yeah. Felon with a gun is a mandatory five-year minimum. No questions asked. Straight to prison five years. So you want your Second Amendment rights back, and you want your pension back. Yes. So if you get the pardon, what's the next step for you? Do you just go in and say, I got the pardon. Can I get my pension? My kids and I have talked about this. I said, we're all piling in the car, and we are driving directly to the gun show at Dulles Airport Expo Center with wads of cash, and I'm buying guns. Good for you. So two things, pension and guns. I'll tell you what, there's a third thing, but I've dealt with it. I lost my voting rights for life. So I was going through the process, like, how do I get my voting rights back? Terry McAuliffe was the governor of Virginia at the time. So I went online, Virginia Secretary of State's office, are you a felon? Yes. I want my voting rights back. I fill out the form, and I just send it in. It says, you'll hear in two weeks. well like three four weeks passed and i hadn't heard anything so i just called the toll-free number and the guy's like okay what's your social security number so i told him and he's like oh oh like he sees on the screen right yes you're in process so just hang on i said oh okay thank you great i hang up like a week later seven o'clock in the morning my doorbell rings i was getting the kids ready for school so i go to the door like who in the world is going to be at the door at seven o'clock in the morning. And it's a courier from the governor's office. He's got this big envelope, this like hard cardboard envelope. And it's a decree with the big gold seal. It's a state pardon. I hadn't even applied for a pardon. But Terry McAuliffe, God bless him. I never met the man, but he pardoned me. He must have followed my case. And so I got my state gun rights back, which is a nice gesture. But what? I buy a gun, I get arrested and I say, well, the state of Virginia allows me to carry a gun. Yeah, but that's Washington, D.C. doesn't. So that's so five years mandatory minimum still with that. Yeah. Well, interesting that that I mean, your story was everywhere when you when you came out. It's not like it was the story for I don't know how long when everybody around the world was following it last night. I'm showing my wife. I said, so who are you talking to? I said, John Kierak was coming back. I said, oh, really? Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about John. I said, babe, let me tell you what he was known for, waterboarding. He says, my wife, who is not following everything that's going on, she's not the one that follows everything politically, she says, tell me more about waterboarding. We went and pulled up a clip of Chris, is it? Oh, Hitchens. Chris Hitchens. Who said waterboarding is nothing. Waterboarding is not a big deal. Have you ever seen this clip, Rob? He's laying there and they put a towel over him he says i'll be able to breathe and he tries to do waterboarding himself you got to fast forward it because it's a five minute clip keep going keep going keep going it's uh i think that's the part where he jumps up yeah this is it can we even show this well let's do it anyways so they're waterboarding him he said he lasted 17 seconds Right there. 17 seconds. And you know what he said? Do you know what happened afterwards? For the rest of his life, every time he couldn't breathe for a second, he would have panic attacks because of the impact of waterboarding had on him. That's right. And that's Chris Hitchens, which is like, oh, there's no big babies. Yes. Yeah. Big babies. So, yeah, so listen, you know, it'll be interesting to see what, yeah, that's right. Believe me, it's torture. I remember when that came out. Yeah, 08, when he said this. Let's talk about SPLC. So Cash Patel and Todd Blanch dropped this, right? And SPLC, you know, maybe at the beginning their reasoning was noble, and they've raised God knows how much money. We saw reports of who's giving them money. George Clooney gave them money. Tim Cook gave them a million bucks. I think Chase gave them money. Soros was speculated to have given them money. And then you see the 2019 Charity Watch. It's a leftist organization. Gave SPLC an F. Current Affairs gave SPLC an outright fraud that uses fear to cause leftists to write checks. Liberal death penalty abolitionist Stephen Bright, I think is his name, refused to take an award from SPLC. Said the SPLC has been run by a con man and a fraud. and then former SPLC employees in 2019 told the New Yorker that we were part of the con and we knew it. Like they knew they were doing this. What do you know about it and why is this such a big deal of what happened? Well, when I first saw the push notification that the SPLC was being indicted on felonies, multiple felonies, my first thought was, oh, come on, we have nothing better to do. And then I clicked on it and I read the article and I said, oh, shit, these are real crimes, real crimes. the kind of crimes where they're documentary you either did it or you didn't do it and if they've got documentary evidence that they did it this could be the end of the spLC literally i think it could be well so i'm watching the opposition to see what their argument is you know the current president reacted i don't know if you saw this clip or not he said yeah you know what you know how they're spinning it here's what they're saying they're saying this is so unfair because this was our way of paying informants to learn more about the organization. I