Former CIA officer John Kiriakou made sweeping allegations about Israeli operations and American political influence during a wide-ranging interview on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Kiriakou, who served as a CIA analyst specializing in Middle Eastern affairs, described restrictions on Israeli intelligence visits to agency headquarters, claiming security concerns drove policy changes. He described his first encounter with Israeli agents some two months after joining the agency. "I was told to give my very first liaison briefing. So this is going to be the Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet. And I was going to be one of about eight analysts, and I was the most junior, so I would go last. We don't allow the Israelis into CIA headquarters. We used to, but every time they would come, they'd say, 'Hey, we brought gifts. Here's a gift for you.' It's all packed full of listening devices and batteries," he alleged.

When Rogan expressed surprise, Kiriakou responded: "Every one of them... We'd say, 'You guys, you can't come back here every single time and try to bug our conference rooms.'" Kiriakou recounted what he characterized as a recruitment approach during an official briefing with Israeli officers.

"The guy goes like this... 'Spell your name.' So I spell it. He writes it down, and he's looking at me over his glasses, and he goes, 'You are Jewish?' And I said, 'I am not recruitable. Don't even think about trying to recruit me,'" Kiriakou recalled. He claimed supervisors later told him: "They've done that to every single one of us. It's like they can't help themselves."

Kiriakou, who joined the CIA in 1990 and worked on counterterrorism operations, gained national attention as a whistleblower who publicly exposed details of the agency's enhanced interrogation program, including waterboarding techniques used on high-value detainees like Abu Zubaydah. His disclosures ultimately led to his prosecution under the Espionage Act, and in 2013 he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for revealing classified information, including the identity of a covert CIA officer to a journalist. Kiriakou has maintained that his actions were motivated by conscience and a desire to expose what he considered illegal torture practices, though his conviction has drawn both criticism and support from various quarters regarding the balance between national security and government accountability.

The former analyst described being approached by lobbyists during his first week working with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"These two guys came in, could not have been any friendlier... 'We wanted to welcome you with an all-expenses paid trip to the Holy Land,'" he said, adding that he declined while "some of my colleagues went for their all expenses paid trip to the Holy Land."

Despite his criticisms, Kiriakou acknowledged the effectiveness of pro-Israel lobbying operations. When Rogan marveled at how Israel was so effective in its lobbying compared to other countries, Kiriakou agreed: "Much bigger. And they have such a tiny population... nine million people... It's pretty gangster. Kudos to them. It's like Chicago taking over the world."

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Joe Rogan used his popular podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Elon Musk's bid to take over Twitter.

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Rogan, who was hosting fellow comedian Duncan Trussell on Saturday, said the Tesla CEO's potential contribution in completing the purchase would be enormous because the current state of affairs in the world when it comes to free speech, communications, and scientific mysteries.

"You have to understand, and we all do, somewhere," Rogan said at the start of the podcast. "But, you're alive in the middle of this experience, and it's playing out, where no one feels comfortable, no one understands what's happening, no one knows what life is, no one, not a single person."

He called Musk a "super-intelligent leader-type character that seems to have great ethics and morals too," comparing him to a movie character who was "genuinely working to save humanity."

He then said in the grand scheme of things, Musk has had "everyone so excited," including himself.

Musk has recently bought a 9% stake at the social media giant and several days later officially announced that he was making an offer to buy the remaining 91%, saying that making it private would ensure that it would allow free speech to flourish. Musk has been critical of Twitter's content moderation policy, which some say is too strict and even borders on censorship.

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Podcaster and media persona Joe Rogan showered praise on Israelis in his recent podcast on March 23, saying their experience in the Middle East's hostile environment has steeled them for the complexities of life and has led them to appreciate it. 

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The podcast featured a lengthy discussion with tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez on a whole range of issues, including the influence of progressives on the daily discourse in the United States, which according to Rogan, sometimes results in "nonsense problems" taking center stage. At one point, Rogan, said that Israelis generally don't have debates over gender pronouns and other progressive matters, because of the other problems in life, recalling the impression he got from an Israeli friend's attitude toward life.

"I have a good friend of mine who was my kickboxing coach back in the days, his name was Shuki. He lives in Israel now," Rogan said. "I went to dinner over to his house once and his wife and kid was there, and there he is playing bongos and there is cooking and everyone is dancing and I go, 'You are so happy, so many Israelis love to sing and dance and party and it's like a real-life version of the Zohan. I go, 'What is it?'"

According to Rogan, Shuki replied, "When you are in Israel, every day you could you die, you don't know what is going to happen ... there is constant conflict, you are surrounded by all these Arab states, any day you can die, so everybody is just in the mood for party-party-party, because when you are alive you are happy."

Rogan said that this taught him how Israelis look differently at life, and perhaps Americans don't realize that their lives are so good, because "when you have don't have a problem and a real thing to rise against, people find nonsense to squabble over."

Rogan said that in Israel "it's real life and real death, this s**t you are dealing with, but here it is about the traffic, and people hating their job. It's nonsense problems." He added, "As our society becomes softer and softer we get angry and upset about some of the dumbest things possible. Whether it's pronouns or whatever it is, the current outrage du jour, we are weird; we almost exist at our best state when we are in some life-or-death scenario." 

The interview was held before the recent spate of attacks in Israel, which saw more than 10 people murdered in the span of a week.

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Podcast host Joe Rogan has recently announced that he would go on a "carnivore diet," in which he would eat only meat and fruit in January. The decision was made public on his Instagram account earlier this month.

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"January is world carnivore month. This time I'm adding fruit to this diet. Just meat and fruit for the whole month," the UFC host wrote.

This is not the first time the host, whose program is probably the most popular in the US, has gone on such a "carnivore" diet. In January 2020 he spent 30 days only eating grass-fed beef, elk, and eggs, according to Men's Health magazine. Back then this helped him shed 12 pounds, and he said it helped him regain energy levels.

"When you have no carbohydrates, one of the things that's amazing is that there's no crashing," Rogan said told Tom Papa during that interview. "My energy levels were amazing."

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