Transcript of John Kiriakou’s Interview: Mehdi Unfiltered

The FBI investigated me for a year, from December of ’07 to December of ’08, and determined I had not committed a crime.

Just 4 weeks later, Barack Obama becomes president. He names my old nemesis, John Brennan, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism. And Brennan asks the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me. They did that. For the next 3 years, my phones were tapped, my emails were intercepted, teams of FBI agents followed me everywhere. And then finally, in January of 2012, more than 4 years after I went public, they arrested me and charged me with 5 felonies, including 3 counts of espionage.

Arrest, Charges, and the Injustice of It All

MEHDI HASAN: They accused you in 2012 — it wasn’t over the whistleblowing, it was allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer. That’s something you’ve never accepted, you deny that.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh yeah. Well, there were two names that they accused me of having turned over. One had never ever been undercover and in fact had a LinkedIn page where it said Central Intelligence Agency. Kinda gives it away. And then the classified programs I was supposed to have outed were the torture programs.

MEHDI HASAN: How did it feel knowing that you went to prison essentially for whistleblowing on the CIA’s torture policy? I mean, they didn’t charge you with that, but that’s what started the whole thing. But the torturers themselves and their bosses who ordered them to torture, they never saw a day inside prison.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, not a day. I don’t mean to smile because it’s not funny, but this has been, of course, something that’s been on my mind for a decade and a half now. Our system is corrupt, our government is corrupt, life just isn’t fair. And so I was determined to make the best of it. And I feel like I have.

The Truth About Torture: Correcting the Record

MEHDI HASAN: You are critical of torture. Very much so. You say you were critical at the time. You refused to do it. Here’s what’s confusing. Since then, you’ve said multiple times that torture doesn’t work. You said it to Joe Rogan just last year in your interview with him. You said it’s not effective, which is the view of the Senate torture report and most experts. But in the ABC interview in 2007, you said it did work on Abu Zubaydah. Why did you say that then?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, that’s a great question. The reason I said it is because all of the reporting cables coming back from the secret site were lies. What was happening was the CIA and the FBI were still so at odds that their computer systems were not compatible. So the FBI agent interrogating Abu Zubaydah, Ali Soufan — great hero of this entire episode, great hero — he did what the FBI is very good at, and he interrogated Abu Zubaydah by treating him with respect. Abu Zubaydah opened up, and Ali was reporting back to the FBI, “This is what he said,” every day. And he was giving us actionable intelligence. Well, the CIA insisted on taking over, for reasons that have never been made clear.

MEHDI HASAN: They tried to attribute Abu Zubaydah opening up to torture.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Exactly.

MEHDI HASAN: To cover their ass.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: So what they did, because the computer systems were incompatible, they took Ali’s reporting, retyped it in CIA channels and said, “We waterboarded him once. Here’s what he said.”

MEHDI HASAN: So you were wrong in ’07 when you said that. You were basically incorrect.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Incomplete, incorrect, dishonest. But we didn’t know that that was wrong until April of 2009.

MEHDI HASAN: But as of today, you stand by the consensus position that torture doesn’t work.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It does not work. Besides being illegal.

MEHDI HASAN: Besides being morally illegal, yeah, it doesn’t work.

From CIA Officer to Online Sensation

MEHDI HASAN: All right, let’s broaden this conversation out. You today — it’s 2026 — you’ve gone from being a man who was in the shadows, a man who was taking on George W. Bush, going to prison for it. You’ve become an online personality, John. In fact, I interviewed you a few years ago, and even then you weren’t as big as you are now. Complex magazine describes you as “a TikTok sensation with a skill for narrative mastery.” When was the moment you realized, “Oh, I’m a bit of an online celebrity”?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, it was about 11 weeks ago. I happened to be in Dubai during a business trip and my niece called me. And she said, “Uncle John, you’re exploding on TikTok.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “I don’t know, but you’re everywhere.” I said, “Okay.” I thought it was some one-day thing, something happened, something in the algorithm. And I went to bed. The next day, CAA calls me, the Creative Artist Agency. They said, “Tell us you’re not represented.” I said, “No, I’m not represented.” “You are now.”

MEHDI HASAN: By the way, is it only me who finds it amusing that you went from the CIA to CAA? Sorry, had to be said.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I’ve had to spell it out very carefully. So what it was — I had given an interview to Steven Bartlett of Diary of a CEO. Big show, a month earlier. And as it turned out, a 20-year-old sophomore from the University of Texas saw that podcast, chopped it up into Shorts, gave me an Alvin and the Chipmunks voice, put lasers shooting from my eyes, and made me famous.

What His Audience Is Really Looking For

MEHDI HASAN: I bet you — I wonder if George W. Bush has seen the clip. There are a lot of people though who are craving information about what is going on right now in the world, in the Middle East, in government, from Iran to Epstein to Gaza. What do you think the average John Kiriakou subscriber who listens to your podcast, who finds you online, what are they looking for, do you think?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The truth. My management — everyone’s looking for the truth.

MEHDI HASAN: What are they looking for from you?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: They are confused. They’re confused by the competing — I’ll call it right-wing and left-wing media narratives, the two parties of the duopoly and their narratives, and they’re looking for somebody just to speak in plain English and tell them the truth.

Funny thing, when I got out of prison, I had this website, and my webmaster asked me if I could guess at my demographic. I said, “Oh, yes. Women 40 to 60.” She says, “Not even close.” She said, “It’s men, and it’s equally divided between ages 15 and 80.” 80/20 men. Well, since this exploded, it’s still 80/20 men, but almost all of them are between the ages of 15 and 30. They’re looking for somebody just to tell them the truth.

