Ex-CIA Agent: Iran, Israel, and Epstein Are All Connected (Transcript)

Those people are not recruitable and they don’t need money. So money’s not going to motivate them. So you hire instead somebody who has access to those people, somebody who can wine them and dine them, make them comfortable, have them drop their guard, they speak a little bit out of school, and then you can report that back to your handlers. That’s valuable information.

When I was in CIA training, one of my instructors said something that has stuck with me for all these years. He said that the best recruitment he ever made over a 30 year career was a copy machine repairman. And we all laughed and he said, “Hear me out.” We all wish that we could go overseas and recruit the Prime Minister. None of us are going to recruit the Prime Minister. But you recruit a copy machine repairman knowing that the Prime Minister’s copy machine is going to go down eventually or it’s going to need to be serviced or cleaned. And so when that happens, he goes into the Prime Minister’s office. Security is there to make sure he doesn’t steal documents or whatever. He’s not interested in that. What he does is, as he’s cleaning and servicing the copy machine, he’s installing a little device that we created so that every time somebody makes a copy on that machine, it transmits a copy to Langley. That’s an access agent. You haven’t recruited the Prime Minister but you did the next best thing, because everything that the Prime Minister is seeing, you are now seeing.

I believe that Mossad recruited Jeffrey Epstein as an access agent either to collect information from these very, very important people or to plant the Mossad’s point of view on XYZ issue in the minds of these very important people.

Now, in this latest tranche of the Epstein documents, among horrors, we also learned that he repeatedly reached out to the CIA and the FBI asking, volunteering to help them and to do work for them. He did the same with the British MI5 and MI6, and he repeatedly attempted to engage with what was then the KGB, now the SVR, to get a one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin. The Russians actually offered him a meeting with Putin and two national security aides and he turned it down. He said he needed for it to be one on one with Putin, and the Russians weren’t biting.

So I think that this was all about the Mossad. And then I think that he thought maybe he could freelance a little bit and just see what else he could come up with.

The Origins of Epstein’s Wealth and His Connection to Les Wexner

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Wow, John, that is so interesting. But it brings up some other questions. Do you think this happened in the very beginning? Because a lot of people, myself included — where did this guy come from? All of a sudden, it seemed out of nowhere, he meets up with Les Wexner and he gives him the keys to the kingdom for some reason. Do you think it started before that, or once he started to show that he had money and he had some relationships — is that when maybe they started to recruit him or use him?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I think it may have been before, and I’ll tell you why. And I’ll preface this by saying that Les Wexner adamantly denies this, but I think they may have been lovers. Jeffrey Epstein was a junior high school substitute math teacher with no college degree. I would love to own the widest townhouse in Manhattan. I would love to own my own island in the Caribbean and my own fleet of private jets. But I’m a normal person. Normal people don’t just fall into something like that.

We know that the origin of his wealth — I won’t say the basis, but the origin of his wealth — was with or from Les Wexner. Les Wexner being, of course, the wealthiest man in the state of Ohio. And Les Wexner latched on to Jeffrey Epstein, adopted, so to speak, Jeffrey Epstein without any logical reason for doing so. There had to be 500,000 people in the United States that would have been better qualified to manage this billionaire’s money. Why Jeffrey Epstein?

So I think that the Israelis directed him to target Les Wexner. That’s what got him started. Wexner testified a couple of weeks ago that he was the one that had spoken to the Rothschilds. And the Rothschilds said, “Oh, you should talk to our friend Jeffrey Epstein. He manages our money.” How is that even possible? The guy was a seventh grade substitute math teacher with no college degree, and he’s managing the Rothschild family’s billions. It doesn’t make any sense.

So I think that this was one of those very long term operations. It’s easy to fall into a sort of rut where we, as CIA officers, compare our operations with the operations of other intelligence services. We have a very limited timeline in our operations. You don’t get promoted if you don’t make a recruitment. And if you don’t make a recruitment in six months or 12 months, you move on to the next guy or the next issue or whatever.

The Israelis, the Russians, the Cubans — they have a much longer term view where they’ll pluck somebody out of obscurity like Jeffrey Epstein, and they’ll manage him for 20 years, 30 years, no matter how long it takes. They know that in the end he’s going to be able to report to them.

The Rothschild Connection and the Epstein Documents

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Wow. You brought up something interesting. I only learned about this recently. What do you think about the connection between the Rothschilds — because that’s like stunning — and Epstein? How did that even come about?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It is completely unexplained in these documents. These three million documents, Mike — this was like a tease for the American public. And there are still between 2.7 million and 3 million more pages that haven’t been released. And according to Pam Bondi, they now won’t be released.

But we’re teased with this information about the Rothschilds to the point where Congress subpoenas Les Wexner and he just teases more. In fact, you may have seen the clip from his testimony on YouTube where a Congressman asks him a question and he gives what appears to be an honest answer. And on a hot mic, his lawyer leans in and says, “I will kill you if next time you don’t answer the question yes or no.”

So they don’t want us to know the details of the origins of these relationships. There’s something there that is embarrassing, that is humiliating, that is possibly dangerous, that they just don’t want us to know about.