knew they were going to say that. Yeah that what they saying Like journalists who buy one share of stock so that they can go to the stockholders meeting They spinning it in a way to say shame on them to do this These are people that are doing great work That was the guy who responded, claiming that's what they're doing in the past. What do you think about that? I think that that is weak. Because what they're being accused of doing is giving money to the Ku Klux Klan, giving money to Nazi groups, laundering money. There are very clear laws, very specific laws about money laundering. You know, you can't do it. You can't do it. And so why launder it in the first place? Again, what the Justice Department is accusing them of doing is documented. And so they're going to have their day in court just like everybody else. And they can make that argument, certainly. Yeah, I saw a list of Moms of Liberty was on that group. I think we had the leader of Moms of Liberty on the podcast, Rob, if I'm not mistaken. She was phenomenal. They had TPUSA on that list. They had different groups, but they didn't have Antifa on that group. They didn't have – and even there's a – Rob, go to – what's his name? Stossel. John Stossel. Can you go on YouTube and go to John Stossel? I want to give him credit on this. John Stossel has done a lot of work on SPLC. And just type in SPLC if you could. Just type in SPLC John Stossel, one from two years ago. That one right there. Go to about minutes, and we'll give credit to John if you want to go subscribe to his channel, Rob. Let's make sure we put the link below as well so if people want to go support him. So John Stossel, go about minutes. Keep going, keep going, keep going. I'll tell you. Keep going, keep going, keep going. About minute four. So keep going. No, that's not minute. That's minute one. Keep going. Minute four, Rob. Keep going. Keep going. Okay, right there. Press play. Watch what they find here. Go ahead. Which is in offshore camps, Caymans and places like that. How do you know? Oh, we look at their 990s. Pause it right there. Ah, the 990. The 990 shows that they were taking money. Press play. It's going to show Caymans. The islands. Right there. Now the Southern Poverty Law Center calls groups that simply oppose sexually explicit content in schools anti-government extremists. Moms for Liberty and Moms for America are on the hate map because they dare do things like seek school board seats to try to stop districts from disregarding opinions. Now keep in mind, Stossel is not a Republican. He's a libertarian. A very well-known one. So, you know, if this goes, I wonder what the positioning is going to be. I wonder who's going to come out defending them. How much money did they have in the account? I don't know why I saw they went from $50 million to $100 million to $200 million. Oh, my God. What is the – how much total money have they raised? What's the total amount of – I don't know why I saw $720 million. Maybe that was a – have they total raised? They've raised a lot of money. Oh, there you go. Okay, total assets in 2024. Look at that. A one seven hundred and eighty six point seven. And some reports noting it's eight twenty two. When I saw seven hundred twenty million, I said they cannot be that powerful. Their endowment was eight twenty two. Shocking. Look at the kind of power you have with that. What you could do. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. I got to say also on the nine nineties, I was the king of the nine nineties at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The 990s will tell you everything you need to know about an organization that you're targeting. Because to keep themselves out of trouble, they admit to everything thinking nobody's ever going to look at the 990s. So you guys looked at the 990s. Most organizations actually have it on their webpage. It's oftentimes hidden. There was only one time that I wanted to see a 990 that wasn't publicly available. And I just called the organization and I said, I'm the chief investigator from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I need to see your 990. And they were like, please don't. And I said, no, I'm going to swing by. I'll give you a day. I'm going to swing by and pick it up. And their 990 must have been 150 pages long. I had never seen one more than a page or two. It was 150 pages long. I found nothing wrong with it. And I just dropped the investigation. So the 990 is what? It's a document that most tax exempt organizations file every year with the IRS. It tells the government and the public how the nonprofit operates financially. Yeah, it's got everything. It's like the crown jewel of the tax forms. So, okay. Rob, can you pull up who else gave SPLC money? Who are the biggest contributors of SPLC? I'm actually curious. I've seen some of the names. Tim Cook, million bucks, George Soros. So it took $106 million in donations just in 2024. $786,000, it funneled through it. I'm wondering, yeah, I got the Soros, I got the Clooney, I got the Tim Cook. Charles Schwab Charitable Foundation, Fidelity Charitable gave a lot of money. National Philanthropic. Yeah, I'm reading a book right now on charities because, you know, when you get to a point where family offices need to start charities and all this other stuff. The book I'm reading today, it tells a story of never, ever start a charity and leave the board to decide what to do with the money. Because whatever cause you start today, you're going to lose control with