CIA Whistleblower: “The Shadow Government Is Real” - John Kiriakou
In a Nutshell
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou argues the "deep state" exists as career bureaucrats who remain in power for decades while elected presidents come and go, routinely ignoring presidential orders they oppose. He claims the CIA functions as a shadow government controlling foreign policy through institutional resistance, abuses classification to hide embarrassing information, and violates its own charter by conducting domestic surveillance on Americans. Kiriakou warns that China poses the greatest strategic threat through economic infiltration rather than military confrontation, while the US wastes trillions on ineffective weapons systems and maintains 210 military bases worldwide.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
John Kiriakou acknowledges that skepticism toward his statements is reasonable given his CIA background. He emphasizes that his credibility rests on a consistent history of truth-telling, leaving the choice to believe or disbelieve entirely with the audience.
Kiriakou has received strong support from individuals within Donald Trump's inner circle, including household names. However, he was informed three weeks prior to this interview that a pardon is unlikely because the CIA as an institution opposes it. The institutional fear centers on the precedent such a pardon would set for future whistleblowers exposing waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. Kiriakou notes he has never met or exchanged harsh words with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, confirming the opposition is institutional rather than personal.
Philip Agee, a CIA case officer in the 1960s serving in South America (likely Chile or Peru), resigned after witnessing a CIA-sponsored torture session. Beyond resigning, he authored "Inside the Company," documenting approximately 1,200 names of undercover CIA officers in an appendix. The CIA considered executing Agee and continued discussing how to locate him years after his departure. Agee ultimately fled to Cuba, where he lived most of his life. Until Edward Snowden's disclosures, Agee remained the CIA's most reviled former employee.
Kiriakou asserts that the deep state, which he alternatively describes as the federal bureaucracy or the state, genuinely exists. Career civil servants remain in position for 25-35 years while presidents serve four or eight years. A colleague with 37 years of service currently ranks among the top four or five CIA officers. When presidents issue orders the bureaucracy opposes, the response is typically "Yes, Mr. President," followed by inaction.
Following the 1975 Church Committee in the Senate and Pike Committee in the House, oversight responsibilities transferred to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Kiriakou questions how a staff of 40-50 people can effectively oversee an agency of 20,000-40,000 personnel, noting the CIA's exact size remains classified. Oversight relies on self-reporting, which agencies routinely circumvent.
Kiriakou recounts participating in an operation that resulted in the loss of a source. When his station chief instructed him not to report the incident to Congress, citing budget concerns and reluctance to create complications, Kiriakou complied. This non-reporting was presented as standard practice rather than exceptional.
Kiriakou confirms the CIA functions as a shadow government. Real power resides in the layer immediately below political appointees—the career bureaucrats at the CIA, State Department, and Defense Department who remain regardless of electoral outcomes. These individuals control foreign policy, defense policy, and intelligence policy implementation.
Kiriakou draws a parallel between CIA operations and nightclub management. In his experience running events in northern England, the actual operational knowledge and relationships resided with floor managers rather than owners. When owners stopped appearing at venues, managers developed independent arrangements with venue operators, cutting out ownership. Similarly, CIA careerists maintain day-to-day operations and relationships while political appointees rotate in and out, creating loyalty to the institution rather than transient leadership.
The CIA particularly values new presidents lacking foreign policy experience. Following elections, the deputy director for intelligence or PDB staff director provides the president's daily brief, sharing highly classified information unavailable to others. This process effectively recruits presidents into the CIA's perspective, making them "one of the guys" through exclusive access to classified briefings. Presidents with foreign policy experience are less susceptible to this recruitment dynamic.
The classification system begins with unclassified material, followed by sensitive but unclassified information. Confidential classification applies to information whose disclosure would embarrass the government without causing damage. Secret classification covers information whose revelation would cause serious damage to national security. Top secret classification applies to information whose disclosure would cause grave damage to national security.
Beyond top secret exist numerous compartments. New CIA employees receive TSSCI SITK gamma clearance, encompassing top secret special intelligence (NSA reporting) with compartments including talent, keyhole, and gamma above both. Additional compartments like "Zarf" have existed historically, with code names computer-generated randomly.
