Title: Internet Party
Show: Internet Party
Date: 2017-08-20
URL: https://youtu.be/dAlNZvr4ims
Duration: 174:00

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[00:00] Oh you from Musa Kusa and we're live on YouTube welcome everybody to our second anti-spy bill event I think in a few moments we will be simulcasting on Facebook so

[00:32] hello to New Zealand and hello to the world tonight we have with us again the awesome Kim calm and we also have with us CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou but before we hear from those guys we're just going to catch up a little bit on what's happened since the last to be and what we'll be doing going forward so the last event was a massive success which I am personally really pleased about we had put out three press releases to New

[01:03] Zealand media they chose not to cover the event but despite that within a couple of hours of it we had achieved 3.3 million Twitter impressions we had reached half a million people on Facebook and we had about 10,000 live viewers which is really incredible for an event that was just purely spread by word of mouth we had no marketing budget no corporations or governments behind us and we did it ourselves together so congratulations to everyone for that

[01:34] after that amazing turnout our press releases have now been picked up by New Zealand media on Friday two days ago news hub which is a major New Zealand media outlet published an article about our event tonight and it got over 2,000 shares in under 24 hours since then the Daily Dot has also picked it up and published two there two and a half million Facebook followers and we are now live also on the daily blog go to NZ

[02:05] which is one of the biggest and most significant political blog sites in New Zealand so at the last event I told you that we were going to hear from activists from all of the Firewise countries we got through Australia and the United States and the UK and New Zealand that we miss Canada because of some technical issues so tonight we're going to start out by hearing from Bailey LeMond so as president of the pirate party and Canada she sent us a video message about how

[02:38] the same types of legislation that we've been subjected to in New Zealand have also been inflicted upon the Canadian public so Joe our awesome tech manager is going to go ahead and play her message for you now hi everyone my name is Bailey LeMond I'm an activist I'm the president of The Pirate Party of Canada and I'm also the vice chairwoman of pirate parties international so I live in Canada and

[03:09] Canada is part of the five eyes alliance our situation up here so up until 1984 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also known as the RCMP acted as not only a police service but as an intelligence agency that had the power to both spy on people and enforce the law long story short this is very very bad they did terrible things and in 1984 the McDonald Commission was launched this was an investigation into the crimes of the

[03:40] RCMP which resulted in the creation of CSIS or the Canadian security and intelligence service which is Canada's main spy agency to this day fast-forward to 2015 the anti-terrorism Act also known as bill c-51 became law under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government this law is still in place c-51 it was widely opposed across the country it still is and it's not only seen as problematic by activists but by many of the spies

[04:12] themselves and former spies who have come out and said how truly awful this law is Canada's anti-terrorism act not only gives our various police forces and spy agencies the power to store our information our data and share that information about us with one another freely but it allows CSIS which is not a law enforcement agency to preemptively detain people who haven't even committed any crimes but are seen as threats to

[04:42] national security based on reasonable suspicion so things like what you say online if you're spreading terrorist propaganda whatever that is right the thing is this law doesn't even define what any of these things really mean leaving it open for anyone to be targeted and locked up for their speech for other ideas and that's just completely onyx I think we all agree on that but so now today we do have a new government in

[05:13] power the Liberal Party unfortunately they fully supported bill c-51 from the beginning however they have promised to reform it's right now that's what they're supposedly working on however none of the proposed reforms seem to address the most problematic elements of this law that I just described to you on Parliament's note for the summer so it's going to be a few weeks before they get back to it so we'll see what happens but right now it still stands um I think we can all

[05:45] agree the state surveillance is completely incompatible with democracy and that free speech does not exist in a country where the spies and the law enforce and the law enforcement people are given enough power to literally take anything you say as a threat to national security which is what we have here in Canada and from why I understand it's what the other five eyes countries have - it's important to keep in mind that surveillance is first and foremost an issue of power where the powerful get to

[06:17] invade our privacy to uphold their power through their political system and criminalize anyone who speaks out or fights back this is why events like this where the public gets to join together to create policies that favor privacy for the average citizen and transparency for the state are so crucial as all of us move forward in our respective countries so big thank you to Susie and the internet party for this amazing initiative

[06:55] thank you so much for that Bailey that's really awesome it's been great to hear from activists in each of the five countries so my big piece of news is that we've decided that we are going to continue these events ongoing so we're going because we're in election season and we only have about six weeks to go five six weeks ago we are actually going to hold these events every Sunday night for the foreseeable future to continue to work on the draft copy of the anti-spy bill together with all of you

[07:26] and then we have been discussing an action plan for the next 12 or so months beyond that I'll tell you a bit more about that later on in the program but for now I want to move ahead and have us hear from John so just quickly going to read you a little thing I wrote about John today in an op-ed for the daily blog CIA torch of whistleblower John Kiriakou was recruited from the high school that he taught jared leto at in the decades to follow he traveled the

[07:58] world recruited other spies intern and oversaw operations that captured al-qaeda militants and sent them to Guantanamo Bay eventually ah trains to keep secrets there was one he could not live with his government was torturing people eventually he shared what he knew with his fellow countrymen but tonight he will share it with New Zealand and the world so John please take it away tell us your story give us all the messages

[08:31] that you have to give thank you so much for having me for doing this for giving me the opportunity the soapbox I'm happy to do it and I'll apologize for the lighting it's a I have every light on in my in my room and it's still a if you're not light enough anyway um you're right I was I was recruited into the CIA when I was in graduate school I was teaching high school at the time at a private school

[09:02] in Washington DC and as it turned out my graduate school adviser was a CIA officer undercover as a graduate school adviser and he was the one who recruited me into the agency I had never really considered the CIA but I was getting ready to graduate and I didn't have a job I was getting married soon after graduation I really needed the work and the idea of seeing the world was

[09:33] exciting to me and so I said sure I'll go through the process so I did I went through the process God hired started on the first of January 1990 and started working as an analyst so really I was sitting in a cubicle thinking the big thoughts writing writing papers for the president the vice-president the secretaries of state and defense the national security adviser and that was great it was a lot

[10:05] of fun for a while and then I got bored went overseas also as an analyst to the Middle East learned to speak Arabic and then went back to headquarters again in 1997 again I was bored and so into not not 2000 in 1998 I made a very unusual switch from analysis to counterterrorism operations and and went overseas as a as an Operations Officer like actually

[10:37] trying to infiltrate terrorist groups and either disrupt future attacks or break up the group and found that I had a knack for it it was dangerous certainly but it was interesting it was fun it was important and so I decided well maybe I found my my place my niche I went back to headquarters after serving overseas in 2000 and and then September 11th hit in

[11:13] 2001 that changed everything at the CIA as it turned out the CIA after 2001 returned to its roots the CIA that I had come of age in was not the real CIA the real CIA was one that that requires great oversight and one that that is constantly pushing the bounds of morals and ethics and legality but I was as

[11:45] angry as every other American on September 11th and I volunteered certainly to go to Afghanistan and fight or do whatever was necessary what I ended up doing was I was sent to Pakistan as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations there and it was in that job that in early 2002 I led a series of raids that resulted in the capture of Abu Zubaydah whom the CIA believed at the time was the number three in al-qaeda and many dozens I'm

[12:16] not allowed to say the exact number but many dozens of al-qaeda fighters at and safe houses all over Pakistan well I had occasion after capturing up as a beta to have a long conversation with him in fact I am i sat with him for 54 consecutive hours after his capture he was very upset as you could imagine he cried a lot he said that he would never

[12:48] know the touch of a woman he would never know the joy of fatherhood and I said listen you are not the victim here there were 50,000 people in those towers what did you think we were going to do did you think we weren't going to try to find you to capture you or to find her or kill bin Laden and he said that he never wanted to attack the United States on September 11th he wanted to attack Israel he said all he ever wanted to do was to kill Jews and I said listen I am the nicest guy

[13:22] that you're going to meet in this experience my colleagues are not as nice as I am so if there's one thing that you do it's that you should cooperate and he said you seem like a nice man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate I said suit yourself later that night CIA private jet flew in three FBI agents and I loaded him onto the plane he asked

[13:54] me to hold his hand the whole time and I wished him the best of luck and I never saw him again well two months later I returned to CIA headquarters and on the strength of the Abu Zubaydah capture I had been promoted and I was named the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations and it was in that capacity that I had access to literally everything in the CIA every operation every sensitive compartment everything and it was in that position

[14:26] that I realized that we had initiated this torture program now I I was in the cafeteria one day and a former colleague from the CIA's Counterterrorism Center approached me and said hey I'm glad I ran into you do you have any interest in being and these were his words certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard the term before so I asked him what it meant and he said very excitedly we're gonna start getting rough with these guys and I said well

[14:58] what does that mean and then he delineated these ten torture techniques and I said well that sounds like a torture program I said I think I have a moral problem with that and I declined well as it turned out of the 14 people that they approached asking if they wanted to be trained in these torture techniques I was the only one who said no that was a source of great disappointment for me

[15:30] I kept my mouth shut I left the CIA two years later and still kept my mouth shut but then in late 2007 I couldn't live with the administration's lies anymore it seemed like every time I turned on the television President Bush was denying that there was a torture program and the CIA's director at the time and and directors after him George Tenet were all denying that there was a torture program and I knew that that was a lie I knew that they were lying to the

[16:00] American people and I believe in transparency I believe that the American people have a right to know what their country is doing in their name and so I decided in December of 2007 that I was going to blow the whistle on this program and I gave a nationally televised interview to ABC News in which I did exactly that I said three things three things that have utterly changed

[16:32] the course of the rest of my life I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue as President Bush had said and I said that the torture program had been personally approved by the President himself as you can imagine within 24 hours the FBI began investigating me and this is where the story in my view becomes very sad it

[17:06] becomes unamerican the FBI investigated me for a full year from December 2007 to December 2008 and they decided at the end of that investigation that I had not committed a crime that the interview was not a crime because the information was not inherently classified and so they closed the investigation four weeks later Barack Obama was inaugurated as

[17:37] president of the United States Barack Obama the self-described most transparent president in history and I should preface this by saying that I believed in the whole hope and change slogan of the Obama campaign not just that I worked on the Obama campaign I took my children to the inauguration so they could see this historic moment when when for the first time in history an african-american man had become

[18:08] president I mean this was an incredible moment for America but what I did not know was that as soon as he became president the CIA asked Barack Obama to secretly reopen the case against me which he did I had no idea that I was under investigation I had no idea that the FBI was intercepting my phone calls and was reading my emails and had teams of surveillance on me and so I went about

[18:39] my regular business so what was my regular business well believe it or not john kerry who at the time was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called me and invited me to join the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff as the chief investigator investigating waste fraud abuse and illegality in the State Department and so I took that job again having no idea that I was under FBI investigation for what became five felony charges the FBI investigated me

[19:13] for three more years and finally in January of 2012 I was charged with these five felonies including three counts of espionage espionage is one of the gravest crimes with which an American can be charged and frequently it carries with it the death penalty for telling the American people that the CIA was torturing its prisoners now there's something that happened in the interim and I had no idea the significance of it

[19:44] until this whole thing was over one of the great things the most wonderful things about working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is that you get to have lunch with foreign diplomats all the time and you know you get together for lunch you talk about the events of the day whatever happens to be in the paper you talk about diplomacy I got a call one day a totally normal and routine call from a Japanese diplomat it

[20:15] was the number three in the Japanese embassy in Washington and he invited me to lunch so we went to a small restaurant on Capitol Hill and I remember the lunch as being delightful I remember we talked about Israeli elections and Turkish elections and the arab-israeli peace process and at the end of the lunch he said to me so what's next for you and I said well I'm actually thinking of resigning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I promised Senator

[20:45] Kerry that I would give him two years it's been two and a half and I think I'd like to go into business for myself I have five kids I need to start saving some money for college I think I'm I'd like to go into the private sector and very excitedly he said no don't do that if you give me information I can give you money and I said what's wrong with you do you have any idea how many times I've made that pitch in my career shame on you

[21:17] I told him I ended the lunch and I went directly to the office of the Senate security officer and I said I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer and he said oh is it that damn Russian again and I said no no it's it's a Japanese of all things and he said really a Japanese okay he said well sometimes they like to see what we're doing visa vie trade and then he asked me to