What He Can and Cannot Say

MEHDI HASAN: And how much truth can you tell them, John? When you talk about your experience in the CIA, I’m sure people want to hear stories. What did you see? What did you hear? What are you restricted by? Obviously you don’t want to go back to prison.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, I don’t want to go back to prison. But over the years, because I’ve written so many books — I’ve written now 9 books — I’ve gotten all my stories cleared. Plus, the CIA is subject to something called mandatory declassification. Information has to be declassified when it gets to the 30-year or 35-year mark. Now generally, you have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to force the declassification, but I’m happy to just tell the stories. And besides, my opinion is not classified so long as it’s not based on specifically classified information.

MEHDI HASAN: But I assume that there are things that you know that you still can’t say. How bad are they?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, it’s pretty ugly.

The CIA: Out of Control from the Start

MEHDI HASAN: You mentioned Stephen Bartlett’s show. You said on Diary of a CEO in January, “I’m the most anti-CIA, former CIA person that’s out there.” And you justified it by saying that the CIA is an organization that’s just out of control. What do you mean by that, and when did it go out of control? Because many would argue it’s always been out of control.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, it was out of control from its first covert action program, which was to steal the Italian election of 1949, until the Church Committee hearings. Yes. Between 1975 and about 1982, there was real oversight, something that Americans could be proud of.

MEHDI HASAN: The Jimmy Carter presidency.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Jimmy Carter presidency. Frank Church was serious. Otis Pike was serious, the congressman from Long Island. They were serious about reforming the CIA and really overseeing its activities. But that all went out the window with Iran-Contra.

MEHDI HASAN: Iran-Contra, and then obviously the War on Terror, which takes the CIA into a whole different world.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And this is the big problem. The War on Terror is the most obvious example. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence really are not oversight committees. They’re cheerleading committees. Yes. And they don’t do anything to rein in the CIA. They didn’t do anything to rein in—

MEHDI HASAN: The opposite, they emboldened the CIA. They emboldened the CIA.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: After 9/11, give them more. The assassination program, the secret prison program, the torture program, the rendition program.

MEHDI HASAN: It was put at the heart of the War on Terror. It was.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Not the Pentagon, it was the CIA. Very much, it was the CIA.

Pompeo’s Admission and the Case for Abolishing the CIA

MEHDI HASAN: In 2019, John, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who went on to be Secretary of State, told a crowd at Texas A&M University, “What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.” I mean, obviously he was— I’m joking, but from the horse’s mouth.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, that was a really stupid thing to say. I mean, it was true, of course, but it was a really stupid thing to say in public because it’s exactly what people want to hear from a CIA director so that they could use it against the CIA. Not that they don’t deserve it. They deserve it.

MEHDI HASAN: Do you agree with people who say the CIA is a rogue agency that needs to be shut down?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, I’m on record as saying that I think the CIA should be shut down.

MEHDI HASAN: And you know, we’ve got— Not enough people say that though.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, not enough people say that.

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, Democrats are too scared to say abolish ICE. I’ve never heard the slogan abolish CIA. Maybe we’re coining it here today on Mehdi Unfiltered. Abolish CIA. Abolish CIA. Maybe a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 could run on that.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Most countries have one intelligence service. Some have two. The United States has 18.

MEHDI HASAN: 18, which are currently being managed by Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard. Exactly. Do you regret anything you did during your time at the CIA?

A Janitor, a Phone Call, and a Lifetime of Regret

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, sure, sure. You personally? Oh, sure, sure. I’ve told this story about a morning early on in my career. I was an analyst working on Iraq. This was early 1993, and every branch in the CIA meets every day at 9 o’clock. Everybody has their little lowest-level branch meeting just to talk about what happened in the part of the world that you cover overnight.

So I was in my 9 o’clock meeting, and the secretary came in kind of perplexed, and she said, “John, General Powell is on the phone for you.” And I said, “General Powell?” I said, “How does he know who I am?”

MEHDI HASAN: Colin Powell.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Colin Powell He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. And she said, I don’t know, but he asked for you by name. So I looked at my boss. He said, well, go answer the phone. So I went to my secure line, and I said, “Good morning, General Powell, may I help you?” And he says, cut straight to the chase. He says, “John, if the Iraqis were going to try to kill the president, who would be in charge of an operation like that?”

I said, “Well, if you’re talking about the attempt to kill President—” It was George H.W. Bush. Yes. “In Kuwait, Kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi Intelligence Service Basra station. But Basra station is headed by the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, Saber Abdulaziz al-Douri.” And he said, “Where does he physically sit?” And I said, “In Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters.” And he says, “Thank you,” and he hangs up the phone.

I go back into the meeting. They said, what did he want? So I told them what he wanted. And went about my day. That night, we fired 47 cruise missiles into Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters, and we vaporized it. But we killed a janitor.

And I went to the office the next day after having read the news reports, and I said to my boss, “I killed that janitor yesterday.” And he said, “I knew you were going to say that. You didn’t kill the janitor. Powell killed the janitor. You just answered his question. You didn’t know what he was going to do with the information.”

But it’s bothered me all these years. We bombed the place in the middle of the night because we didn’t want there to be a massive loss of life. That’s what the argument would be. But the one, like, the most innocent person in the entire Iraqi Intelligence Service, the janitor, that’s the guy.

Jeffrey Epstein: Mossad Access Agent?

MEHDI HASAN: I hate to say it, but that story almost sounds quaint. We now live in a world where we killed 120 schoolgirls on day one of this war. And don’t bat an eye. And don’t bat an eye. Won’t even take responsibility for it. Scandalous.