Gamma represents the highest day-to-day classification level, covering particularly sensitive information such as intercepted communications from foreign leaders. Higher compartments exist above gamma but change frequently based on specific operations. DARPA activities represent the highest classification level, with no CIA officer Kiriakou encountered having access to this work.
The president remains the sole individual capable of accessing all classified information across compartments. The president alone possesses authority to declassify any material, including gamma-level and higher compartments, through executive action.
Kiriakou states that classification is abused to conceal embarrassing or politically inconvenient information. J. William Leonard, former classification czar under George W. Bush, now advocates against over-classification, estimating that three-quarters of classified documents should not be classified. Authorized leaks occur regularly for political purposes, technically violating the Espionage Act despite daily occurrence.
Following 9/11, Congress granted the CIA unprecedented authority to invest in technology startups. The CIA became Palantir's first investor, and Palantir now provides security software to governments worldwide. Kiriakou expresses skepticism that Palantir would withhold information from NSA and CIA, based on his 15 years of agency experience.
NSA's founding charter prohibits collection on American citizens, as does the CIA's charter. Both agencies violate these prohibitions daily. Following 9/11, the FBI can issue National Security Letters to service providers demanding all customer data without judicial oversight, with recipients prohibited from disclosing the request under the Patriot Act.
Kiriakou acknowledges that private companies developing surveillance technology can serve national security interests when properly regulated. He emphasizes the necessity of robust legal oversight rather than allowing technology distribution without government involvement. The alternative—allowing technology to reach any bidder—presents risks of adversarial access.
Kiriakou advocates for consistent adherence to law and international treaties regardless of convenience. He references Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill" concept, arguing that the United States must either maintain legal and human rights standards universally or abandon the pretense. Privacy commitments must be genuine rather than expedient.
Kiriakou identifies China as the primary foreign nation-state concern for the United States. He notes China's historical preference for economic co-option over military invasion, contrasting with American defense spending of $1-1.5 trillion annually—more than the next eight largest countries combined. He questions the effectiveness of current defense expenditure allocation.
The United States maintains 210 bases across 144 different countries. This extensive military presence represents a significant portion of defense spending that could be allocated more effectively.
The F-35 fighter jet program exemplifies wasteful spending, as it was developed despite nobody wanting it. The fundamental flaw lies in attempting to create a single aircraft to serve all military roles, when one size cannot fit all operational requirements. The A-10 Thunderbolt II, which was phased out, offered superior close air support capabilities, flying low enough that ground forces could practically reach up and touch it while it engaged targets. The F-35 cannot replicate this performance.
China avoids spending on implements of war, instead investing in ports, airports, factories, and desalination plants worldwide. This economic approach buys them friends, isolates the United States, and frees up cash for technological development that can be used against America.
China's end goal mirrors America's Cold War strategy toward the Soviet Union: containment and isolation, hoping the US will eventually collapse on itself.
The United States has crossed the $40 trillion national debt threshold. Defense spending is now the number one government expenditure, with interest on the national debt ranking second.
Sam Caucus, Chief Information Officer at the Treasury, described the department's information systems as a "Frankenstein's monster" with no single database for tax information. The system requires lookups across eight different databases, with information stored in inconsistent formats.
China actively conducts espionage against the United States and its allies. A deep cover Chinese intelligence cell was recently uncovered in New York City, where officers threatened Chinese dissidents and their relatives in China to stop anti-Beijing activism. Chinese intelligence recruits Capitol Hill staffers, FBI agents, and attempts to infiltrate the CIA, while placing intelligence officers in hard science PhD programs across American universities.
The greatest immediate threat of government infiltration comes from Israel, which operates covertly rather than overtly. The new National Defense Authorization Act collocates Israeli personnel in both the Pentagon and CIA. The FBI identified 187 undercover Israeli intelligence operatives infiltrating American defense contractors 35 years ago. Three weeks ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency director sent an all-hands email warning that Israelis have ramped up intelligence operations against DIA.
