There are plenty of secrets hiding inside the US government that most of us will likely never know, with some reserved for only the highest level of clearance. As conspiracy theories continue to swirl about JFK's assassination, Area 51, and the Moon landing decades after they occurred, some of us are obsessed with digging deep in search of what we think is the real truth.
Agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NSA are full of secrets that we'll never know, but as they're tasked with keeping us safe, most of us are happy living in ignorance.
That doesn't mean we don't like to hear from whistleblowers, with John Kiriakou giving us a rare peek behind the curtain.
As you know from the hype, any time the CIA declassifies files, there's a lot of interest in what goes on behind closed doors.
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Speaking to Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast, Kirakou revealed why he blew the whistle on the CIA and dived deep into subjects ranging from how many spies there are in the USA to the truth behind lie detectors, whether Jeffrey Epstein was a spy, and more.
One of the most fascinating sections includes Kirakou getting real on what things the average US citizen will never know.
Barlett explains that before he started interviewing people in the spy world, he simply thought having a password on a device meant it was secure. Now, he's not so sure.
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According to Kirakou, JFK referred to the CIA as the "best and the brightest," although he suggests they're not. Saying its staff are just ordinary people, he said: "We're not as smart as we think we are. We're not as worldly as we think we are. We've pretty much missed every major global development since 1947."
Getting honest, Kirakou reminded us that the CIA is always watching. Saying that while it was illegal to spy on Americans before 9/11, we now invest a fortune into it: "Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans. Whether it's NSA, CIA, FBI, or intelligence community contractors, nothing is secret. Nothing."
Reminding us how the likes of the CIA don't even need a warrant anymore, they can just buy your metadata because it's likely for sale somewhere.
We've apparently made ourselves 'vulnerable' by putting our lives on the likes of Facebook, as Kirakou then referred to Harvey Silverglate's Three Felonies a Day, and how we're so over-regulated, the average American is committing three felonies a day.
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Kirakou reiterated: "So if they decide they want you, they don't like your politics, they can get your metadata, they can go through that metadata, find crimes that they can charge you with and ruin your life. And there's nothing you can do to protect yourself."
He went on to expand on how he was charged with espionage when he spoke out on the CIA's 'torture program', with it potentially carrying a death penalty.
Giving us some pretty grim stats, Kirakou concludes that the government supposedly wins 98.2% of its cases, so you're best taking a deal.
With his parting words, Kirakou said: "At the CIA on our very first day, they told us not to ever say or do anything that we would be ashamed to see on the front page of the Washington Post."
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Saying that modern tech means everything we do is easily accessible, he concluded: "So be careful what you say, be careful what you write. even ingest because it can be taken out of context to target you."