We’ll come back to that in a moment. Just on CIA and people asking you questions about your time, a lot of people I’m assuming ask you to confirm or debunk conspiracy theories. I get it all the time. All the time. One of the biggest ones of recent years that turned out not to be that much of a conspiracy theory, but just a real conspiracy, was one involving Jeffrey Epstein. Yes. And his ties to the rich and powerful, but also his ties to foreign governments. Israel comes up a lot. Obviously there are other governments, the Russian government, et cetera. Sure. But to your mind, was Jeffrey Epstein A, a foreign agent for Israel, B, a foreign agent for any other government?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I said from the very, very beginning and took it on the chin for saying that I believed Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad access agent. And what an access agent is, it’s different from a recruited spy.

MEHDI HASAN: You know, it’s a freelance fixer type person.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah. If you are a government and you want information from the richest and most powerful people in the world, you’re not going to recruit them. You have nothing that they can’t get. Intermediary. You go to an intermediary, somebody who can get close to them, somebody who can wine them and dine them.

MEHDI HASAN: But why wouldn’t he be working for lots of governments and making money? Why Israel?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: As it turned out, it looked like he was trying to. So I accused him of being an Israeli access agent. I still believe he was an Israeli access agent, but we know from this most recent tranche of— Documents. Documents that he had volunteered to the CIA, volunteered to the FBI, volunteered to MI5 and MI6 and the Germans, and was really, really trying to get a meeting with the Russians. They wouldn’t allow a meeting directly with Vladimir Putin. They offered him a group of as many as 4 intelligence officials, and he said no, he wanted Putin directly. So he was out there trying to ingratiate himself with a variety of intelligence services.

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, he aimed high and he got high. And got high. He got MBS. There’s a whole story about how he nagged the Saudis to get him a meeting with MBS. What about Ghislaine Maxwell, his literal partner in crime? Was she spying for Israel? Her father, the late Robert Maxwell, the publisher in the UK, he was alleged to have been a Mossad spy?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I think the evidence is pretty solid that he was a spy for Mossad. And it’s not at all unusual for parents to offer up their children once their children have access to the kind of information that an organization like Mossad would have. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

Working with Mossad: A Career of Deliberate Distance

MEHDI HASAN: So let’s talk a little bit more about Israel. Did you work with the Mossad during your time at the CIA? And what is your impression of them, if so?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes and no. Okay. The very first briefing that I ever gave, I had been on the job for 6 weeks and my boss said, “Listen, you’re going to do your first liaison briefing. It’s going to be the Israelis. It’s Mossad and Shin Bet, the two representatives at the embassy here in Washington. And here’s the way we do it.” He laid it out. He said, “We do not allow the Israelis into the building. We used to, but every time they would come, they would bring gifts. And the gifts were always laden with listening devices and batteries and microphones, and they were trying to bug the conference room table, and it was just terrible. And then we would catch them every time. You x-ray everything that comes in. And they would laugh and say, ‘Oh, it’s just a misunderstanding.’ So they’re not allowed in the building. We have to rent a space, and we meet with them in this offsite space.”

So, because I was the most junior person giving the briefing that day, I went last. And the senior analyst went first, and then the political analyst, the military analyst, the economic analyst, the oil analyst, and then finally they got to me. Because I was an overt employee at the time, not undercover, I used my real name. And so the Shin Bet officer, he had his glasses down like this, and he said, “Spell your name.” So I spell it. And in front of all my colleagues, he says to me, “You are Jewish?” And I said, “I am not recruitable. Don’t even think about trying to recruit me.” I was furious.

So I go back to the office, and my boss said, “Hey, how’d the briefing go?” And I said, “He tried to recruit me right in front of everybody.” And he laughed and he said, “They do that to every one of us.”

So I made a point of staying away from the Israelis for much of the remainder of my career. We had this thing called the exchange where we would send officers to Israel once a year, they would send officers to the United States once a year, and we would have this intelligence exchange. And I elected instead to go to the Arab countries. I wasn’t interested in the Israelis.

MEHDI HASAN: And you’re a fluent Arabic speaker, I believe.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, and I’m an Arabic speaker. So we had this thing called the exchange. I declined the exchange. I didn’t want to go to Israel, not officially. I didn’t want to be harassed. I instead went to almost every one of the Arab countries. I felt more comfortable there and made my career in the Arab countries. I finally went to Israel for the very first time as a tourist in 2022, but I did not go officially.

MEHDI HASAN: They gave you a visa fine?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: You know, I have to say, I was shocked that they gave me the visa.

MEHDI HASAN: So you get to Ben Gurion Airport, what happens?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No problem at all.

MEHDI HASAN: I get more problems than you going into Israel.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I couldn’t believe it. I get more problems than John.

Israel’s Disregard for Civilian Life and Its Influence on American Elections

MEHDI HASAN: You said in the past the Israelis have no rules, quote, “They’ll kill anybody. They’ll kill 1,000 people just to kill you.” Yes. Why then is the US such a close ally of such a country?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, that’s a good question. And there’s no answer to it. The context of the quote that you just read was I was talking in some podcast or news broadcast about Israel’s policy of being perfectly happy to blow up an entire city block, an entire block of apartment buildings if they think there’s one Hezbollah leader inside. Or one Iranian scientist or one Iranian military leader. They don’t care about civilian casualties. They’ll just blow the entire place up. And they know that the United States isn’t going to say anything. And they don’t care if any other country says anything. And they know they’ll get away with it. So they continue to do it.

MEHDI HASAN: You recently tweeted that it’s not the Russians influencing American elections. Israel is. Are you referring to the pro-Israel lobby groups like AIPAC? Or are you referring to the Israeli government?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, I was referring to AIPAC, but let’s not pretend that AIPAC isn’t tied to the Israeli government.