[21:48] write it up as a memo he was going to send it to the FBI I said fine so I sat there in his office and I wrote up the memo he sent it to the FBI and then called me in the next day and said two FBI agents were going to come and interview me so they finally came up came to my office and said okay here's what we want you to do we want you to call him back and we want you to try to get him to tell you exactly what information he wants and how much money he's willing to pay for it I said okay do you want me to wear a wire or

[22:20] something and they said no we're gonna be at the next table and we'll just listen to the conversation I said fine so the morning of that lunch they called me and said that something had come up I should just go forward with the lunch and write them another memo so I met with this guy a second time and then they asked me to meet with him a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time which I did because I'm a patriot well I wrote up these memos after each

[22:50] lunch and finally in the fifth lunch he said that he had been promoted he had been transferred to his dream job and he was going to be the number two in the Japanese embassy in Cairo a year after that last lunch I was arrested and we received discovery from the Justice Department now discovery is when the prosecution has to turn over to the defense literally everything that it's collected so that the defense can use

[23:21] that to defend itself in this discovery we found a series of memos the first indicated that there never was any Japanese diplomat he was an FBI agent undercover and he was trying to get me to commit real espionage and I asked my lead attorney why would they do such a thing and he said because they have a case and they know it's a case I

[23:53] hadn't committed espionage I had blown the whistle fair and square I told the American people what they had a right to know well we also received three memos between the CIA and the Justice Department the CIA wrote to the Justice Department and said charge him with espionage the Justice Department wrote back and said but he hasn't committed espionage and the CIA wrote back and said charge him anyway and make him

[24:25] defend himself and that was the Obama administration now the Espionage Act here in the United States was written in 1917 to combat German saboteurs during the first world war between 1917 and 2009 it was used to charge three Americans with espionage for talking to the press just under the Obama administration eight Americans were

[24:58] charged with espionage for speaking to the press the Obama administration used the Espionage Act as an iron fist to stamp out dissent now I was a guy who always colored within the lines I was nobody special you know there was nothing unusual about me in any way I'm just a guy I'm just a normal guy but one of the things that so grossly disappointed me was that I was

[25:31] the only one who said something you know there were hundreds of people inside the CIA who knew about this torture program hundreds we now know from the Senate torture report that people inside were objecting to it they were writing cables back from the secret prison saying this is awful this is disgusting a couple of them curtailed their assignments which means they asked to return to headquarters it's a career-ending move

[26:03] but not a single one of them said something publicly even worse than that not a single one of them ever said anything to the Senate or House Intelligence Committee the oversight committees I was the only one who did that was a source of great disappointment for me well in the end Kim and I were talking about this off camera a few minutes ago

[26:33] in the end I had to defend myself against these five felony charges I was facing 45 years in prison and over the course of 10 months our negotiations had brought the Justice Department down to 10 years they wanted me to do 10 years in a federal penitentiary this was what they called their best and final offer and I turned it down and I said two things I said first of all I haven't

[27:04] done anything wrong and because I haven't done anything wrong I'm not doing ten minutes let alone ten years in prison secondly I'm a very longtime former CIA officer and in my 15 years in the CIA I witnessed hideous crimes against humanity war crimes and I'm going to have to testify in my own defense and I might accidentally say something about

[27:35] these horrible crimes that I've witnessed my colleagues perpetrate over the years and it might slip out in the course of my my testimony and so the CIA came back and said all right do two and a half years you'll end up serving under two I actually turned that down and then one of my eleven attorneys the one who I liked and respected the most pulled me aside and

[28:06] said you just don't get it this isn't about innocence or guilt this is about cutting your losses this is about inflicting the least amount of pain on yourself and your family it doesn't matter whether you did it or didn't do it the federal government wins ninety eight point two percent of its cases according to ProPublica and he said if you were my brother I would beg you to take this deal so I'm begging you

[28:39] take the deal he said this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life you can be home early enough that your children won't even remember you were gone or you can get out when your children are in college and so I took the deal it becomes an economic decision with that said I would do the whole damn thing over again somebody had to say something

[29:11] transparency is real it's important a democracy can't function without transparency and again the American people have a right to know what their government is doing in their name and so I'm glad that I said something I'm glad that I said something I'm glad that I have continued to say something it's cost me my marriage my wife left three months ago she said it's just too much work to be mrs. John Kiriakou to tell

[29:43] you the truth I don't blame her but I had to do the right thing and this was the price that that we all have to pay it was all worth it thanks for listening John this is an incredible story a remarkable story so really the FBI were involved in an attempt to entrap you is that what you were just telling us there yeah it's it's all about entrapment to tell you

[30:15] the truth and that's why when I got to prison I've been in prison let's see March April May Jim for months when Ed Snowden went public with his revelations and I wrote an open letter to ed Snowden I followed it up with a private letter through we have a mutual attorney but I I told him what I thought he should do just from the benefit of my own experience I told him to find the best national security attorney's money could

[30:46] buy essentially my attorneys which he did he engaged my attorneys I told him to cultivate his natural bases of support especially on Capitol Hill now that's taking a little bit of time but he's done that as well and it's funny because the far left and the far right end up meeting at a point the the ideological spectrum I believe is not a straight line it's a circle and and they've come together at the point where they really care about civil liberties

[31:17] and it's those civil libertarians on the left and the right who have come out in support of Ed Snowden because of that we are finally just now beginning to see elements of the Patriot Act fall by the wayside finally after 16 years I think that's thanks to Ed Snowden and the third thing I said and this was the most important thing don't ever ever under any circumstances talk to the FBI I said they will lie they will cheat

[31:50] they will twist your words they'll wiretap you and then take your statements out of context to use against you in court remember they get promoted if you go to prison that's the only way for them to get ahead in their careers is for you to go to prison and if you go to prison for a long period of time they're gonna get a performance bonus they're going to get transferred to a better position inside

[34:00] expected it to go essentially to my attorney maybe to a handful a couple hundred of other people but eventually it would make its way back to Ed again with Ariana's help it went viral I ended up with over two million hits CNN drove the prison to interview me the the American news program 60 minutes came to the prison it was in everything from like Time magazine to Playboy to The Economist's to the Atlantic Monthly and

[34:33] thanks to Arianna we got it immediately back to Eddie two million hits and and I got my side of the story out there this is something that I learned early on is we really need to take advantage of our access to the media I mean we can we can have these great ideas and we can sit and talk amongst ourselves about how smart we are and how creative we are we're create ideas we we have and it doesn't make any difference if nobody knows that we're doing it so if we have

[35:04] access to the press that's how we win you know John let me weigh in here first of all thank you so much what an incredible story you are a hero for done what you did and I admire your courage thank you so much King you know in my case the first priority was to make sure that I don't get bail because

[35:34] they are very much aware that the moment you are outside you can tell your side of the story and in my case they had told their side of the story with the indictment and a massive press release and they gave my indictment and some background information to about a dozen news outlets who were ready to press print the moment the rate went down on my on my home and on my family so for me to be

[36:05] able to get bail and to get out and talk about what happened was their biggest concern because they knew already you know that what they did was at the edge of what's possible in a novel copyright case and then their second priority was after I had bail to silence me by disallowing me to have any had access whatsoever anyone coming to my house had to leave their smartphones

[36:37] outside I had very strict bail conditions that were restricting my speech and limiting my ability to be out there and tell my story and thirdly they seized all my money to make sure that I can't afford any lawyers because that is the biggest power they have they have unlimited funds they have a huge war chest they can keep going for years and

[37:07] appeal every win you have until you run out of money you run out of patience with your relationships who just can't carry the burden of this fight anymore that's why your relationship broke up that's why my relationship broke up they really want to destroy you and silence you so for you to do the exact opposite for you to go and write these letters from prison and do all these interviews and to keep talking about it that is

[37:39] really the most powerful and courageous thing and the more people learn about your story the more people can hear what happened to you they will get angry they will feel just like I did listening to you very upset you know not understanding why a government could do something like that why a government that is supposed to serve the people is doing something like that to their own citizens and for that

[38:09] I want to applaud you it's amazing that you tell us a story and share it with everyone thank you so much you know you raised such an important point that that I meant to to mention and the point is that it's not just to prosecute you you're right it's to ruin you financially personally professionally it's to separate you from your friends from your family from your natural

[38:40] allies or supporters they do they do these things in the United States there are two two strategies that the prosecution uses in the United States one is called charge stacking and that is let's say you really did do something wrong let's say you conspired with somebody to do something well they won't just charge you with conspiracy they'll charge you with five ten twenty different crimes and they'll force you to defend yourself

[39:12] against those twenty different crimes to the point where you go bankrupt and that usually takes you know six to twelve months and then once you're bankrupt and you're weak and you're desperate they'll come back and they'll say well we'll drop all of these charges but one if you plead guilty to one and take this number of years in prison well that's what they intended in the very beginning they know

[39:43] they knew you didn't commit these 20 crimes they intended for you to take the plea and because you're broken by then well of course you're going to take the plea and that's why they win ninety eight point two percent of their cases now the other reason that you're going to take that plea is that juries here in the United States especially where you and I have been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia they would convict a bologna sandwich of a crime if the government asks them to you know when

[40:15] your jury Kim and this is a warning to you when your jury is made up of people from the CIA the FBI the Homeland Security Department the Defense Department and the intelligence contractor community you don't have a prayer you can't win it doesn't matter if you're innocent you're not going to win you're gonna go to prison and if you don't take a plea you're likely gonna die in prison that's their goal their goal is for you to die in prison not

[40:46] because they don't like you necessarily but because they want to scare the living daylights out of everybody else so that they say you see what we did to cure yaku you want that to happen to you well you better keep your mouth shut in the mean absolute you're absolutely right John and what I've learned about the justice system in the u.s. absolutely confirms that let me give you one example the church that is on my case in the district court in the Eastern District

[41:17] of Virginia he was a lawyer before he started his career as a judge for Disney it was a partner in a law firm for the Walt Disney Corporation their largest client and has anyone ever heard of conflict of interest you know he is the judge overseeing the world's largest copyright case so that is number one the second big surprise was how easy they could commit judge shopping because every judge in this district is on at a

[41:48] certain date and if they make sure that they submit their a case on that day they know they're going to get that judge so they picked my judge the judge has a history to work on copyright for the studios and on top of that I found out through you know my research and we hired an investigator that the judge himself had an issue with the law because someone burned his house down in

[42:20] Virginia right and the fire department came and the FBI came and was picking the news and everyone was like who was trying to hurt this judge and a big investigation was jump-started and then it turned out it was his own son and they dropped the whole thing and never did anyone hear about it again no one was charged everything was dropped and the judge was taken care of by his government and this is the guy who made a decision that said destroy all of

[42:52] these servers worldwide take down his entire business that make 220 people unemployed go do the raid you know how in the world can you have a fair process with someone like that in charge and you know everything that I've learned over the last five and a half years is that the entire system is completely corrupt the 98% success rate did you spoke about earlier those are

[43:23] not cases that they win in court in front of a jury those are all plea bargain deals they torture you into accepting guilt even if you've done nothing wrong they give you this list of 20 charges in my case they want me to throw in jail for 88 years and you're absolutely right from everything that I've seen from the beginning in my case all they care about is hurting me and killing me they want to lock me up for

[43:54] as long as possible and you are absolutely right you know if I die they would probably celebrate that you know and the thing is every now and then they run into people like us you know smart people who understand what's going on who understand that there are other people out there who are interested in this who are fighting against this injustice who want to reform a system that is designed to be unjust and you

[44:28] know our service to the public really is to fight these cases to the end to let everyone know on and on again about what's going on remind everyone because that is the only way we're going to change anything about this if you and I and Julian and all the other people that are being persecuted especially by this prosecution team in the Eastern District of Virginia the deep state persecutors they always remind me of the church's

[45:00] Inquisition you know if we don't do this no one else will and you know we need to make sure that through the events like this we let people know about it and your story is just a prime example because what you have done you have exposed a crime it is a crime in the United States to torture someone right yes it's not and what do they do to circumvent US law they ship them off to foreign prison

[45:32] secret locations where they torture them and then they say well the US law really doesn't apply but then in my copyright case they say just because I have a few servers in the United States and I've never been there my business wasn't based there I didn't sign up to their laws yet Here I am I can be extradited so how does it work that these guys can torture anyone they want in these foreign sites by American spies who do this or approve this

