Title: Julian Assange and the U.S. War on Whistleblowers with John Kiriakou
Show: CovertAction Bulletin
Date: 2022-05-04
URL: https://covertactionmagazine.com/
Duration: 40:00

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[00:00] Welcome to Covert Action Bulletin, the official podcast and radio program of Covert Action Magazine, where we've been exposing the covert action of the U.S. government and plutocrats worldwide since 1978. I'm your host Rachel Who. And I'm your host Chris Garrafa and we're very happy to be here with you for today's Bulletin. You can hear this program live Wednesdays at 9 a.m. on 99.5 FM in New York City or you can subscribe to the podcast to listen anytime by searching Covert Action Bulletin

[00:34] on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're really happy to provide early access to this podcast to all of our patrons. So a big thank you to all of our patrons who support us every week. They make this podcast possible. We're also excited to offer early access to interviews and even just exclusive interviews just for our patrons. And you can do that by becoming a patron at Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com backslash covert action magazine. That's Patreon dot com backslash covert action magazine.

[01:07] We're really excited to be joined today by John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst and case officer and a member of the editorial board of Covert Action Magazine. John, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Rachel. It's great to have you on because we wanted to talk about the case, of course, of Julian Assange. This is one of, you know, one of the most famous globally whistleblower cases. There's a movement all across the world, not just in the US and in the UK, but there are folks on every, you know, in every continent.

[01:40] There I've seen rallies just really everywhere from Australia to Canada and in Africa and Latin America calling for Assange's release and his freedom. And of course, I think many of our listeners are going to know about the case of even following Covert Action for a while. But just as a refresher, really basic, you know, we know that Julian Assange has been held in the UK now for quite some time and had to, you know, be basically on the run before that for a while for, effectively, you know, for publishing documents on WikiLeaks.

[02:15] And these documents expose so many of the Covert actions of the United States government, just the leaks that came out and the information that we saw just in some of the State Department cables alone. I think about how, you know, Hillary Clinton's State Department was pushing for a lower minimum wage and Haiti, you know, just things like that and just how they have been, you know, pushing the EU in particular to move against some of its own members and certainly against Russia.

[02:46] And every time something happens now, I always try to go back and look at WikiLeaks and see what did we learn years ago from WikiLeaks that we can apply to this situation now to give context. But, John, you've been, I think, uniquely following this case and in some ways involved because of your own history. And I, you know, we'll certainly get to that and we want to hear about that too. But talk about what Assange means to you and what this whole case means to you. What's unique about it for you?

[03:20] Wow, where does one even begin with Julian Assange? You know, Julian Assange, even if you don't believe that Julian Assange is a journalist, you have to at least acknowledge that he's a publisher. And one of the things that I think is so important that most people either don't know or refuse to recognize is that WikiLeaks has never, ever in all the years of its existence had to issue a correction, had to retract something that it published,

[03:56] or had to apologize for making a mistake. It's never had to do that. One of my mantras, Chris, is the American people own the information that Julian Assange is accused of leaking. The American people have a right to know what the government is doing in their name. And especially if what the government is doing is illegal, right?

[04:26] We have, we have a law in this country making it illegal to classify a crime. It's never been enforced. But if the government is doing something that is clearly illegal, they are not permitted by law to classify that program in order to keep its existence or its revelations from the American people. Well, without Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, we wouldn't have known that our government was involved in crimes against humanity or in war crimes.

[04:59] We wouldn't know what Hillary Clinton was doing in Libya or Syria or Somalia. And you know, even down lower on a human level, let me tell you one short story. And I hope that this helps to humanize what it is that WikiLeaks does for us. I have a very dear friend by the name of Brad Birkenfeld. Brad is a famed whistleblower from UBS, the big Swiss bank.

[05:31] He blew the whistle on money laundering and income tax evasion by very, very wealthy Americans, 19,000 of the wealthiest people in America. And he came back to the United States on vacation with thumb drives proving that the richest Americans were illegally avoiding paying income taxes. He was much to his shock. He was prosecuted even though he was able to make a case where the U.S.

[06:05] was able to recoup 10 billion dollars in back income taxes, unpaid income taxes. The Justice Department prosecuted him and sent him to prison for three and a half years. Why? Why prosecute the whistleblower? Why send him to prison for three and a half years? Brad never had any idea why this happened until Julian Assange and WikiLeaks issued that that tranche of documents from Chelsea Manning.

[06:36] And what he found was this, Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, sent an email, I'm sorry, sent a cable, a diplomatic cable, to the president of Switzerland saying, hey, listen, we have these Uyghur prisoners in Guantanamo. We want to release them. We need to find countries to take them. We're going to send two to Albania. We're going to send two to Tahiti.