AIPAC’s Influence and Foreign Agent Registration

MEHDI HASAN: You think it should register as a foreign agent?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: 1,000% yes.

MEHDI HASAN: Is that your opinion or is that based on evidence you’ve seen?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: That’s my opinion. But I was on Capitol Hill for years as well. I spent several years as the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee working for John Kerry. And I had been on the House side before that, so I knew how things worked up there. But AIPAC will assign a young staff member lobbyist to every office. And these kids will just sit there in the anteroom, in the outer area of the office, and interact with constituents, interact with other lobbyists, try to get involved in every piece of legislation that’s either written or sponsored or co-sponsored.

MEHDI HASAN: There’s a piece in New York Magazine this week about Senator John Fetterman having a friend, a very pro-Israeli friend, buddy, who’s not an official member of team but sits in on calls with Netanyahu, sits in on meetings with government officials, apparently is the person who tells him everything he needs to hear about Israel, such as reporting from New York Magazine.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I don’t understand why everybody else has to register as a foreign agent, even if you’re not a foreign agent. I’ll give you an example. Back in 2008, I won a very small contract to write 4 or 5 op-eds in support of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce. Do business in Abu Dhabi. It’s really great. They have plenty of money. Free capitalism, whatever. I had to register as a foreign lobbyist. But AIPAC can spend millions upon millions of dollars in American elections which would directly benefit the state of Israel, and they don’t have to—

MEHDI HASAN: They argue that we are all Americans fighting for American interests, but I think more and more Americans are questioning that narrative.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: May I add one other thing? So I got a call, I’m going to say about 6 months ago, from a Democratic state senator from Texas, and he followed my case and my notoriety, and he said, hey, I’d like to do a declaration, John Kiriakou Day. I said, hey, thank you, that’s going to be fun. You get a nice certificate and it’s signed by the governor, it’s got a big gold seal on it. So he said, yeah, I’m going to sponsor it. He said, we do about 150 of these a year and I’ll let you know. I said, great.

He calls me a few weeks later, he said, yeah, that resolution, that’s not going to happen. I said, oh, okay, what happened? He said, AIPAC objected. I said, “In the Texas state legislature to a non-binding resolution?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s not going to happen.”

Do you believe we went to war in Iran because of Israel?

MEHDI HASAN: Absolutely, yes.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Iranians were no threat to the United States.

MEHDI HASAN: But there was not a faction of American hawks that wanted to do it regardless of Israel?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, there always will be. The neocons— Military-industrial complex, the neoconservatives. Absolutely, the DNC Democrats. Yes, absolutely yes. You’re always going to have haters in both parties.

MEHDI HASAN: But Israel was pushing it.

Israel’s Push for War with Iran

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Israel was pushing it. Israel had been pushing it since the ’80s, the 1980s. I can tell you from my time at the CIA, Mehdi, literally every Israeli prime minister— this isn’t specific to Benjamin Netanyahu, but every prime minister of Israel, when they would come, regardless of who the president happened to be, would say, please bomb Iran, please bomb Iran, please bomb Iran.

MEHDI HASAN: I think John Kerry affirmed that point recently saying, we were asked, we said no. Everyone said no except Donald Trump. We will come back to Donald Trump in one second. Just on Iran, a lot of hawks in the US say this isn’t about Israel. Iran has been a threat to the US. Iran has killed American soldiers in Iraq. You were there at the time. What do you say to that?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure, it’s true, Iran has killed American soldiers. The Iranians tried to kill me. In 2001. That doesn’t mean I want to attack and invade the country and overthrow its government and fire missiles and kill schoolgirls. We’ve got to pick and choose our fights. The Iranians were no threat to the United States or to the stability of the United States. The Iranians did not have a nuclear weapons program. That’s not John saying it. That’s two national intelligence estimates done by all 18 members of the US intelligence community.

MEHDI HASAN: Yes, and Tulsi Gabbard repeated it in Congress.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In Congress, and besides the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa in 2003 declaring it a sin.

Trump, Iran, and the Nobel Peace Prize

MEHDI HASAN: So here’s what’s interesting. You told Joe Rogan last October, “Call me crazy, but I think that if there’s going to be peace with Iran, Donald Trump is going to make that peace with Iran.” Can I call you crazy now?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, yeah, call me crazy.

MEHDI HASAN: You got it wrong. And it wasn’t just you. A lot of people thought Trump was going to be anti-war. I met Muslim friends of mine who said, Trump’s going to be anti-war. Kamala Harris is a neocon. Joe Biden’s a Zionist. Trump’s going to be anti-war. And it’s turned out that the guy has attacked, what, 7 countries last year? He did Venezuela at the start of this year. He’s done Iran, and now apparently Cuba any day now. How did you get it wrong?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I really believed that he really believed he had a chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And I said on the Joe Rogan Show, I said, listen, we used to say only Nixon could go to China, right? And I said, maybe only Trump can go to Tehran. Not literally. Maybe Trump goes to Riyadh and Mohammed bin Salman.

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, he might go literally. He went literally to North Korea. He crossed in. If they built him a Trump Tower in Tehran, he’d be there.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: He’d be there. So I thought there was a real chance that this might happen. Although I also have been repeatedly accused of being overly optimistic about things.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, although Trump had a record as a hawk, right? He’d already killed Qasem Soleimani in his first term. You know that. You follow foreign policy. But you still believed there was a chance with him. Some of us were saying the opposite, that don’t believe the bullshit. This guy is a warmonger. And it’s not just that he’s a warmonger. To come back to Netanyahu, Netanyahu kind of bragged that for 40 years I couldn’t find an American president who would do what I say. And this guy was basically dumb enough and impressionable enough to believe me that Strait of Hormuz would be fine and the regime would fall.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And that’s the key. The key is that Netanyahu convinced him that the Iranian government was a house of cards and it would just collapse. As soon as hostilities began, as soon as the missiles started flying, it would collapse.