the way it is. And 10 years later, they can change the cause they want to support. So maybe your cause was one thing 10, 20, 30 years later could change to something else. So, by the way, let me ask you, if you still were at the CIA today and you got the call from the director of CIA and they said, you know, John, I want you to go find out because there's so much noise right now in the marketplace. I want you to go find out who is actually taking money from Israel, who's taking money from Qatar, who's taking money from these different organizations, whether they are trying to get people to give pro. Zionist messaging or trying to give pro-Islam, you know, Sharia is not that bad, everything's okay, or socialism. How quickly would you be able to find that if someone's getting funded or not? I get that it's a hypothetical question. It's an FBI issue. The CIA, by law, would be forbidden from doing that on Americans. But you could certainly look at foreign nationals. The CIA could look at foreign nationals. You probably need a couple of months to really dig it up, but you could dig it up. Would you be able to find out for a fact? Not all of it. So the reason why I'm asking is because I have Dominic Tarjinsky here. He's a EU member of the parliament, and he tells the story of in 2022, these multiple EU parliament members were caught getting, what do you call it? Oh, yeah. Big satchel. Duffel bags. Yes. Duffel bags. That's true. One and a half million dollars. One of them was Greek, and she's in prison now. Yes. Yeah, $1.5 million of cash. Can you go to that one, Rob, where it's, which one is this one? Is this the one? Yeah. Yeah, so $1.5 million. But go to, if you can go to the picture, yeah, that's the lady right there, whatever her name is. She was part of the corruption. And apparently there was so much money in one of the duffel bags that they dropped $60,000, 60,000 euros that they caught afterwards where cash was being given. And then when you go even deeper, you find that the history of, you know, nowadays, you know, King Charles is very pro Islamist, you know, pro. It's not. It's nothing wrong with that. Everything is fine. And then there were reports about him taking three point two million dollars. I don't know if you've seen that report like he needs the money, like he needs the money. But he took three point two million dollars. You know, I hate to say it, Pat. Right there. Look at this. Between 2011 and 2015, then Prince Charles received approximately $3.2 million in cash payments from Qatari prime minister. This has been confirmed, and he said he did. But he said the moment money went into our account, we just gave it to charity immediately. There was no illegal things done. We're supposed to believe that? So I wondered, buying influence, if the government all of a sudden – I don't even know if they would pursue this because they may not even want that. Man, if somebody was to come out, like let's just say they did this with SPLC. Yeah. And all of a sudden they come out and say, let me tell you guys that these top 50 influencers, who's funding them, who they're getting money from, it would silence the entire market. And the fog of war in mainstream media and podcasts today would be gone. Everybody would say, okay, we know why you say what you say. We know where your position is. Great. Can we all move on? Let's move forward. I'm curious. This is exactly why we need robust oversight. rather than the cheerleaders on Capitol Hill that we have. We need people who are really going to provide independent oversight. Let me tell you a story, and forgive me that I have to sort of fudge the language a little bit, but I had a conversation with a senator a couple of days ago. He had somebody reach out, can you come up to the office? I said, of course. I go up there, and he's concerned about some documents. He needed to see some documents, documents that were classified in the 1970s. I said, well, they should have been subject to mandatory declassification. We have a mandatory declassification law in this country. After 30 or 35 years, they have to be declassified unless they contain the names of a source or the methods of an ongoing operation. And he said, exactly. And they've never been declassified. And he said, I went to the CIA and they said, we don't know what you're talking about. They're not our documents. and it turns out that they're Senate documents. Well, the Senate is not, the Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and it's not subject, they always exempt themselves from their own laws, right? So no laws apply on Capitol Hill. They do anything they want. And so I said, well, why don't you go to leadership? And he said, I went to leadership. And they said they don't want to get involved in this fight between two committee chairmen. And I said, and the other chairman? He said, the other chairman told me, go screw myself. And I said, are you kidding me? And he said, no. He said, I don't know what to do. And we sat there for two hours, and we could not come up with a plan. And it's because there is no oversight. It's funny to me. You read the Constitution. The Constitution says that the government is made up of three co-equal branches, The executive, the legislative, and the judicial. But that's just not how we treat it. The legislative has ceded its authority to the executive. And so now if there's a Republican in the White House, Republicans on Capitol Hill are going to do everything they can to support the president and to pass