[07:06] And we want Switzerland to take two Uyghurs. And the president of Switzerland wrote back and said, yeah, we're not going to do that. We don't want any Chinese Uyghurs in Switzerland. And Hillary wrote back and said, yeah, we really want you to take these Uyghurs. And the Swiss wrote back and said, arrest Brad Birkenfeld and we'll take them. And Hillary responded, done. And Brad Birkenfeld was arrested and prosecuted.

[07:38] The guy ended up winning a massive lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the Justice Department. But he wasn't able to collect on it until he was finally released from prison. Well, we wouldn't have any idea that it was Hillary Clinton that started that whole legal process against Brad Birkenfeld to silence yet another whistleblower had it not been for Julian Assange.

[08:08] Now that's on a human level, on a big, broad policy level. We only know about these war crimes against the Reuters journalists, for example. War crimes committed by the American military in Iraq, thanks to Julian Assange. We only know the Vault 7 revelations that the CIA has the capability of hacking into your smart TV or hacking into your car to make you drive over a cliff or drive into a tree or whatever it is, thanks to Julian Assange.

[08:42] So we should be celebrating Julian Assange, not wishing for his prosecution, not demanding his extradition to the United States, and certainly not putting him on trial, a foreign national, by the way, on trial for violating the Espionage Act. No, John, absolutely. Without a doubt, just perfectly said. I mean, I think it's really important and I appreciate you going through the specifics of what we know. I mean, the way that we talk today about surveillance, just at all, is so profoundly

[09:14] shaped and informed by the information that we've been given by Assange and by WikiLeaks. And there's no way to even think about, you know, as activists, especially, too, so much of what we're fighting up against, which we're pushing back against, we only know about any of this because of Assange. So it's just, it really is everybody, everybody who cares in this country at all about not just civil liberties as a concept, but just our ability to survive, live, and fight for what's right has to care about Assange's case. I mean, one of the things I'm curious to hear more from

[09:46] you about, too, is some of the particularities that really get me, and I'm wondering your thoughts on this. I mean, the fact that Assange is being charged for the first time in the 100-year history of the Espionage Act, that the that he's actually being charged with espionage and being prosecuted for publishing truthful information specifically he's being charged for he's gonna be he's being prosecuted for publishing truthful information in particular i think it's just important to really underline that that it's just disconcerting to me that this is how he's being tried and he's not even

[10:19] he's not even from the united states so it's crazy no he's under no obligation to protect american classified documents no obligation at all and he did this is the sort of the crux of the of the justice department's case they they alleged that he instructed chelsea manning to bring out these documents that is absolutely untrue chelsea manning has testified to this he was he was not even in a position to instruct chelsea manning to remove these documents

[10:54] you know i was doing a what was it it was the zoom call with a couple of night ridder journalists and both retired now and one of the one of the participants asked them why haven't you guys said anything about juliana sanj it's obvious that you use juliana sanj's information right in your own reporting you're the ones that that reported on these war crimes in iraq why have you been silent on juliana sanj and they looked at each other and then one of them said

[11:29] we believe juliana sanj is not a journalist he's an activist and the guy said well even if you believe that he's an activist you have to you have to acknowledge that he's a publisher and then the other one said he's an activist and we don't want to talk about it anymore and that was just painful to me because it's it's clear to me as it's clear to you that to the the two of you that this is a very slippery slope if we criminalize journalism if

[12:00] we criminalize the exposure of information that's in the public interest then what's to stop the justice department from arresting the washington post-national security correspondent or the new york times right or the la times now we've we've gotten ourselves in a in a position in this country where you've got national national security um journalists like kandelinian who frankly is in the pocket of the cia uh we know that because of a freedom of information

[12:35] act request that was done by jason leopold of buzzfeed where he asked for all um emails between the cia's office of public affairs and national security journalists and what they ended up providing showed that kandelinian who's the chief national security correspondent for nbc news and msnbc was sending his articles to the cia for clearance before he sent them to his own editor well listen it's not journalism if you take a cia press release and gist it and then put your name

[13:10] at the top in the byline that's not journalism that's certainly not investigative journalism i would argue that that's not national security journalism so is the idea that that's all that the that the national security state will approve of and if you actually develop sources inside the cia the nsa the nsc the pentagon and publish that information are you going to be prosecuted next are you the one who uh who is going to be in the dock at the eastern district

