John Kiriakou

He had been there for 42 years.

He had to get a waiver from the director because he had aged out.

Well, these guys make no secret of their belief that they can outweigh pretty much any president.

Presidents come and go.

And these guys are there forever.

And so if the president wants them to do something that they don't want to do, they just slow roll it.

Just wait until he leaves.

And that's the end of it.

You know, that's why I say I've said this in interviews a lot.

There is a deep state.

You don't have to call it the deep state if you don't want to.

You can call it the state.

You can call it the federal bureaucracy.

You can call it whatever you want.

The fact is it exists and it's unelected and it's generally unaccountable to anybody.

And they just wait for the president to leave if they don't want to do what he wants.

You know, honestly, I didn't know until well after I left the agency.

You know, once I turned this down.

And I got this out-of-cycle promotion for the Abu Zubaydah operation.

I was named executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations.