Title: London report on the Assange extradition hearing
Show: Potkaars podcast
Date: 2020-02-25
URL: https://youtu.be/Ef--cDAHlp8
Duration: 24:00

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[00:01] it's a February 24th 2020 and my guest is junk karaoke John is a CIA whistleblower or was oh hang on let's just change my view I'm recording on his Omega was I should say and is now a successful author and a radio show host hello John hello thanks for having me yeah thanks for being back so I asked you to comment on the expedition

[00:32] hearings I shouldn't say trial trial I think my hearings over of Julian Assange so let's dig into that what's your take on what's happening here in London I'm in London by the way so just sure so you're in London okay good um well day one this is a long process there it's a very long process actually it's gonna stretch into July by all accounts and there's gonna be a break of at least a month in the midst of this thing at the request of the American prosecutors just

[01:05] because they say they can't remain in London for such a long stretch they're gonna have to come back here and regroup I find that to be very odd but I do think that that the fact that it's scheduled for such a long period of time is a good thing for Julian because it's going to give the defence I think ample opportunity to get a lot of facts into the record about the American prison system that otherwise would have been overlooked or ignored I think that's a good thing well what

[01:35] would be the top number one fact about the American prison system that they need meat in them well it's what Neal's Melser has been saying the special the UN special record tour for for torture that the u.s. practice of solitary confinement meets the definition of torture at the United Nations and and there's a precedent there are actually several precedents in British jurisprudence where prisoners have been where the courts have refused to extradite British prisoners to the

[02:06] United States because they would be subjected to solitary confinement so fingers crossed I was I was not in the courtroom I don't hold a press card so I can't be journalists inside so I was outside with the people protesting and well there was some Brits there were some people from London a Norwegian guy Dennis got me from Holland and then the French showed up yeah I heard it was like a hundred of 50 well we call them the yellow vests and they they're the

[02:38] heroes of the day days but they arrived in Oh somewhere in the morning and they did stop singing until the court was surface recessed and banging defenses and everything and that was weird heard also in in the courtrooms now I just finished talking to a member of European Parliament market a Geiger OVA as he's here as an observer and he said well there weren't seats reserved for me as a European Parliament member but I got in line and I and and I was one of

[03:09] the first people in I didn't know where to go so I asked when was she here the guys and he said well yeah courtroom too so she went there was empty set down and as he stayed sitting there until the room filled up as he was in there she wasn't supposed to be the stories this stories he told from the courtroom is that the audio system was off so the microphones weren't working so even people in the room couldn't hear what the judge was saying now Asajj was sitting behind a plastic wall thingy so he had trouble hearing his own courts

[03:39] this mess that I just described is that common in United States also no no it's funny to me that they had him behind a plexiglass shield the British do that for some reason not all the time but sometimes that's something that's just unheard of in the United States and in the u.s. even if the system even if the power were out and I've never heard of anything like that happening you're in such close proximity to each other that

[04:09] you can still hear what's going on the handful of times that I've been in courtrooms you didn't even really need a microphone you're so close to one another that you can hear everything but you know this I have to say this doesn't surprise me at all it sounds like more of a circus sideshow than it does an actual legal hearing yeah so so it's it's amateurism if that's what you're saying that's what it sounds like to me you think they would have tested the

[04:41] sound system at first on a case like this earlier so the impression that I got is and here's a little lead-up to a more serious question you have the French and me and the other guys outside banging defenses cheering cheering Freedom of Information cheering the right for publishers to publish right cheering let this our street so that's this the one party in this and on the other end you have the party that

[05:12] wants him extradited and in the middle there's the actual courtroom with Asajj now I would I would the word victim might be out of context here but he's sitting in the middle between those two parties with his legal team up against the American prosecutors and I'm a Christian to you is who in United States wants him extradited end of the line really the only the only people the only organization that is even talking about extradition is the US Justice Department certainly there's no