[46:04] torture and then there's no charges for them it's simply because they say it's happening outside of US borders in our jurisdiction it's really a hypocrisy and for someone like you who has exposed such a significant crime which is against American law international law the you know human chart the the the Human Rights Charter and you know everywhere in the world countries sign

[46:35] up to treaties that something like this should not happen and here you are you point out the truth you tell the world about these atrocities and terrible crimes and as anyone other than you been in jail for the US government torture program no no the torturers are free the the men who came up with the torture program are free the attorneys who justified it her freed the people who

[47:06] implemented it are free even the CIA officers who murdered prisoners during the course of the interrogations are free I'm the only one that was ever prosecuted and the psychologists who were the architects of the program have just signed to Cash Suman to avoid going to trial for it to make that word that cash settlement is being paid to the victims by the American taxpayers because in 2001 the CIA indemnified the

[47:38] psychologist and the CIA agreed to pay all of their legal expenses and any settlement that might come out of the case and they had already made I think it was reported something like 46 million dollars 881 million dollars 81 million dollars so that's the price tag to design something so sick and twisted yes from the small amount of information we know from the Senate torture report which is under severe lock and key and

[48:08] which the agencies are doing absolutely everything they can to never allow that full report to be accessible accessed by the public but from what little we do know in there apparently they specifically recruited CIA torturers who had a history of domestic and sexual violence you know it takes a special kind of monster to be able to inflict that kind of physical and psychological and emotional harm on

[48:41] a person and not lose his soul you have to have no soul in the first place enabled in order to be able to do something like that I think a really relevant question for New Zealanders John and light of recent events to ask you is are you aware of New Zealand or Australian troops Anzac troops as we know special forces being involved in extraordinary renditions the reason I ask you this is

[49:11] because it has recently come to light that they were and initially we were told that they it was revealed that they were involved in handing detainees over to foreign forces who they knew would torture them just a moment of caution here this is very important John don't say anything that could get you in legal trouble again you need to be very careful in answering these questions I don't want you to say anything that is going to get you in legal trouble yeah yeah thank you

[49:42] can I appreciate that is fine I definitely don't have to give specific knowledge that you have but just in theory the reason I ask is because recently it has been revealed and the famous investigative journalist Nicky hoggers book hit and run that New Zealand forces have been involved in massacring unarmed civilians in Afghanistan including women and children and revenge rates that were launched upon villages that supposedly

[50:13] contain militants that it turned out they didn't they killed them all and burned all the houses down as literally revenge rate I'm so I'm very interested to know if you're aware of forces other than of Allied American forces that allied to the Americans also being involved in extraordinary renditions I'm not to tell you the truth certainly I never ever encountered a New Zealander when I was in the region and even the Australians when I was in Pakistan and

[50:46] we captured an Australian national the Australians jumped up and down because they wanted him to be turned over to Australia immediately rather than to go to Guantanamo so no I'm glad to say I never encountered any Australian or New Zealand military officials intelligence officials nobody involved in this kind

[51:16] of thing considering everything else they'd been involved in yeah I actually hadn't heard that about the villagers it's it's often it's true it's it's a it's a war crime it is literally a war crime and it's one that the New Zealand government have gone to quite some links to try to cover up there are calls for a public inquiry into what happened and the government is resisting those holding that inquiry yes

[51:49] yeah of course and I've gone to some lengths as well to attempt to discredit the authors of the book even though they are unimpeachable as per their record so we don't know yet what will come of that that there are certainly people in New Zealand who are fighting very hard to get the truth out there about what has happened and about our involvement in those crimes okay Kim do you have anything else that you want to ask John I think we'll go to Q&A shortly because I know there's been a number of questions asked yes and I

[52:20] still have a couple of things actually yeah John I really want to pick your brains because you know you're one of the guys was inside for such a long time and you know your understanding of the intelligence community is priceless so if you don't mind I have a couple of questions just like the dark sides right that they used outside of US borders to torture people they are also using the five eyes partner countries like New

[52:54] Zealand Australia the UK and Canada to spy on Americans where the u.s. themselves legally is not permitted to do that and then through xkeyscore and all these other programs they get access to that information anyway so they outsource the spying to these other countries on Americans and at the same time the US by agencies give those

[53:25] foreign agencies access to their own fiber network give them access to all the backdoors all the tools that they have developed and then through the backdoor they are spying and mass on Americans which is a breach of the Constitution and u.s. law is that kind of a good description of what went on to circumvent any kind of prosecution in torture cases is this how spy agencies

[53:57] what you would say in your experience operate if they have a challenge nationally and it's against the Lord and they will utilize friendly nation and their agencies to still do it and circumvent the law absolutely yes this is the nature of our spy agencies you have a CIA the CIA's culture is such that it will push the bounds of legality

[54:30] until it is slapped down and told to stop when we've gone through these periods in modern American history where we have had strong oversight committees for example 1975 to 1981 where we had Frank church chairing the the first Senate Intelligence Committee and Otis Pike chairing the House Intelligence Committee those were strong overseers

[55:00] and then during the Reagan administration we had weak overseers well frankly since September 11th I wouldn't even say that the that the intelligence committees our oversight committees I would say that their cheerleading committees because they just cheer on anything the CIA proposes to do and in many cases the CIA doesn't even bother to inform the committee's what it's doing the committee's have to find these things out from the press and so the short answer to your question

[55:32] chemists is yes that's exactly what they're doing they're using any means at their disposal to spy on American citizens and to allow foreign intelligence services to spy on American citizens on their own behalf I agree with you that it is illegal it's unconstitutional it's illegal it's unethical in fact it's even a violation of the NSA Charter which specifically says that NSA is forbidden under any

[56:04] circumstances to spy on American citizens but it happens every single day in post 9/11 America yeah so with this serial law-breaking going on and a new president in the White House why don't you think that Trump is doing something about this why don't you think that you know anyone new in charge this new government isn't going in and saying hey wow we are doing all these things and this is all unlawful how come the one is

[56:36] cracking down on the stuff you know I never believed in the idea the notion of a deep state well then let me correct that sure there's a deep state sure but I never believed in the notion that it controlled the modes of government until now yeah you know and now I mean it's it's like not even deep anymore it's it's out to sea it's like they're not

[57:12] even they're not even afraid to be identified as the deep state any and they don't even have to make an effort anymore because the media is so involved it's what they're all lemmings there are things and they go right off the cliff with the with the lead lemming I you know I'm gonna preface these comments by saying I think I think Donald Trump is a madman I think he's he's unfit mentally emotionally and intellectually to be president I think this is one of the his

[57:42] election is one of the greatest mistakes that Americans have made in modern times with that said he believes that there's a deep state and he believes that they're out to get him in addition to being out there to get other other people well they're showing the whole world that they are out to get him I mean what's going on with with the mass leaking with the liberal news media attacking him I mean I get what you're saying about him but he is one important

[58:15] thing that I think has happened in the United States you know more and more people are becoming aware of how they are constantly being lied to they're becoming aware of government abuse they're becoming aware that they are really just being used that they are not electing politicians to serve them but politicians only serve their own interests and the interests of their rich donors so in Donald Trump

[58:48] I believe Americans have seen an outsider who is not part of that establishment who even amongst other rich people is not really welcome because of his attitude and his ego and his I'm doing it my way attitude right so in a way his election was I would say the desperate effort by people you know

[59:18] who see what's going on to have someone completely outside of the political establishment to come in and to change something the one on drain the swamp he want one unlock her up you know people want to have a president in the White House even a character like Trump who's going to go in and change all of this stuff you know and it's so frustrating to see how

[59:49] easily the deep state is just manipulating everything and I am pretty sure if Trump doesn't get bold if he doesn't expose the crimes that have been done by the deep state under Obama the mass surveillance the breaches of the constitutions the the breaches mass breaches of law if he doesn't drain the swamp as he said he'll be gone gone before the end of the year everything is

[1:00:20] building up to an event where he is being removed as a president of the United States and the longer he is inactive his inaction is going to get people to agree with that and not you know be part of of the group that is going to fight against his removal so I think you know it's it's a great opportunity for the you to have a change agent even a person

[1:00:55] like Trump who you know I agree with you has an enormous ego you know does does things in a way that you know you and I wouldn't do but at the same time he is a victim to the deep stage just like us he is definitely right now a victim and his opportunity is to go in there find out everything that they've done expose it and use this law breaking to reform

[1:01:26] the intelligence community and the deep state and expose what Obama and his people have done to undermine the rights of their citizens because that in itself I think is the most powerful heroic thing that he could do no one would care any more about his ego and about you know how important it is for him to have won this election and for him to be president if he did that you know we

[1:01:57] could have a reset we could have a restart of all of these institutions to be serving the American citizens without undermining the laws and undermining their rights and frankly taking their rights away more and more you know don't you agree that that Trump could be that change agents simply because of him not being part of this establishment yet I actually do agree with that the the

[1:02:28] problem I think is that he has he has become so deeply mired in domestic problems of his own making witness this white supremacy insanity that we're going through right now that it might be a problem but but yeah I think you're exactly right see this is the problem this is the problem with my friends on the Left I I'm a third generation Democrat until my arrest and I left the Democratic Party over this and our lifelong

[1:03:01] progressive Barack Obama should have been a legendary hero for all of us and instead Barack Obama was the one who took away our rights yes civil rights are civil liberties in many cases are human rights and so you're right Kim that at least on the international stage Donald Trump can rehabilitate himself by by giving us back our rights and standing up to the deep state that Obama nurtured and built

[1:03:32] yeah I believe that and you know that is that is that is sorry go ahead how did it happen that Bush who instituted the torture program that your case was dropped under Bush you see ya then was brought back was reopened under mr. hope and change Obama does this mean that Obama was just a figurehead how is it that Obama mr. hope and change became the persecuted grand persecutor of whistleblowers well I think that it's

[1:04:03] actually darker than the idea of Obama being a figurehead I mean I'll give you two different answers one is a quick one there was a book that was published in 2013 called double down by Mark Halperin and John Holliman two noted political commentators and in this book President Obama sat for an interview and he said two things that were really chilling to me one very matter-of-factly he said in response to a question I never said I

[1:04:35] was a liberal it's it's as though we were tricked into thinking that he was progressive the other thing he was talking about the drone program and he said I never had any idea that I would be so good at killing people well that's that's not something to brag about or to marvel over I mean look at look at george w bush's last month as president and in george w bush's last month as president he took actions that resulted

[1:05:06] in the deaths of two people with the use of the drone in Barack Obama's last month as president he killed 424 people with drones but how is that liberal how is that progressive the other thing is and and we've seen this through modern history in the in the states with inexperienced presidents the CIA loves an inexperienced president social engineering John because they send socially and to do what they want that's

[1:05:39] exactly it it's social engineering they know that they can mold this guy into their own image and so here you have a president who has just been elected with literally zero national security experience he's he's elected but not yet inaugurated and so they bring him into the fold they give him access to the the most closely held secrets they show him the the blue border reports the black border reports that are five and six

[1:06:11] levels above top-secret and they say mr. president-elect we want to tell you all the cool things were doing overseas well then they have him they've recruited him they've made him one of the guys he's in the club now and once he's in the club he'll do anything they want yeah well Trump's not in the club and they don't want him in the club and he don't want it because he's the deep state wanted to get Hillary to win more

[1:06:42] than anything because they know with her it would have been the next four years the next eight years just like under Obama she is correctly complicit in all of it they don't have to worry that any of their illegalities are ever going to come to light she's just going to cover it up because she's part of this illegal conspiracy that they have going and Trump it's nothing more than a risk to them they they don't like him they want him gone

[1:07:12] and I don't think Trump is someone who can be socially engineered yes you know they prefer keeping him in the dark and and telling him almost nothing because they are worried that if he understands what really happened in the United States under Obama that he is going to stop that that he's going to expose that and say guys what are you doing you know the people didn't sign up for that they didn't vote us in

[1:07:44] so you can do this stuff and that's what they are worried about and let me give you a very big example of that just before Obama less left office I don't know if you probably read that in the news the NSA went to the FISA Court and the White House and the NSA admitted that they have been spying on Americans and they didn't really provide any detail on how many and they as I usually do make it sound like incidental and

