Title: John Kiriakou with Stelios Kouloglou
Show: Stelios Kouloglou
Date: 2017-11-23
URL: https://youtu.be/OAwSZzldvuE
Duration: 47:00

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[00:57] -Welcome, Mr. Kyriakou. -Thank you very much. -Thank you for being here. -It's my pleasure. Thanks. -We are talking a year after the elections. What are your feelings after a year? -I lived in Washington for 35 years and I've never seen it like it is now. It has become a very ugly,

[01:28] very angry and negative city, polarized. We haven't seen these kinds of angry politicians before. Most people, at least in my circle - I come from a very progressive left-leaning area of ​​northern Virginia, Arlington, Virginia, where Barack Obama got 70% in 2008 and 68% in 2012 - we didn't expect Trump to win. I don't

[02:05] think anyone expected Donald Trump to win. I actually don't think Donald Trump believed he would win. By the way, I have a friend who was the official White House photographer under Obama and was at the White House the day Trump went to meet Obama for the first time, 4 days after the election, and he said that Trump looked sick and scared because he didn't think he was going to win. He believed that he could make his views known to the public and it would enhance his prestige

[02:39] and make more money. He didn't actually expect to become president and have to deal with all these different issues. I believe it is obvious, it is clear that the man does not know what he is doing, he is pretending. I think he relies on his personality to try to influence people. No president has done this before and it simply doesn't work.

[03:11] -Let me ask you something. Let's say a few words as an introduction to your personal story. You are a public interest witness. You worked for the CIA and then you ended up in prison. -Yes -How did that happen? -I spent 15 years with the CIA, mainly in counterterrorism operations, and was head of counterterrorism services in Pakistan after the September 11 attacks. From this position, I led a series of raids that led

[03:45] to the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who we thought was number three in al-Qaeda at the time, as well as dozens of other al-Qaeda fighters. I am not allowed to say the exact number, but there were several dozen fighters. When I returned to headquarters I was asked if I wanted - and these are not my words, these are the words of the CIA - to be trained in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. I had never heard that term before so I asked what it meant and the man I was talking to said, "We're going to go wild with these guys."

[04:21] I said: "What does that mean?" and mentioned these 10 techniques. I said, "This sounds like a torture program. I don't want to get involved in a torture program, but give me an hour to think about it." I went to the seventh floor of the CIA, the executive floor. There was a very old CIA officer there who I had worked for in the Middle East 10 years ago, and I said to him, "I need some advice: They asked me if I wanted to be certified in enhanced interrogation techniques, but it

[04:56] sounds like a torture program to me. What do you think?" And he said to me, "First of all, it's a torture program. They can use whatever words they want, but it's a torture program. Second, torture is dangerous territory, and you know how some of them are. They'll go overboard with interrogation and kill a detainee. And when that happens, there's going to be a congressional investigation, and then there's going to be a Department of Justice investigation, and someone's going to go to prison. Do you want to go to prison?" I said: "No, I don't want to go to jail." Of course, as things turned out, I was the only one who went to prison.

[05:32] I went back downstairs and told them, "This is a torture program and I don't want any involvement." But I kept my mouth shut. After 2 years I left the CIA and continued to keep my mouth shut. Finally, in 2007, President Bush gave a press conference, we're talking about George W. Bush, the younger one, and he looked at the camera and said, "We don't torture." I knew that was a lie. He was lying to the American people, looking us in the eye. And a few days later,

[06:06] answering a journalist's question, he said: "If there is a torture program, it is the result of a corrupt CIA agent." I knew this was a lie. So I decided to speak to the press and tell the truth about this program. I waited five and a half years for someone to show up and say something and no one said anything. So I said. -Torture techniques included simulated drowning.

[06:39] -There were quite a few that were miserable. The mock drowning is the most famous, in which the prisoner is tied to a board with his feet slightly higher than his head, some material is tied around his mouth, and then water is poured into his face. You feel like you're drowning and water actually enters your mouth and nose. In the case of Abu Zubaydah, we tortured him with virtual drowning 83 times and his heart stopped beating. He suffered seizures and had convulsions.