The four-part process for recruiting foreign assets includes:
- Spot: Identify potential targets
- Assess: Evaluate their access to desired information
- Develop: Identify vulnerabilities such as gambling debt, family medical needs, or financial pressures for children's education
- Recruit: Formalize the relationship when the person provides information in exchange for compensation, usually money
Most foreign assets inside the US government are not foreign nationals but American citizens who have been turned. The Soviets successfully recruited at university level, as demonstrated by Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts who were directed toward intelligence careers.
Kim Philby, an overt communist at Cambridge University, became chief of counterintelligence at MI6 while serving as a deep cover KGB agent. His best man at his wedding was James Jesus Angleton, chief of counterintelligence at the CIA. When Philby's true allegiance was discovered, Angleton launched a mole hunt that destroyed dozens of lives and careers. Philby was exposed when a CIA source inside the KGB revealed his decades-long service, leading to his escape from Lebanon via Soviet embassy and eventual life as a KGB training lecturer in Moscow.
Kim Philby's father served as personal physician to King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia, earning Saudi citizenship. After divorcing his British wife, he married a Saudi woman and had a second family. John Kiriakou met Abdullah Philby, Kim's half-brother, in Riyadh during the first Gulf War.
Chinese-manufactured chips in US passports compromise fundamental source security codes. This occurred despite passports being assembled in Thailand, as the critical chips originate from China.
Future CIA whistleblowers may reveal the extent of technology company infiltration into everyday life and civil liberties violations. The CIA's ability to collect information on American citizens without court orders represents a significant concern.
In the 1970s, CIA counterintelligence files contained thousands of Manila folders on American citizens. These files are now electronic, with no court orders authorizing collection of information on Americans.
The argument "if you have nothing to hide, why care about surveillance" was first posed publicly by Joseph Goebbels in 1933 regarding SS and Gestapo information gathering.
Government and private industry work hand-in-glove on surveillance. Vault 7 revelations from 2017, leaked by CIA engineer Joshua Schulte, documented the CIA's ability to take remote control of cars, hack allied classified systems while leaving Cyrillic or Farsi code behind, and convert smart TV speakers into microphones even when the television appears off. Schulte received a 40-year sentence without parole for these disclosures.
A 2023 KO Institute survey found that nearly a third of Gen Z favors government installation of surveillance cameras in homes, compared to only 14% overall support. This generation has grown up with data-for-services exchanges through companies like Facebook and Apple.
The CIA, KGB, Chinese, and North Koreans conducted brainwashing research beginning in the early 1950s. A fabricated report about KGB remote mind control operations prompted the CIA to initiate MK Ultra (1952-1975), which involved dosing employees and civilians with LSD, including an incident where a CIA officer contaminated a French village bakery's flour supply, causing an entire village to experience LSD effects.
In 1975, the Church Committee ordered the CIA not to destroy documents, but CIA Director Richard Helms ordered their destruction upon returning to headquarters. Only 15% of MK Ultra documents survived.
In April 2000, British Defense Attaché Brigadier General Steven Saunders was assassinated in Athens by Revolutionary Organization 17 November. A walk-in source claimed to witness the assassins transferring a brown paper bag between vehicles near the assassination site, leading to consideration of hypnosis for memory enhancement.
A CIA case involved a source who claimed to have witnessed events relevant to an investigation. The team employed a hypnotist who directed the source to raise one arm while being placed under hypnosis. The source maintained the arm in the raised position for four and a half hours without visible muscle strain. Under hypnosis, the source accurately described a van at a scene, including the number of occupants, contents of the van such as a motorcycle, and the license plate number. The license plate was traced and confirmed as belonging to a stolen police car. The source later fabricated information in subsequent meetings and was deemed unreliable, though the initial hypnosis session yielded accurate details. This raised questions about whether brainwashing is possible and whether it could be harnessed for limited intelligence purposes, with counterintelligence considerations being essential to prevent adversaries from exploiting similar techniques.
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Juan Pujol Garcia, known by the British code name Agent Garbo, was a Spanish chicken farmer who unsuccessfully trained at the Royal Poultry School. After living through the Spanish Civil War and developing a hatred of fascism, communism, and Hitler, he sought to wage a personal war against Nazism. Garcia initially approached the British to offer his services as a spy but was rejected multiple times. He then contacted the German embassy in Madrid, pretending to be an enthusiastic Nazi supporter with connections allowing travel to Britain. The Germans recruited him, providing money, secret codes, and invisible ink, with instructions to establish an espionage network in Britain. Instead, Garcia moved to Lisbon and fabricated intelligence reports from London using newspapers, magazines, maps, travel guides, and imagination. He invented a network of 27 nonexistent agents with complete backstories and personalities, blaming imaginary subordinates when reports proved inaccurate. The Germans became convinced Garcia was running a major intelligence operation inside Britain. MI5 eventually discovered his activities and recruited him as a double agent with the code name Garbo. Garcia became central to Operation Fortitude, the Allied deception surrounding D-Day, providing false information to Hitler about Allied invasion plans. Garcia received military honors from both Britain and Germany, one of the few individuals to achieve this distinction.
A Mossad agent named Levi, originally a barber, repeatedly offered his services to Israeli intelligence. His Arabic was excellent, and he eventually gained acceptance. Levi operated in Damascus, hosting parties attended by senior Baath Party officials and exiled Nazis. He was caught when a KGB signals van detected his transmissions to Tel Aviv while driving through the neighborhood. The Syrians arrested him after being informed of the spy in the area. Town squares and schools in Israel are now named after him.
The Hezbollah pager operation was described as brilliant and an act of genius. It took approximately a decade to develop and involved controlling the entire supply chain across five or six countries to place pagers in the hands of Hezbollah operatives. While civilians, including children, were injured or killed, making it technically a war crime and crime against humanity, the operation's complexity and execution were unprecedented. Intelligence services worldwide are expected to study it for years. The operation was fundamentally different from simply geolocating a target and striking an apartment building, as it required infiltrating the global supply chain and ensuring the devices reached intended targets and functioned as designed.
The hunt for Mir Amal Kansi was identified as one of the most complex and sophisticated operations. On January 25, 1993, Kansi, a Pakistani national, drove to the front gate of CIA headquarters, parked his car at a red light, exited with an AK-47, and systematically shot men in cars waiting to enter. He killed two CIA employees, including colleague Lansing Bennett who was working on a paper with Kiriakou, and Frank Darling, while wounding five others. Kansi calmly returned to his car, made a U-turn, drove to Dulles Airport, and boarded a flight to Pakistan with a one-way ticket and no luggage without being questioned. After the shooting, the CIA counterterrorism center solicited all ideas, including unconventional ones. Kansi was eventually located in a flea hotel in Quetta, Pakistan, through intercepts and human intelligence. An agent was recruited to lure him out. The CIA notified the FBI, which made the arrest. Time magazine later featured FBI agents on its cover taking credit for the capture, which angered CIA personnel involved.
In the mid-1980s, following the kidnapping, torture, and execution of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena by a Mexican drug cartel, Congress passed legislation making it legal for the United States to kidnap foreign nationals extrajudicially and bring them to the United States for trial. A rendition involves capturing a target in one country and returning them to their home country, regardless of what happens to them there. An extraordinary rendition involves capturing a target and sending them to a third country for interrogation, typically involving torture, with transcripts of statements provided to the sending country. Intelligence operations often involve cash payments to local officials at all levels, from low-level personnel to heads of state. When capturing Abu Zubaydah, a $10 million bounty was involved, and when capturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a $25 million bounty was involved. Pakistani intelligence reportedly used cash from these operations to build a new headquarters. During operations, local partners frequently negotiated for equipment such as night vision goggles, firearms, and office furnishings before proceeding.