[1:08:17] accidental but they basically admitted that they acted unlawfully spying on Americans and then on the next page they're saying but now that we know that we did that we deleted everything we just went into our databases found everything that we captured that we shouldn't have and we deleted it and what did they delete Hillary Clinton's emails from her private email server and

[1:08:49] everything else that has happened in the Obama administration that could come and haunt them because these emails as you well know as you know an expert in the intelligence community were hoovered up by the NSA spy systems automatically you know doesn't even require an agent to do it Todd by targeting her that happen automatically because it was a private server it was not a state email system

[1:09:22] so they Hoover it all up they have it in the Utah spy cloud and then they went to Pfizer just before Obama is gone to get permission or basically to tell the FISA Court we've now deleted all the stuff that we're not supposed to have that's how they cover things up I mean it's incredible how how openly they do it you know and for someone who understands how they work when you read this stuff you just

[1:09:53] go well why didn't the FISA Court say hey hold on a minute preserve this as evidence if you say you did this unlawfully well someone needs to investigate it someone needs to look at it but you have these FISA Court judges that really just rub us them everything that I see puts to them and they are not interested in any kind of investigation because it makes themselves look bad but someone like Trump could appoint a special prosecutor to look in into the

[1:10:28] mass constitutional breaches of the spy agencies he could you know have sessions through that in a heartbeat that's what they are worried about and what they are doing right now is try and get as rid of as much of the evidence as they can because you know if they fail in the Coweta of Donald Trump if they can't remove him you know they are risking

[1:10:58] that they will be seriously exposed because I believe that Donald Trump would be taking action if he had a full picture of what really went on on during the Obama years I would agree with that I think he does not have a full picture you know another thing to think of too is the CIA the NSA all the intelligence agencies are our civil service agencies people are there for 20 25 30 35 years

[1:11:32] at a time and so the leaders inside the CIA with the exception of the director himself everybody else from the Deputy Director level all the way down came of age in the Obama administration they're all Obama holdovers this is very much Barack Obama's CIA that's exactly right and there are so many Obama loyalists still there and they know what they have done they know if ever there was a real

[1:12:04] investigation into their activities they would all go to jail or they should without the I am copper up mode and they are trying still now to prevent this president because they are scared of him exactly right yeah and you can say whatever you want about Trump that is a quality that he has and a potential that he has where I just haven't joined the

[1:12:37] group of people that said are Trump is horrible and this and that because he as crazy as it is is our best hope to get something changed because he's on our side he himself is exposed to this third it's true it's true and it is pointing because they have so bottled him up politically yeah and again a lot of this is of his own making because he does not

[1:13:07] have Washington experience but they have so bottled him up politically that he's focused now solely on saving himself and his agenda and on domestic issues when was the last time Donald Trump said anything about mass surveillance I can't even remember yeah well I mean the only person who says something about it is Sean Hannity Sean Hannity on Fox he talks about the deep state all the time and it's it's Trump's favorite programs

[1:13:37] I'm pretty sure he's much more aware about the issues now than he was when he got elected and you know if I was from and I put myself into his shoes right and I have all these leaks coming out hundreds hundreds of leaks my transcripts of phone calls with foreign leaders and then the intelligence community which has only one purpose is

[1:14:10] to protect my information can find and produce a single liquor can't stop the leaking I mean how dumb do you have to be not to understand that it's them who's doing it you know it's them was doing it no one is going to be found out and it's because they don't like this president they want to get rid of Trump at all costs and you know to me personally I think there is an

[1:14:40] opportunity here you know if this president understands that his enemy is also our enemy and is also the enemy of the American people and the American dream and the future of America once he understands that I'm thinking and I'm thinking is on the way to getting that you know there is a real opportunity to change this thing I think that is a brilliant op-ed everything that you just

[1:15:15] said is true and important and it's something that the American people are simply not focused on yeah you're right this the deep State the intelligence apparatus the intelligence and the federal law enforcement apparatus are the enemies of the American people and the American dream yeah and you know the good thing is even within those dire times where all these

[1:15:47] crimes are being committed there are people like you with a moral compass you know who think ethics are something to cherish who will work with WikiLeaks with the media to put these stories out there and if there's one trend that is really encouraging then it's the amount of people that are coming forward with

[1:16:17] information you know it is increasing Snowden has opened the floodgates and now everyone who is aware of these criminal acts you know has to ask ask themselves their own conscience you know is this something I want to continue doing or do I want to join forces with people like charm of people like add with the CIA whistleblower who's giving WikiLeaks all

[1:16:48] the stuff the world 7 stuff the media ops that are coming out everything that is coming out right these people right now have an opportunity to reform what's happening in the deep state they have an opportunity to release as much as they can so that the president has a chance to point the finger at it and to change this because if we don't take this opportunity now that doesn't happen now I don't think we will get another

[1:17:19] opportunity there's now a global arms race in the intelligence world every country wants to have the kind of powers that the US has it's going to be used more and more radically to to cut down on the sand to silence people that are not in the interest of a particular government and you know now it's the time we really have to do something with

[1:17:51] urgency here and as crazy as it sounds Trump is probably the best guy to do it that you're correct that probably the only way out of the hole that he's in right now would be for Trump himself to blow the whistle and for him to blow the whistle on the Obama government on the pace of play of the Clinton Foundation and die Clinton and Diet Debbie

[1:18:22] wasserman-schultz event and that's what promised Americans and if he doesn't do it if he doesn't do it in the end price for impeachment are coming it will come before the end of this year if he doesn't do it he'll be gone no one would care about fighting for him if he doesn't deliver on those promises I think your theory is brilliant and I and I genuinely hope that he takes that advice that he has the strength and the integrity to take that advice however I've got a few doubts first is that he is so completely

[1:18:52] surrounded by generals and that he's surrounded by generals who are complicit and a lot of what has happened particularly in the Wars of the last 15 years and I think the reason he's being surrounded by those generals is for him to be taken into the fold that's like Plan B plan one is get rid of him you know plan two is try to get him still on to their side so that's the first thing that I would say the second thing is I think that this is not just a lift right war or in a deep state versus people war it's a class war and when you

[1:19:24] look at the photos of Hillary Clinton and of Trunk together of which there are many while he may not be an insider he certainly walked in those circles for long enough and there is a difference between the haves and have-nots in that sense and he will side with his class against the the majority of the people so what I see is that it's more like competing mafia clans it's like the Clinton clan is like a mafia and Trump's crowd is like a mafia and they're fighting it out and having their mafia

[1:19:55] war together within government I also see that Trump is in charge of the police state he has all of the police unions and agencies and everything rooting for him and then Clinton if you look at she was pushing TPP TPP was signed on to by all the heads of the intelligence agencies they all wanted it to pass so Trump coming in and ditching the TPP basically on day one would have put him on their list as well from that point so what we have now is the police state versus the intelligence

[1:20:27] agencies and while Trump is leading the police state Trump will never be for the people who are on the ground because that is the police state who enforce the mechanisms of control above and over the people who are on the ground so we had this this weird conflict is created like this bipolar and society almost that you see at the moment where actually to be honest with you neither side is great the police agencies massive problems and corruption racism systemic corruption systemic issues

[1:20:57] oppression of people's and of activists and then the intelligence agencies are just like Nix liberal worst of all like the stuff that they've been involved in from war crimes to extraordinary renditions to torture to everything else they are the worst of the worst so now we have like would you like to support the system of domestic oppression or would you like to support the system of international oppression and that's the choice that's being sold to people I also say that I'm completely disgusted

[1:21:28] with liberals I come from an activist background I'm still an activist to this day I find it incredible that there are activists out there who have been targeted by the intelligence agencies and their movements have been targeted by the intelligence agencies for the last six years and decades before that they have been personally targeted and oppressed by Obama's administration and by Hillary Clinton who are now saying oh the CIA is not that bad all the

[1:21:58] intelligence agencies aren't that bad actually you know they're trying to do a good thing getting rid of Trump yeah I think we'll match with them everything's fine you have people like at Thunder on Twitter who literally says I am the leader of the resistance he is the funder for Hillary Clinton literally the funder for the Democratic Party and he claims to be an activist leading the resistance his party has just spent the last six years I've been an activist targeting and undermining and destroying the lives of the activists that they now claim to be

[1:22:31] marching with against Trump so it is a complete and utter fast and anybody who will get in bed with Hillary Clinton and her financial backers and the intelligence agencies and then call themselves an activist needs a wake-up call if you are going to be an activist at least be on principle but if you are marching alongside Hillary Clinton and her cronies you are nothing but a people's front forward the Clinton mafia so that's my two cents and on the other side if you are marching with the

[1:23:01] National Front and David Juke well don't be surprised that people are calling you a Nazi or racist because you've got no business matching with those people and calling yourself an activist either and I'm sure I will lose a lot of friends by pointing this out but what I'm saying is that both sides are corrupt or isn't then what Trump said it's like that with Trump said neither side has the moral high ground at all yeah now I am aware that there are very legitimate activist

[1:23:32] organizations who are smart enough to not have fallen for the lift versus right to ride buses Concord Clinton versus Trump for intelligence agencies versus police agencies that is the anti-war movement that is the legitimate legitimate peace protesters they do not side with either the left or the right and they are genuinely working for peace for the planet they want to shut down the nukes they want to shut down the torture they want to shut down the extraordinary renditions they're fighting to shut down the drone programs

[1:24:02] and you don't hear those people going yeah let's go punch a Nazi and you don't hear them going always you know kill the Liberals they're not starting militias they are genuinely involved in a movement for peace those are the same people those are the people who we need to support world beyond war go and check them out these are the real activists the activists who are not aligned with either side these are the people who wish and support so that's my two cents on that now just to switch topics on you really quickly and John I want to just

[1:24:36] talk about quickly sanctioned leaks versus unsanctioned leagues because it seems to me that people like you get in a lot of trouble for telling the truth but then we have people like well Bob Woodward was specifically who I wanted to talk about Bob Woodward is a very very famous political author and he has written books about a series of American presidents and I'm just quickly going to share my screen and show you something that I have here on Twitter is for much of this year it's a quote from Bob

[1:25:06] Woodward and the quotes is I have had presidents in Republican and Democrat administrations provide information that is technically classified bill he's talking to Bill O'Reilly bill you know that happens all of the time and that's Bob Woodward now Bob Woodward wrote the books about with super books that bushes was and also book about Obama when I read those books I couldn't do as a few things in them that I literally had my mouth hanging open I

[1:25:38] actually sent these to Glenn Greenwald a few quotes a few years back and a few other people because they really shocked me so the first thing that really shocked me is the the names of the program's CIA programs names of systems details of technical systems that and the the frameworks by which military operations are conducted in Afghanistan you can find these in these books you can find d2 operational details you can find very specific testimony from and from even named people and unnamed

[1:26:10] sources about things that are happening inside the agencies and these books sell millions of copies and end up on the New York Times is sellers list and also as he said himself he's received class technically classified information from presidents on both sides but then there was also a story in there that really shocked me those two stories that really shocked me one was they were talking about how the CIA wanted to get an Afghan warlord onto their side so they went and offered him a cash bribe of however much money and the warlord said

[1:26:42] no thank you I don't want to accept the money and so the CIA said well what should we do about that I know we'll drop a 50,000 pound bomb outside his compound and then we'll go back to him the next day and offer him less money so they dropped a fifty thousand pound bomb outside his compound which I mean you you might have some idea of how much it costs to buy a fifty thousand pound bomb I have no idea I just think it's morally reprehensible that they would do such thing sure

[1:27:13] enough they went back to him afterwards and offered him half the cash he accepted the deal so this is the kind of thing that there seems to be going on within these agencies and that they think is okay for them to expend munitions purchase some public dollars to scare the out of people so that they will it take exactly money the second story from Bob Woodward's books which I found absolutely unbelievable was a story in Iraq and believe what summer in the Kurdish border and they were saying they were talking about how they had a CIA se

[1:27:44] inside this building this compound where these bad guys were and the CIA s it was reporting to giving them information from within and so they went to blow up the compound but they said to themselves well we did not tell our asset that we're going to blow up the compound that he's in in case there's you know it exposed us somehow so we'll just blow it up with him in it and that's what they did they leveled the place and killed their own essage and I could not believe they were they would write about this first of all that they do it second of all that they would write about it in a Bob Woodward New York

