Steven: Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's NSA or CIA or the FBI. And to make matters worse, we know that the CIA can take control remotely of a car's computer system in order to crash the car, take it off a bridge, or take control of your smart TV and turn a speaker into a microphone...

John: ...even though the TV is off and broadcast back to the CIA.

Steven: Can they do that with devices?

John: Absolutely. And I'll tell you how we know. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled and he downloaded tens of thousands of documents classified above top secret and instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he went to Wikileaks and they became the Vault 7 documents. So our whole lives are out there potentially for someone to use against us and every country has these capabilities. Listen, I spent 15 years in the CIA. I love this country, but one of the most important things in my life is the issue of ethics, which is why I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program. Because my superiors kept repeating that torture worked, but besides being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true. And I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do. I mean, we know that they were experimenting on American citizens and spreading diseases in American cities.

Steven: This is the stuff of movies. And because you've been in this world that the average person really has no idea about, I have to ask you, who do you think is the real adversary of the West, what are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? And what about everything that's going on with Trump in Venezuela and Greenland? And then, do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?

John: Yes.

Steven: Who do you think he was working for?

John: The Israelis.

Steven: John Kuryoku, the world knows your name. Why? Why does the world know your name?

John: I can give you two answers. One, I'm proud to say that I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in a nationally televised interview with ABC News. The second reason is I blew the whistle a long time ago and just in the past 18 months, I seem to have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm sweet spot and all of a sudden my message is getting out there.

Steven: And you went to prison for blowing the whistle.

John: I did and I would do it again tomorrow. I really would. You know, I was I was giving an interview to the BBC the day after I got out of prison... And the interviewer said kind of perturbedly, "You're not showing any remorse or contrition." And I said, "No, I'm not remorseful. I'm not contrite. I would do it again. I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do."

Steven: And you were a spy in the CIA.

John: Yeah. I was quite an accomplished spy in the CIA. I spent 15 years in the CIA. The first half of my career was in analysis and uh and I got bored, frankly. And so I made an unusual at the time change to counterterrorism operations. And then I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks.

Steven: And if I'd never heard about the CIA before and I had never heard about your role in the CIA before and I was a 16-year-old, how would you explain to me what you did there? What your role was and what the CIA is?

John: Sure. The CIA is an intelligence service whose job it is at its most basic level to recruit spies to steal secrets and to analyze those secrets so that the policymakers can make the best informed policy. After 9/11, we were expecting an attack, to use Osama bin Laden's words, that would dwarf 911. And so my job was to infiltrate al-Qaeda by recruiting members of al-Qaeda to tell us when and where that next attack was going to come so that we could disrupt it.

Steven: And who were the presidents during this that time?

John: Uh, when I started, it was George HW Bush, the father, and then it was Bill Clinton, then George W. Bush. There are several different publications. There's the president's daily brief, which is the most important. I covered Iraq the entire time that I was in analysis from well before most Americans had ever heard of Iraq.

John: When I switched to operations again, the the job was very straightforward. It was to recruit spies to steal secrets... It's something called the asset acquisition cycle. Spot, assess, develop, recruit... I was in Pakistan. I got a tip that uh that al-Qaeda, a group of mid-level al-Qaeda fighters was meeting every single day in a coffee shop at 10:00 in the morning... I bought an Arabic newspaper and I went to the coffee shop... Finally, I said to him, "Let me take you to dinner... I'm not Lebanese. Actually, I'm American... I'm a CIA officer." ... And he says, "And what will you do for me?" And I said, "Anything your heart desires." And he said, "I want to go home." I said, "I can do that."

Steven: ...you wanted information presumably.

John: I wanted information, very specific information... we got him a passport. I bought him a first class ticket and I took him to the airport, gave him some cash... And he said, "I've been here 5 years, and you're the first person who ever asked me about my family." So I said, "Best of luck." Never saw him again. That's the job.

Steven: Do you think the CIA are have a strategy for podcasters and for podcasting?

John: I think yes, now they do... just like they over time developed a strategy with Hollywood... the goal is that everything that comes out of Hollywood should be pro-CIA. And you know, we end up with with Zero Dark 30 and you know, the recruit and the CIA, Argo, the CIA is always the hero in these movies. If you were still at the CIA now and your job was to in infiltrate and uh use creators or podcasters as an asset for the CIA's objectives, how might you design that plan? ... It has to be a message. You've got to be able to get a specific, well-honed message out there... You just have to make sure that it's repeated enough. See, this was the danger with the torture program... my superiors at the CIA kept repeating this lie over and over and over again that torture worked...

John: ...until 9/11, it was against the law, like in stone, to spy on Americans. And now billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans... They don't need a warrant anymore... All they have to do is just buy your metadata because it's for sale. Which reminds me of a book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate... it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he argues in this book that... the average American on the average day going about his or her normal business commits three felonies every day.

Steven: To some extent, they did that to you.

John: Yeah, they did that to me because you spoke out about a torture program... John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said, "Charge him with espionage"... They arrested me, charged me with five felonies, including three counts of espionage... They waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with $2 million in legal fees and then they dropped the espionage charges and they said... "you can take a plea to this lesser charge." ... I ended up doing 23 months.

Steven: What is a sleeper agent?

John: Yeah, the Russians are very good with sleeper agents... A sleeper agent is someone who is taken virtually from birth and trained to be of another nationality... they take you to an American-style town that they've built out in the hinterland in Russia... and then they send you to the United States on a on a fake with a fake ID... they'll look for deaths where the person was only a day or two old and they'll take that name... There's a woman in my neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper about a year ago. She was an elementary school teacher...

Steven: Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?

John: I believe very strongly he was a spy. Yes. The Israelis... Jeffrey Epstein is kind of the stereotypical example that they give you in training for what's called an access agent... You recruit somebody who has regular access to them... maybe you bring in young girls, you get them in compromising positions just in case you need to use what's called compromat... hidden video cameras in literally every room... Only the Israelis and the Russians use extortion as a motivator.

Steven: Who do you think is the real adversary of the West?

John: I think it's China... The Chinese will plan for something 25 years down the road... they're really good at stealing technology... What frightens me the most is that the US government... has so inflated its military budget that what we spend on the Pentagon is now more than the next eight largest countries combined... We're going bankrupt... It's because they decided not to spend their money on weapons. They spend it on infrastructure.

John: One of the most important things in my life... is the issue of ethics. I love this country... and I wanted to do the right thing. We're a country of laws and we have to obey our laws, which is why I blew the whistle on the torture program... In 1946, we passed something called the Federal Torture Act, which banned torture... And then in 2002, it's legal. We can do it because we're the good guys. The law never changed. We changed.

Steven: ...what's something you stopped doing that improved your life more than anything you started?

John: ...feeling sorry for myself. I have struggled with depression my entire life. And after my second divorce... I believed I was just a loser. I was in my 50s, unemployable, convicted felon... And then I thought, "Fuck you. What's wrong with you? You don't have to answer to anybody." ... I'm a terrific writer and I'm told that I'm a gifted storyteller. So, I'm going to write books... So, don't feel sorry for yourself. Do something about it. Act.