The Bojinka plot was planned in 1996 in Manila by an individual known only as Mukhtar. The plan involved hijacking 14 Boeing 747 aircraft from Manila and flying them into buildings along the west coast of the United States. The plot was discovered when Mukhtar's cleaning lady noticed plans and photographs on a dining room table and contacted Manila police. Mukhtar fled before police arrived. After Abu Zubaydah's capture, FBI agent Ali Soufan asked about Mukhtar during interrogation. Abu Zubaydah laughed and revealed Mukhtar's true identity as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The CIA had no prior file on Mohammed. The FBI later discovered he had attended high school in North Carolina, studied at North Carolina A&T, self-radicalized, and moved overseas to plan 9/11. The operation demonstrated considerable complexity with many moving parts.
In the early 1960s, Israeli intelligence located Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann working in a car factory in Argentina. Israeli agents kidnapped him and transported him to Israel for trial. Eichmann was forced to wear his old Nazi uniform during the televised trial and was reportedly proud to do so. He was convicted and hanged. The operation was particularly notable because Israel did not have diplomatic relations with Argentina at the time, requiring the agents to enter the country, conduct the kidnapping, and extract Eichmann without official government support.
Intelligence operations generally fall into two categories: brain operations that are precise, surgical, and well-planned in advance with minimal fanfare, and broad operations that are more kinetic. The capture of Maduro was cited as an example of a surgical but kinetic operation, while an alternative approach involving luring a target to a Formula 1 driver's house and drugging him via a vape was mentioned as a different operational style. Carlos the Jackal was referenced as another notable case in terrorism history.
Carlos the Jackal, whose real name was Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez, was a Venezuelan national and ardent communist Marxist Leninist who served as the Osama bin Laden equivalent of the 1970s and 1980s. One of his most audacious operations involved kidnapping every minister of oil from every OPEC country during a meeting in Vienna. Carlos and his gang held the entire OPEC leadership for billions of dollars in ransom, which the Saudis paid, after which the perpetrators scattered to locations including Algiers, Benghazi, Moscow, and Baghdad.
Billy Wah was a legendary CIA contractor and one of the most highly decorated war heroes in American history, having fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He earned seven Purple Hearts, with his Florida license plate reading "seven hits" alongside a purple heart symbol. While working contract surveillance operations for the CIA in Khartoum, Sudan, under Cofer Black (who later became director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and Ambassador Cofer Black, special envoy for counterterrorism), Wah spotted Carlos the Jackal in a vegetable market.
After initial skepticism from colleagues, Wah returned to the market daily for a month until spotting Carlos again. He orchestrated a distraction by paying two Sudanese men to stage a fist fight, which drew a crowd including Carlos. Wah captured multiple photographs, enabling headquarters confirmation of Carlos's identity.
The operation involved breaking into Carlos's house and placing ground glass in his toothpaste. They recruited his dentist to treat him when his gums began bleeding. Under anesthesia, Carlos woke up on a French military transport plane headed to Paris to face seven counts of murder. He remains in prison today.
One psychological assessment determined Hitler had a fragile hold on his masculinity. The CIA planned to inject female sex hormones into vegetables grown for Hitler's Eagle's Nest by recruiting the gardener. The goal was to alter Hitler's hormonal profile, causing his voice to go soprano, mustache to fall out, and breasts to develop, theoretically driving him insane and helping the Allies win the war. It remains unknown whether this operation was successful.
John Kiriakou visited 72 countries during his CIA career, meeting with kings, presidents, and prime ministers while conducting operations he still cannot discuss. He particularly enjoyed working on Greek terrorism, eagerly anticipating each day's developments.
Kiriakou identifies passage of the Patriot Act as the most successful mass behavioral campaign in history, convincing Americans to voluntarily surrender civil liberties. Public complaints focused on airport security measures like removing shoes rather than the loss of civil liberties, including warrantless FBI access to library records, emails, text messages, and phone calls, or government purchasing of metadata from collection companies.
The CIA's first covert action program targeted the 1949 Italian elections, which communists were leading in polls. The operation involved giving $150,000 to the Christian Democratic Party to rent journalists who would place CIA-written pro-conservative articles in newspapers. The communists subsequently lost the election.
A U.S. defense attaché in Yemen ran a pirate radio station broadcasting jazz music interspersed with call-in shows. The strategy aimed to make young Yemenis like jazz and consequently like the United States, with hosts making pro-American comments during call-ins. The operation cost $150,000.