[05:44] movement among the American populace demanding the head of Julian Assange I said in an earlier interview that at least 95 percent of Americans have never heard of Julian Assange they don't follow these issues they don't pay any attention to the news or to the case this is an act by the US Department of Justice to try to prosecute a journalist to try to prosecute a publisher and so that's where that's the driving force here it's not the American public demanding that someone pay for example

[06:14] for releasing classified information the truth of the matter here Rico is that oh did I lose you there you are not for a second this the truth of the matter is that that Julian Assange blew the whistle on American war crimes it is illegal in this country to classify a crime if something is a crime by definition it cannot be classified and the American people have the right to know what their what their government is doing in their name Julian assigns released that information that's a

[06:45] public service it's not a crime so so Justice Department is the Justice Department and an extension of the current administration in the White House or is that disconnect it there well in a way but in a way most of these prosecutors are career prosecutors there are the same people that were prosecuting cases under Barack Obama and under george w bush before him so i don't think it's so much ideological as it is institutional and and it's it's the the professional prosecutors at the

[07:16] justice department who are looking for his scalp okay okay now what i understand from the court documents is that the kriste is based solely on what's happened in the Afghan locks Afghan war logs and irregular war logs so the stuff Chelsea Manning leaked beckoned and it was published in 2010 so why wasn't the later stuff included there do you think like 47 what was also through WikiLeaks

[07:47] yeah my guess is that they're holding that information in reserve in case they they do get him here and he is somehow acquitted of the the leaks in the Afghan and Iraq war logs they have that in reserve to charge him with new crimes afterwards it sounds like it's personal I'm gonna ask you again who is the who's the person is there a person that has a personal issue with the Sarge or is it an institutional personal thing yeah I think it's I think it's institutional I

[08:19] think it's the the Justice Department's National Security Division I think it's the prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia and certainly the judges in the Eastern District of Virginia and then you had this this completely gung-ho Attorney General now former attorney general in Jeff Sessions who got them who got the wheels moving in the first place William bar William bar is not Jeff Sessions his job is to protect the president as he sees it and putting Julian Assange in prison I think is going to help with with the Republican

[08:51] base okay we'll talk about Republican base there's a as seen from this side of the Atlantic there's a disconnect between the DNC and the Trump group it just is so you say ninety five percent of Americans may not have heard of the asan story but is there a similar disconnect between the other five percent and the general population look like really apart yeah there is there is because there are a lot of Democrats who blame Julian Assange personally for

[09:22] giving us Donald Trump they believe that that his release of the DNC emails in the in the weeks before the 2016 election guaranteed Donald Trump's victory and they just will not forgive him for that yeah but did the previous question URL so there was so it's Justice Department it's not it's not the DNC thing that that's involved in this case right yes well the DNC doesn't have the authority to do something but my point really is that that you know

[09:53] Democrats ought to be Julian Assange is natural constituency here it should be Democrats and progressives who are in the streets demanding that Julian be released and it's not it's not in this case I mean those of us who are true progressives yes we're the ones that in the streets we're the ones marching to the White House and marching to the Justice Department but run-of-the-mill Democrats no because they blame him for Donald Trump okay so what's what what's going on in Washington today what's there in a

[10:24] demonstration yeah there's a demonstration right now as we speak let me actually look to see what time it is it's two o'clock so I'm sorry it's evening yes it's evening in London two hours ago the demonstration began at the White House it moved on to the Trump International Hotel and from there it went just another couple blocks down the street to the Department of Justice to the attorney general's office they're gonna continue doing that every day this week just to keep up the pressure and it's a variety of progressive groups and

[10:55] transparency groups okay yeah which I identify as Democrats then or is that know talked about yeah no actually I know all of the speakers and and no they don't identify as Democrats they identify as either independence or greens because they believe like I do that the Democratic Party is so similar to and consistent with the Republican Party that there's really not much of a difference between the two people are thinking that's gonna might even split

[11:26] even after these elections you say I would not be surprised by that at all and on the other side note you see Clinton coming into the game again or no you against her you know I I loathe Hillary Clinton I think Hillary Clinton was one of those dangerous political figures of the last generation but the rumor is that she might agree to be vice president under Mike Bloomberg we just have to keep our fingers crossed that we