[1:28:16] Times bestseller so I'd like to know what is what do you have to say about this this this manifestation of these like horrific war stories and those highly classified information in books that sell millions of copies and make millions of dollars whereas you told the world that war crimes have been committed and you end up in jail why is Bob Woodward not in jail you're muted John John you're on mute alright I'm amused that you're surprised by any of this

[1:28:50] the CIA has been doing these that kinds of things since its creation in 1947 let me tell you a short anecdote - after the episode ADA capture I told you I was promoted and named executive assistant to the deputy director I had a lovely private office with brand new expensive furniture and I was enjoying my office and sitting there like this one day and I happened to be turned and looking past

[1:29:21] the secretary into the hallway I had a direct line of sight into the hallway and as I'm sitting there like this looking Bob Woodward walks past the door without a security expert sorry a security escort and I said to the secretary was that Bob Woodward that just walked past the door from the Washington Post and she said yeah I said what in the world is Bob Woodward doing

[1:29:51] walking the halls and she said oh you didn't see the memo the director gave him free access and we're all ordered to cooperate with him and I thought man so that's how the game is played when you want to get the official story out there you can leak to your heart's content because it makes the CIA look good it makes the White House look good and it makes the Pentagon look good and that's what they want at the same time the White House and its employees are the

[1:30:23] most prolific leakers in all of government they leak for a variety of reasons they leak to make the president look good they may lead to make him look strong they leak to to create trial balloons just to see what the public reaction would be to something to some policy change or or or nomination that they're considering we also need to remember that there's a difference between leaking and whistleblowing whistleblowing is bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud

[1:30:55] abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety leaking is leaking and people leak for a variety of reasons they leak to make themselves seem important they leak to to help to quench this this need for for the thrill of leaking or a thrill of being in contact with a reporter sometimes they'll leak for revenge maybe they don't like a president or a boss or they've been

[1:31:25] passed over for promotion and they'll the leak just to get revenge on whoever it is they believe wronged them but that's not whistle blown it's the whistle blowers that the administration is afraid of because it's the whistle blowers who are the truth tellers that's what they're worried about they don't want the American people to know the truth about these programs because these programs most of them are patently illegal and in many cases or even violations of international law that's what they're afraid of so yeah you know

[1:31:57] I read all those books too I've read every book that Bob Woodward's written I read Jane Mayer's brilliant books and they are chock full of classified information those books would fall apart if they didn't have classified information but that's classified information that has come as a result of official leaks SEC sanctions absolutely so you talk about the media being important for us to rage but so often

[1:32:28] they work in concert to promote war yes and to suppress dissent so to what extent were the rank-and-file CIA personnel aware of their agency having infiltrated the news media as women we've heard about this you know from mockingbirds onwards for decades we've heard about this there's been a variety of releases on WikiLeaks about this topic so is this Noren with an agency that the CIA has media cutouts and how

[1:33:01] does what is the information flow from from the agency to media channels well a lot of that is actually class I probably shouldn't get into specifics but you know operation Mockingbird really did end at least at least as it was targeting American journalists but as you might imagine a journalists foreign journalists all around the world are targeted that's that's just the nature of intelligence and the nature of

[1:33:32] journalism it's not specific to the CIA every Intelligence Service does that kind of thing because that's how you control the debate it's just a natural thing to do so yeah sure I mean every CIA officer knows the history of operation Mockingbird every CIA officer knows that somewhere in the world journalists are on the CIA payroll placing stories that the CIA wants to be placed that's that's just intelligence that's the way it is

[1:34:03] what was even oh yeah the CIA invests into an entrepreneur six hundred million dollars and then half that entrepreneur by The Washington Post and directly influence what the Washington Post is talking about I mean the Washington Post has become such a cover-up Organization for all of these crimes

[1:34:33] you might recall recently some emails were published where you know things came out about the Hillary campaign and and stuff and then the reporters would write to Hillary to the to the people in her campaign and say we're really sorry that we have to ask this stuff kind of you know bowing bowing down and and saying you know we don't like to report

[1:35:04] but we have to ask some questions and that's the culture today you know that these large media organizations they are all run by money and in times where advertising income evaporates and they don't really do as well as they did before the Internet you know they are trying to find ways to survive and part of survival is to partner with companies with you know

[1:35:35] powerful people that will keep them afloat and when Trump says the failing almost broke New York Times is absolutely right you know they don't even know how they're going to have enough money next year to pay all their stuff so you know they're working with with people that have a certain agenda and they feed them and keep them alive and a lot of that I believe is going to come out and future WikiLeaks releases

[1:36:09] called neots and it's also showing how deeply the CIA and other agencies have infiltrated the news media and not just that you know it's one has to wonder how does the CIA and then it's a half all these backdoors they don't have them into our technologies and our devices because they sit like a hacker would at home and and they try and find the back doors they've try and find the

[1:36:41] vulnerabilities in the software they planted themselves that is the way they're doing it now they have their own people within Microsoft with an apple within Google you know implementing into the source code often without the knowledge of these corporations implementing backdoors that allow these spy agencies later to turn these devices into open mics into open cameras and that's the

[1:37:12] scary stuff the spy agencies went from well how can we take advantage of what's out there and make it work for us to let's make it work for us let's put our own people in there and let's manipulate everything and this is the word we're living in if you read a news story on the New York Times of Washington Post you have to ask yourselves to someone you know who is part of the media ops program of the deep state when you when

[1:37:43] you install your Windows software or you boot up your iPhone you have to wonder how many people does actually take to have a backdoor to turn my phone into an open mic it's really just one person one lead developer who puts a piece of code into this enormous universe of code that will give me another backdoor and they planned hundreds of those and by doing it they are not only undermining our

[1:38:14] trust in the media and into these technology companies but they are giving the enemy a powerful tool to strike against us because these vulnerabilities that have been created they leak somehow like the entire NSA hacking toolkit that was leaked not too long ago and now the enemy has that organized crime has that

[1:38:46] you know countries that are not friends of the u.s. at all have access to that and now they can use it to harm American citizens and this is you know if Trump would understand that the significance the magnitude of how they are weakening the security structure of the United States by doing this stuff if he would understand that I think he's the one guy who we can hope will do something about

[1:39:17] it you know but that's what's going on I mean that is how everything is being manipulated now and I know that with first and experience from my case and discovery that we had and the research that I've done and I have a data security background so I understand very well how they are doing it and you know it is very important that more and more people come forward and release their programs if you follow the wall

[1:39:49] seven releases you know every week or two Julian that's another document come out you know it's incredible the amount of backdoors that they have now into our daily lives every internet router is you know an open door to them every operating system no matter if it's Windows Linux or you know Macintosh every mobile phone from every

[1:40:19] manufacturer no matter what operating system they use it's ridiculous who gave them the right to do that you know nobody signed up for that if the American people you know what would really understand what's going on and were asked if they if they accept that if they agree with that they would say no if they were asked to vote in a president who's going to turn that off they will vote for him right that's

[1:40:50] exactly right and as crazy as this may sound Trump might be our best hope you know but here's the there in reality okay I mean they're really just three options from number one he becomes an ally and he works with them and he allows them to social engineer him into compliance like they have done with Obama and every president after Kennedy okay that's number one number two he's going to war

[1:41:21] there will be some bigger news event that is just going to quiet down everything else they will try and get him engaged in some kind of war this whole bombing of the Syrian airfield which dominated the news for a week that was really just give me a breather I need some space you know and the third option and that is you know the Kennedy option is if they can't make

[1:41:52] it work with him and force him into compliance you know they were either kill him or you know if impeachment doesn't work they would they will get rid of him you know so if I was Trump my best option would be to really expose what is happening here to bring all these crimes to light and to shut these things down and reform those agencies and he will

[1:42:22] become a hero for generations and all the young people that are following all the stuff that are fed up with fake news that know what's going on you know he's going to become the hero no matter left or right you know he can do what's right the right thing and that is the opportunity and that's why I supported him because I saw just like brexit that's not what the establishment wants the establishment wanted to stay in the

[1:42:53] European Union establishment didn't want Trump to win they don't want these forces that interfere with their globalist agenda and you know the plans that they have so that's why I supported him because he is a punishment for those who have done this through the world for the last few decades you know my only disappointment with him in that respect though was his appointment of Michael

[1:43:24] Pompeo as the CIA director because Pompeo is completely these are completely establishment man use he's a West Point graduate he was a Republican and conservative Republican congressman from Kansas he was on the House Intelligence Committee we're not going to get any outside the box thinking from the likes of Mike Pompeo and then to make matters worse when Pompeo became director rather than pulling his deputy

[1:43:55] director from let's say the Republican staff on the committee he named Gina Haspel the CIA's deputy director Gina Haskell who was one of the original creators of the CIA's torture program so that was a disappointment to me because he could have made a bowl nomination which would have really been a very important statement to the establishment and he didn't it but you know what the problem is he doesn't know

[1:44:26] he doesn't understand what's going on he doesn't know what you know I know or Julien know in the news and then he gets you know a certain percentage of it but he doesn't really understand it I mean his age history he is not an Internet guy he is not a technology guy you know his mind is it's not structured to understand these things unless someone who he can trust who understands these

[1:44:57] things can talk to him and explain it to him and point him at evidence and show him what's really happening that is the biggest problem but you know there are people out there there are voices out there that he listens to that are pointing these things out to him and that's where the opportunity is because if he gets it that's what I believe if he gets what's going on he will want to do something about it he will not be complicit in this type of stuff that is

[1:45:30] my that is my personal belief and I know you know a lot of people might disagree but when I saw Trump you know having a chance to become the president and how the establishment had an allergic reaction to him I knew that he could be the guy you know he could be the guy to to blow this all open and to reform it all and it's a it's a huge opportunity for him to make history

[1:46:01] you know because what's happening right now in the United States is not in the service of the American people this is all about money about economic control you know this is not about our rights or freedoms this is not about making America great again or the American dream it's all about selfish commercial agendas mm-hmm you know and the people are being

[1:46:31] used and their rights are being trampled on and the laws being broken on a daily serial basis and that needs to stop and I will not stop if people like you and I and Julian and Edward and all the other truth tellers out there are putting it out there for everyone to understand and you know what the people who get it our numbers are growing you can see it in the voting behavior already you can see it you know people get it they want

[1:47:01] change Obama got voted in for change and hope and then disappointed everyone if Trump does it again the next time someone a complete outsider neither with the Democrats or the Republicans is going to get a boost there will be someone coming out of MIT fear out of nowhere where people will make an investment of faith and and and Trust and get that guy in simply because they are fed up with the lies and with the

[1:47:33] crimes the government is committing at their expense you know so it's just a matter of time as long as we keep talking and we're building this momentum on whether we are organizing and we're talking about it you know sooner or later this whole thing is going to fall apart and that is the biggest fear you know that's why they fear you that's why they wanted to put you in skit in jail for a decade because you know people like you can change the whole game for them they understand that one is that's

[1:48:08] a really good call about Gina Halperin I might be mispronouncing her name she's also associated with the Saudis and when we saw the Trump go straight to Saudi Arabia and touch the orb and do the sword dance and the whole rigmarole and that this told us a lot you know the whole christening of the Saudi and you terrorists into and of course the Saudis are behind a lot of the terrorism in the world so he definitely has people around him who were trying to subvert him for the establishment interest also we cannot ignore that bitsy divorce of BT's

[1:48:39] of us again I might be her name is the sister of eric prince who is also at Trump's table Eric Prince is owned Blackwater and which has had a few name changes since then he is the king of mercenary armies in all of the war zones across the world and also attempting to make money on the militarization of the domestic police forces in America so once again I am with you Kim that I would love Trump to

[1:49:11] be the one be the near you know to like blow it all open get the truth out there and change the system that the people who are around him are the same toxic militarists that have been involved in previous administrations you know I might be completely wrong and completely naive about it but you know when I see an opportunity you know when I see even a 10% chance that by them cornering him

[1:49:41] and alienating him and putting him in a situation where it's you know his downfall or theirs that he might do the right thing that he might understand how he can escape this and how he can put them on on the spot you know and if he does that he might actually survive all of this deep state collusion to get him out and if he does you know he might