In the 1970s, Nestle struggled to sell coffee in Japan, a tea-centric culture. They employed psychoanalyst Clair Rapai, who had worked with autistic children, to create childhood memories of coffee flavor. Nestle launched a years-long campaign beginning with sweet coffee-flavored products for children to establish taste imprints. By 2014, Japan's coffee market reached record highs. Coffee-flavored Kit Kats later emerged, capitalizing on established consumer familiarity with the flavor.
In the mid-1970s, more Americans drank Coca-Cola than coffee in the morning because coffee producers used Robusta beans, which have excellent aroma but poor taste. Arabica beans provide superior taste but less appealing smell. The industry switched to more expensive Arabica beans to save the U.S. coffee market.
Kiriakou has been out of the CIA for 22 years—longer than his service duration—but remains constantly vigilant, scanning side and rearview mirrors for surveillance. He continues using encrypted apps and carefully phrasing language in emails and text messages, despite knowing backdoors exist in these applications.
CIA training teaches officers to always use the bathroom before meetings to avoid disrupting proceedings. Officers avoid consuming beverages during meetings to prevent creating distractions like opening cans or leaving rings on tables, allowing full focus on the other party.
Kiriakou authored "The CIA Insider's Guide to Lying and Lie Detection." Key indicators include:
- People who lie tend to blink less frequently
- Looking up while thinking about an answer suggests truth-telling
- Looking down may indicate lying
The CIA used video of Whitey Bulger's brother (president of University of Massachusetts and former Massachusetts State Senate president) testifying before Congress about contact with his fugitive brother. The brother maintained steady eye contact while denying contact without blinking, serving as an example of lying behavior.
During overseas operations, Kiriakou encountered walk-ins daily. Of these:
- 95% are mentally unstable individuals
- 1% are intelligence brokers with small pieces of information seeking payment
- 2% are probes from organizations like Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and ISIS conducting reconnaissance of embassy vulnerabilities
- 1% are genuine high-value sources
The greatest CIA recruitments in history came from walk-ins, including the chief of the KGB's counterintelligence directorate and the director of North Korea's nuclear program.
Kim Jong-il and his son used fake Brazilian passports from the Brazilian embassy in Prague to visit Disneyland, despite being North Korea's leaders. Both father and son were film buffs who loved American movies.
The most effective approach involves treating individuals with respect and kindness while demonstrating patience. The FBI's interrogation method, used since the 1940s, focuses on friendly conversation and relationship-building rather than the CIA's torture program approach.
Kiriakou's first interrogation subject in Pakistan was a Jordanian national who escaped Tora Bora during U.S. bombing. Despite lacking interrogation training, Kiriakou used a respectful approach, confirming the subject's story about operating an orphanage in Afghanistan since 1996. The subject had left Jordan on specific dates and arrived in Afghanistan accordingly. When asked why he told the truth, the subject replied that lying to his captor served no purpose. The subject then offered to be Kiriakou's "godfather" in embracing Islam.
Muhammadu Slahi, also referred to as the Mortanian, was detained in Guantanamo Bay. An entire movie was made about his case. He had Osama bin Laden's cousin's number on his phone when detained. He was sent back to Jordan rather than being held at Guantanamo. Slahi lectured in Kiriakou's class at Solomon and has been described as "the Martin Luther King of our time." He is now married with kids after spending 14 years in Guantanamo, including three to four mock executions.
Slahi described the most painful aspect of his detention as being unable to urinate for an extended period while strapped on a plane. Despite mock executions and sustained torture, the inability to use the bathroom caused the most pain. Prisoners were fitted with diapers during transport.
Torture does not work for obtaining truthful information. The person being tortured will tell the interrogator anything they think they want to hear just to stop the torture. John McCain, when tortured, provided the names of the starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers instead of his unit members. The information obtained is worthless garbage that analysts must spend months sorting through, often after the threat has already materialized.