For example, they talk about beef jerky in something like 1,500 different emails. Jeffrey’s having the guy over to make the beef jerky. The guy’s coming over to teach us how to make beef jerky. We’re going to make the beef jerky. We’re going to freeze the beef jerky. I love beef jerky. They talk about beef jerky nine ways from Sunday. But you know what they never talk about? They never talk about eating beef jerky. And so what are they actually talking about? Is it children? Is it people we don’t know?

There are more questions now after the release of these 3 million pages than we had before we knew anything at all.

Trump, the Epstein Documents, and the Cover-Up

MICHAEL FRANZESE: John, it’s unbelievable. It really is. I mean, the extent of this operation that this guy had over, I guess, a 20 year period or something — the people that he was in contact with. Look, I think everybody believes and knows, if we had to bet our life on it, there was a huge cover up here. And I think — I don’t know if you’re aware — that Marjorie Taylor Greene talked about on a YouTube deal that she had a conversation with Trump.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: And Trump actually told her — she said, “You know, why are you so mad at me for wanting these documents released unredacted? You’re not in them to any problem with you.” And he said, “Yeah, but many of my friends are.” I mean, that was his response.

The Epstein-Brennan Connection: CIA’s Highest Honor

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And I think that she was so courageous in her willingness to stand up, but it was too much even for her. And they forced her all the way out of Washington. You know, when you’ve got members of both political parties, very high ranking members of both political parties, presidents of both political parties that are at least implicated in accusations, then you have to ask, what would we expect them to do other than to try to cover up.

I’ll tell you one thing that bothers me very much about these documents in the latest tranche. I have a very particular interest in John Brennan. John and I have known each other for 36 years. John Brennan, it was always my belief, was a murderous sociopath. And what we saw in these latest documents was the Obama White House general counsel Katherine Remmler, who just last week was asked to resign as the general counsel for Goldman Sachs. Katherine Remmler sending an email to Jeffrey Epstein saying, “John Brennan gave me the CIA’s highest honor today. Pretty neat, huh?”

Well, I was at the CIA for 15 years. I know what honor she got. That honor was reserved for CIA officers who were killed in the line of duty. So what in the world could Katherine Remmler have possibly done to warrant the CIA’s highest honor, an honor that is reserved for the organization’s greatest heroes.

And then she tried repeatedly to get Jeffrey Epstein and John Brennan together for breakfast or for lunch. We don’t know if she was ever successful because Brennan’s not talking. And if there was a response, it wasn’t released in this latest tranche. But like I said, there were so many other lines of investigation that were revealed to us that I’m not sure we could ever get through it. And everybody’s implicated.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Was she even a CIA operative in any way?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Nope. She was a lawyer.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Remmler.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Nope. She was a lawyer who went directly into government, Justice Department, worked her way up in the Justice Department, and then Obama brought her over to the White House as White House counsel. She didn’t have any experience in intelligence at all.

The Tuesday Morning Kill List

But I have a theory. I follow these issues very, very closely, and forgive me if I’m a little overly passionate about it. But in 2009, I was the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a journalist from the New Yorker magazine called me and said that she had information that John Brennan, who at the time was the deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism, was hosting meetings at the White House every Tuesday morning at 7 o’clock. Called the Tuesday morning kill list meetings.

I said, “What are you talking about?” So she came to my office, closed the door. We had this off the record conversation. It’s on the record now because she published it. But she said that every Tuesday morning at 7am, John Brennan chaired a meeting made up of attorneys from the Justice Department, the CIA and the White House, as well as representatives from the CIA’s Special Activities Division. And they would come up with a list of people to kill that week. They would agree on the list. Brennan would sign it on behalf of the President, and then the teams would fan out around the world, kill everybody that was on the list, and then meet again the next Tuesday morning for the week’s list of people to kill.

And I think that she was probably responsible for White House approval for all those assassinations. Now, you can’t go to the Washington Post if you’re John Brennan and say, “Hey, shout out to Katherine Remmler. She helps me kill so many people. I just want to say what a great patriot she is.” You can’t do that. So you give her an award that nobody is supposed to know about. It’s a classified award. And then she blew the classification by immediately emailing Jeffrey Epstein and saying, “John Brennan just gave me the top award that the CIA has.” It’s sick.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Wow. You know, John, I’m glad you just verified something for me. I always looked at John Brennan as one of the most arrogant guys. I just didn’t like anything about him and everything that I’ve seen with him. I likened him — he was a worse version, in my opinion, of J. Edgar Hoover. And I said, this guy must have a lot of great enough dirt on a lot of people.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, sir.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Yeah, I really believe that. But man, here’s something like that. An actual kill list.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh yeah, an actual kill list. And in the beginning, Brennan denied, denied, denied that any such thing existed. And then when the magazine found enough people — and it was like a half a dozen people, current CIA people, saying, “Of course we have a kill list. What do you think we do all day long?” — they were able to run with the story and publish it. Crazy.