the president's legislation. The Democrats have somebody in the White House. The Democrats in Congress are going to do everything they can to support the president. That's not what the founding fathers envisioned. Three co-equal branches. And then what we end up with is these so-called oversight committees that don't oversee anything. They just egg them on. Yeah, I think the part with America that when I hear people that are tired, like what are you tired with? What are you most upset with? I just don't think there's any accountability. That's exactly what the problem is. Yeah, I just don't think there's any accountability. What do you mean? It seems like they're all on the same party. It seems like they're all protected. You hear that message, right? You can't have that because that's not good in a democracy. If there's accountability for the average person that does something and there isn't for the other guys, what are you talking about? Yeah, no, there's not. So I think this administration, a story came out. I don't know if you saw the story came out yesterday saying that, again, it's a leak, that they want Tulsi to resign after midterms. OK, so they want Tulsi to resign after midterms. All right. That story was leaked. I don't know if it's even a story there or not. There you go. Yeah. Director Donald Trump reportedly wants to direct their national. OK, who knows what these stories are? Like we asked you earlier, what stories do they leak? What do they not? And you kind of test the market. Who knows what this is, you know, on how they're dropping a story. But to me, if there's anything, this administration has a shot at increasing the score the people have in the CIA, in the FBI, in the U.S. government a little bit more. Because the way it dropped after Kennedy is a – Oh, my God. It's like a massive – from 72% trust in the FBI. Can you pull up the history of trust in the U.S. government or trust in the FBI or trust in the CIA? And then Watergate? And then Watergate? you know one by one by one um there's a chart rob if you go back and just go to images you'll see it yeah it's one of those that shows the high was 72 percent and i don't know what yeah zoom in a little bit if you could oh it doesn't go all the way back it doesn't go all the way back so that goes from 97 the one i'm looking at it's from the 60s you know uh go on the second one see what the same the pew research there you go that's the one from 58 wow look at that we used Wow. 72%. Look at that. We used to trust the government. We're like, yeah, they're good. You know, they're and then we're now in the 20s and the teens. And that's 15. I would assume it's even lower today. Like even 9-11, it was barely 50%. Yep. Yep. That's right. Even 9-11 was 50%. At least we're like, look, they're the good people. They're here to protect us. Yeah. There is a massive mass. And by the way, I think long term, the lower that score goes, you cannot risk not knowing the consequences of the score getting too low. That's right. Because if it gets too low then what does the youth do who don't have anything to lose? Anything. The young is willing to break the whole thing because they're like you know what you guys are not doing anything you guys are all protecting each other you guys are and then you're dealing with a bigger problem. So I hope they do something to regain the faith. Are you following the story with the scientists? Yeah. So you know Rob And at first I'll admit to you At first I was like, oh, come on, another conspiracy theory. And then I started reading and I was like, oh, crap. You think there's some credibility to it? There could be. Yeah. What is it? Twelve scientists or 11 scientists. Four of them were from NASA. Yeah. And I want to say JP, is it the JPL? The other four were nuclear fusion plus weapon. And the other three were guys with secret clearance, not direct contact with each other. 11 scientists are dead or missing. It was only a matter of time before conspiracy theorists hit the White House. A haphazard grouping of recent cases emerged from the one paranormal investigator described as mystery-mongering data mining. It also made the ideal fodder for the president and our leading media personalities alike. Okay, so I don't know if I'm fully there. I don't know if I'm fully there that something's going on. But one of the guys, his name is David Whitlock? Wilcox. Can you go to the tweet of David Wilcox? I think Oshana sent it to you. If you go into your text, yeah, he sent it to you. Oshana sent it to you. If you go to his text, he sent you the tweet he had in 2022. Yeah, there you go. This is in 2022. I plan on living, not suicide at all, just concerned about what happens when you prove God is real. Okay, this is 2022, three and a half years ago. Go a little bit lower, Rob. May God bless your soul. Such a positive. That's April 21st. And then you see all the other stuff that's coming. If he did kill himself, it was DW murderers. So the market's kind of reacting to what's going on here. There's just a lot of questions. But tell me, what are you thinking? I think it bears investigation. Listen, the Israelis have been killing Iranian scientists forever. We probably kill scientists. other countries likely kill scientists. I have no idea if these guys are connected. I mean, apparently, work-wise, they're not connected, but maybe there's a foreign actor out there that has a policy that requires a technological setback, and you do that by killing scientists. I don't know. Rob, what