Title: Jeff Sessions Is Extending Obama's War on Leaks
Show: Democracy Now!
Date: 2017-08-08
URL: https://youtu.be/UV4Cd-9lJA8
Duration: 15:00

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[00:00] here on Democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez attorney general Jeff sessions has announced an administration-wide Crackdown on leaks announcing the FBI has formed a new team specifically focused on investigating potential leaks to the Press during a press conference on Friday sessions announced leak investigations have tripled since president Trump took office so today I have this message for our friends in the intelligence Community

[00:30] the Department of Justice is open for business and I have this warning for would-be leakers don't do it I've listened to our career investigators FBI agents and others and our prosecutors about how to most successfully investigate and prosecute these matters at their suggestion one of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas on Twitter president Trump praise session

[01:02] speech writing quote after many years of leaks going on in Washington it is great to see the AG taking action for National Security the tougher the better unquote Trump's new Chief of Staff John Kelly also warns staff over the weekend about the leaks to the Press although his warning itself was promptly leaked civil liberties and press Freedom groups criticize sessions remarks then Weisner of the ACLU said quote a Crackdown on leaks is a Crackdown on the Free Press

[01:33] and on Democracy as a whole well for more we go to Washington D.C where we're joined by John kiriaku spent 14 years at the CIA as an adolescent case officer cariako exposed the bush era torture program and became the only official jailed in connection with it his Memoir is titled doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison John cariaco welcome back to democracy Now we spoke to when you were under house

[02:03] arrest after you got out of jail and now speaking to you now can you respond to the attorney general Jeff sessions yeah I think this is really not about leaks as much as it is about controlling the Press uh it's it's the press that the president has a problem with uh and another thing too that I think is very important in this whole scenario the intelligence Community the intelligence agencies the Department of Defense can

[02:33] refer as many leaks as they want to the FBI it's the FBI that's going to decide if they're even worth investigating and even if they are worth investigating they're still going to have to try to figure out whether or not it's worth filing charges so it doesn't really matter how many new leaks are referred to the justice department for investigation I think we're going to see very few actual cases if any at all and John kiriako the aside from the uh the

[03:04] trend toward constant tweeting was there is there any basic or fundamental difference between the way the Trump Administration has been hand handling leaks and the Obama Administration frankly not much this really isn't so much of a new policy as it is an extension of the Obama administration's policy it was Attorney General Eric Holder that really declared war on leaks back in 2009 and it was the Obama Administration that prosecuted nearly three times as many leak cases as all

[03:36] previous administrations combined so I think that that the Obama uh I'm sorry that the Trump Administration is perhaps a little bit more vocal about its intentions but it's really not much of a difference in policy on Sunday Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein said the Department of Justice is not targeting journalists this is what he said on Fox News Sunday the Attorney General's been very clear we're after the leakers not the journalists we're after people who are committing crimes and so we're going to

[04:07] devote the resources we need to identify who is responsible for those leaks and who has violated the law and hold them accountable what is your response to that do you believe what um attorney general the deputy attorney general is saying no I don't uh and frankly somebody should tell the attorney general that his Deputy is saying that this is not going to be focused on the Press when the Attorney General himself has has said that it will be focused on the Press you know I think the justice department learned a lesson with with James risen of the New York Times in the

[04:37] Jeffrey Sterling case where they tried to compel ryzen to testify in that case ryzen refused uh he went to the uh to the fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost there went then to the Supreme Court and lost there and still refused to testify finally the justice department backed off I think that the Trump justice department isn't going to want the government to back off I think they're going to want to make an example of somebody in the press and preferably make an example of someone who's as

[05:09] highly respected as James risen is you've been one of several uh former intelligence officials who've talked about the the problem of over classification of material in the in the uh in the U.S government could you elaborate on that yes there are something like 3 billion classified documents in U.S government databases it's actually and most Americans don't even realize this it's actually illegal to over classify something now in the CIA we saw this

[05:39] kind of thing all the time and I'll give you an example my wife and I were in the CIA at the same time if I wanted to have lunch with her I would send her a message and say hey do you want to have lunch and I would classify that document secret now why is that secret it's actually not secret but everybody classified everything at the secret level it was just policy it's just the way things were she would respond to me sure I'll meet you at 12 and she would classify that secret it's actually illegal to do that and I think that in

[06:11] in what we're seeing now with with the case that I think is the impetus of this new Justice Department announcement the the leak of the transcripts of President Trump's conversations with the Prime Minister of Australia and with the president of of mass Mexico that the information in those transcripts really wasn't very sensitive it was embarrassing to the president certainly but it wasn't uh it had no impact on national security so for the administration to say that that was classified or that that was somehow

[06:41] National Security information is an over classification this is an issue that that no one in government has yet addressed and I think that the only way it will be addressed is if someone is arrested for for leaking this information and then they fight it by saying that it was improperly classified I think that's the only way we're going to see action on this if you're asking your wife to meet in the evening would that be top secret exactly I mean we throw around these these classifications like they mean