Israel, Iran, and the Nuclear Threat

MICHAEL FRANZESE: It’s just unbelievable. So, John, when I look back at that statement that Trump said, many of my friends are involved. I mean, the president has a lot of power, but there has to be people in this world that in some way control him or keep him quiet to a certain extent, and maybe not only true of him, but others. And what I want to ask you is there’s this flood of information out there — not information, opinions out there — that it’s really Israel that has so much control over the United States, over our presidents and everything else. Now, they’re all talking that this is Israel’s war with Iran. It’s not ours. What could you say about that, John?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Well, forgive me for smiling. I could say a couple of things. In all the years that I was at the CIA, literally every single time that an Israeli prime minister would come to Washington — and usually they come once or twice a year, sometimes more. In the last year, Benjamin Netanyahu has come seven times. Literally every single time they would come, no matter who the prime minister was, no matter who the American president was, they would ask us to bomb Iran every single time. And I mean, going back to the 80s, and every single president would say, “I’m not going to do that. It’s going to be the start of World War Three. I’m not going to do it.”

In fact, George H.W. Bush, the father, actually revoked loan guarantees for Israeli housing construction because the Israelis would not stop with these constant requests to bomb Iran. We always sort of hoped that the Iranians would turn around, they would agree to talks. Maybe we would go through the Omanis, maybe we’d go through the Algerians, and then everybody could live happily ever after. That never happened. But there was this constant drumbeat of pressure from the Israelis that we’ve got to bomb Iran. “You’ve got to bomb Iran.”

Well, we didn’t bomb Iran until Donald Trump. And I have friends at the White House, I have friends in the administration, and they all tell me the same thing. They say that Trump agreed to bomb Iran because Benjamin Netanyahu threatened him and told him, “If you don’t bomb Iran, we’re going to use nuclear weapons against Iran.”

Now, of course, the Israelis have never admitted that they have a nuclear program, but analysts believe that they have between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads. The Israelis are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Interestingly enough, the Iranians are.

I can also tell you that the deal that we had with the Iranians, that was called the JCPOA, and the deal that the United Nations had with the Iranians were identical to the deal that the International Atomic Energy Agency had negotiated with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for observation of Iraq’s weapons programs. Lead seals on every door, cameras pointing 360 degrees, spot inspections with no warning, no coordination. The Iranians had agreed to all of that.

In addition to that, the CIA wrote two National Intelligence Estimates — this is the highest level analysis that’s produced by the entire American intelligence community — two of them over the last 10 years, saying that the Iranians do not have a nuclear program.

It was always a joke at the CIA, Mike. When Netanyahu would come to Washington, he would always be invited to address Congress, which is unusual, but every time he comes, he’s invited to address Congress. And he would always say that the Iranians are six months away from a nuclear weapon. You’ve been saying that since 1986, and they’re still six months away from a nuclear weapon. Well, they’re not. They never were.

And not only did the CIA assess that they were not, but the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed a week or two ago, issued a fatwa saying that it was a sin to build a nuclear weapon, and that to build a nuclear weapon would be punishable by death. But we just took Netanyahu at his word.

Well, in July, when we did bomb Iran at Netanyahu’s request, you’ll recall that the President said that the Iranian nuclear program had been obliterated. His word — it had been obliterated. It no longer exists. And then from July until now, “Oh my God, they’re six months away from a nuclear weapon and we have to go in now and wage full scale war.”

I was in the Gulf a week ago, and I was in the Gulf three weeks before that, in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha. And I’ve spent a good bit of my adult life in the Persian Gulf serving in the CIA. I love it there. And I have wonderful, close, abiding relations with all of the various royal families there. And everywhere I went —

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I’ve got to just stop you for one minute, John. One second. We were probably in Dubai at the same time because I was there just a few weeks ago. I was there for two weeks and I met with one of the sheikhs and I’ve got a lot of friends in there also. So yeah, we got out and then all heck broke loose, as they say.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Just a few days later. But I think you’re going to agree with me — they were all worried. They were all worried because when George W. Bush wanted to make war against Iraq, American diplomats went out all over the world to make the case. The President crisscrossed the country to win over the American people. And this time, nothing. Nobody went out to the Gulf to say, “Listen, we’ve got a serious problem about the Iranians. We’re going to just finish them off for once and for all.” Nobody ever had that conversation.

And so they’re asking me like I’m an insider, which I’m not, “What do you think he’s going to do?” I told a senior royal in the United Arab Emirates, I said, “I’ve been watching this for a long time and it’s my experience that the United States would not send two aircraft carrier strike forces, two aircraft carrier battle groups with 12 associated ships each unless they meant to do serious damage. I think we’re going to attack them.”

Connecting Epstein, Mossad, and Political Leverage

MICHAEL FRANZESE: John, let me ask you this now, jumping back and forth, and I didn’t want to get off the Epstein matter because there’s more, but now I have to ask this question. So Netanyahu comes now, tells Trump we’re going to use nuclear weapons — connect Epstein to Mossad. Is it possible too that they have more information and maybe Trump does have a problem with Epstein, or there are things that he’s trying to cover up there? And so maybe there is a connection there.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: There certainly could be. See, Mike, this is exactly what’s wrong with a lack of transparency.

The Kennedy Assassination and the Role of the Mob

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Right? If you’re truly transparent, just release the documents. Just put it all out there. Let the cards fall where they may. By not releasing the documents, that gives rise to conspiracies. Now, the conspiracies may be true. Just because they’re conspiracies doesn’t mean they’re not true. But it dogs you. It eats away at trust in your administration, and it leads people to think that, you know what, they may have something on him. Maybe that’s why he won’t release the documents.