The Intelligence Community and the War on Iran

MEHDI HASAN: And even George W. Bush did not do Iran. Donald Trump did Iran. And I think you’re right. I think ironically, if he’d got the Nobel Peace Prize, he might not have done it. He’s actually said publicly, “Well, I don’t care about peace anymore ’cause I didn’t get a Peace Prize.” F*ing child.

In a rare moment in US history, the US intelligence community did not even bother to manufacture consent for this war. Right? The CIA, the DIA, they normally, they say, you know, with Cuba now, they’re doing this whole leaking of, they’ve got drones and they could hit Miami and all this bullshit. With Iran, they didn’t even bother. He just bombed. They didn’t even try and make a case. As you say, Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence expert, said the opposite, that there is no evidence of nuclear weapons. The ayatollah has not decided to build nuclear weapons.

The question is, do you think the intelligence community could have done something to stop it? We’ve had some kind of carefully timed leaks, right? But do you think people within your former agency and other agencies— they’re clearly pissed about this. You can see that they’re not happy. Could they have done more?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh yeah, sure they could.

MEHDI HASAN: But it doesn’t seem to be a very powerful deep state if it couldn’t stop Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, I think you’re right. Rubio, that’s a whole conversation right there. They could have done more. They could have leaked more. They could have put their collective foot down, and they didn’t. They just saluted.

May I add something too? John Ratcliffe went to Cuba a week ago. The CIA director went to Cuba a week ago. And a couple of my colleagues, my former colleagues, said, oh, that’s good back-channel communication. I said, are you crazy? He’s going to tell them, we’re going to overthrow you. We did the same thing to Gaddafi. And we sent the CIA director to meet with Gaddafi and say, the gig’s up. You’re going to go.

Cuba: Venezuela or Iran?

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, Libya was a disaster. Venezuela so far militarily is not a disaster. That’s emboldened Trump to do things like Iran, which is a disaster. Question is, is Cuba a Venezuela or an Iran?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Cuba. I went 2 years ago, and several things struck me. First is how incredibly peaceful the Cuban people are. Literally every Cuban has a relative in Miami. They just want to work and earn money for their families and live happily ever after. And Cuba is not only no threat to us, they’re worried about how many hours the electricity is going to be out and where food is coming.

I said something to a waiter in the hotel where we were staying. I said, “Buddy, squash 3 times a day, every day. I’m squashed out. I can’t eat any more squash. Certainly you have to have something besides— I can’t eat squash, it’s killing me.” And he said, the American embargo extends to food. We have to eat what we grow, and this is squash season. That’s Cuba. I had no idea that it extended to food.

MEHDI HASAN: Do you think Cuba will end up a Venezuela or Iran if you had to predict?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: God forbid. I think it would end up a Venezuela. Nobody there has the stomach to fight.

MEHDI HASAN: They give up Raul Castro, they put a Delcy Rodriguez equivalent in. You went to Cuba 2 years ago, you said?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes. When did you go to Israel? In 2022.

MEHDI HASAN: I’d love to see your passport, the stamps on your passport.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And I’ll tell you, they put the red light on when I come back through immigration and I look up and there’s the red light and I say, okay. And I give them my mantra, I’m represented by counsel and I don’t talk to cops and you cannot stop me from reentering my own country.

Israeli Spy Technology and AI in Warfare

MEHDI HASAN: But they all know you at the airports, that you’re the ex-CIA officer. And now podcaster. Quick question on technology. Does Israel have spy technology that the US does not have or chooses not to use?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I believe that they do. And I believe that they use it against Americans, especially Americans who have the guts to protest in front of the Israeli embassy.

MEHDI HASAN: There’s all this reporting that they’ve agreed not to use technology against Americans, the NSO Group and all these companies, the hacking of WhatsApp.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Take their word for it. Sure.

MEHDI HASAN: You think they’re spying on Americans with technology that they have developed, sometimes with Americans?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I do, yes.

MEHDI HASAN: And we’re seeing a lot of use of AI in warfare. The US reportedly used Anthropic’s AI in its war with Iran. Israel reportedly uses AI programs like Lavender and Where’s Daddy, where they follow a militant into their home to kill them with their wife and kids. Apparently only 20 seconds of human intervention to authorize a bombing once AI decided on a target. How dangerous do you think, as someone who was in the war on terror as a CIA officer, how dangerous are these developments?

The Dangers of AI-Assisted Killing and the Tech-Military Complex

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, I think they’re incredibly dangerous, but they’re more dangerous because there is no internal rule or regulation or policy for the Israelis to try to avoid killing civilians or innocents. They don’t care about collateral damage. They’ll just kill everybody who’s in the area if they can be sure to get the target.

One of the things about the Israelis, too, is they can’t help themselves but to brag to the media about their successes. So, as an example, the Iranian nuclear scientists that have been killed, they’ve been wiped out. Yes, meded. And the senior military officials. How? After the Iranian leadership said nobody was permitted to use cell phones. It didn’t occur to them to tell the bodyguards that they couldn’t use cell phones. And so the Israelis just honed in on the cell phones of the bodyguards to geolocate their targets.

MEHDI HASAN: But if you make remote killing that easy and AI can pinpoint where people are, right, what kind of checks and balances are there in a world where governments just can kill anyone, anywhere, anytime?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: None. This is like an episode of Star Trek. It really is. Where it’s almost impossible to stop once it’s been initiated.

