CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that the agency inherently controls U.S. presidents, as most agency employees tend to work in Washington, D.C. longer than the U.S. head of state does.
President Donald Trump vowed to reorganize agencies such as the CIA and FBI. While discussing his time at agency on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” Kiriakou told Carlson how CIA agents can continue their “deep state” plans even if they don’t “like” the current occupant of the Oval Office.
“I know we’re getting far-field, and we will get back to your story, but it doesn’t sound like, so if you look at the org chart, the president controls the CIA. But you’re describing a situation where the CIA kind of controls the president,” Carlson said.
READ: Jolly Jumps In: Ex-GOP Rep. Flips Dem For Florida Governor Bid, Faces Immediate GOP Firestorm
“This is another problem. It’s that presidents come and go every four years, every eight years. But these CIA people, they’re there for 25, 30, 35 years,” Kiriakou said. “They don’t go anywhere. So if they don’t like a president or if a president orders them to do something that they don’t want to do, they just wait because they know they can wait him out, and then he’s not going to be president anymore. They can continue on with whatever plan the blob or the deep state wants to implement.”
During his first day in office for his second term, Trump signed an executive order to end the weaponization of the federal government. In his order, the president accused federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community of abusing their positions.
“Donald Trump took a lot of guff in his first term when he used on a regular basis the term ‘deep state.’ I argued from the very beginning, it is a deep state. Maybe you don’t like the terminology,” Kiriakou said. “You don’t have to call it the deep state. You can call it the federal bureaucracy. You can call it the state. But the truth is that it exists.”
READ: James Carville Erupts: “If You Tell Trump, You’re Telling Putin” On Ukraine Drone Attacks
Carlson responded.
“I would say by definition, you just described it, the president. By the way, the elected representatives who are the instrument of the population through which they control their government are perennial,” Carlson said. “They come and go. The people who carry out those orders remain. So, over time, they are the ones with the power.”
By May, members of the intelligence community had quietly begun changing their internal structures, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe vowing to “eliminate” the politicization and potential waste that he said had become normalized within the agency.
Prior to his second term in office, Trump said he wanted to change major governmental agencies and tapped Ratcliffe as the CIA’s new leader and Kash Patel as the FBI’s new director. Some Democrat lawmakers voted against Ratcliffe in January. He enjoyed overwhelming support from Republican senators.
READ: Harmeet Dhillon Tells Tucker Carlson That DOJ Lawyers Had ‘Crying Sessions’ After Trump’s 2024 Win
During his opening remarks to the Senate committee, Ratcliffe called the agency “the most challenging national security environment in our nation’s history,” pledging to adhere to the CIA’s core missions.
Kiriakou recalled how former chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee Jane Harmon publicly claimed she had never been briefed on the CIA’s torture program. Kiriakou said she was lying.
“Reporters went to her and said, ‘Hey, what about this torture program?’ She said, ‘I didn’t know anything about the torture program,’” Kiriakou said. “She was lying. I said, and I remember saying it to the New York Times. I said, ‘she was in the room when it was briefed.’”
“When she was challenged, she said ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that day. But you know what? I got up, and I left early, and I left one of my aides as a notetaker, and he never briefed me,’ which is also a lie,” Kiriakou added.
Kiriakou worked for the CIA between 1990 and 2004, later becoming a whistleblower against the agency beginning in 2007 after publicly disclosing the CIA’s use of waterboarding. By 2012, the former intelligence agent was charged with disclosing a covert officer’s identity and other classified information under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Please make a small donation to the Tampa Free Press to help sustain independent journalism. Your contribution enables us to continue delivering high-quality, local, and national news coverage.
Connect with us: Follow the Tampa Free Press on Facebook and Twitter for breaking news and updates.
Sign up: Subscribe to our free newsletter for a curated selection of top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
