The Most Insane CIA Brainwashing Story - John Kiriakou: transcript

Is brainwashing real? Like, what's true and fake about that idea? >> Operationally, yeah. I mean, the CIA, the KGB, the Chinese, the North Koreans, they worked on brainwashing operations going back to the early 1950s. You know, this whole notion of a Manchurian Candidate, for example, this was based on on fact, on truth. There was a In the early 1950s, there was a source inside the Soviet Union that the CIA recorded I'm sorry, that the CIA recruited. Um and this source reported that the KGB was working on um on a brainwashing operation, something that would even allow them to control somebody remotely from a long distance.

The CIA panicked at the notion. The truth is that there was no such KGB operation. There was a Chinese operation, but there was nothing that the KGB was doing. So, the CIA decided it was behind the eight ball. It had to play catch up, and it then created and implemented what became known as MK Ultra. So, MK Ultra ran from 1952 to 1975.

It was a complete and utter failure. It resulted in the deaths of, you know, a number of people. We'll never know what the real number was, where the CIA was dosing its own employees with LSD. It was dosing people in San Francisco with LSD and and pumping germs into the air to see who got upper respiratory infections. A CIA officer broke into a village bakery in in a little village in France and put LSD in the in the bakery's flour one morning, and everybody in the literally everybody in the village when they ate their bread that morning went nuts on an LSD trip.

And then they're like, okay, so what do we do with this information now? We have people jumping off, you know, roofs and jumping off balconies. What do we do with this? >> You call MK Ultra a failure? >> Oh, yeah, it was failure. >> Mhm. >> Mhm. >> So, [clears throat] it didn't not only was it damaging, but it also didn't achieve anything. >> Literally nothing. >> I have had, do you know John Lyle? You familiar with him? He wrote the Dirty Tricks Department and he also wrote He's done a lot of um research. He's here at uh in Austin and he goes into the National Archives and the most ground floor research of anybody that I know around this. He's written two books on it and he's he's really really great.

And uh yeah, that was kind of his uh summary as well. >> You know, one of the real shames about this whole thing is in 1975 at the Church Committee Senator Church told the CIA director, do not destroy the documents. And he went straight back to headquarters and told people shred everything. 15% of the documents survived. >> So, that's what we know. >> That's all we know. 15%. >> Mhm. Okay. That would suggest brainwashing isn't real.

>> Right. It could. I I I believe that they tried they tried to do it and it and it failed. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> We've got new technology now, new substances, more advanced understanding of human behavior. >> Everything's changed. >> Do you think that's unlocked some new capacities? >> Oh, probably. Probably. >> Yeah. >> I'll tell you kind of a funny story I've told once or twice in podcast. Something that I witnessed at the CIA that I never seen before and I've never seen since. It was absolutely fascinating to me.

In April of uh 2000, my next door neighbor was assassinated in Athens. He was the British defense attache Brigadier General Stephen Saunders and he was shot and killed by an assassin for a group called Revolutionary Organization 17 November. It's It's kind of a long story and I'll I'll skip the the most of it. Several months after the assassination. We had what's called a walk-in. A walk-in is somebody who literally walks into an American Embassy and says, I have intelligence information that I want to give to a CIA officer.

It just so happened that day that nobody was available. And so an FBI agent in the Embassy took the walk-in. She assessed that he was a nut and she said thank you very much and sent him on his way. And then she wrote up a little memo and sent it to us. We were fascinated by it. So we called him back. So a colleague of mine and I, he only spoke Greek this guy. And this colleague of mine and I were the two Greek speakers.

So we called him back and we said, "Why don't you come on in and we'll have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria." So he came in and we said, "What did you want to tell us?" And he said, that about 40 minutes after the assassination, the source happened to be driving down the national highway [snorts] and he had to take a leak. So he gets off the exit and there's a little chapel off to the side of the road that's locked up and there's a large banyan tree in front of the chapel. He goes behind the back the banyan tree to take a leak. And as soon as he does that, a van pulls up and then a car pulls up behind the van.

The back doors of the van open and there's a motorcycle in the back of the van. The man in the car says to the two men in the van, "Akou mazi. Is he still alive?" And one of the men says, "He should be dead by now." Okay, that's worth investigating to me. The British defense attaché has just been assassinated and this guy may have seen the assassins. Right? And the the guy in the van gave a brown paper bag to the guy in the car.

Did it have the murder weapon in it? >> Mhm. >> It might have. Worth investigating. This source was a simpleton. You could tell by his language. His grammar was terrible. He was uneducated. He was a farmer from Central Greece. He just happened to be driving down the national highway. So, we decided to debrief him as extensively as possible. But, it was >> What do you mean debrief? >> Uh interview. >> Right. >> [gasps] >> But, it was clear to us that the guy really was just a simpleton. He just couldn't really answer these questions.

And so, somebody at headquarters came up with the idea to hypnotize him. I had never participated in a hypnosis hypnosis session before. So, we flew him to a third country where we wouldn't be interrupted. And my Greek-speaking colleague and I went um to this country. We were met by a psychologist and a psychiatrist from headquarters. The psychiatrist was a sort a certified hypnotist.

So, he said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to turn all the lights off. We're going to have the guy sitting in a chair. We're going to make him as relaxed as we possibly can. And we're going to count backwards from 10. And when we get to one he's going to be hypnotized. And then, we can ask him questions." I said, "Okay. This seems kind of nuts to me, but okay." So, we did that. He's in the chair sitting there very comfortably like this. The lights are all off.

I'm counting backwards in Greek from 10. In the meantime, the hypnotist says, "I want you to put your right arm up her left arm up in the air." and the guy does. So, I go backwards 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 and his hand goes like this. But his arm is up in the air. He kept his arm in the air for 4 and 1/2 hours. I had never seen anything like it. There was no muscle strain anything. It was just frozen there for 4 and 1/2 hours.

So, I'm asking him questions. What do you see? I see the van pulling up. How many people are in the van? I see two men. Now what's happening? The driver got out. He opened the back door of the van. What do you see inside the van? I see a motorcycle. Can you see the license plate on the van? And he goes like this. And then he reads the license plate. I write it down. I hand it to my colleague. He runs in the adjoining room. He calls Athens. Run a Run a trace on this license plate. It's a freaking stolen police car license plate.

Now how would he know that? The FBI thought we were nuts. What ended up happening the guy the source so wanted to impress us that he started making things up in subsequent meetings. >> Right. >> And we knew he was lying. But everything that he said in that initial hypnosis session >> Huh. >> turned out to be true.

We ended up having to cut him off because he was just unreliable. But you know, is brainwashing possible? Yeah, I think probably. Can you get anything out of it? Maybe something limited. If there's a way to harness it and focus it, then sure. Maybe something good can happen. >> I wonder how many people could use that as an opportunity to sow discord >> Exactly right.

>> in the other direction. >> flip side. That's why you have to have strong counterintelligence. Because you have to expect that your enemies are going to do exactly that. >> A quick note, lots of people tell us that YouTube unsubscribes them from the channel even though they already pressed it. So, just check down there and see if the subscribe button is pressed. You get access to episodes before anybody else if you do, supports me and the show, helps me to bring you bigger and better guests, and it makes me very happy. So, just go and give it a tap for me. I thank you.

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