And I’ll add one thing. The vote on Capitol Hill to release the documents in the House of Representatives was 419 to 1. In the Senate, it was 99 to nothing. And then the President signed it. Okay, so it is law. You can’t just decide, well, I don’t like that law, so I’m not doing that. That’s contempt of Congress, which can be a felony. And the Attorney General is in contempt of Congress. When she went on national television and said, “All right, I’m not releasing any more documents. That’s it. No more.” You can’t do that. You can’t say that.

But the calculation is this. The calculation is, she knows she can’t do that, but she’s going to make the other side sue her, and then it’s going to go to the federal district court. And they’ll lose. And then it’ll go to the Circuit Court of Appeals and they’ll lose. And then it’ll go to the Supreme Court. And they may lose, but by then they’re all out of office because it took five years to get there. And I think that’s what they’re counting on.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: So even though it’s a law to release them, it’s still up to the Department of Justice to see what’s redacted and what’s not redacted, right?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah. And that’s another important point. So on the CIA side, we had to redact documents all the time because you’ve got a mandatory declassification law after 30 years, and you also have the Freedom of Information Act. So all of us, at any given time, would be going through documents and saying, okay, I’m going to black out this. And then you write in the margin for HUM, or HUM 482, or HUM 193, or whatever, which means sources and methods, liaison relationships, whatever.

So if you file a Freedom of Information Act request about something, I’m going to have to respond to it. But I can’t say, well, we got this information from the Canadian Intelligence Service — that’s classified, so I have to black that out. Well, they’re just blacking out random things. Okay, I understand you want to black out the names of the victims. God bless. That’s an important, good thing to do. But you can’t black out the names of the perpetrators. These are the people that are being investigated for having committed crimes.

And if you’re going to black out the email addresses, I understand that it’s a privacy issue, but you don’t also black out the name of the person either sending or receiving the emails. It’s like they stood on the street corner and yelled out to a bunch of teenagers, “Hey, you guys want a job for a couple of days? Come on in here, grab a Sharpie, and we want you to black stuff out.” Because these people at the Justice Department didn’t know what in the world they were doing.

The 30-Year Declassification Law

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I have to ask you — you just said something I want to make sure I got right. That there is, after 30 years, it’s mandatory that classified documents are released?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Okay. And that’s a law that virtually nobody knows.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I was going to say, what about the Kennedy assassination? We still have all these classified documents.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Exactly.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: And so by law, they should be unclassified.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In fact, I have a theory.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I have a theory I want to share with you on that. My entire life, my entire adult life, from 1963 when the assassination happened, until the time I left my former life, I was told — there’s no question about it — that the mob was involved in that assassination through Jack Ruby. I don’t know what government agency came to us, but I heard this consistently from the right people, including my dad. Jack Ruby was 100% associated with us. 100%. And that’s documented.

From what I understand, the commission came back and said he had no affiliation, which was an out-and-out lie. It was just totally a lie. He was associated with New Orleans, with Chicago, and even in Dallas. That’s how we got to Australia — 100%. And yet they’re saying it never happened.

So I always said that one of the reasons — and there may be more reasons — that they don’t want to release these classified documents is because the government doesn’t ever want to say that a sitting president was able to be assassinated by people with the mob. And that’s been my position, knowing what I know. What do you have to say? I know we’re jumping around, but this is so interesting.

Oliver Stone, Bobby Kennedy Jr., and the CIA

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Oh yeah, I have a couple of things to say about this. When I got out of prison, I struck up a friendship with Oliver Stone. He bought the rights to one chapter of my first book. And we sold a show idea together to the History Channel that they never made. But we became friendly and remained friendly.

And he put me on the spot one day. I was in his office and he said to me, “You’re not one of those guys that doesn’t believe that the CIA killed Kennedy, are you?” And I said, “You know, I think there were probably elements of the CIA that were involved in killing Kennedy. But in terms of being a CIA operation to kill Kennedy, no, I’ve never believed that.” He said, “You’re so full of sh.” And I said, “No, no, I genuinely don’t believe that the CIA killed Kennedy.”

And he said, “Who do you think killed Kennedy?” I said, “It was probably George Johannides, who was kind of a rogue CIA officer stationed in Miami. He was very close to the Cubans, and I think we probably should take a closer look at him.” But I said, at the same time, I don’t think we’ve really gotten to the bottom of where the mob was on all this. We hear these stories about Carlos Marcello. We hear stories about Santo Trafficante and the things that they said in the immediate aftermath, like, “We finally got him.” And then the ties between Chicago and Jack Ruby. I said, “I just don’t think that’s ever been fully investigated.”

He got genuinely angry with me that I didn’t just agree with him that yes, the CIA killed Kennedy.

Well, I later struck up a friendly acquaintanceship — we’re not close friends, but a friendly acquaintanceship — with Bobby Kennedy Jr. And he and I started talking about this one time, and he said something that I told him in response: “This is historical. You should write this down, because I think the American people need to hear your recollections.”

He said that on the day his uncle was killed, November 22, 1963, his mom picked him up at school early. It was like 2:30 — it was minutes after the assassination. And they drove back to their home in McLean, Virginia. It was called Hickory Hill. It was a glorious, 40-acre spread with a mansion on the top of the hill.