MEHDI HASAN: Earlier this year, I interviewed Michael Steinberger, who’s author of the book Philosopher in the Valley, which chronicles Alex Karp and his company Palantir. He told me the tech bros have captured the state, that the US government has become overreliant on these tech billionaires, these tech companies. They’ve got contracts with the Pentagon. They’ve been now integrated into the military planning and execution. How worried are you that it’s not just the deep state we should be worried about, but it’s tech companies integrating themselves into our defense apparatus?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, I’m deeply worried. The CIA received a waiver in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to create a venture capital firm, a quasi-independent venture capital firm called In-Q-Tel. They thought it was cute. It’s Intel with the letter Q in the middle as a nod to the James Bond character. The very first investment they made was something like $1.5 million to Palantir. And now Palantir is a multibillion-dollar concern. It is deeply integrated into the CIA.

But besides Palantir, there are other companies. One, Abraxas, for example. Abraxas was set up when I was still at the agency. It was founded by a group of retired senior CIA officers who really set it up as a pass-through — to have a place where they could go, drink coffee and smoke cigars and talk about all the scalps that they had accumulated during the course of their career. And they started getting these counterterrorism contracts after 9/11. They all got rich. That’s also a multibillion-dollar concern now tied to the CIA.

When you couple that with the fact that we know from the Twitter Files, that there were active-duty CIA, NSA, and FBI employees working at Twitter, at Meta, Instagram, Facebook, at all of the social media platforms, and then knowing what they’re doing with In-Q-Tel and Palantir and Abraxas, et cetera — where are they not in tech and in government? I’m genuinely worried about this.

Political Identity: From Democrat to Leftist Libertarian

MEHDI HASAN: So where does that leave our government? You describe yourself as a third-generation Democrat who left the party ages ago. I think you were once vice president of the College Dems. Yes. At GW prior to being recruited. What made you leave the Democratic Party and where do you stand on the political spectrum now? How would you classify your politics now to your new online followers who say you’re conservative, you’re liberal, you’re a socialist?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: What are you? I call myself a leftist libertarian. The Libertarian Party has this online Q&A. And they’ll show you on a graph where you sit, and I am solidly on the left and solidly in the anti-government libertarian quadrant. I also am a firm believer in the fact that the ideological spectrum is not a straight line from left to right, that it’s a circle.

MEHDI HASAN: But that’s often used as a pejorative. The horseshoe, the far right and far left meet.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: But I think that’s a good thing. I’m perfectly happy to cooperate with somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, on an issue like Jeffrey Epstein or Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Iran, whatever. Perfectly happy to take support from wherever I can find it.

MEHDI HASAN: Let’s talk about the very contentious issue. I recently made a video about that, because AOC came out and said, “I don’t trust Marjorie Taylor Greene.” Then some people on the left attack her. And she said, “Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s got lots of issues.”

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, you’re not asking her to marry Marjorie Taylor Greene, just work with her on this issue.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but there’s a trust issue for some people. And there’s also an issue of what are the toxic politics surrounding some of these people you have to ally with? Before I ask this next question, you said you’re on the left. How many other CIA, ex-CIA people are on the left? I mean, you don’t think of the CIA being a left-wing place.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: You don’t, but I’ll tell you something. On Election Day 1992, I voted and I went into the office and we had our 9 o’clock morning meeting. And my boss said, “I know we’re not supposed to do this, but I’m really curious as to who everybody voted for.” And in our branch, it was 3 for Bush, 3 for Clinton, and 2 for Perot. And I remember thinking, “Wow, I’m not the only—” Well, we called ourselves liberals then. I’m not the only liberal. I never had any idea what the politics were of the people that I was around. And then when I got arrested, the day I got arrested, my wife said to me, “Well, you don’t have to hide your politics anymore.”

MEHDI HASAN: Well, your politics are interesting, because I think a lot of people have moved. I think you’ve shifted as well, as you said, left libertarian. You talk about working with people on different sides of the aisle, circular politics, Marjorie Taylor Greene, AOC, big topic right now. I need to ask you about someone else because I was looking forward to this interview. My team and I did some research and then I got very upset.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Uh-oh.

MEHDI HASAN: So I got a bone to pick with you. You endorsed in Florida the far-right Republican candidate, James Fishback, who is very anti-Israel. Very anti-establishment, claims to be libertarian. He’s also a brazen racist.

The James Fishback Controversy

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I didn’t endorse him. And I’m not using this as an excuse.

MEHDI HASAN: You said, “Listen, if you’re a Republican voting for governor of Florida, consider James Fishback.” Fishback, February 2026. That was you.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, that was my assistant. And I tore him a new one for—

MEHDI HASAN: This was you, John, live with Ted Rall.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, no, I know what you’re talking about. Oh, yes. And that was a stupid thing to say. I didn’t really know anything about him other than I had seen this clip.

MEHDI HASAN: I thought you were going to sit here and defend James Fishback.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, no. I saw this clip where he’s yelling about AIPAC and I said, “Hey, a lot of people—” A lot of people, this is the problem with the clips. And then my assistant endorsed him on Twitter and I had to delete it. And I was like, no, no, no.

MEHDI HASAN: So just to be clear now, you have not told people to vote for a man who says a black man should be lynched. Who says Indian people shouldn’t eat with their hands, they don’t have forks. I could go through the list of the racist remarks he’s made.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, no, no, that’s true.

MEHDI HASAN: Because here’s the problem. I have brown Muslim friends of mine who have said to me, “James Fishback’s interesting,” because they, like you, saw a clip where he’s attacking AIPAC.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, exactly.