[11:57] don't trade one corrupt billionaire for another corrupt billionaire and you know I for one am I love Bernie Sanders I'm going to proudly vote for Bernie Sanders in two weeks and it looks like he has enough momentum to put everybody else away but that's not to say that the Democratic National Committee won't steal this thing from him at the Democratic convention again exactly as an aside looking back at 2016 Bernie

[12:29] Sanders won the the West Virginia primary and the Colorado caucus won handily and didn't get a single delegate in either one of those states Hillary Clinton got all the delegates that's not democracy that's theft and we're afraid of happening again exactly does will be my prediction so as seen from this side of the Atlantic that's happen again and that's gonna breed a breakup of Democratic Party yeah and Trump's gonna win anyway another question I just told

[13:02] you I'm gonna talk to ya well it's in the future so I hope it's gonna pull through but I'm about to talk to John McAfee yes all right so he's the guy to the event it's one of the first antivirus products now he claims there no such thing as computer privacy or encryption everything that works will have has been compromised oh I believe he's taken a different approach then at Snowden who says well if you do properly

[13:33] encryption works what's your take on that well I'm not a computer expert but I've been in touch with that Snowden and Bill Binney and Tom Drake and Kirk Wiebe and guys who are computer experts and they tell me that if the encryption is sophisticated enough if the key is sophisticated enough that it can work the danger though is that it's intercepted before you encrypt it so if so if NSA for example is spying on you or the FBI or CIA are spying on you and

[14:03] they're able to target your computer as you're typing your message before you hit the encryption key then they've got you yeah and so it's it's far less safe and far less reliable than most people realize I think so only a week or two weeks ago by now in the news was that a Swiss company crypto AG right you've got that story oh yes so yeah I'm asking a former CIA employee but it was did you know about that back in the day was this common no no no no this was highly

[14:36] classified highly compartmentalized you know I was in a senior position of the CIA and I I had no idea I gave an interview about this last week to a Russian Network and it was really one of the funniest interviews I've ever given and I didn't mean for it to be funny but this woman was asking me very loaded questions like is anybody going to be prosecuted for this and I said no but I think several people will probably win medals for it there's there's a wildly successful operation it's not viewed as a crime it's you it's viewed as something heroic and patriotic and she

[15:09] said but it's it's not honest to do something like this and I said no it's it's intelligence it's an intelligence operation it's not supposed to be honest it's not supposed to be fair it's not supposed to make for a level playing field this is something that intelligence services do all around the world yeah but still it is supposed to be in a general public interest on to Arnold I mean there's yummy I mean why else are we spending like it wrong why else are we spending our tax money all the time well this is

[15:40] in the public interest it's in the US public interest for the CIA to crack the codes of every other country in the world very much in the public interest yes I'm here the reason that I'm here is this like like soul searching searching for the soul and United Kingdom in London and be activists here who shows up into journalists who show up politicians and and to see if Asajj has any chance at all on a fair trial and then the microphones don't work should they want

[16:10] and the microphones don't work yeah so you know one thing I'm worried about too is let's say Julian let's say that the judge denies the US government's request to extradite Julian that's going to be seen as a huge victory but then what happens Julian is an Australian citizen he just recently in the last year or so had his Australian passport renewed so he has a current passport if he's then

[16:41] expelled from the United Kingdom and sent to Australia the US will just ask the Australians to extradite him it would be so much better if he were allowed to leave for Russia or if there were a country that would be willing to brought provide him with asylum because I don't think that he would be safe if he wins and he's expelled to Australia how I don't know do United Kingdom legal system but if you don't get extradited

[17:12] you don't get expelled do you I mean do you do sure you do because he's not a British citizen he doesn't have a right to remain in Britain no doesn't he have the right to choose his own plane on which he leaves I would hope so that's really the big question I would hope so so here's an or say you know unless they escort him to the airport and just put him on the first plane to to Melbourne Sydney France maybe I mean that would be great I heard he addressed asylum there yeah I heard the same thing okay last question

