The Anchormen Show EP 105 - Spy Games w: Pearson Sharp & John Kiriakou
The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz
Matt Gaetz
4.4 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou pulls back the curtain on the shadow world of espionage, from Project Artichoke and MK-Ultra to modern Pegasus spyware and the erosion of privacy. He shares firsthand stories of double agents and near-death betrayals while breaking down the real mechanics of spy craft: signals vs. human intelligence, bribes vs. blackmail, and how far CIA influence over foreign officials truly goes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now it's time for the Anchorman podcast with Matt Gates and Pearson Sharp. |
| 0:13.6 | Welcome back to another episode of Anchorman. |
| 0:15.7 | We are so excited that we are going to be able to bring you such a level of expertise and insight in this program. |
| 0:21.8 | I'm joined, as always, by my co-host of Pearson Sharp, host of the Sharpe report here on our network. |
| 0:26.7 | And the building is a buzz because we've got John Kiriaku with us for an hour. |
| 0:33.2 | And so many of our producers, whenever we book John on the MacGate Show, everyone's excited. |
| 0:38.9 | Everybody wants to contribute to the discussion because we always learn a great deal. |
| 0:42.7 | John Kiriaku was a CIA officer in the lead-up to 9-11, then takes major roles within the CIA counterintelligence in 2007, famously becomes part of this major |
| 0:57.0 | disclosure that torture is being administered by the United States government. John later pled |
| 1:04.2 | guilty to a crime involving a disclosure of information. He was sentenced to 30 months. |
| 1:12.0 | He got out after two years and really has been heralded by many as a whistleblower, |
| 1:18.0 | as someone who saw things going on in the government that the country wasn't aware of, |
| 1:23.3 | people weren't aware of. |
| 1:24.7 | And it's been really out there. |
| 1:26.9 | John, thanks so much for joining us. I've had, I've really enjoyed having you on the Matt Gates show talking about. It's been my pleasure. Lots of fun. Well, you're a really smart guy. You've lived an incredible life. My co-host and buddy here, Pearson Sharp, has been all over some of these things we've seen in the headlines |
| 1:44.3 | and wants to ask you about them. So we're going ahead, Pearson. |
| 1:46.4 | Hey, John. How you doing? Good to see you. Good. So did you see the news that came out about |
| 1:52.4 | the vaccines and the CIA operations recently? Yeah. Yeah. Apparently it was called Project |
| 1:59.3 | Artichoke. And for anyone who's not familiar, apparently it ran from 1951 to 1956. |
| 2:04.7 | And it focused on behavior control, interrogation techniques, psychological manipulation. |
| 2:11.2 | But the interesting part that got everybody paying attention was the fact that it was being |
| 2:14.8 | administered through injections and vaccines. |
... |
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