MEHDI HASAN: And they say, “Finally, someone standing up to AIPAC.” But you would agree that there are people on this political spectrum, whether it’s round or linear, who are not just anti-Israel because they care about Palestinian rights or international law, they’re also antisemitic. And you probably shouldn’t ally with those people.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, no. You have to draw the line. I do a lot of cameos since this thing went crazy.

MEHDI HASAN: People want me to — from CIA agent to cameo guy. I love it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And the only cameos I’ve ever turned down, there have been 3, are people asking me to give shoutouts to Nick Fuentes. And I’ve said no.

MEHDI HASAN: So, so far in this interview we’ve learned that you turn down the opportunity to torture people and to do cameos for Nick Fuentes. Good decisions, both of them.

Working for Sputnik News: The Russia Question

Another controversy that surrounds you. I wanted to give you a chance just to get this out because it’s still a big issue in Democratic circles, which is Russia. From 2017 to 2024, correct me if I’m wrong, you worked as a radio talk show host at Sputnik News, a Russia state-owned media company. Correct. The New Republic, I think in 2018, published a big piece saying “the CIA spy who became a Russian propagandist.” Put aside the Russian propagandist line. Do you agree that it is at least concerning for some people, that it should be concerning for some people as a former spy, that a former CIA agent turned whistleblower then ends up working for the Russian government?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No. And I’ll tell you why. What should be concerning to people is that the CIA will so ruin a person whose politics they don’t like that he can never work again. I did 23 months in a federal prison, I paid my so-called debt to society, but then I’m never supposed to work again as long as I live?

MEHDI HASAN: So it was a financial thing for you?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, completely. I have 5 kids.

MEHDI HASAN: But isn’t that even worse? Because that suggests that you’ll do anything for anyone who pays you. That’s what your critics would say.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, what you didn’t quote in that terrible New Republic article—

MEHDI HASAN: You said you had editorial freedom.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh, complete and total editorial freedom.

MEHDI HASAN: People would say that’s not possible for Russian state media.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, it is. People also say, once CIA, always CIA.

MEHDI HASAN: I mean, I do a show, “Fault Lines,” and people say I’m a Qatari stooge. It’s ridiculous. But I don’t know what your situation is, obviously.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Russians came to me and offered me a radio show. I turned it down. They came to me again 6 or 8 months later, offered me again. I, for the life of me, could not find a job. And because I was a convicted felon, I was turned down by Uber, I was turned down by Lyft, by Safeway, by Target. I mean, I literally could not find work. I was turned down to be a baggage handler at the Reagan National Airport.

And so I said to the Russians, the only way I would take this job is if you give me complete freedom to criticize anybody and anything I want, including Vladimir Putin. They said, “Done.” I said, “Would you put that in writing? In the contract?”

MEHDI HASAN: And you did criticize Putin on air?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: On the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I opened my show by saying, “I unreservedly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I call on Russian troops to withdraw immediately.”

Trump and His Curious Silence on Putin

MEHDI HASAN: What do you make of the Donald Trump relationship with Russia? It’s weird. I don’t want to relitigate Mueller and all of that stuff. My position on this has always been, put aside all the wealth of information that shows there were financial and business ties between the Trumps and Russian banks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’d have to argue, is Donald Trump an asset, all that? I don’t want to get to that.

Just as someone who follows Donald Trump, this is a man who criticizes everyone, throws his own children under the bus if need be, gives nicknames to everyone, attacks world leaders, attacks allies, whether you’re the Canadian Prime Minister, the British Prime Minister. I’ve yet to find an open challenge. People are watching at home — find me a place where he attacks Vladimir Putin.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I have to agree. He’s never done it.

MEHDI HASAN: No, it’s weird.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It is. It’s strange. And I wonder if it’s just that he’s in awe of him. Yeah. I think that’s the only best—

Trump’s Vulnerabilities and the Pardon Question

MEHDI HASAN: I think that might be the best explanation for Trump is just that he’s a sycophant who’s in awe of this autocrat. Democrat, he’d like to be— I think he admires autocracy. Yes, he loves Xi Jinping, he just came back from China. Yeah, with nothing but compliments. But even with China, he’s been critical of China, critical of Xi Jinping, critical—

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Putin, no. Yeah, no. Although, listen, I’m a Greek Orthodox Christian, and you get a lot of Orthodox who won’t criticize the Russians either.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but Donald Trump doesn’t have any religion of any kind.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: No, no, no, that’s true.

MEHDI HASAN: Let me ask you a quick question, we’re running out of time, on Trump and his own vulnerability. He continues to use his personal cell phone to call everyone. Yes. Random reporters can just call him up. Multiple people in DC have Donald Trump’s number in their phones. Yes. That’s the first for a United States president. Yes. Previous presidents didn’t even have cell phones. No. Let alone one that people had the numbers for.

One advisor said that once Trump receives a call from an international number he doesn’t recognize, he answers it anyway. He just sees the number and thinks, “This might be a foreign leader I want to talk to.” Do you think he’s the most compromised president of our lifetime? Surely they must be listening into these calls. Of course. Any good spy agent.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It’s got to be a dozen different countries listening to these calls. Absolutely, yes. I know what we used to do at the CIA. How is that not a bigger issue?

MEHDI HASAN: Hillary Clinton got slaughtered for her fricking emails.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, it’s not good.

MEHDI HASAN: He’s got a phone that you’re saying a dozen different intelligence agencies may be listening into. Yeah, not good. Well, good thing is Donald Trump’s very discreet, I’m sure, in all of his conversations, so there’s nothing to hear. Some people say that you were soft on Trump last year because you want a pardon from Trump.

The Rudy Giuliani Pardon Meeting

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I probably was soft on Trump. Yeah, I would love to have a pardon. Because of a pardon. I would love to have a pardon. I’ve applied for a pardon. Yes, you have. I’ve—

MEHDI HASAN: You tried to hire in the first administration Rudy Giuliani, is that right?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh no, no, no. I hired a lobbyist named Karen Giorno. Rudy Giuliani, several people suggested that I speak to Rudy Giuliani. And so I called one of his top aides and said I’d like to talk to him about a pardon. They said, “Oh, we’re going to be in Washington. Let’s meet on Tuesday at 12 at the Trump Hotel.” I said, “Great.”

I went with my attorney. We sat down with Giuliani and 2 or 3 other people. And Giuliani says, “You a baseball fan?” I said, “Yes, sir. Pittsburgh Pirates are my team. They’re terrible.” And, “How do you like the Mets?” “OK, the Mets are great.” “You a football fan?” “Yeah.” I said, “I am, but there’s this issue of the pardon.” And Giuliani says, “Anybody know where the pisser is?” And he stands up and walks away.

And I said, “What just happened?” And his aide says, “Never talk to Rudy about a pardon. You talk to me about a pardon, and I talk to Rudy.” Did they ask for money? Rudy’s going to want $2 million. $2 million? And I laughed. I said, “I don’t have $2 million. I’ll never have $2 million. Even if I did, why would I spend $2 million to recover a $700,000 penalty?” You say you’ll never have $2 million.

MEHDI HASAN: CAA may have different views on that, John. Giuliani, of course, says he has no recollection of that meeting. Yeah.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And then when the New York Times called me to say Giuliani says he has no recollection of the meeting, I said Giuliani forgot that we took a picture together at that meeting. Oh, and so I sent it to them. And then they wrote in the follow-up, “Don’t deny meetings with a CIA spy.”

MEHDI HASAN: They know what they’re doing.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: They wrote in the follow-up that the New York Times has seen documentary evidence that the meeting took place.

Does Anyone Have Leverage Over Trump?

MEHDI HASAN: Let me ask you a quick thing before we run out of time. We mentioned the phone call, Donald Trump, whether you were soft on it or not. Let me just ask you bluntly right now then. So you said you’re honestly saying that you think it’s not great that he’s using his private phone call. As a former spy, you would say a lot of agencies are listening in.

There are many people who say to me, I don’t agree with this, but I want to get your view. Many people say to me, the reason Trump’s doing all this stuff is because the Israelis have stuff on him. They have dirt on him. They have leverage on him. “Look at the Epstein files.” What is your view?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I don’t think that that’s the case. I think that he is— I think he is stubborn enough and arrogant enough that if they were to threaten him with holding something over his head, he would lash out at them. I don’t think that’s it at all.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. I also think it’s very hard to shame a shameless man. Like, “We’re going to put out an embarrassing video.” Why does Trump care? His base will say it’s a deepfake. Exactly.

Looking Ahead to 2028

Before we finish, last question. 2028, we just talked about your politics. Who would you like to see running for president in 2028?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I’ve looked at everybody and I think that the person that I’m probably closest to ideologically is Ro Khanna.

MEHDI HASAN: Okay, congressman from California, regular guest on the show. Congressman from California, yep. Do you think he fits the leftist libertarian mold?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In most respects.

MEHDI HASAN: Make the case for why Khanna.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because I think that he is the truest to his convictions. There are so many other Democrats who are more prominent than Ro Khanna who just are too slick, too closely tied to the party structure. They’re neoliberal war lovers. They’re just kind of status quo Washington, D.C. people. Even if they’re not in Washington, D.C. People like Gavin Newsom, for example. People like, oh my gosh, there’s so many. Where do you even begin? I went on Cauchy the other day and they have 46 Democrats.

MEHDI HASAN: It’s going to be a big race. Yeah, it’s going to be a big race. I think they’re going to have multiple kiddie table debates. I have to agree. I want to give you a chance at the end to plug the book. You’ve got a new book coming out, “Remains of the Day: A Definitive Guide to Historic Cemeteries of Washington, D.C.” Not a book about spycraft.

New Books and Final Reflections

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The first 7 books were about the CIA. And when COVID hit, I decided to do something completely different. And so I thought, well, I’ll look at and see what cemetery books have been written about Washington. And I realized no books had ever been written about Washington, D.C. cemeteries. So I wrote the book. And then my publisher, Simon & Schuster, they liked it so much, they commissioned several more. I have another one for the end of the year called “Whispers in the Dirt: A Definitive Guide to the Mafia Graves of New York City.”

MEHDI HASAN: Oh, wow. Actually, I lied. I do have one more question. I just thought of one that I want to hear. You said at the beginning of this interview that you wanted to serve your country. You wanted to travel. Yes. You didn’t join the State Department. You joined the CIA. Today, one of your new 18- to 30-year-old followers comes to you and says, “John, I’ve been listening to you. I want the truth. I also do care about my country. I’m patriotic. I want to serve the United States of America. Should I join the CIA?” And if not, what should I do?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: People ask me that literally every single day. Wow. And my response is, it’s difficult, actually. I’m on record as calling for the dismantling of the CIA. It’s redundant. Other organizations in government do exactly the same thing. But I’m a realist. I know the CIA is not going away. It’s never going to be dismantled.

And so if you want to really change the CIA, you have to do it from inside. Run for Congress, get onto the oversight committees, or join the CIA, and when you rise up through the ranks and you find yourself in a position of authority, you use that authority to do the right thing.

MEHDI HASAN: Even if it risks going to prison, as you did? Worth it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I would do it again tomorrow.

MEHDI HASAN: Wow. John Kiriakou, thank you for your time.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for the invitation.

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