And when they pulled into the driveway, his dad was standing there talking to John McCone. John McCone was the director of the CIA. The Kennedys and the McCones were very, very close. They were both devoutly Catholic. Six months earlier, Mrs. McCone had died of breast cancer, and the Kennedys were genuinely worried that John McCone might do something to harm himself. And so they had him over to dinner seven nights a week just to keep an eye on him. After dinner, he and Bobby Kennedy Sr. would go swimming together.

So Bobby Jr. and his mom pull into the driveway. He gets out of the car. He’s walking past his dad, and he hears his dad say to McCone, “Tell me your people didn’t do this.” And McCone says, “I don’t know who did it.” He didn’t say, “Of course my people didn’t do it. Why would you even ask such a thing?” He said, “I don’t know who did it.”

So Bobby Jr. said he always believed it was the CIA. I always believed it was elements of the CIA.

The 10,000 Unreleased Documents — and Israel

But this is my most important point. I have a friend who is close to the President. And I said to him, at the time that the documents were released about a year ago, “Thank God that the President finally released the remaining documents.” And he said, “No, he didn’t.” I said, “Yeah, he did. He was compelled by law. Congress passed a law twice demanding, compelling the President to release all documents related to the Kennedy assassination.” He said, “There are 10,000 documents that are never going to be released.”

And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because every single one of them points directly at Israel.”

And I said, “Oh man. Wow. That’s not one that I was thinking of.” He says that the Israelis were so angry that, A, John Kennedy wouldn’t give them nuclear technology, but more importantly, B, he was actively trying to disrupt the Israelis from acquiring nuclear technology, and they decided they had to take him out. Crazy, isn’t it?

AIPAC’s Reach: From Washington to Local Races

MICHAEL FRANZESE: This is fascinating, John. Why is it that Israel seems to have this much say over the American government? I mean, I don’t get it. They’re a small little country.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I don’t either.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I mean, they’re our major ally in the Middle East. But why do they have this kind of power and control? I don’t get it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Israelis genuinely believe that they are alone in the world. They know that we’re close, but they’re afraid that we might not be so close tomorrow. And so they genuinely believe that it is them against the world. And if they are not among the strongest powers in the world, they’re going to end up floating in the Mediterranean.

And so they made a strategic decision in the mid-1950s that they were going to have as much of an impact in American elections as they possibly could. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was created in the 1950s as a domestic lobbying organization supporting Israeli foreign policy goals. Every country has lobbyists in Washington. There’s nothing unusual about that.

What’s unusual about it, though? Well, there are several things. Number one, AIPAC is the only one of these organizations that does not have to register as a foreign agent. Why? I don’t know why. They’re clearly working on behalf of Israel, but they pretend that they’re not. And so they don’t have to register as foreign agents.

More importantly, they really started focusing on fundraising for American elections in the late 1960s, and then they were successful in getting President Nixon in 1969 to guarantee Israeli national security. We had never said that before. Beginning with Harry Truman — you know, Harry Truman said that his role in the creation of the state of Israel made him, quote, “a damn fool,” that he was a damn fool for creating that country. And he said it was the biggest regret of his presidency, because it spun out of control almost immediately.

So they created AIPAC in the ’50s. They convinced Nixon to guarantee their national security in ’69. And then they start going from being able to raise a couple of million bucks — 5 million, 10 million — to raising hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that would allow them to be competitive in literally every political race in America.

And I’ll tell you a funny thing, Mike — I shouldn’t smile, because it’s actually not funny. So a buddy of mine is one of these civic leaders in Texas, and he’s friendly with a state senator in Austin. The state senator called him about a month ago and said, “Hey, listen, I’m going to propose a resolution to make a day named after you — like Bill Smith Day.” He said they do about 140 of these a year. Whoever’s the head of the Social Security Commission or whatever, they’re going to make Mike Franzese Day, and you get a big certificate with the gold seal, and the governor signs it and everything. He said it’s all pro forma.

A couple of weeks later, he calls back and says, “Hey, listen, that Bill Smith Day — that’s not going to happen.” And my buddy said, “Why?” He said, “AIPAC killed it.”

And I said, “AIPAC? In the state legislature in Texas?” It turns out that they have lobbyists in all 50 state legislatures. It’s not just the House and the Senate here in Washington. He told me they’re even involved in local races — not just the New York mayoral race. They’re involved in races for mayor all over the country, and for city council all over the country, because they want to make the United States a 100% pro-Zionist country. And they’re succeeding.

The Epstein Assassination Theory

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Well, John, I got to ask you this. And it may seem that we’re bouncing around, but the Israeli connection makes it very interesting. Charlie Kirk, Charlie, everybody. Well, there’s a lot of people out there that believe that Israel was behind his assassination. What do you have to say about that? I mean, I was. I always said no, but I’m learning something here right now.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I always said no, too, but, you know, there are so many people out there, Mike, who I respect, people far more important than I could ever be who say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. There’s enough there that we should at least investigate it. We should at least look at it.” I don’t think that it was, you know, the Egyptian Air Force, like Candace Owens says that the Egyptian Air Force killed him. But, you know, Charlie was kind of cutting an independent path. And there are a lot of interests out there that don’t want people to take independent paths. And so at the very least, I think we owe it, well, certainly to Charlie’s family and more broadly to the American people to investigate this thing.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Well, there again, if there is an Israeli connection to Trump like that, you know, he would be the one that would kill any kind of an investigation that would point in any way towards Israel, it would seem. I think that was, you know, something we can consider. Man, this is such a deeply woven web. Terrible information.