[07:14] This is not legal, it is a war crime, a crime against humanity. We have a specific law in the US against torture that explicitly prohibits doing such things. We have signed the UN Convention against Torture. Who says you can't do such things? But we did it anyway. There are other, worse techniques than virtual drowning. One is sleep deprivation. We know from the American Psychological Association that people start to lose their minds

[07:49] around the seventh day of insomnia. We know that they die around the ninth day. But the CIA kept prisoners awake for up to 12 days! We have prisoners who have lost their minds and cannot participate in their own defense. How is something like this legal? There is something even worse. It's called "The Cold Cell." You chain a prisoner from the ceiling and strip him naked. He

[08:26] can't sit or lie down and you freeze the cell to 10 degrees Celsius and every hour someone from the CIA comes into the room and throws a bucket of ice water on him. We killed people with this technique. If your job is to interrogate a prisoner, to be able to gather information to prevent an attack, the last thing you want

[08:58] is a dead prisoner. Now the FBI is using a technique from the end of World War II. It's what we're doing here today. You sit at a table, maybe I offer you a cigarette, or an apple, a phone call to your wife. After a while, we have a relatively friendly relationship, so that when I ask you something, I get an answer. It's not sexy, it's not fast, but it works as a technique.

[09:33] If you kill them or beat them so much that their faces are swollen, they won't trust you to talk to you. These were the three worst practices. We killed people with these techniques. - When you decided to speak, were you aware of the consequences? - Both yes and no. I knew the FBI would be after me. So does the CIA.

[10:06] But I believed two things: First, that this information was not classified. American citizens have the right to know what the government is doing on their behalf. I believe it strongly. They must know. Second, I believed then and now that the torture program was illegal. It is actually illegal to classify a crime as secret. I believe that information should be public. Within 24 hours of my interview, the FBI began investigating me. For a whole year.

[10:41] From December 2007 to December 2008. They decided that I had not committed any crime and closed the case. What I didn't know was that, a month later, when Barack Obama, who was supposedly a liberal, our savior from the Republicans, became president of the United States, the CIA asked him to secretly reopen the case against me. They investigated me for 3 more years. The FBI tapped my phones, they intercepted my emails, and I was followed by surveillance teams

[11:19] at work, at church on Sundays, visiting friends, at restaurants. I always had FBI teams on me. - Did you realize this? - No! It's strange because I was a teacher of surveillance at the CIA and I should be able to understand if I'm being monitored. I would observe things and say "it must be in my imagination". Because there was no reason for them to be watching me. I didn't do anything wrong. And they had closed the case. That's what I thought.

[11:51] Finally, in January 2012, the FBI arrested me and charged me with 5 felonies. Among them, three cases of espionage, one of the most serious offenses with which an American can be charged. It often carries the death penalty. I was facing a possible 45-year prison sentence. I knew from a study, published by the independent journalism website ProPublica, that the government wins 98.2% of cases.

[12:25] They offered me a sentence of 2.5 years. Do I roll the dice and try to win with a 1.8% chance? Or do I accept the 2.5 years? I accepted it. - To plead guilty? - Yes, I should have pleaded guilty to weaker charges. Not for espionage. They dropped the espionage charge and I accepted a weaker charge. I was

[12:56] sentenced to 30 months and served 23 months in prison. A regular prison, not a relaxed one, more like a club. - Was it difficult? - It was difficult. Drug dealers, murderers, pedophiles, mafia bosses. Normal prison. - What do you think about the other whistleblowers who came before or after you, for example Snowden?

[13:29] - Let's talk about the easiest case, Snowden. I consider him a true American hero. Because without him we would have no idea that the government is watching us. It is illegal for American surveillance agencies to monitor Americans. It has always been illegal! It's a violation of the NSA's founding principle since the 1950s, but they do it anyway. We would

[14:02] have no idea if Snowden hadn't informed us. One thing I hate is when American government officials say that Snowden fled to Russia. It didn't happen that way. He was transiting through the airport in Moscow and John Kerry canceled his passport. John Kerry put Ed Snowden in Moscow. There were others before us. Tom Drake of the NSA, Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe at the NSA,

[14:39] Jesselyn Rayduck at the Department of Justice. But even earlier, we have Daniel Ellsberg, who is the "godfather" of American whistleblowers. I think there is a proud tradition. Daniel Ellsberg called me two nights before I was to go to prison. And he told me that I had chosen a difficult path - which I had done. But he told me, never to doubt that I was doing the right thing. "You did the right thing," he told me.

[15:12] "Americans need to know what their government is doing. Especially when these are crimes." - And what do you think? Did you do the right thing? - Yes. The price was heavy. I lost my pension. I don't have a pension anymore. I had $770,000 in that retirement package. They got it. I spent over half a million dollars in legal fees.

