John Kiriakou | The Dead Infant Strategy & How Sleeper Agents Infiltrate America

They'll find in the social security records somebody born the same year as you, but who died as an infant. And then they'll apply for a social security card in that name, which is now your new name. In my neighborhood here in Arlington, this woman was a freaking special ed teacher, and here she's a KGB sleeper agent the whole time. six guys would show up for one of these meetings and all six of them were FBI agents not knowing that the all the others were FBI agents. There are famous now declassified reports of um the FBI infiltrating uh antivietnam war protest groups to the point where you know six guys would show up for one of these meetings and all six of them were FBI agents not knowing that the all the others were FBI agents and they're all ratting each other out in their reports. I mean does every country have this problem? Does China have the same problem? China may. China might. It's possible. Who do you think I if anyone has moles in the US, which country would you guess is the best job right now? China, Israel, Russia are the three big ones. Yes. Okay. What are they here for? Secrets. Almost entirely defense secrets. The Russians have that longerterm view again. You know, they have this thing called the illegals program, also called the sleeper program, where they'll take you at the age of 12, and they'll send you to this camp and you're going to watch American TV shows and American movies and speak learn to speak American accented English so that nobody can tell that you're Russian. And what they do, it's harder today, but what they used to do is they'll find in the social security records, um, somebody born the same year as you, but who died as an infant, and then they'll apply for a social security card in that name, which is now your new name. And with a social security card, you get everything. You get a driver's license, you get a you get a passport, you get a, you know, utilities turned on, and you come here with your fake US P or now it's actually a real US passport because you've applied for it uh in that name and you get a job as you know well in in the Netflix show the Americans they were travel agents or in my neighborhood here in Arlington this woman was a freaking special ed teacher and here she's a KGB sleeper agent the whole time and you just lead this normal life until you're activated and And you know, you may go 20 years without being activated, but once you're activated, you do as you're told and then you go back into your deep cover again. And the activation may be that they want you to shoot somebody in the head or they want you to put on these shoes that they brought you cuz they have this special adhesive on the on the soles and they want you to walk around outside a nuclear plant to see how much um radiation is leaking. Or walk around outside this factory because we think it's a nuclear missile factory and the Americans say it's a you know bicycle factory. And then you just go back into your your cover life again. It's pretty sophisticated. We we don't do that. Do you think that there are moles in our graduate programs right now? Because Absolutely. Yes. Okay. Mostly Chinese. Mostly Chinese. What What sorts of things will they be studying? The hard sciences. Oh, that kind of makes sense. You know, but that's a that's a two-edged sword because the Chinese send them here to get PhDs in, you know, astrophysics or whatever or organic chemistry. And then while they're here, we're like, they're probably Chinese moles. We should flip them, right? And then we try to flip them and send them back to China to then report to us. How do you flip a a mole? It's hard. You get him dating an American girl. Sure. That might scare him away actually. Part of it. Yeah. You know, I was just teaching a class a couple of days ago and I was using this wonderful, wonderful book called Fair Play that um a former CIA officer named Olsen wrote. He used to be the director of the counter intelligence center. This book is fantastic. And what he does is he he offers up like a hundred different scenarios that many of us in operations, you know, encountered on a day-to-day basis. And then he'll ask people's opinions, professors, lawyers, grad students, former CIA, former FBI, and there are disagreements across the board. Like what do you do? So, one of the questions was there's a uh there's a Russian PhD candidate in the United States. The FBI believes that he's a sleeper agent and so a CIA case officer is assigned to just accidentally bump into him at the tennis club where he goes. So, she goes to the tennis club, she sees him practicing his serve. She says, "Wow, you know, you have a really great serve." He takes a liking to her. She invites him for a drink in the bar. They have a drink. They start dating. It's clear to her that his interest is romantic and she's holding him off. So, she assesses that he is weak personally. He's very lonely. Um, he may have a drinking problem. but he would be very valuable to us as as a double as a double agent to double him back against the Russians. And she tells her boss, I'm willing to have sex with him. Do you allow her to? And everybody was like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And then Olsson writes the actual right answer, which is absolutely not. Right. You don't let her have sex with him. No, I mean, you got to draw the line somewhere, right? Right. Right. That's incredible. Do Do you have to draw the line somewhere? I I think in a real fight, rules kind of go out the window. Sometimes Sometimes I worked with a woman who had been a case officer in Latin America and she recruited this guy and immediately started sleeping with him and then she came clean to her boss and he's like, "You're out. Out." So for a while they switched her from ops to analysis which is a real smack across the face. She married the guy and then after the investigation was done they threw her out. You know this is pretty common though. I mean I know America did this to the British when we were breaking away from them. I mean, we needed the cotton gin and water mills and trains and I mean, we we had they had the British had technology that we wanted and we would also send moles over to England to try and steal the plants, work at the factory, work at whatever was going on to bring that industry back to America. That's right. So, this is not something that's like specific to any nation. It's it's Sun Sue, art of war. I mean, it's if your opponent's more powerful, this is the way to go get stuff from them. Espionage is specifically mentioned in the Bible on multiple occasions. Yeah. Yeah. It's been around a long time. Well, they say it's the second oldest profession. Yeah, they do. I mean, they've always said that it's a superset of the oldest profession, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Last time we chatted with you, you said that there was actually a ground game going on in Africa. You said that there were US Do you have We're losing. What's going on? The Chinese are just throwing money at everybody against us or Oh, no, no, no. Not against us. They don't even need to. Like that Onion uh headline said, the Chinese are perfectly happy to sit back and watch us destroy ourselves. Burning. Yeah. So, a Congolese diplomat said to me one time, you know, you promise us democracy, the Chinese promise us food. Which one are they gonna take? So, you know, the Chinese have this belt and road initiative. It's been going on for decades already. It was a big deal when I was in Pakistan 20 24 years ago. Um, they spend so little on defense relative to their population and compared to what we spend that they're just swimming in money. Their economy is robust. They've got some real estate problems now, but their economy is generally robust, especially manufacturing, swimming in money. And so they just go to every country in Africa and say, "What do you need? You need roads?" Done. You need a port, you need an airport, you need hospitals, you need schools, not a problem. Just sign this 99-year lease on your rare earth medals. And they say, "Fine." And then the Chinese build all this stuff. The Chinese are all over Africa and now making inroads into South America because they can provide whatever these countries want. And then we tell the same countries, we've got some old F16s that are sitting in mothballs over here, we're going to give you two of them. Wow. Yeah. What do you think of that? And they're like, come on. The Chinese are already they beat you to it. If you want to see the full conversation, please subscribe and check out the link in the description. Thanks a lot.