John Kiriakou

And why was, for example, the Kuwaiti family a ruling family and not a royal family and all the others were royal families?

And why were some emirs and sheikhs and the others were princes and kings?

And I loved it.

What made the job easy, easier, was that...

The United States has always had very close relations with these countries.

And so we were always seen as as the good guy.

And, you know, relations were close and we weren't targeting these countries for anything.

recruitment because, you know, our intelligence liaison relationships were close enough that they were giving everything to us anyway.

So when I was working there, it was Iranians that I wanted to go after or Iraqis that I was going after or or Syrians or Russians and Chinese for that matter.

It wasn't we didn't have this.

We didn't have the kind of relationship with these different countries that would have caused any kind of friction or difficulty.

And it made life very, very easy for me there.

Well, I'll answer you in two ways.

I worked for a deputy director at the CIA.

I was his assistant, my last headquarters position.

And he had a mantra that he used to repeat every single day, that the job of the CIA is to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and then to analyze those secrets so that the president can make the best informed policy.

That was the bottom line.

The tech and the fancy stuff, that's all layered on top of it.

But the bottom line is we recruit spies to steal secrets.

And then when you're in the field, actually...