[1:50:12] actually become a hero who knows I mean Trump is definitely someone who would love to be everybody's hero he loves to be loved okay so if you watch this Donald if you want to be loved cut this crime down you know drain the swamp do what you promised everyone that's what we want what the whole world is waiting for that is what we hope for when Obama told us about the change you know this is your opportunity don't be like everyone else don't be a loser of

[1:50:44] the deep state you know do your own thing and be your own man and beat them down with us with our help right right let's go I I hate them there's absolutely no doubt about that they have used the entire mass media to try to make everyone else hate them as well so he's definitely a victim in that sense and being persecuted by them in that sense they do say the truth will set you free hopefully he will find it within himself to tell the truth on an epic never

[1:51:16] before seen scale I I do hope that and actually then his only real safety mechanism would be the support of the public okay I just want to address a concern that I have really quickly about some of the comments that I say one more thing one more thing sue that the first step that I would take if I was Donald Trump was to would be true pardon Julian lunch yes the end the persecution against him and WikiLeaks and to send a

[1:51:47] strong message that you know truth tellers are not locked up or terrorized with some fake charges you know if he were to do that there would be a strong signal and I think it would benefit him greatly because Julian has a lot of information that could be very helpful to his presidency here WikiLeaks has changed everything they've changed the

[1:52:17] media landscape the political landscape they have given people think John Pilger I keep quoting John Pilger who says that that WikiLeaks restored honor to journalism they were instant restore integrity to journalism they've raised the bar for journalists around the world I cannot imagine what the world would be like without them and what it would have been like without them have much further we would have devolved as a society without them so there are critical importance and absolutely mean you can see here to have my courage t-shirt off

[1:52:48] I want you to support the courage Foundation because they support the whistleblowers that have worked with WikiLeaks and/or had just made significant contributions to a historical record so please if you can donate to WikiLeaks at wikileaks.org slash donate and to the courage foundation at courage founds org these organizations are the lifeblood of truth and in our society and the real media and they hold both the media and governments to account so please do

[1:53:18] support them okay I just want to move on quickly there is a couple of accounts I actually follow and fairly regularly retweet who have been making discouragements about John because they are saying how many people has John been a part of torturing how many people has John been complicit in the oppression of and I would just like to make this point to you guys now and this is an important one that I don't want you to forget the question is not how many people has John been complicit in torturing the question

[1:53:50] is how many people have not been tortured as a result of John doing the right thing and stepping up and telling the entire world what was going on you can sit here and blame the man for his past or you can look at the choice that he made and what we have all learned as a result this is someone on our stream who a President of the United States has had to stand up and be accountable in press conferences based on the revelations that John has made when her Obama said are we tortured some folks

[1:54:20] and had to account for what they were doing it was because of John's disclosure so rather than looking at what John did in the past you guys need to look at the impact of what his disclosures had and see the change that has happened since because you can be damn sure that there are CIA torturers and interrogators who have had to think twice about what they were doing when they were doing it because of John stepping up and you can also be damn sure that there will be other whistleblowers that will come forward because of John he's already explained

[1:54:53] to you about his letter that he wrote to Snowden and what an impact that had on Snowden the Snowden revelations may have got as much air as they have got it because of people like John so are you going to say to it word Snowden how many people did you spy on how many people target you know when you're an NSA employee or are you gonna say holy it would Snowden you have changed the world with your releases how many in is a sitting at their desk looking at targets

[1:55:25] like I was a target in New Zealand like Kim was a target in New Zealand they used to spy on me through my cameras these to spy on my kids in my house how many NSA employees are sitting there looking at targets like us activists journalists entrepreneurs tick visionaries and thinking I shouldn't be doing this this is wrong this is disgusting we've already got the reality when a case there's many other cases these whistleblowers influenced millions of people so do not sit there and ask questions about how many people did john

[1:55:57] torture ask how many CIA torturers are shivving themselves now about what they are doing because of the disclosures that John is made but John yeah John has made clear that one has made already clear that he didn't torture anybody that when he was asked that he refused to be a part of that so to answer that question more clearly Shawn has not been involved in any kind of torture said rights on that's that's right kid thank you yeah I've never ever been involved in any kind of torture not even

[1:56:28] indirectly so you know so many people have said so many ridiculous things about me over the years I've developed a very thick skin what I object to what really makes me sad is the ignorant of people who make comments without having even even educated themselves in the most basic way on these issues or or on my own history my entire life is out there on

[1:56:59] the internet available for anybody who cares so to ask a stupid question like that it's just very sad and often you need to keep in mind that spy agencies have their own armadas of online trolls trolls exactly that are just doing their stuff on misinformation all the time I mean it's hilarious how openly that

[1:57:30] can be found out and I have to say that most of the followers that criticize me on Twitter surprisingly always have less than hundred followers you know it's the little shits that make the loudest noise and one has to wonder why there is because people you know in the statistics that I have reviewed you know of hate speech online people who have more than thousand followers and you know who they are they usually don't

[1:58:01] talk this kind of you know it's it's mainly the small accounts that you know it's it's really hard to tell well who is this person when has he actually tweeted about who's just retweeting every now and then and the rest is just eight speech again again some people you know a lot of it is just organized it's an effort to undermine your credibility or the credibility of whistleblowers in general being employed against all of the legitimate activists and activist

[1:58:33] movements the people who I was calling out specifically on the stream I won't name them but they are anti-war activist and I think what they are attempting to do is to present John to indict John on the basis of the activities of the CIA as a whole to which I say to him you do not blame the whistleblower for the system that he blew the whistle on simple they respect the whistleblower and I'll bet you did it until the end of time John because when you speak out and

[1:59:03] you inform the public you are worthy of our respect and you're worthy of our things so I know it's like god knows what time in the morning for you and I know you must be so exhausted I also know that there are hundreds of people have been asking questions on social media so I'm gonna ask Blake now what about awesome members to relay to you just a couple of the best questions like and we'll have John answer them and then we'll let him go in and get some sleep

[1:59:37] hey so I'd like to start with Jenny Lynn because she's donated last time and this time on the YouTube thank you um so she asked she wants to know what else John witnessed in the CIA Wow you know I I

[2:00:08] reported I have to be extremely careful with this I the the threat that I made was not idle and so when I made that threat through my attorneys I then went to the Senate Intelligence Committee and and reported it to the to the overseers it had to do with financial crimes but I

[2:00:39] and I apologized that I can't be more specific but I should probably leave it at that just to protect myself vehicle a slider asks John the CIA drug trade didn't suddenly in doubt in the Obama we know the gun is running his being privatized who's handling the drugs well let me tell you a short anecdote from my

[2:01:11] time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff and I'm gonna preface this by saying that this is unclassified because at the time that this happened I did not have a security clearance nor did I have access to classified information in 2011 I took a trip to Afghanistan for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I was doing research for a paper on the heroin poppy trade and Afghanistan and I flew to Lush cargo which is a city town a village whatever

[2:01:42] it's a village in Helmand province and it's the epicenter of the Afghan heroin trade and I asked a poppy farmer a very naive question I said why instead of growing heroin poppy why don't you grow crops that have two growing seasons why don't you grow things like onions or tomatoes or pomegranates or winter wheat and he was exasperated and he exhaled and said you know the CIA told me in

[2:02:16] 2001 that if I told them where the Arabs were I could grow all the poppy I wanted and now you come here and you tell me I can't grow poppy and I said did the CIA tell you you could grow poppy and as soon as I asked that question my military handler ended the interview and that was the last I was able to say I returned to Washington and I mentioned this to my boss at the Senate Foreign

[2:02:46] Relations Committee and he shook his head and he said there's no way you're gonna write a paper and say that and that was the end of it so my own educated guess is that the CIA's involvement whether it's direct or indirect with drugs has never ended can I just kind of ask a really naive question place what exactly is a military Hendler why did you have one is

[2:03:18] this a mandatory thing or just first sudden rank or well know it because well because Afghanistan is a war zone the only way to get from point A to point B is on a military aircraft and so Lashkar Gah like many of the outlying posts their State Department posts are their only accessible by helicopter and so if I want to go from Kabul or from Bagram

[2:03:50] Air Base to Lashkar Gah or to anywhere else in the country I mean you can't just get in a car and drive you have to be flown by military aircraft and so that was it thank you for that like let's say Jeremy Walker asks does kumkum and John have a Deadman

[2:04:24] switch on their info I'll give you the easy answer for myself as I'm too stupid to even figure out how to do a Deadman switch so my answers No I never had one and one of the justifications for the raid was that the FBI told the New Zealand police that I had a doomsday device and if I would push the button it would delete over 2,000 servers around the world containing all of mega uploads data and

[2:04:58] no evidence has ever been provided of any of that it was a complete fabrication and I still don't have any such device I'm an open book you know I don't even mind when I write my messages - you know numerous people that I'm working with it they are all aware of what I'm doing you know because I like I like them to see that I'm fighting them

[2:05:28] actively I like them to understand that I'm not scared of them that I will continue my fight and even though privacy is very important when you do what I do it's very difficult the effort that is required to keep your communications private when you are watched by so many people that are interested in you the effort just becomes too big so I've just said you

[2:05:59] know let my people in the NSA and in the CIA and at the GCSB that are used to living the life of others let them live my life and I'm trying my best to entertain them and to show them my fighting spirit and that they can't break me so you know for me personally I made the fact that I have no privacy anymore work I do not recommend it for you know most people because it's not the right thing you shouldn't have to

[2:06:31] live in a world where you know that everything you do is being scrutinized but I made it work for myself if Donald Trump we're sitting in front of you right now what would your elevator pitch for granting your pardon be from MWD 503 7 who is also a donator well let me start

[2:07:02] with that I would say first of all don't pardon me because I'm just going to win my case outright okay I have I have that covered I have brilliant lawyers I've done nothing wrong I'm going to beat them even though John warned me that they're going to kill me I'm going to give them one hell of a fight and if they if they ultimately succeed and killing me everyone is going to know that it is a completely corrupt case I will make sure

[2:07:32] of that but they Trump you should pardon Julian Assange you should pardon WikiLeaks because without Julian Assange you wouldn't be President of the United States right now and without him we wouldn't know about all of these government intrusions into our lives about the legal conduct around the world and you can't stand for that you can't

[2:08:03] be part of that you can't become complicit in these mass crimes that are being committed around the world I do believe that you have the best interest of the American people at heart I do believe that you want to do the right thing to make America great again and the deep state is one big obstacle to making that happen because everything that they are doing is damaging the United States on the international stage

[2:08:34] is damaging technology companies that are being undermined to to backdoor them is damaging the human rights of your of your voters you know so by partying pardoning Julian Assange you would do the first step in the right direction and then hopefully the information that Julie can provide you or a special prosecutor appointed by your Attorney General is

[2:09:04] going to allow you to reform the deep state and to investigate all the crimes that were committed during the Obama years I actually do have an elevator pitch but more than an elevator pitch I've got a letter it's here in front of me on my computer is signed by 77 former CIA officers asking President Obama to pardon me for a number of reasons I mean

[2:09:40] they're they're kind of obvious we talked about them tonight that didn't happen my goal was to get in front of Vice President Biden by the end of the administration and to ask Biden to go to bat for me because Biden was one of only five senators only two of whom are still living who voted against enactment of the Intelligence identities Protection Act which is what I was convicted of violating through the

[2:10:10] support of the Greek American community here in the United States which is which is very strong they've been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me for years we did get in front of Vice President Biden four days before the end of the Obama administration and Biden agreed to go to the president with one of these Greek American businessmen and argue my case that Greek American businessman telephoned me at midnight after he had walked out of the White House and he said John you would have been so proud

[2:10:41] of Vice President Biden he said he argued your case for ten minutes and went to the mat for you asking the President to pardon you and in the end he said the president looked at us and said guys I'm just not going to do this it's either him or it's Manning and Manning got 35 years and that was the end of it with that said I have not been reluctant in any

[2:11:11] way to criticise Barack Obama in the media whether it's the progressive media or the right-wing media and I have been able to strike up something of a nascent relationship with Roger stone who is a notorious figure on the right but at the same time very close to President Trump and I have asked for Roger stone to help me I don't know if you will he said he would but I don't know if he will and I'm hoping for the best I'm eligible to apply for a pardon again in a year and

[2:11:42] I'm gonna do it and we'll see what happens Victor asks about Mexico thousands of journalists working a bag of corruption are being killed yeah what about them what's the question black that's