Torture is illegal under the Federal Torture Act of 1946, which specifically forbids the techniques used by the CIA. The United States is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the US wrote. In 1945, Japanese soldiers were executed for waterboarding American POWs. In January 1968, the Washington Post published a front-page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner, leading to the soldier's arrest, conviction for torture, and 20-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth.
It was appropriate to take the gloves off after 9/11, but there was a disconnect about what that meant. Executive order policy allows the CIA to kill foreign nationals who present a clear and present danger to the United States, American citizens, or American installations. However, if captured, individuals have the same constitutional rights as citizens and must face their accusers in court.
Three techniques were approved by the Justice Department that would shock normal people:
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Waterboarding: Prisoner is strapped to a board with feet slightly elevated, head lower. Cloth material is placed in the mouth while water is poured over the face, creating a drowning sensation. Abu Zubaydah actually drowned during waterboarding and had to be revived.
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The cold cell: Prisoner is stripped naked and chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling, unable to sit, kneel, or lie down. The cell is chilled to 50°F every hour, followed by a bucket of ice water thrown on the prisoner. This technique killed prisoners.
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Sleep deprivation: Prisoners were kept awake for 12 days with industrial strength lights and music played at maximum volume. People begin losing their minds at day seven without sleep and begin dying at day nine as organs shut down.
The CIA used techniques beyond Justice Department authorization. One prisoner named Ahmed Ahmed did not survive interrogation at a secret prison. The counterterrorism center instructed staff to "dig a ditch behind the building and put him in the ditch." The Justice Department never authorized murdering prisoners.
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Bug confinement: Abu Zubaydah, who had an irrational fear of bugs, was placed in a diaper, put in a coffin, had a box of cockroaches dumped on him, and was closed inside with only a fan for oxygen.
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Walling: Prisoner is grabbed by the shirt and slammed into a wall. The approved method required a rolled bath towel around the neck and a plywood wall for give. Instead, interrogators used concrete block walls without towels, causing traumatic brain injuries that prevented defendants from participating in their own defense.
The facility currently holds approximately 17 detainees, down from a peak of 770. Almost every single one of the 770 detainees was innocent. People were turned in for personal debts - for example, borrowing money and then reporting the lender as al-Qaeda to avoid repayment. Current detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Abu Zubaydah, Amara Baluch, KSM's son-in-law, and Ramsey Benib.
Uday Hussein was killed in a gunfight along with his brother Qusay. He was described as a true psychopath who would drive around in his limousine, point out attractive women on the street, have his bodyguard snatch them, rape them, and throw them off hotel balconies. He was known to attend weddings to rape brides. Uday's brothers-in-law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid and Saddam Kamel al-Majid, defected to Jordan with their wives (Saddam's daughters) out of fear of him.
Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel requested air cover, heavy weapons, and secure communications from the CIA delegation that met them in Jordan. When told the CIA wanted information about weapons of mass destruction rather than installing them as leaders, the conversation went nowhere. They publicly begged Saddam's forgiveness and returned to Iraq, where Uday met them at the border and shot them both dead.
Hereditary monarchies and family dynasties face the problem that while kinship provides loyalty, the likelihood of multiple generations without producing incompetent or tyrannical leaders is very low. Financially successful families typically blow through their wealth within three generations. The line between genius and madness can shift with small disposition changes, turning a benevolent leader into a narcissistic tyrant.
Evolutionary sociology identifies two ancestral leadership forms: prestige through dominance versus prestige through competence. During wartime, societies prefer more authoritarian leaders who may operate close to or beyond normal rules. However, transitioning from wartime to peacetime with a dominant leader creates problems, as they require a ring of sycophants as enforcers to maintain power.
Every new technology faces similar resistance patterns. The printing press faced arguments that common folk reading would pervert minds. Thomas Blackmore's translation of the Bible into common language was opposed on grounds that it would turn the minds of the proletariat. Saudi Arabia had no television until the 1970s due to debates about graven images, eventually resolving the issue by broadcasting only Quran readings 24 hours a day on two stations.
Christa Pike, who received the death penalty in Tennessee, survived two failed lethal injection attempts. As of the recording, she was on life support and unresponsive after the second failed execution.