[17:43] that I have for you I prepared for you you're aware you're familiar with a software product called secure drop I assume so I was not and I still don't know did the workings of it exactly but on a higher level if you're a whistleblower you have some stuff that you want to expose to media you would volunteer it to your drop and that mechanism would land it to the media without there being connection between me and the material that I'm leaking right that's security yes okay yes and

[18:14] if you go to various media outlets in United States you go to the websites you might find secure drop on there as one of the means to to get the information for them yes I got that right and it was built among others Assange was one of the people getting that system working correct Aaron Swartz was on there so these would be totally independent people trying to get that system to work okay my question is there's not a product product as well and that was global eeks that's also a

[18:45] software product that was adopted maybe among other parties but by a Dutch organization pop leaks publics is using the global leaks offer and does the same thing and I just described have you heard about publics before no there's this is the first time I've heard of it okay well my question to you is if you find the time and you know people I want to know if I can how how I should weigh publics as compared to secure drop Oh

[19:16] most definitely bill Binney and and Tom Drake give you a detailed answer on that I will connect it wonderful better I'm gonna connect to them excellent okay oh yeah yeah before I hang up on this phone in the Netherlands we have a law it's called yeah in Dutch house phone clock allowed us home of whistleblowers now that law sounds

[19:47] really great like some laws tend to do so that's like a safe place built into law where whistle blows can go so they don't have to leak to the press how cool is that we don't need the Fourth Estate because in that safe and secure house of his Louis all things are and you get even get a so kind of a whistleblower certificates that you're a real one so you're protected that rep I can form a Secret Service person in a Netherlands is on the on their board that kind of an organization so they're about to

[20:17] evaluate that law and how it frictions and well it doesn't really function that well my question break if you were to build an NGO and if you would get a law in that would fund that NGO through the tax money let's let's let's just dream that that would be reality someday who would be the people deciding on who's on the board of such NGO how would we get an abort and an organization protecting

[20:50] whistleblowers and their rights so that it's not corrupted well actually such an organization already exists it's called blueprint for free speech it's based in Australia and the board members are mostly academics and some of them are transparency and privacy activists I've worked with them for years and they've been able to write draft legislation draft whistleblower protection legislation and marketed around the world so they hired me in 2015 to help

[21:21] the Greek government write a new whistleblower protection law we wrote it in 2015 it was finally passed into law in 2018 and then a version of it was adopted by the European Parliament for for implementation in the European Union it's not perfect of course because it had to go through so many different layers of amendments and in writing and rewriting and it had to be approved by all the different countries but they've had success in places like Canada and

[21:52] Zambia and Jamaica and Ukraine pushing this whistleblower protection legislation it's it's hard work and it's a very long and drawn-out process but it actually works in the end in in most places that are serious about that kind of legislation well the United disunited I was going to say to your P Union that they're not so so United as they'd like to be but European Union has a whistleblower directive that thing is supposed to be passed into law into

[22:23] various Member States yes one of the it's watered down right so that what's really asking it also the restrictions that does not apply to is Brussels itself so nice it's like a Buddhist the United States but not for Washington that's kind of a whistle blow it was and that and that's how every piece of legislation is here Congress is automatically exempt from coverage like for example OSHA the Occupational Safety and Health Act Congress doesn't have to observe any of it they exempt themselves

[22:54] from coverage same thing all over but okay you were involved with the thing from Australia and it definitely kind of research into that yeah to your knowledge were they involved in any way with the Dutch a law or evaluation is taking place now um I don't know but I can tell you that the that the founder and director of blueprint for free speech is dr. Salette Dreyfus who was the co-founder of WikiLeaks with Julian

[23:25] she's serious about transparency okay you've given me fantastic information John great to talk to you again my pleasure good to talk to you take care of it bye-bye speaking of I yes we Came we saw he died every nation in every region now has a decision to make decision you think I'm joking

[24:01] predator drunks you will never see it coming [Music] knocks down the big Canadian over [Music]
