Title: 环球时报 Global Times
Show: Global Times (环球时报)
Date: 2023-05-30
URL: https://youtu.be/88S43X0oUpE
Duration: 8:00

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[00:00] [Music] foreign [Music]

[00:41] when you blew the whistle what was your consideration and what happened to you next in 2002 we captured Abu zubeda at uh at a safe house in faisalabad Pakistan we believed at the time that Abu zubaida was the third ranking person in Al Qaeda that turned out to not be true although he was a bad man he was not the terrorist Mastermind that we thought he was that was in March of 2002 in August of 2002 the CIA began

[01:13] torturing him at a secret site and I objected to it I objected to it inside the CIA I was told to mind my own business that the decision had already been made there was nothing anybody could do to stop it or to change it and I should just move on but I knew that there were other people inside the CIA who were making the same complaints that I was and I expected them I expected somebody to go public

[01:43] that didn't happen a year and a half later I resigned from the CIA and went into the public sector I'm sorry into the private sector and again I I waited for somebody to come out and say something and that just never happened finally in December of 2007 I got a call from an American journalist quite a famous American journalist who had questions about the torture of Abu zubaida and I decided that I was

[02:13] going to just tell the truth and go public I actually probably naively did not expect the Fallout that resulted but the most important part of that is when I blew the whistle in December of 2007 the bush FBI began investigating me and they investigated me for a full year

[02:44] from December of 2007 to December of 2008. and then they decided that I had not committed a crime and they closed the investigation then Barack Obama became president three weeks later and they secretly reopened the case against me and so they investigated me for three more years and then finally arrested me in 2012. you wrote a letter to Snowden 10 years

[03:16] ago when he made the Revelation you suggested him what to do and wished him best luck why did you do that did you get any feedback from him as soon as he made his Revelations I realized how important he was this was a huge story and we wouldn't have known that the government was spying on us if Snowden hadn't told us so I I wanted to write him a letter

[03:46] because I knew from that very moment that he was going to go through exactly the same experience that I was going through and I didn't want him to make the mistakes that I had made so I wrote him actually two letters I wrote him a letter that was public and then I wrote him a private letter that a friend of ours delivered to him and I told him to embrace support wherever he could find it especially on Capitol Hill

[04:20] I told him to not trust anybody anybody because everyone is a potential FBI source and I told him to hire the best lawyers money could buy in fact I recommended that he hire my lawyers which he did in in most aspects it worked out well for him to him I've talked to him many times uh you know he said something that was

[04:50] very interesting he he was willing to go to prison he was willing to come back and face trial and go to prison he told me he was willing to to serve 20 years in prison but what he wanted to do and this is what the the lawyers were trying to negotiate with the justice department he wanted to be able to stand up in court and explain why he did what he did and the justice department said never and he said then I won't come back

[05:23] and so he didn't how do you think of his whistleblowing action what commonalities do you have his his whistleblowing was absolutely critical we had no idea that the that NSA was spying on us we had no idea that the FBI was using that information without court orders or warrants to spy on us so I think he's a bona fide hero I

[05:54] think that the country owes him a great debt of of thanks and gratitude for what he did to you and um the last time I talked to him like through Skype was three years ago January it was right before covid started and um now it's through Twitter that's how he does most of his communication

[06:25] through Twitter direct messages he's an intensely private person um he doesn't think he did anything that was particularly unusual he's wrong about that of course but he wants to be just a normal man who's living his life with his wife and his children that's that's really what he wants he money's not important to him and um he just wants to get his truth out there 10 years on

[06:57] CE Lakes brought in terms of you as spying Behavior around the world they've intensified their behavior you know we we've had Revelations now on multiple occasions for example that this that the NSA was intercepting Angela merkel's cell phone okay that's that's big news she was one of our closest allies when the information was first revealed Hillary Clinton went to Germany and apologized and then we did it again

[07:29] the problem there is if you look at American public opinion most Americans want the CIA and the NSA to spy on foreign leaders even our friends uh at the very least we we can learn what they're intending to do in trade negotiations at the very most maybe it can disrupt some sort of an attack you know if it's an unfriendly country so in terms of spying around the world the American people love it and they

[08:01] want more of it in terms of spying domestically that is very specifically illegal these intelligence services are not allowed to spy on Americans and they do it anyway and so what snowden's leaks have have caused and this is really not enough but what they've caused is Congress is

[08:32] now watching more closely and exercising better oversight