[07:12] nothing in fact they mean very important things now what what should be used are are things called controls rather than classifications you can call something sensitive but unclassified sbu or you can call it for official use only so that means that they're not intended for public dissemination but they're not necessarily classified there's a lot of information in government that should that should have those controls but should not be classified and could you discuss also the distinction between

[07:42] just leaking and whistle blowing for those folks who don't understand the distinction I think this is a very important distinction actually there's a legal definition of whistleblowing and that is bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or Public Safety leaking is just leaking and there are lots of motivations for leakers some people like the thrill of of speaking with a journalist for example some people like to feel important that they're on the inside they have this information and

[08:13] they just have to share it with somebody some people do it for Revenge just because they're angry at a boss angry at the president perhaps angry at a supervisor but leaking is not whistleblowing they are mutually exclusive and politicians and even the White House leak all the time don't they well you know that's the Dirty Little Secret of Washington isn't it the most prolific leaker in Washington is the president of the United States not even just that it's Donald Trump it was Barack Obama before him uh certainly uh many leaks I might even say most leaks

[08:45] come out of the White House out of the National Security Council and out of the defense department now those are usually what we call official leaks where they're meant as trial balloons or they're meant to influence public opinion or public policy those leaks are never prosecuted uh John your Memoir doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison um can you remind us and for people who don't know the story of John kiriaku how

[09:16] you ended up serving two years in prison what exactly you did sure in December of 2007 I gave an interview to Brian Ross of ABC News in which I said three things I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official U.S government policy it was not the result of a rogue CIA officer as President Bush had suggested and I said that the torture policy had been personally approved by the president himself so within 24 hours the CIA filed a crimes

[09:48] report against me and the FBI began investigating me they investigated me for a full year until December of 2008 and then determined that I had not committed a crime and they closed the case what I didn't know was that a month later after President Obama had been inaugurated and Eric Holder had been named attorney general that the CIA asked holder to secretly reopen the case against me and so the FBI investigated me for another three years until January

[10:18] of 2012. now in that three-year period the FBI dug deep into my life they tapped my phones they intercepted my emails I was under surveillance I had no idea any of that was taking place and they found an email that I had sent in which a reporter asked me if I would introduce him to someone who might agree to sit for an interview for a book he was writing I in my response I confirmed the last name of a former CIA colleague who I

[10:50] believed was was retired that was a crime that was a violation of the intelligence identities protection act but I wasn't just charged with that I was also charged with three counts of Espionage coming out of my original ABC news interview and one kind of making a false statement which my attorneys and I never really fully understood I I didn't really know what the false statement was but in any event um I always believed and my attorneys believed that that my case was not about leaking or about revealing the name the

[11:23] name was never made public in any event it was about whistleblowing and it was because I aired the cia's dirty laundry and I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners and so I went to prison for 23 months for violating the intelligence identities protection act I'm only the second American ever to be charged with that crime and I'm the only CIA officer ever to go to prison for speaking to the Press would you do it again oh in a heartbeat in a heartbeat see this is this is the

[11:53] thing the American people have the right to know what the government is doing in their name and it is illegal to classify a crime I believed at the time I still believe today that torture is illegal and so to classify that torture program as some kind of a top secret compartmented program is illegal I stand by that I wanted to get your response to this latest news a federal judge has cleared the way for a trial against two military psychologists who helped devise the bush

[12:24] administration's interrogation program which included using torture as waterboarding the psychologist James Mitchell and Bruce jessen reaped more than 80 million dollars for Designing torture techniques used by the agency the lawsuit was brought by Suleiman Abdullah Saleem and Mohammed been sued two survivors of the torture program along with the family of Rodman who wrote who froze to death at a CIA back site in Afghanistan I'm wondering your uh your reaction

[12:54] I'm thrilled about this lawsuit and frankly I can't believe that both the Obama administration's CIA leadership and the Trump Administration CIA leadership have allowed this case to go forward one of the things that's truly sickening about this case is that the psychologist Mitchell and Jess and just in the last two weeks used the example of of scientists in Nazi Germany who developed zyclon B gas that was used to

[13:25] gas Jews in concentration camps as part of their defense they said that at Nuremberg the inventors of zyklon B weren't prosecuted so they shouldn't be prosecuted because they only taught the CIA how to torture that's just simply not true the scientists that invented the zyclon B were not prosecuted but but Mitchell and Jess and not just created this torture program they went overseas to the secret site to the secret prison and they were the ones who actually carried

[13:56] out the torture I think frankly that Mitchell and jessen are very very fortunate in that this is not a criminal trial because this is a violation their actions are a violation of the federal torture Act of 1946 and a violation of the United Nations conventions Against torture so they're lucky I think that this is only a civil suit well John cariakou we want to thank you very much for being with us Jones spent 14 years at the CIA as an adolescent case officer he exposed the bushira torture program became the only official

[14:27] jailed in connection with it his Memoir is doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison this is democracy now when we come back we go to Minneapolis where a mosque was bombed this weekend president Trump has been tweeting up a storm on his vacation not a word about this act of what the Minnesota Governor is calling terrorism stay with us