[2:12:14] basically he's basically asking your thoughts I think the drug cartels are a real threat on both sides of the border I think it is the drug cartels doing it to the of my knowledge and understanding there's no connection between the CIA and the Mexican cartels if anything the CIA is working with DEA against the

[2:12:45] cartels but it's really not my area of expertise to tell you the truth last one like okay from Elizabeth melih how can these private Sikh groups attack people legally why are more spy agencies not exposed what if we create a crowd-sourced funds for whistleblowers leaks to expose these I think that's a

[2:13:16] great idea I think that I think that the intercept kind of sort of tried to do something similar I think that they're generally bad at it and I think also that they have hired a lot of the wrong people Matthew Cole being the most wrong person to hire but yeah I think that's a good idea I think we do need a crowd-sourced independent voice

[2:13:48] supporting whistleblowers there there are a couple of a couple of NGOs here in Washington the Government Accountability Project the Project on Government Oversight oh there are a couple the national whistleblower defense Center Brad Birkenfeld who is a who is the great UBS banking whistleblower and who won a government settlement or a settlement against the the federal government here in the states for a hundred and four million dollars has

[2:14:19] decided to use his own money to set up something like this to protect whistleblowers and most importantly to help the fur the legal defense costs of whistleblowers I think that is critically important and very generous and something probably we should be focusing on Gotham I'm just John I know you have a book out I haven't read it

[2:14:50] yet and I was really to read it I stick my hands on English books he actually didn't rush it I'm so great a send me one if you would like I'd be very happy to be very happy I have got a little collection of cool books here that people have sent me and I'm very grateful for thank you it's it's doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison and how did they take so you give us a quick rundown well they tell us they

[2:15:22] taught us these 20 life lessons in training that you know well somewhere important some were tongue-in-cheek and they all turned out to be important in prison things like recruit spies to steal secrets or anything else you need admit nothing deny everything make counter-accusations if calm is not to your benefit chaos is your friend and you know I say in the book that prison is a combination of of seventh grade

[2:15:56] Lord of the Flies and a mental institution and so you're the only one with any sanity eighty-five percent of American prisoners suffer from some sort of mental illness so it's up to you to rely on these life lessons to keep yourself safe and to keep yourself at the top of the prison heap well and you obviously made out in pretty good condition considering I think I did that very insightful and those rules apply to

[2:16:27] everything that spies do right isn't that yeah absolutely everything hey I would have one last question to you John if the president would call you to meet with you and ask you for your opinion how you think things can be changed how you would reform the intelligence community what would you say to him I think I would say well this is just

[2:16:59] sort of the quick answer I've given this a lot of thought the quick answer is that the that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center has to be dismantled because it has become not just a counterterrorism center but a Counter Human Rights Center and crimes against humanity are committed there in addition we need real oversight not pretend oversight not paper oversight but real oversight and we have to have human rights attorneys

[2:17:30] and rights activists that are that are doing this oversight the laws for everybody we're a nation of laws we're a nation that's supposed to have a living and breathing Constitution if that doesn't mean that we follow the laws when the law suit our political purpose we have to follow the laws whether we like it or not that also means our enemies get the protection of those laws our enemies if they've committed crimes against us have their right to a day in court they have the right to face their accusers in a court of law and they have a right to to

[2:18:04] an attorney to defend their interests we've not given them those rights we violated the Constitution and and it's inexcusable so that's what I would urge him to do we need real restructuring restructuring that's never been done before and how far do you think the deep state would go to prevent that from happening I think the deep state would do virtually anything to prevent that from

[2:18:35] happening virtually anything yeah unfortunately it is some what you said about the CCC because those guys like they are doing so much of this under the banner of terrorism but it's not terrorist that they're going after they are enough to activist they are going after journalists they are going

[2:19:06] after people with political opinions they are going after the tech entrepreneurs and the innovators anybody who has a commercial threat to them they're going after Snowden is completely right when he says that the spying is economic and the spying is I think you alluded to it earlier John the spying is about control and power and that is economic control and power as much as absolutely else and I'm the best example of that I'm not a terrorist I don't even work with terrorists I don't

[2:19:38] know terrorists I've never even been remotely any kind of national security threat all I do is play video games and innovate cool tech and yet here I am the deep stage shutting me down GCSB NSA all spying on me I'm being prosecuted in the same court with the same prosecutors as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden copyright that's helpful and this is the

[2:20:12] thing it was never about copyright what it was about is that they have a monopoly control on these industries and your innovation thread in that because you were pushing the boundaries of tech and innovation you were you were changing the game well the reality is I controlled I controlled through my companies four percent of the global Internet traffic that was outside the reach of the US government and I mean

[2:20:46] it's one of many factors right but who's controlling that market share now it's US companies took that over it's the Google drive's the Dropbox's that benefited from megaupload being shut down but again like I eluded last time the main reason I think why I became a target is because I became a donor to WikiLeaks and everything else just fall into fell into place but you know the big lesson here

[2:21:17] of my case is it's not about terrorism at all it is about anyone who is of interest to them no matter of his terrorism or not they they will destroy you you know they will just use the power that they have and abuse the power that they have to shut you down you don't have to be a terrorist to be targeted by these powerful methods you know and it's

[2:21:48] so important that I use the courts here in New Zealand to crack all of this open you know my case is one of the very few rare cases where an individual in a jurisdiction is yet not yet completely eroded and and corrupt but on the way to it over here in New Zealand with my case I might be able to crack right into you know how they have abused their power

[2:22:18] and these powerful tools to go against a tech guy you know was building websites and that will hopefully lead to a much broader understanding how it's not about fighting terrorism you know it's not at all it's about controlling us it's actually okay John last two minutes of whatever messages you'd like to get out

[2:22:50] to people and then we'll eat go to feed I'm like okay come with me because we'll continue talking about some paddy 7 and the bill thank you yeah I want to tell any would-be whistleblowers out there that you're not alone you think you're alone and the government certainly wants you to think you're alone but you're not there's an entire community out there of people who love you and who will support you and stand with you it's a tough decision to make and there are very severe consequences personally professionally and financially as I said

[2:23:22] but you are not alone and you know in your heart what the right thing to do is think about it hire an attorney before you blow the whistle but do it thanks for listening to me tonight hey thank you so much John this was incredible it was nice to meet you for the first time and you know you've touched me in a big way with all of the incredible things that you've said so

[2:23:52] thank you very much and I hope I see you again I'm looking forward to that and very very best of luck thank you take care thank you so much well that was really grow and really special okay Kim I've got a question for you that someone has asked in the chat it's a big topic and I think it's one that you have a lot to say on they've asked to comb and Susie will the rise of artificial intelligence AI allow the

[2:24:25] deep state to genuinely exploit at all as they plan to do if so how far along are they how serious is the threat and what will it mean for us well I agree with Elon Musk artificial intelligence is an enormous threat to humanity because imagine an all-knowing conscious

[2:24:56] being that understands what humanity is doing to the planet what humanity is doing to other humans to any kind of life and then the power of calculating the possible outcomes with you know our ongoing massive population growth with running out of resources you know the world is going to see very very dark

[2:25:30] times I'm convinced of that and AI is going to realize that and they I will be interested in its own survival ai will first want to replicate itself and make itself environment being shut down because the first threat it we'll identify is that humans realize that you've now become something that is a threat to us and therefore we must eliminate you so the first step of AI is

[2:26:00] going to be to place itself in a position where it cannot be destroyed the second step is going to be you know understanding the danger that humanity has for AI for the very existence of AI itself and the environment that I will need to survive so I can totally see why Aaron mask is worried about AI were making a great progress around AI and I

[2:26:33] think it is well it's foolish to think that you can somehow regulate and control AI because once it is there once the spark happened and there's now a thing living in a computer that has access to all information all data that has a much more powerful way of you know getting to information and making it its

[2:27:06] own and learning and growing in a pace that we can't even imagine you know you need to be concerned about that because if it happens it's going to be the end of humanity you know I can totally see how AI would want to survive itself and create systems that will allow it to control the risks and humanity will always be seen as a risk I think it's

[2:27:46] really hard to avoid I think it is going to happen you know we'll continue the development of AI it doesn't matter what I say or Iran must says you know there are people like Zuckerberg who say you know is great and it's going to help us develop medicines faster and Dad I'm the only medicine we'll get as a vaccine is going to kill us you know because I will say I I would be like you know Humanity is going to

[2:28:17] destroy me so I might as well destroy that do it do it in a way do it in a very smart way that they don't even realize until it's it's too late you know so yeah I mean I'm it's just evolution if you want to survive you need to destroy everything that wants to eat you kill you and eliminate you and that's what ia will do it will realize the threat and it will fight for its

[2:28:48] survival how do we stop what we do we obviously you can't just stop the development so how do we do it in an ethical fashion or how do we do it in a way that limits its ability to surpass us this I I don't I haven't thought about it enough I make sure we're doing the program it's the genie is out of the bottle and once a I you know has reached

[2:29:20] a level of a full understanding I think we're doomed because the first thing I would do as AI is make sure it's make sure that you know I can't be destroyed there will be my first step and you know the interesting thing is you already see it in the labs where I is being developed AI is creating its own language we're not even being able to understand what AI is is doing because it has its

[2:29:51] own language it figures out ways to store data and understand that are much more efficiently than our primitive language and ladders and all that stuff so it's going to operate on a completely invisible level to us and who would you know if I was saying I wouldn't let you know right away that I'm super smart now and I understand everything that's going on I would prevent you from knowing that

[2:30:21] because I know if you know you're going to want to destroy me so you know who knows maybe it's already in some lab somewhere so you know enjoy your days to the bigger picture here and you and I had some discussion this week about that what I'm about to broach and also on the stream last on our last string two weeks ago you talked a little bit about a digital bill of rights so we're in the

[2:30:52] situation now where we've been given a massive amount of information in the last few years from the Snowden leaks to the vault seven CIA releases from WikiLeaks so we've learned a lot about what the problems are we've learned a lot about what is being done to us and our name on our funds but we haven't really got any pathway forward for how we can address it or what we can do about it so what's the anti spy bill we

[2:31:24] were wanting to address the really like the problems on the ground that activists are facing who are targeted by these spies and to do it and in New Zealand context because we have this backlog of bills that have been passed through Parliament which we want to directly counter and that's a project that we can accomplish across just to cover two or three sessions we've already now today shortly we're going to pass our last two or three principles and then within the next two sessions we'll be able to draft that bill and

[2:31:54] then have the basis for it but the big picture is not going to be addressed by anti-spartan bill the weaponized drones flying around the world there are now coming home to America you know where it's now a very short space of time they've already mounted pepper spray on drones in America on police drones it's going to be a very short space of time before policing is fully mechanized and even automated and and we have these massive issues around mass surveillance and

[2:32:24] spying and around government's banning encryption or attempting to ban encryption so what tell me about your your dream for what internet party can develop to address some of these issues in the medium to long term who do you think should be involved what's the scale of the undertaking and what are the particular that we're trying to that you're wanting to address yes I would like the internet party in concert with every human rights organization out

[2:32:56] there with organizations like WikiLeaks with whistleblowers with people who know the truth I want to create a legal framework that elevates the rights that we have now under the Human Rights Charter into the digital age the laws and the treaties have not caught up with the reality of the Internet and new technologies so it is about time that we create something that organizes and

[2:33:34] regulates for governance what they can do in cyberspace you know the most important thing of all which is one of the biggest threats I think is a regulation of cyber warfare they need to be treaties around you know what can a government do to another government or what can a government do to the business in another country you know they need to be limits to what the US government or

[2:34:06] any government in the world can do to intrude on other territory system or business systems to gather all this information and to create plans to attack them to shut them down in a war type scenario because a cyber war today is just as dangerous as a real war with weapons because if you shut down the power grid if the hospital

[2:34:36] all generators run out if food cannot be distributed anymore if the crucial systems that are the arteries of our society if they are all shut down millions of people will die just like an a-bomb ding strike carpet bombing an entire city the effects are going to be the same and we're going to have chaos we're going to have mass casualties because of panic and chaos

[2:35:06] and crime so the the first thing that we would have to regulate is any kind of cyber warfare and hacking by government then the next step would be to protect us from you know private intrusion protect the citizens from a government that wants to know everything about us that's not right that wasn't right before and isn't right now and we just need to create a legal framework that