Epstein’s Death: Suicide or Murder?

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I want to go back to Epstein for a moment. I have always maintained that I spent seven months in MDC out of my 29 months in solitary. Seven months was in MDC. I find it very, very tough to believe that he could have committed suicide based upon my experience there. Add to that what I’ve read, and I think it’s been verified, that it took the FBI, who are right across the street from MDC, seven hours before they came over to investigate the fact that their main inmate in that jail had committed suicide.

I’ve maintained this. There’s no way he could have committed suicide. So my theory behind it was that he probably said to whoever, “Hey, I got dirt on every one of you. You get me out of this like you got me out of this earlier, or some heads are going to fly. I’m going to reveal everything.” And at that point, they took him out. And now it makes even more sense because of what you said with this kill list. They just took him out. What do we need this for?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Absolutely plausible. Yeah, you know, I wasn’t at MDC. I was at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania. But if my experience was indicative of the broader Bureau of Prisons, and I think you’ll agree with me, number one, the guards are morons. They’re lazy. They’re in the guard booth either sound asleep or on the phone with their girlfriends or looking at porn on the computer. They’re supposed to walk around whatever it is every 15 minutes, every eight minutes when there’s somebody on suicide watch. I never saw those guys. They walk into the booth for their eight hour shift and they walk out eight hours later for the very first time.

Number two, the cameras never work. Now, they may have counted on the cameras never working. So that may have been part of the plan. I was a janitor in the chapel, Mike, and every time there was a religious service being planned, I had to go in there and shoo all the guys who were having sex out of the chapel. So why were there guys having sex in the chapel? Because the cameras didn’t work. The cameras never worked.

Now, with that said, this is MDC. It’s not some low security, you know, rural prison in Pennsylvania. These are very tough people, very bad people in many cases. And, you know, I guess I wanted to believe that he had committed suicide. But then when Dr. Baden — Dr. Baden, the famous forensic —

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I really trust him, John. You know, I’ve watched him going way, way back, and I trust his analysis, his investigation on this.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And when he said that this was not a suicide, then I thought, okay, well, I’m with Dr. Baden.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: It’s not only that, John. If Epstein had all of this information, and he obviously did, why would he want to commit suicide? I mean, his brother said it didn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense.

The Pedophile Attorney and Israel’s Extradition Policy

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It doesn’t make sense. And let me tell you an associated story. I was in a low security prison, and as you know, almost all the pedophiles in the federal prison system are in low security prisons. Maximums and mediums are too dangerous for them. Minimums, they’ll just run away and go molest another child. So they’re all in the lows.

There was a very prominent Philadelphia attorney, Harvard Law School, mergers and acquisitions, lead attorney at some big muckety muck firm in Moscow. American firm in Moscow. But he was a pedophile. And so he molested this little boy from when he was 12 to when he was 15. And he got caught. And when he came back to the United States, he got wind that he was being investigated. Well, not even that. The kid filed a civil suit against him. And so what did he do? He ran away to Israel.

Why Israel? Because Israel doesn’t extradite Jews. They don’t care what you did. You can be a mass murderer, a serial killer, you can be a pedophile, you can be the most notorious pedophile in the world. They’re not extraditing you because they don’t extradite Jews. So this guy ran to Israel.

Well, he was a great lover of the ballet. And the boy that he was molesting was this ballet prodigy in Moscow. So what Interpol did — it was brilliant — they took out ads in Israeli newspapers saying that there was going to be this one time only ballet featuring the greatest child ballerinas coming from Russia. And it was for one night only in Cyprus. Well, Cyprus is a hop, skip and a jump from Israel. You get there in 40 minutes. And sure enough, he got on a plane, he flew to Cyprus to see this non-existent ballet, and they grabbed him in Cyprus and extradited him to the United States, and he got 20 years.

So with that said, if I were Jeffrey Epstein and I own my own jets, multiple jets, I’ve got billions of dollars hidden all around the world, why in the world would I not flee to Israel? The only thing that I can think of is that he believed he was safe. He believed he was safe. And I think it’s because of what you just said — that he had so much dirt on so many important people that they wouldn’t dare come after him. And then they did.

Mossad, Epstein, and the Scope of Blackmail

MICHAEL FRANZESE: It’s the only thing that makes sense, you know, really. But there again, you know, was Israel — if he was with Mossad, Israel was collecting all of this information, and they would have information from the indication that people that were involved in this horrible Epstein thing. They must have dirt on so many people in the world of stature, of meaning, of wealth.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Imagine. Yeah, it has to be — my guess is we can’t even imagine what they were able to collect through him. It has to be just staggering. I mean, already in the UK, look what’s happening. Prince Andrew is no longer a prince. And not only is he no longer a prince, he’s been stripped of his royal residence, essentially thrown out into the street and arrested last week. And he’s going to be prosecuted because he allegedly gave Jeffrey Epstein classified Defense Ministry documents. Why in blazes would Jeffrey Epstein want classified UK Defense Ministry documents unless he’s spying for a foreign power?