[15:43] In fact, I still owe my lawyers $880,000. I will never be able to pay it back. I lost my job, my home, my friends. My wife left me. The price was very, very heavy. But still, when you make the decision to do something like this, you do it for the common good. You're doing it for the country. I consider myself a patriot. I believe that those who

[16:15] created this torture program are enemies of democracy. A few days before I went to prison, I was on Twitter. The deputy director of the CIA, Jose Rodriguez, sent me a tweet mocking me very badly. He said, "Don't drop the soap." If your viewers don't know, in prison, prisoners are sexually assaulted.

[16:45] When you're in the bathroom, if you drop the soap and you bend down to pick it up, someone will attack you. I was really angry when I read that. The deputy director of the CIA! He does this in his free time! It took me an hour to calm down. I said, "Jose, I'll look like I did the right thing. You didn't." I left him with that. - Let's go back to the story of Donald Trump. I have Le Monde here. It

[17:22] has Trump on the cover and the headline is "The Diplomacy of Chaos." What do you think about his first year in office? - Trump has the lowest approval ratings of any president in history, in his first year in office. Since the polls began 100 years ago. Le Monde doesn't He's exaggerating when he talks about chaos. Washington is in chaos.

[17:58] Not just the White House, but everything related to it: the State Department, the Commerce Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury Department. Nobody knows who's in charge. I'll use the State Department as an example, because I know that best. There are 13 undersecretary positions. They're vacant. Donald Trump is in China today as we speak. This is the second-longest trip by a

[18:34] U.S. president to Southeast Asia, and we don't have an undersecretary for East Asia. When he was asked about it, he said I'm the undersecretary for East Asia. People can talk to me. This is not a plan. This is not a government. This is a recipe for disaster. For chaos. I even have some friends in the CIA. They tell me they don't like him

[19:08] and they don't trust him. They think they can wait for him to go. This What the CIA does is what we call the "deep state," the "parastate." It exists! It's real. In this case, they know they can wait for him to leave. Some senior officials have been there for 25, 30, or even 35 years. Presidents come and go. Either every four or every eight years. This is not an eight-year President.

[19:43] They know that if they sit around and do nothing, in three years he'll be gone. And then they can start working again. This is a disaster for the entire government. I'm going to say something vulgar and I want to apologize in advance: A friend of mine who works in the White House told me that these tweets are a very serious problem. They can't control them. They think he tweets when he's sitting on the toilet,

[20:15] because that's the only time when no one is around to stop him. That's why he tweets at 6 in the morning. Because that's when he's getting ready for his day. - There's a permanent crisis in all his political activities, whether at home or abroad. Do you think this is a method of administration? Why do we have repeated crises?

[20:53] - Analysts in Washington say that we will not be able to withstand four years of crisis. It is impossible. It is exhausting. Already a year later and most of them are exhausted. But yes, it is a method. A method in its paranoia. There are Republicans, who are neoconservatives and supported George Bush and the younger and the elder before him, who love war and put us in the Iraq war, their

[21:30] neoliberal opponents, the Democrats, put us in Syria, in Libya... We were in Afghanistan for 16 years, with no end in sight. Trump, in his campaign, was against all of this. But from the moment he was elected, he became one of them. Let's look, for example, at the case of North Korea. I think the United States is adding fuel to the fire of this crisis.

[22:01] Not North Korea. The North Korean leader makes statements that we expect and laugh at. Then we forget about them. But when we have the American President making these ridiculous statements at the UN and calling him "Rocket Man" or other childish things, that is not presidential. That is not the behavior that the leader of the free world should have. Trump has fallen into the trap of neoconservatism, where the only way to boost

[22:35] your popularity is to have a war, while at the same time - and I say this all the time - the American economy has been in a temporary state of wartime economy since 2001. If we don't have a war, our economy will go into recession. So a trillion dollars is spent on defense spending. That is what the rest of the world spends overall.

[23:09] What do we want all this for? It's not for defense. It's for attack. It's because we look at countries and pick and choose which ones we like and which ones we don't. If we don't like you, then we attack. We'll drop missiles on you, we'll launch airstrikes, we'll put aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines off your coast, and we'll talk about regime change, which is equally illegal, since it violates the UN treaties. But nobody ever says anything.

