John Kiriakou

“I was watching Patrick Bet David yesterday, and Patrick is a a hardcore Zionist. He's Iranian. I don't think he's Jewish. I think he's, like, half a Syrian and half Armenian.”

“One of the very first lessons that I learned at the CIA is that if you wanna 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 gonna send an an entire aircraft carrier strike group, you mean business. If you're gonna send two of them, you're going to war. And we sent two.”

“Obama 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... 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.”

“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.”

“But he famously threw those medals over the White House fence to protest the Vietnam War. So I'm looking at that like, what?... And he goes, are you kidding? He said those medals are the most important things in his life. He went to the P X that morning, and he bought copies. And he threw the copies over the White House.”

“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 of proud government service... 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... And then he got brain cancer. And so he couldn't be on the conference committee.”

“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 jump up, and I said, mister president, my name is John Kiriakou. I'm the CIA torture whistleblower. And then I I used my my go to line. I said, Barack Obama and John Brennan ruined my life, and you were the only person who can give it back to me. And he goes like this. He goes, Tucker Carlson told me about you.”

“We see this brilliant blinding flash of light, not very high off the ground, maybe 1,500 1,200, 1,500 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... And then it went like that at this fantastic speed that just defied the laws of physics.”

“I think long term, the lower that score goes, you you you you cannot risk not knowing the consequences of the score getting too low. 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, well, you know what? You guys are not doing anything.”

“The only apparent consultation that was taking place was with the Israelis. And the Israelis really, really wanted this to get done. So why would you, as a practical matter, need to consult other countries? Because there is this sense, like, as an exceptional nation, we don't need anyone's permission to act. At the very least, you're gonna want political cover. You're also gonna wanna give them an opportunity to come up with plan b for their, let's say, oil or gas needs or transportation issues.”

“I've never believed I don't think any CIA officer, past or present, believes or has believed that the Iranians were anywhere near a nuclear, weapon. They don't have a delivery system that could deliver a nuclear weapon to The United States. And, you know, when you've got two national intelligence estimates, a national intelligence estimate is a sense of the entire intelligence community, all 18 organizations within The US Intelligence Community, unanimously concluding that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program, twice.”

“Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin. Almost all of that heroin goes to Iran and Russia, and we want them to be addicted to heroin. It weakens their societies, and I never got it published. Well, fast forward years later That's disgusting. We've got a fentanyl epidemic in this country. That fentanyl is coming from China and Mexico. They want us to be addicted to fentanyl because it weakens our society, and that's why we're in the predicament that we're in.”

“The CIA doesn't care about stopping the flow of drugs. They just don't care. You know, this this wonderful show on Netflix, Narcos? Yes. So in seasons one and two, just as the DEA is gonna go in and grab Pablo Escobar or grab the gentleman of Cali, the CIA station chief comes in and just screws the whole thing up. That's in that show because that's what happens in real life. The CIA at the time cared only about communism and stopping communism. And if the drug cartels were gonna tell the CIA where the communists were hiding, then the CIA was a okay with drug cartels.”

“Why would a president believe a foreign intel agency before his own? I don't know. That's really the $64,000 question. You you recall in the in the first term when president, Trump met with, Vladimir Putin. He did not take his intelligence people into the meeting with him. Putin took his intelligence people into meeting with him because the president said he trusted the other side's intelligence people more than he trusted his own. I'm surprised that that feeling, that belief has held over all this way into the second term where you would believe the Israeli information before you would believe your own people's information.”