Christa Pike survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her via lethal injection on Wednesday. She's intubated on a ventilator and remains unconscious in a Nashville area hospital. Her attorney stated in a court filing on Friday that she is receiving life-saving care after being injected with two ostensibly fatal doses of pentobarbital.
Her attorney stated on Friday that she's being treated for the serious effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms.
A legal team filed an emergency motion Friday asking a court in Nashville to require the Tennessee Department of Correction to protect and preserve all evidence. They've also asked for an expedited hearing on the motion. The state department of correction declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Her legal case will now be at a standstill.
Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, announced he would call off the state's last remaining execution this year while a third party review takes place to determine exactly what happened in Pike's case.
According to the Associated Press, the governor has appropriately called for an investigation. The administration has not informed Slemmer's family of what might be next for Pike. The family is devastated and exhausted.
Bracewell, who helps Slemmer's parents navigate the process, said the family is mad at the state for not being helpful or forthcoming as to what is next.
Pike's last words were, "Is it supposed to hurt this much?"
The three-drug sequence works as follows: one drug paralyzes the heart, one paralyzes the respiration, and the other is supposed to be the finisher. When taken altogether, they cause an inordinate amount of pain, but because the person is paralyzed by then, they cannot express the pain.
As of October 2nd 2026, eight people have survived a modern US lethal injection execution attempt. Death Penalty Information Center documented seven people before Christa Pike who survived failed attempts because execution teams could not establish a usable IV line. Pike became the eighth.
Pike is apparently the first person in the modern US death penalty era to survive after the lethal injection drugs were actually administered. In the previous seven cases, officials abandoned the execution because they couldn't establish the IV access necessary to administer the drugs.
The exact timing is murky because officials closed the execution chamber curtain during injections, but witness accounts have been reconstructed. The first dose appears to have been administered at about 7:41 CT. The protocol states that if the prisoner is still alive 5 minutes after the first dose, officials administer a second 100 milligram dose.
At 7:46, Pike was still alive and visibly breathing. Officials closed the curtain, which reopened 3 minutes later. Witnesses saw her loudly snoring with her mouth open. Multiple accounts indicate this approximately 3-minute interval is when the second dose was administered.
The best reconstruction shows 7:41 first dose, 5 minutes later at 7:46, curtain closed, second dose administered 7:49, curtain reopened with Pike still breathing and snoring.
Tennessee normally establishes two IV lines as a redundancy. It is unknown whether the second dose went through the same IV line as the first or whether officials switched to the backup IV, which remains one of the major unanswered questions in the investigation.
Pike's complaint that her arm felt like it was going to burst is potentially significant, possibly indicating the IV line was fitted incorrectly and the injection went into tissue rather than intravenously.
Pike took a box cutter to Colleen Slemmer and kept a piece of the skull with hair on it, showing it around to friends. She broke the girl's skull into asphalt when she was 19.
The discussion addressed retribution as a means to capital punishment and questions of free will and culpability. Humans have a reflexive instinct for retribution, which is why execution continues in approximately half of US states.
Even in states that have the death penalty, many do not carry it out, such as California.
Most people involved in the intelligence community are very bright, very patriotic people who want to do nothing more than serve the American people. They are not right-wing ideologues.
In 1992, an office of eight or nine people including the branch chief had three voting for Clinton, three for Bush, and two for Perot. In 1996, a woman in a branch got in trouble and received a letter in her file making her ineligible for promotion for a year because she had a Bob Dole bumper sticker in her cubicle.
There are bad people at the CIA, including psychopaths, sociopaths, and murderers, but most are good, decent, smart, hardworking people.
The Israeli intelligence services are considered the best in the world because they have convinced themselves that they have to be or they're done. This reflects Parkinson's law where intensity expands to fill the existential threat against it.
Kiriakou has multiple books available on Amazon, including a new one released a couple of weeks ago and another coming out in 10 days titled "How to live off the grid." He hosts "John Kiriakou's Dead Drop" on Apple Podcast and Spotify, and "John Kiriakou's Briefing Room" on YouTube.
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