[23:40] Nobody stands up, either inside the US or outside, to say that this is wrong, illegal, and shouldn't be happening. Why isn't the UN discussing the US invasion of Libya and Syria? We look at the Russians in Syria and the Iranians. They were invited there by the internationally recognized official government of Syria. Nobody invited the US.

[24:11] Nobody told us to come to Syria. And we even said publicly that our goal is to overthrow the official internationally recognized government of Syria. This is a war crime! You can't do this. But nobody is telling us, "No, you have to stop." - Is Trump the source of the problem or the symptom of the problem of American democracy? I think he's the worst symptom. But if you look at the Democrats, they did exactly the same thing.

[24:49] If you read a book called "Double Down," by Mark Helprin and John Hellman, it was about the 2012 presidential election, and Obama agreed to be interviewed for this book. He said two things that were just terrifying: He talked about the drone program and he said, "I didn't realize I would be so good at killing people." But that program is illegal. You're not allowed to fly a drone over a sovereign country

[25:24] and launch missiles at people whose policies you don't like. The other thing he said - and he said it literally - is: "I never said I was a liberal." But that's why so many of us volunteered for the Obama campaign, who went to work for the Obama White House or the Democrats who were with him. I worked for John Kerry for 2.5 years -, who went to the inauguration of the President, I took my children - I have 5 children -, I took them to the inauguration of the President, to see this historic day,

[25:58] that a black man became President of the United States, finally a liberal, someone who loves freedom and democracy, which was not the case at all. He was just like Bush. And now Trump is basically proposing an extension of Obama's policies and Obama's policies were an extension of Bush's policies. There's really no difference. He's corrupted the bipolar system in the United States. We have practically duopoly, or if you like a two-party monopoly.

[26:31] Of course, there are other parties in the United States: we have the greens, we have the libertarians, we have the socialists, we have the communists, we have the fascists, we have the whole spectrum. But the two parties usually get about 95% of the vote, and the small parties split the rest. So how is a smaller party, a third party, going to enter the national scene if it's not allowed to be on the ballot in most states

[27:02] and to participate in the presidential debates? It 's not fair, it's not democracy. It's corruption. And so when you have the two major parties, who agree on 90% of the issues - there are differences on minor issues, but on issues of war or peace, the two parties are exactly the same - where does that leave us Americans? We have nowhere to go. - And Bernie Sanders? Does he represent hope? Bernie Sanders is the hope. Yes.

[27:36] In the last election, I couldn't vote because of a felony conviction. I would have voted for Bernie Sanders. His only problem is that he's old. And we don't have a presidential election for another three years, and there are almost twenty Democrats running for President. But Bernie Sanders, or at least the movement that he represents, is the real hope for a return to true democracy,

[28:12] participatory democracy, and an end to the logic that we have to be constantly at war. So I think Bernie Sanders and the ideas that he represents are the hope that we have. - Do you think Trump will finish his term?

[28:42] - That's the big question. I think no, he won't finish his term. Four years is a long time, and I personally don't believe that the Russian government hacked the American election and elected Trump. I think the Democrats They put forward the worst possible candidate they could, Hillary Clinton, and she couldn't

[29:13] face the worst candidate the Republicans could have put forward, Donald Trump. Two terrible choices in the past year. I think there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. I blame the Trump campaign, not the Russians. The CIA has always interfered in other countries' elections. It's been doing it since the Italian elections of 1947. It interferes all over the world.

[29:47] Ask the Iranians, the Nicaraguans, the Hondurans, the Dominicans and the Italians and the Greeks. The CIA interferes all over the world, and then we're shocked when the Russians are accused of doing it too. Shocked! "How could this happen?" Well, even if that happened, which I don't know, I don't influenced the election. But I think Trump's people tried to reach out to the Russians to give them information they had on Hillary Clinton, and that's a crime.

[30:19] But people are people. I think human nature is to protect yourself, no one wants to go to jail, especially if you were a general or a senior White House official or, in Manafort's case, one of the richest people in Washington who spends $1.2 million on his Italian suits or $1 million on Persian rugs, you like that life, you don't want to go to jail and lose all that.

