John Kiriakou

We kept the Israelis at arm's length, like seriously so.

The very first liaison intelligence briefing I ever gave was to the Israelis.

I had been only on the job six weeks.

And my boss said, listen, you're going to give a liaison briefing.

It's going to be a whole big group of people.

So you're going to be the last one to talk because you're the most junior.

But you need to know some of the ground rules.

He said, we do not meet with the Israelis in the building.

We used to, but every time they'd come, they'd bring us gifts.

And the gifts are always packed with listening devices and batteries.

Is that true?

Yes, 100% true.

Because you have to x-ray everything that comes into the building.

You can't just wantonly walk in off the street with boxes of gifts and say, here, this is for you.

And what'd they do, just sew a couple of Palestinian ears from the rubble?

And they're like, oh, we're just joking.

So I'm sure there's other countries that like- Oh, there are other countries we don't even have liaison with.

Got it.

But with the Israelis, we had to rent a place and we would meet with them in the place.

On my very first day at the CIA, you meet in the auditorium called the bubble and the head of HR comes out and the director comes and says, welcome to the CIA.