do you know? What do you know about the 11 scientists? Because they're saying they were working on stuff. They had certain patents. They had certain things they knew about, you know, some of it related to the UFO. I mean, you've got to realize this is like a beautiful, you know, a playing field for guys that want to go into, you know, maybe there's something there. Maybe they're doing this. Maybe the aliens, maybe they're hiding it from us. But you and I were joking before we went on about Manecht. Well, maybe it wasn't you. It was one of the guys. We were talking about Manecht, and a lot of the requests that I get on Manecht are related to UFOs. And I always say the same thing. My very first question on my very first day at the CIA, when I met my boss for the first time for lunch, where are the UFOs? And he laughed and he said, that is the first question that every one of us has asked. And I'll tell you what I was told. He said, that's not what we do here. If there are any UFOs, all that stuff's at the Pentagon. Well, we always get a chuckle out of that. But when I was 17 years old, my mom and dad bought a restaurant in a neighboring town. We lived in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. This restaurant was in Sharon, Pennsylvania. It's only 15 miles away, but you have to go through Amish country. That's my dislike of the Amish. So you have to go through Amish country to get there. And the Amish don't use electricity, so it's very, very dark. One night, my dad and I, it was a Friday night. My dad and I used to work 11 to 7 on weekends, midnight shift. so we're driving to the restaurant going through Amish country we see this brilliant blinding flash of light not very high off the ground maybe 1500 1200 1500 feet there's a second flash and a third flash and we were both looking up at it and then this orange saucer lit up and it's just hovering there. What year is this? This is 1981. He pulls over to the side of the road. I said, what in the world is that? We get out of the car. We're just standing there staring at this thing. A guy pulls up behind us. He gets out of his car and he says, what is that? And my dad said, I don't know. And then it went like that at this fantastic speed that just defied the laws of physics. We get back in the car. We stood there for a minute waiting. Is it going to come back? So we get in the car. We start driving again. And I said to my dad, and mind you, I was a kid. I said, so should we do something? Should we like call the cops or something? And my dad said, and say what? We saw a flying saucer and then it flew away. People are going to think we've lost our minds. And so we only told my mom the next day. We didn't say anything to anybody, but I have never forgotten. And in the meantime, I moved to Washington a year later. My uncle owned a restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. His son was an F-15 pilot or whatever it was, F-16 pilot. And I mentioned this to him like, oh, I saw the craziest thing last year. I saw this flying saucer with my dad. And he said, oh, we see those things all the time. He said, one time I saw one shoot up out of the ocean. And I said, are you kidding me? He said, no, we said we fill out these forms. They're classified. We sent them to the Pentagon. He said, every pilot has seen them. What? This is crazy. This is crazy. Every pilot has seen them? So not every person who seems crazy is crazy. Yeah. I mean, do I believe that? And I wonder, 81. 81, how advanced were we with drones in 81? I know, right? Had we even thought of drones by 81? I don't know. I don't know. I know. When did drones become available to the public? What year did drones become available to the public? That's it. You're talking 81. 20-something years? That's right. Before. So it's not like, you know. And when you went in, you weren't like, I've got to figure this thing out. I'm going to get into the sea. I'm going to figure this thing out. I'm going to go. So did anything get close where you're like, maybe there's nothing? Not even vaguely close. One thing that I did get a kick out of, when I got there, we didn't have computers yet. I'm embarrassed to even tell you. We had IBM's Electric 3 typewriters at our desks. And then we got these big boxes called Delta Datas with a little tiny green screen. And yeah, Delta Data. Go to him. Oh, there it is. Delta Computer. Go to images. They had these little green screens. There they are. There's the Delta data. So, yeah, that's the one. That's the one. And so all the files were paper files that went on these – they were on these rollers. They went all the way up into the ceiling and then came back down. The ceilings were a good 15, 20 feet, and then they went up into the ceiling and came down. So every once in a while, as I'm researching somebody, I would run across an old professor of mine from when I was at school at GW. And? No. Nothing. No, nothing on UFOs. Not a word. Not a single word. It's funny. I just pulled up the story on these 11 scientists. Rob, what did you pull up? Did you pull up anything on the scientists? Because what it's telling me is, okay, 10 or 12 scientists who have either died or gone missing since 2022, many were high security fields, nuclear research, aerospace, NASA. FBI, Department of Energy, NASA, White House are involved in a coordinated review. The Congress launched a probe calling it potential national security. Really? Threat. Some officials have floated possibilities like foreign intelligence involved in China, Russia, Iran security breaches or just unrelated incidents being grouped together. A NASA nuclear engineer, Joshua LeBlanc, was found dead after being reported adding the list and raising urgency. Important reality check experts saying no confirmed link between the cases. Many of us have been explained. Accidents, suicides, illness. The pattern may partly be Internet-driven narrative building. One of the stories is about a William Neal McCasland. McCasland right there. So that's one of the stories that prompted everything. If you can just go to the New York Post story right there. Retired Air Force General worked on classified aerospace programs. Disappeared in 2026. So he's one of the stories. And the other one is Amy Eskridge. Amy Eskridge, there you go, right there. Amy Eskridge was a researcher into advanced propulsion, anti-gravity concepts, and that's the picture we've seen all over the Internet. We've seen that she said definitely did not plan death by suicide. Friend, go a little bit lower to read that one. Where do we have it? Amy thought she was a target. She thought she was a target. Research friend from Eskridge believed she was being targeted for her work in propulsion technology. Per Melbourne, she claimed she was being physically and psychologically attacked and provided pictures to him of her disclosed, discolored hands. Amy, too, friend, if you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. Milburn said Eskridge told him to believe any reports that she had died by suicide, told him not to believe that she died by suicide. She turned up dead as Chris died on June 11, 2022 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her deathbed officially ruled a suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It's very unusual for women to shoot themselves. Yeah, it's normally they shoot their husbands or they shoot. You know, if it is, it's a situation. It's the other way around. Yeah, there's this thing called the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951. I don't know if you're familiar with it or not. Never heard of that one. Yeah, so the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 was created by the U.S. government, by this senator from two sides under Truman. He signed it, and they gathered 6,000 patents that the governments had since, which they would pay you off, and you can never make money and never talk about it. What? And it's something about 6,000. Go a little bit lower, Rob. The secrecy orders can bar public disclosure entirely, prohibit sales to anyone outside the defense sector, block exports, and seal restricted applications as classified. So if you go deeper into this, this is something that, John, you would get a kick out of if you look into this, the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951. We were introduced to this by Gere, Stephen Greer, if I'm saying it correctly. He did a documentary on this. If you've never seen it, it's worth watching. So this is where some people speculate that, you know, some of these inventions could cure cancer. Some of the inventions would disrupt the oil industry because cars could drive based on just water. And so we don't need to do all this other stuff with oil industry. So and there's some credible stories behind how people disappeared at the time. So I don't know. Is there some credibility to these stories? Maybe. I definitely would like to see journalists, investigators go a little bit deeper to see what happened here with all these people that are saying I'm not suicidal. And then they disappear. So who knows? But if you're watching this and you have any questions for John Kiriakou, you've got to help him get to the super heavyweight. He's very close. I know, right? Send him a minute. He's actually very active and responds to folks out there. And John's also, you've got a podcast that you do. Yeah, I've got a podcast. There's one that's kind of in flux, but the one I'm really, really proud of is on Apple Podcasts called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop. and it is, I'm proud to say, in the top one-tenth of one percent of all podcasts. Really? Yeah. Sick. It's taken off. Well, let's put the link below on the podcast. Let's put the link below. And, John, as usual, every time we talk, I get a kick out of it because you're one – I don't know if you obviously know this. You're an incredible storyteller. Oh, my God. You're an incredible storyteller. It is not an easy – you're extremely curious, interested. You have your own opinions, which makes it very entertaining. Thank you. And then at the same time, I can listen to you for hours because of how good you are at telling stories. And that's not a skill that a lot of people have. So I appreciate you coming out again, as usual, and being a class act. And I know we've got a couple other things we're talking about. Maybe we'll do something where the audience can come to a live event and see you. I'm in. And that would be great. I'm in. I look forward to this. I love it. John, thank you. Thanks so much. Anytime. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye. Hi, everybody. I'm John Kiriakou, former CIA officer. Please find me on MNECT. We have a lot to talk about. CIA, FBI, DOD, torture, secret prisons, international renditions. Maybe you or your child want to apply for a job at the CIA and are looking for some tips. Let me know. There's a lot we can talk about. You pick the subject. We'll make it happen. Again, it's on MNECT. Thanks, and I'll see you soon.