Peter Mandelson —

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Absolutely.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: The former British Ambassador to the United States and former minister and member of the House of Lords and senior member of the Labour Party. He kept saying, “I didn’t even know the guy. I met him one time, I didn’t have his number, I had never been to the island.” And then in the latest tranche of documents, there are pictures of him in his underwear with a 16 year old girl, with the pictures taken from a hidden camera. So now they’ve arrested him. Why would they charge him for providing Jeffrey Epstein with classified trade negotiation documents? British positions on trade negotiations. What’s Jeffrey Epstein going to do with that? He doesn’t care about trade negotiations. It was for a foreign power.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Exactly, exactly. Because he had to have a lot of dirt in order to get that documentation. It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable what this guy was able to do. It’s just — so you would tend to believe then that it was murder and not suicide.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, it took me a little while to come around to it. Yeah, I’ve come around to murder. Yes. I don’t believe that it’s a body double and he escaped and all this stuff. I spoke to his brother a couple of weeks ago, and his brother said no. He said, “I identified the body, I accompanied the body to the crematorium, I cremated him.” So I believe Jeffrey Epstein’s dead, but I’ve finally come around to the murder issue.

Back to Iran: Trump, Netanyahu, and the Endgame

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Unbelievable. All right, let’s jump back to Iran. So if in fact Trump acted because of pressure from Netanyahu — who, by the way, I have a friend of mine, very dear friend of mine, he’s an Israeli, 35 years, he hates Netanyahu, hates him with a passion. And he’s Israeli.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Most Israelis do.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: And you know, he’s —

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Most Israelis do hate him.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: He’s in Bulgaria now, my friend, he wants to come here. And I said, “Why do you hate this guy so much?” He said, “I’m going to tell you when I see you. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.” Israelis are very, you know, they’re very definite in things. But he hates him. Hates him with a passion. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know why, so I can’t comment on that.

But going back to the war, if in fact that happened — what I’m saying right now — if Trump doesn’t finish the job, and I mean really finish the job, his presidency is done. I mean, he’s finished.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I agree.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: He has no choice now. I think if Netanyahu did back him into this corner and he did act, he’s going to finish it. And I don’t think Israel would let them get off the hook at this point. They’re going to finish the job if they can.

Do you think it was just — you know, he had to put it out there — Putin, that he said he’s supporting Iran all the way and he’s condemning what happened here, the war. Do you think it’s just bluster? Do you think they would ever get involved?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I don’t. The Russians have been very clear to not say that Iran falls under the Russian defense umbrella. They sell Iran guidance systems, radars, surface to air missiles. They sell them all that stuff, but they’ve never said that they would protect Iran in the event of hostilities.

And, you know, with Trump, I think, again, I think that Trump really believed that as soon as we started hitting the Iranians and we killed not just Ayatollah Khamenei, but virtually the entire defense leadership, he really believed the country would just collapse like a house of cards. And it didn’t. And the thing — look at it this way, too. We have to win. To win, we have to replace that government with a pro-American, pro-West, maybe even pro-Israel government. The Iranians just have to survive. Just survival is a win for them. So we may have bitten off more than we could chew here.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Well, I hope he didn’t underestimate them to that point. I think, you know, as a novice in this, I’m thinking that right now he’s going to kill everybody if he can. He wants to kill the new guy, the son that they just installed. And he’s hopeful that the Kurds and the people will start to rise up, that he’ll weaken the present administration enough so that when they do revolt, they can win. I mean, I think that’s the card he’s playing.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Does it sound right?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah, I think that’s exactly what this is. And, you know, we’re in now to the point where we’re in deeply enough that we can’t get out. This is it. We’ve got to either see it through or walk away. And we can’t walk away because we’ll lose face. And we’ll lose face, especially with our friends, I should say, not our neighbors, with our friends in the Persian Gulf. You know, we started this, we’re going to have to finish it because they’re taking missiles, they have people being killed. So we’ve got to make this right.

The Cost of War and International Law

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Well, John, let me ask you this. I think everybody, all the foreign nations and all allies believe that Iran is the major sponsor of terrorism throughout the world. They all know that. They all know that the regime was murdering their own people for 47 years. Why don’t they all just get together and say, let’s just eliminate this threat, period. So we’ll all contribute. NATO, whatever it is, we’ll all get together and we’ll get the job done. We’ll help the United States and finish it. It seems that they’re coming around a little bit at a time. But why, why did they not all just get together and say, let’s finish it?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I think for a couple of reasons. Number one, war is incredibly expensive. We are spending $2 billion a day bombing the Iranians. It’s crazy expensive. Number two, and this is especially true among our NATO allies, they don’t have the stomach for casualties that we have. They just don’t want to have to deal with it.

And number three, and this is true of the Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Italians, it’s a violation of international law to attack Iran. There was no clear and present danger. There was no imminent threat. There was no nuclear program. And even if they had a nuclear program, there was no delivery system. So because there was no threat, it’s a violation of international law to launch an attack.

Now we don’t. We’re not signatories to the ICC. We don’t care if Donald Trump gets charged with crimes against humanity. We don’t care. And the Israelis care even less. But the Europeans care very much, and they just don’t want to be part of a major crime like that.