[30:50] So what do you do? You turn in the next person who is higher up than you. And I think, in order to protect themselves, at the end of the day, they're going to turn in Trump, and I think he should resign. But keep in mind Mike Pence, who is the Vice President, ideologically he is worse than Donald Trump Trump doesn't really believe in anything, Trump only believes in Trump. Mike Pence is an ideologue, he is a right-wing extremist

[31:22] and that is at least as dangerous as Trump himself. - So you think there is no way out? - I think we should hold out until the 2020 elections. Yesterday in the US we had elections for governor of Virginia, New Jersey and for many local legislative assemblies. The Democrats won everything. This is a real message to Trump

[31:58] that his days are numbered. Even if he manages to stay for the next three years, which as I said I don't think, then he will be out. - All his promises have failed. For example, he promised to change the healthcare system and failed. He promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico... - And Mexico to pay for it... -...and he failed. He promised public works to investors and did nothing.

[32:29] I think he failed. And it also seems that, behind the shortcomings of American democracy and the capture of democracy by financial interests, there are still some institutions that work. I am referring, for example, to the judiciary that prevented him from banning Muslims from entering.

[33:00] Also, Congress was against the destruction of the health system. So in American democracy there are still some counterweights that balance the worst President in American history, as you said. I think that is a good sign, so that we don't see everything going... - Yes, and that angered him. Because, like a schoolboy, he didn't

[33:32] understand the separation of powers in the American government. We have three separate but equal branches of government: the executive - which is the White House and all the Departments - the legislature - which is Congress and is independent of the White House - and the courts. He got furious when the courts stopped him when he tried to ban Muslims, and he made this terrible statement: "Don't they understand that they work for me?" They

[34:06] don't work for him, they're completely independent of him. And thank God they're independent, because that's what saved us from chaos. So you're absolutely right about health care, about building the wall, about public works, even tax reform, which I think is going to collapse in the coming weeks. But for various reasons, many of the Republicans are voting against their own bills

[34:36] because they don't think they're bold enough. For example, the health care bill failed because it did n't He completely dismantled healthcare, but he took something away from it. We don't need healthcare in our country, as crazy as it sounds. Democrats are much more cohesive, they're more connected. They always vote as a group. But usually in the United States we don't have to be party-bound, you're free to vote however you want, and that causes chaos for Republicans.

[35:12] You're right on another point as well: One of the ways Trump was able to get the union vote was by promising public sector jobs, a huge public sector jobs program. You know, we're the richest country in the world. We should have the best airports, the best roads, the best bridges, the best hospitals, and we don't have any of that. I come to Europe, to Belgium, and I'm amazed that everything is new, strong, and beautiful. That's what we should be

[35:44] spending our money on, nothing else. an aircraft carrier or new nuclear missiles. We should be given the best in all areas, including health care. But Trump is not capable of passing it through Congress. - You were in counterterrorism, you worked in Pakistan, a dangerous place. Did you expect all these mass attacks that happened after the emergence of the Islamic State?

[36:22] I mean the brutal massacres of people in Paris, the shootings in discos,... -...Barcelona, ​​Brussels... Yes. It is partly a result of our own achievements, because we - and I mean all Western countries - have been so successful in dismantling organized groups like al-Qaeda, or fighting the Islamic State on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria,

[36:54] that it has disrupted their ability to plan attacks at home and, unfortunately, has pushed them to easier targets. One thing What they are very good at is recruiting like-minded people who were born in the West. In the US we have a very big problem with people who come from Somalia, for example. We have large communities of Somali origin living in St. Paul, Minnesota, Portland,

[37:31] Oregon, St. Louis, Missouri, they have settled there. But there is also a second generation, who were born in the US and they go back to Somalia to be trained by Al-Shabaab and then blow up hotels in Kenya. Because they have American passports, the fear is that they will fly back to the US and blow something up there. The same thing happened in Europe. Look at Great Britain, most of the terrorists

[38:07] that we see carrying out terrorist attacks there were born in Great Britain and radicalized there. The same thing in France, even though it has more of the colonial problems. power. They never considered, for example, the Algerians as real French. And when you go from generation to generation and you are under pressure, you will eventually break out, which I think we saw in France. But for the rest of Western Europe - Belgium, the Netherlands

[38:40] and now Sweden - I think they are "lone wolf" attacks and we just had one in New York last week. It is almost impossible to work against them. - Is there a way to reduce terrorism? - There is, it is not sexy, it is not fast and it is very expensive. I will explain it to you by telling a story. - The countless Al Qaeda fighters that I caught and interrogated in Pakistan, they all told essentially the same story.