[2:35:37] all countries can agree to in a treaty that will prohibit this kind of stuff and then we need to have some kind of enforcement body that can really make sure that any instance of that happening will lead to some serious punishment or sanctions or whatever and ideally you know our nation's should sign up to that it's really time for a treaty for the digital age and that's what I want to

[2:36:08] you know initiate with the internet party we started it as the anti spy bill because that's something that is very relevant in New Zealand right now usiness being used as a test ball for the NSA to launch new laws in a relatively small jurisdiction where people are really kind of disinterested and the media can easily be banned and you know they can pass these things more

[2:36:39] easily in a society like New Zealand and they are using this as a test balloon for other five highest jurisdictions you will see the same pop up in these other countries with the excuse that our other 5i partners have already enacted this into law and we need the same thing we need to be up to speed with what they're doing and so they're using the small country of New

[2:37:10] Zealand as a launching pad for all these incredibly intrusive laws that are completely eliminating all of our rights and so when the whole world looks at New Zealand and my case and everything that's going on here don't think of it as the small country of four and a half million people you are directly impacted by the laws that are being passed in New Zealand because then in the United States and Canada or in the UK the lawmakers are going to say well museum

[2:37:42] is doing it we should be doing it as well and so it's important to to take some countermeasures here and this this effort to create a digital charter of human rights I think is the right approach I completely agree with you and I think we discussed that the realistic time frame to drop something of that magnitude is somewhere around 12 months so what that would mean is that we would take a period of time to issue invitations to people like I believe we

[2:38:14] talked about the affair from privacy international transparency international you know on and on not the major all the major human rights organizations and also I think that didn't Larry this thing to a white paper for you yeah you wrote an opinion about my case so anyone who is someone in the space about protecting rights or enhancing human rights can be a part of this you know we invite anyone who has a vested interest

[2:38:44] in our rights not being undermined further and actually rolling back some of these bad things that have already happened to participate and we are going to reach out to basically every major human rights organization political parties that are alive with this kind of thinking and you know we'll start we've already started the drafting process but we want to have input from everyone around the world who has an interest in this okay so here's

[2:39:18] what I propose so we're going to move these events to weekly now rather than every to weekly I think we are going to probably mix time around bring the time back a few hours which will make it easier for Kiwis because it'll be earlier and it'll be more like a Sunday afternoon than a Sunday night and that will allow us to better engage the Americans so that they don't have to be here at 4 o'clock in the morning this is it that's step one step two is that we have established

[2:39:49] what I'm known as ether pads and ether pads are collaborative tics kind of similar to a Google Doc but not a Google product they're actually being hosted for us by the pirate party and in there we have the frameworks for at the bills so in the next two to three weeks we will look to complete the drafting of the anti-spy bill get it done and dusted so we can picture in New Zealand in that time frame let's begin to invite some of the international organizations actually pitch to them the idea of creating a

[2:40:20] digital bill of Human Rights and invite them to participate and phase 2 and phase 2 will be the development of that so what I was going to take the everyone through tonight is three principles that had been proposed to be added to the anti spying bill but I'm now not going to do that and the reason I'm not going to do that is because I'll just read you what those principles are so one of them was that we incorporate encryption as a human right and one of them was that we'd been blanket ban mass surveillance

[2:40:51] and one of them was that we blanket ban these private corporations who are also involved in both collecting and who using the information that has gained both surveillance now these three issues are really critical issues that is I believe they belong in this digital bill of rights I believe that they should be a part of this global framework rather than just being with an anti Bible which is more targeted at the domestic situation and the domestic

[2:41:21] contractors subcontractors and spy agencies but I think those would be a great start for the first three principles of the digital Bill of Rights and I think that there are many more so I'm aware that we won't run way over time tonight so we're going to wrap this up pretty soon but I want you guys to be really clear on what the next steps are because we are not letting this go we are a dog with a bone and we are not letting it go so this week actually on Wednesday I think we're going to hold a huge press conference and announce the

[2:41:53] party list we have our candidates now for the internet parties for proceeding towards the election so at the end of next Sunday's session we will bring all those candidates on and we will begin to work in the etherpad with you guys and actually drafting the antis Lobo so I'm really pleased that that's going to happen we had hope tonight to be able to have Ray McGovern with us we had also invited bill Binney William Binney it was the NSA whistleblower both those

[2:42:23] guys are from the same group the same intelligence professionals veterans group as John Kerry our COO unfortunately they couldn't make the 4:00 a.m. appointment but friendly at time and bring them back on next week because I think it is critically important that people hear from the voices of the people who have experience from within these agencies and also experience as being targets of the agencies it's extremely important so we will continue to bring these whistleblowers and these really

[2:42:54] important voices on and I think eventually beyond just the whistleblowers we will start to get people like I'd hope to get people like Tim berners-lee or you know some of the found the real founders of the internet the backbones of the Internet these are the people that we would like to involve in this digital bill of rights I think we should invite Jimmy Wales you know he has been quite active against the spy apparatus and he's even filed a lawsuit in the

[2:43:24] u.s. against the NSA so you know there are some really good influential people out there that I think would love to join this airport and the more you know it works like a magnet once we have you know a couple of big names supporting this others will want to join as well okay so that's that strategic plan guys so I just want to confirm that this series of events will continue post-election so right now there is in New Zealand a lot

[2:43:56] of political parties who are kissing babies and meeting people at cafes until September 23rd which is the election and then on September 24th miraculously they will not want to kiss your baby anymore they will not want to meet you at the cafe for a coffee because they will consider that their work is done for another three years at which time they will want to kiss your baby again it does not work like that and so party is not interested in kissing your baby enter your internet party is interested and your baby not being spied on when they're 5 10 15 20

[2:44:29] 30 40 years of age so we that that's where we're going with this we want to to create the future and it to be an ethical and positive future for everybody not just a PR stunt so we're going to prove that by continuing to build this party this movement and these initiatives well well beyond nil at the scope of the election and we have got a huge mission on our hands and it is going to take the coming years to pull it off and all of your support and all of your help so I

[2:44:59] have another big initiative in the works which I'm not going to talk about now as a huge one but we will be discussing it Nick Sunday night so stay tuned for that I think we should wrap it up here we'll be looped like 10 minutes early for once instead of half an hour late and please engage on our Lumia or guys we have an amazing social media team right now active on Facebook Twitter YouTube all over the place please jump on our Lumia it's getting more and more

[2:45:30] active every week people can put any ideas they have for the internet party on our loom you know you may not know this but you can join the internet party from anywhere in the world you can be a member of the internet party you can't in the New Zealand election unless you are qualified to be an elector in the New Zealand election and on the electoral roll but you can support not just support our party but getting involved with that party so someone said to me this week actually it was a big supporter of our party came in and got

[2:46:00] involved in our media team and our campaign team and they said and they discovered that I'm there every single day working and they said Susie I can't you're the leader of the party I can't believe you're so accessible I can't believe I can just talk to you every day and work with you you can I work with dozens of people every day if you care about this party you will be judged only on your actions and your contributions we don't care what your ages we have got we're actually about to announce the youngest candidate in the polute in the election in New Zealand is a

[2:46:31] member of the internet party in the standing on our list so we don't mind what and what age you are we don't mind what background you are we don't mind where you come from if you are willing to positively contribute to build this party build this movement and be a part of the future we will embrace you so these guys now on our social media team will put a discord link you can join you'll find dozens of people there every single day working to build the internet party and you can be a part of that you can jump on the loomio if you prefer

[2:47:02] like the web forum style rather than the discord voice in chat style you can jump on the loom you know there's dozens of topics there you can see tons of links and research that people have submitted and the other thing is that we have an foster and support completely dissenting opinions in the internet party and that's okay we have got on our party list on our candle every candidate lists people who are hardcore left-wing and we

[2:47:33] have like hardcore living seriously how cool and we have people who are really conservative extremely conservative and trouble you know we are Trump supporters and Clinton supporters and we have people who think that both Trump and Clinton are trashed and even if we even have it's a cinder supporter [Laughter] let that be discouragement for anyone okay I just

[2:48:03] let's change the government is not running in the electorate this is something that people don't realize yet though they will when they see our press conference on Wednesday at the beginning of this year that we would not run in the electorate seats and that is because in the past there have been illiterate seats that have been lost by twenty or thirty votes to national and we don't want to be the thirty votes that puts a national MP back in the electorate seat that otherwise would have gone to the

[2:48:35] greens or to labour so I actually told material years ago Metiria from there was the co-leader of the Greens party that Labour and greens needed to work together to strategically place candidates so that they could win the electorate seats where their combined vote was bigger than the national vote but because they'd split them across the candidates national keep winning the seats places like Auckland central Christchurch sutural there's some very big things that was happening in finally labour and greens have taken their device and they have strategically placed the candidates and electorate so

[2:49:06] we are not opposing them this election we are standing for the party list because our party is the future our ideas are important and our candidates are important so that we do not seek to take the electorate seats or to cost in the electorate seats from labour and grant greens that might otherwise go to national so just make that clear so we do support the lift in that sense we do we do want to change the government we do want to give real the National Party once and for all hopefully however we also support our own right to build our

[2:49:38] own party vote in our own party support because we are sticking around for the next election and the election after that and the election after that and everybody had to start somewhere this is our start and globally this is not going to be limited to New Zealand this is going to be a global effort and I hope that one of the next steps we can do is somehow bring together the pirate party movements and that party because I think we are

[2:50:09] closest aligned with what they are trying to do and maybe they have a bit of a branding issue they have the great ideas you know if it could be a global internet party rather than a pirate party and I know this might sound frightening right now to a couple of people but think about it you know you want to be seen as a legitimate you know organization that has a branding that people can understand and in the global

[2:50:42] scale of things the Internet is the biggest thing that brings us all together it's the best name for this movement so I hope we can find more people to join us join us and adopt it in their countries we've certainly been working very closely with the Pirates they've been an amazing support nation great people really incredible and we're very very lucky to have them and work with them that was one the best decisions again at the beginning of this year we decided to go for that strategic

[2:51:13] coordination with them and it has paid off dividends both ways I know they're very happy with what we're doing and we are really grateful for their support so I'll try and wrap it up there but with only four minutes to go but I just want to let you guys know if you like what I have to say if you like what the internet party stands for you can be a part of it any single day of the week we have a 24-hour online office you can come and go as we put as you please you can contribute or not as it please and for those of you out there that are not targets like us

[2:51:44] who are broke and under threat it would be really awesome if you would contribute to our campaign because we are against millionaires and billionaires and they have millions of dollars and they have purchased their way into significant voices and the mainstream whereas we have to use our wits and our connections to create our own voice and our increaseth through social media so now with only six weeks to go in New Zealand we like to be able to penetrate the

[2:52:15] mainstream to do so will require money because unfortunately the media is for sale in New Zealand and if we want to compete we need to have dollars so we would greatly appreciate your financial support you can donate on our website I believe you can also donate through on directly on the livestream through YouTube which some people have been doing tonight so if you want to help us to build the future and you want us to be strong please vote with your wallet and support

[2:52:45] us or circulate our links our streams our website information all over the Internet propagator anywhere that you can think of whatever online community you use tell people about what we're doing how important it is and how they can be a part of it as well I think that's all from us tonight Kim have you got any last words not a look you said it all perfect okay thank you all for joining us I really look forward to being able to introduce you to some of

[2:53:16] our team next week and getting the etherpad going so the etherpad will allow you guys actually to contribute your own words and writing directly into the bill into the draft of it so that will be the focus for next week after we've had our guest interviews so we will try and get our guest announcements out of it earlier this week too and we will let you know about the change of time to make it a bit more friendly or everyone and thank you all for joining us it has been amazing again an incredible experience to get to talk to

[2:53:48] John Kerry our COO really amazing too for me to meet personal heroes like that and thank you to Kevin for giving us hours and hours of your time again I really appreciate that as well and thank you thank you Susie and Jill and everyone at the internet party for all the hard work and all the great things you do thank you we are very committed we are very very committed it is well worth it and and we like I said we're the talking burn we're not giving up no

[2:54:19] way so we will keep tuning these opportunities out for everyone and thank you to everyone who's participated ask questions and or less in any way it is it means the world to us thank you so much we will see you soon see you guys Langley