Saudi Arabia’s Role

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Do you think Saudi Arabia, because Iran is just sending missiles everywhere, do you think at some point they’re going to get involved offensively rather than just defensively?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It’s possible, but there are almost no Saudis in the Saudi military. Saudis are too rich. They’re too fat and happy. They just don’t have any Saudi nationals in the Saudi military. They’re all Pakistanis. So there are so many people in Pakistan, so many poor people, that they just hire Pakistanis to be members of the Saudi military.

They could do that. They could send Pakistanis over. But I think they would just rather wait this out, maybe absorb a couple of missiles if they have to, especially in the Eastern province where the oil fields are, and then just move on from there.

Back to Epstein — Bill Clinton’s Brilliance

MICHAEL FRANZESE: I want to jump back because I know I’m going back to Epstein, but I have to tell you this. Bill Clinton, I’ll give you a personal thing one night. This is years ago. This was after his presidency. I was listening to him on a late night talk show. And John, I was amazed at how brilliant this guy really is. I mean, he had such command over every issue.

And the way he — I always like Bill. There’s something about Bill Clinton you just gotta like, he’s likable. I can’t explain it, but I think he and Hillary made fools out of the GOP in their deposition. He just handled them.

One of the things with the GOP, they have so much bluster about them and they talk and they don’t do anything.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: They don’t do anything. That’s exactly nothing.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: And Clinton just made a fool out of him.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I think they played the Republicans in these testimonies. And then Lauren Boebert — like, how stupid could a person be after being told twice, no photography. She takes a picture of Hillary testifying and puts it on Instagram. She just can’t be a serious person. Mike, please, please.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: That was so dumb.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: It was so dumb. Please forgive me, but I’ve got to jump onto a business call and I apologize deeply.

Closing Remarks and Farewell

MICHAEL FRANZESE: No, John, this was great. I hope one day we get the opportunity to do it again. I would love — I have so much respect. I mean it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Thank you. I’m at your service.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Well, we will. We will definitely do it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I look forward to that very much.

MICHAEL FRANZESE: You got it, my friend. Thanks.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: So great to see you.

Michael Franzese’s Closing Thoughts

MICHAEL FRANZESE: Thanks a lot, my friends. I don’t know about you, but I’m blown away by this. I mean, he’s given me food for thought about Israel because he’s tying this all together, even with a little bit with Charlie Kirk. Not to the degree that people are spreading stuff out there, but Israel does seem to be involved in a lot of stuff. It’s making me rethink some things based upon what he said. And this is a person with knowledge and understanding who was with the CIA for a long time.

I’m going to tell you something, I’m going to be disappointed in some people here if this does fit in the way it seems to be fitting in and making sense. I’m not ready to throw the gavel down and say that’s it. I still want to continue to learn because let me tell you, some people — I don’t point fingers at people unless I know something for sure. It’s why I’ve been reluctant to call people pedophiles unless I know for sure and have the evidence, because that’s disgusting and I don’t want to label anybody with that unless I have evidence. That’s just me. A lot of people throw things around. They don’t like people. They say things. I don’t do that.

And I’ve said this and I admitted it here. If you heard the interview, I thought Clinton took the GOP to school in the Epstein investigation. He took him to school. Clinton is brilliant. No question about it. And you know what? There’s something about the guy that’s very likable. All you MAGA people, or all the people on the Republican side, are going to get mad at me for that. I’m not saying anything about some of the things that he was involved in. I’m just telling you, he’s a brilliant guy. There’s no question about it. Bill Clinton is smart.

And even Hillary, she held herself very well in that. And some of the things that she was asked, I didn’t agree with. I didn’t approve of it in my mind. What do you got to go that low for, really? I don’t think they treated her fairly. That’s my opinion. And you know that I’m a conservative in many ways, in many of my views, but I tell it like it is, people. That’s what you’re going to get from me. I tell it like it is. And if I’m wrong and I find out I’m wrong, I’m going to admit it later on. That’s the bottom line.

The Kennedy Documents and Government Cover-Ups

So, anyway, unbelievable what he had to say. What do you have to say? I didn’t realize this. It’s a law that after 30 years you must release classified documents. And it’s been 62 years and they haven’t released the Kennedy documents. I told you why. Because there’s a lot more to it. And it’ll show the mob’s involvement. Because the Warren Commission lied about Jack Ruby’s involvement with the mob. Absolutely lied.

So much here. This government covers up so much, not only the current government, but our government, period. That’s why I wrote the book Mafia Democracy, because I’ve seen it and I’ve known it and I’ve experienced it. We’re never going to get the truth, no matter what, no matter who’s in office. We’re never going to get the truth about things that are really important. Not Epstein, not this war in Iran. We’re never going to get the truth. Kennedy, none of that. Face the facts. Don’t blame any particular guy. They’re all in the same boat when it comes to that. That’s just the system. It’s the way it is. Is it right? No. Am I covering for anybody? No. Am I making excuses? No. I’m telling you, that’s just the way it is.

Final Words to the Audience

But John, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I mean, this was great and explosive and you got me thinking to a point where I’m going to really study this and do some more research. I’d love to have him back on. There are so many other things I want to talk to him about. And we will have him back on.

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