[39:19] They said they cannot read and write, they have no professional skills, it is impossible to find a job. And what man wants his daughter to marry someone who cannot read and write and is not unemployed? I would not I never wanted my daughter to marry someone like that. So the local imam came to them and said, "Why are you in this village? You could go to Afghanistan and wage jihad against America. If you do, we'll give you $50 a month, and if you're killed,

[39:49] we'll give your family a $500 bonus. And they said, "Okay, I have nothing better to do." So they went to Afghanistan, where we caught them. I believed from the beginning that education and public works programs, where we would build schools, hospitals and water treatment systems, and develop some of these isolated areas, would keep people in their countries, where they could work, have a family,

[40:24] have their own lives and careers, and it wouldn't even cross their minds to get involved in terrorism. This takes 20-30-40 years, you can't do it overnight. The thing is, we've been in Afghanistan for 16 years and we haven't done any of this and look where we are. Another thing about these people I questioned is that none of them knew the Quran, they had not read the Quran, they do not know the prayers, they do not pray, they do not go to the mosque. They just don't have anything better to do.

[40:55] So, it's not an idea that we have to fight Islam, that Islam is trying to kill us. All this is nonsense. They literally had nothing better to do with their lives. So if we helped them develop their economies, I think we wouldn't see terrorism again. - The Greeks welcomed refugees from the Middle East with a sense of hospitality. Do

[41:26] you believe these actions deter terrorism? - Absolutely. The Greeks did some things that should be a model for the rest of Europe. First, they accepted all these refugees and treated them with kindness and hospitality. Ultimately, the Greeks have nothing. They have no money, the economy is in a state where it is difficult to find work, the unemployment rate is very high, and yet they welcomed these people and gave them everything they could. And when they couldn't give them any more, they arranged for them to go to other countries

[41:59] and apply for asylum there. They were treated with respect. Secondly, Greece does not have a colonial history, while so many other countries do. Therefore, there is no inherent hatred of Greece, the Greek government, Greek history. These people arrive by boat half-dead, starving, sick, perhaps having been raped or abused by slave traders.

[42:30] Half of them came from Turkey and were abused there. And they arrive in Greece and it is these elderly women, for example in Samos, who are waiting for them with food, medicine and blankets. This is what you do when you face a refugee crisis. In the United States, I can't tell you how many articles we read in the Greek-American press about Syrian refugees getting off the boat and some of them crawling to the nearest church, to kiss the icon and thank God for bringing them to a place like

[43:04] Greece. So yes, the Greeks did the right thing. -So, since your origin is Greek, you feel proud of it. -I'll tell you how proud I am. After I made the complaint about the torture, I began to have serious doubts about my government. I told you earlier that I am a patriot. I really believe we are the good ones or at least we are the good ones or at least we were supposed to be the good ones. But after George W. Bush and the torture, I really had doubts about my government,

[43:40] so I acquired Greek citizenship and I am proud to say that I am a Greek national, a Greek citizen. -Very well! -We have very few minutes, but you have both made a lot of efforts to protect public interest witnesses. That is the topic of today's meeting. So, is it easy? What should we do to have a legal framework for the protection of whistleblowers, as a protection of the common good?

[44:14] - I worked with an Australian organization called "Blueprint for free speech" and they worked with governments around the world to enact new legislation to protect whistleblowers, particularly those who report on national security issues. They managed to get these bills passed in the strangest places, like Canada, Zambia, Jamaica, the Czech Republic. There is now a standard text that they offered to the Greek SYRIZA government

[44:49] to use as a model, which will then be adapted to suit the case of Greece. This was 2015. It's still new, it's still new. I hope we can work together and help the Greek government and the Greek people. -I am trying very hard to pass legislation at a European level, as well as in Greece, for the protection of whistleblowers.

[45:23] One of the things we need to pay attention to and make known is that public interest witnesses have participated in a crime, but have changed their minds and are cooperating under strict conditions with the authorities. In Europe we don't have this tradition with

[45:55] settlement agreements, like in the United States. You can't have much information from people who have nothing to do with the case we're talking about. A very big scandal is currently under investigation in Greece, the Novartis scandal, involving a large pharmaceutical company. But this is ongoing and so far we have very good results with 2, now 3 witnesses.

[46:29] They worked for the company, so they knew its secrets, and now they're revealing them. If they were innocent bystanders, we wouldn't be able to have vital information. That's why I would like to highlight the importance of having a famous whistleblower, whom I personally admire, as well as all whistleblowers.

[47:00] I think they are the heroes of our time. - Thank you very much! Thank you! - Thank you both very much for your presence in this discussion we had.
