John Kiriakou

No politics.

It's all about keeping the country safe until it's not, until it's about politics.

And so I think that to reform the place, you have to tear it down and then rebuild.

And you have to have real rules that are really followed that you just cannot be political.

You can't.

And then, you know, maybe even this probably would be unconstitutional, but maybe you put the brakes on political involvement for 12 months or 18 months after you leave, just like there are brakes on lobbying.

You can't just go from Friday afternoon, you leave your job and Monday morning you begin as a lobbyist lobbying your former colleagues.

You can't do that.

And the conferences do not vote on the membership or the chairman or vice chairman of the intelligence committees.

The intelligence committees are select committees.

They're not standing committees.

And so it's leadership that appoints all of the members.

It fixes in from the beginning.

You know, I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's actually a good idea.

If you have

If you have a senior intelligence service that's embedded, it's not going anywhere, they're there for 30, 35 years, and they're going to be anti-president or anti-Republican,

then maybe you do need political appointees to keep the honest people honest.

Yeah, you can say that again.

Yeah.

I spoke with a senator a couple of days ago.