[13:44] of virginia next and i don't understand why every journalist in washington isn't asking himself or herself that question for sure i mean who gets to define journalism i mean that's so much of what comes up here is just what is this definition the fact that they're saying that jason just not a journalist well what is the definition of journalism and i think what you've laid out here is in some ways to me what i feel that the status quo with the system is saying is journalism and journalism approved by the cia and that's just all that counts

[14:15] right and ason sheet does not have a track record of editorializing what's on wiki works he's got his opinions and he occasionally talks about that but he actually is very cautious to not editorialize anything that is officially published by wiki leaks i mean if that's you know that's better journalism than the new york times at cnn and so many others but i'm glad we're talking about this in the context of journalism right because this is you know we are an independent outlet here uh at covert action you know going since the 70s we had

[14:48] lee camp on a few weeks ago on this show and we talked with him right after rt america was shut down and you know he has this you know idea that and i think it's fully believable and maybe one day there'll be a whistleblower or some someone who exposes this that there was a suggestion gently from the state department to rt america that you know what you can't operate here anymore or something's going to you know people are going to be arrested we're going to raid your offices and whatnot and i think that's a fully possible you know situation

[15:21] that that happened and it's just this chilling effect of the war on whistleblowers on publishing especially in the digital age when it is so easy or it should be easy to publish what it is you're looking for you know what it is you have and what you're the information you you want to share um and of course you know verifiably as wiki leaks is but we see not just the u.s government but also on its behalf uh companies like facebook and twitter and youtube you know there was a time when you couldn't share links to wiki leaks

[15:55] on some social media sites it would say you can't share this and so you know how do you see john because you're you also do media you're a host on radio sputnik and i you know listen to your show often um and you have you know many really important guests on and you talk about extremely important things with your co-host and what what is your feeling as somebody who works in media it in terms of like the the implications of the assange case oh yeah the implications i think are monumental i really do in the immediate aftermath of the

[16:26] chelsea manning uh revelations this i was working at the time on the staff of the senate foreign relations committee i was the senior investigator there and the senate security officer went from office to office to office it took him days to go to every the office of every one of the hundred senators and then every one of the committees and subcommittees and said you may not access any of this information on a us senate computer it would constitute the crime

[16:56] of unauthorized access of classified information they threatened everybody with prosecution and so nobody dared go to the wiki leaks website well of course we're all news hounds so we all watched the the news coverage and we see exactly what it was that uh that was released 99% of the information that was released they were just regular normal diplomatic cables they meant nothing this diplomat went to the foreign ministry and delivered a demarge or a white

[17:33] paper or we asked this country to support our nominee for the international board of fisheries or whatever just normal diplomatic nonsense one percent of it was interesting important exposed crimes did it harm the national security i think we can say definitively after all these years absolutely not and beyond that i'm going to repeat myself here the american people have the right to know what the government is doing in their name and if

[18:07] what they're doing is against the law it's a violation of either us or international law not only do the american people have the right to know but those crimes ought to be prosecuted so again we should be thanking julien assange we should be celebrating him for showing us what our government is doing in our in our name certainly john you know i'm wondering what you're thinking about this but i kind of wonder in talking about assange's case it just brings me

[18:41] to this greater picture that i see which is that this that assange's case is one of many in the long standing war on whistleblowers in the united states i mean it's just without a doubt and i i would be curious to hear from you your own experiences as a whistleblower and and what you feel in connecting all these pieces together kind of when when the united states when the ci when the security state really began this war i mean how would when would you say i articulate this is the beginning even though there's obviously no set particularity

[19:12] there are pieces there the earlier parts and what we can look to to understand this moment yes you know what let's start off by talking about the espionage act the espionage act was passed into law in 1917 to combat german saboteurs during the first world war um it was uh updated just by technicality uh just after the the uh julius and ethyl rozenberg executions in 1950 uh the espionage act does not mention classified information

[19:50] because the classification system had not yet been invented so it only talks about national defense information but it never defines what national defense information is. So what is it? It's whatever the Justice Department says it is. Well, between 1917 and 2009, three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking with the media, right? Three. In all those years, 1917 to 2009, one of those famously was Eugene V. Debs,

[20:25] the founder of the American Socialist Party who ran for prison, sorry, ran for president from prison and got something like 50,000 votes, 100,000 votes a lot. He was in prison on espionage charges because he gave a speech saying that he opposed U.S. entry into World War One, right? That's espionage. In 2009, Barack Obama became president. And Barack

[20:58] Obama in his eight years as president charged eight more Americans under the espionage act for speaking to the media nearly three times the number of all U.S. presidents combined. Uh, that was not an accident. When Obama first became president, friends of mine who were working at the White House and at the CIA described to me knock down drag out fights taking place

[21:29] in the National Security Council. Obama was furious about leaks. The way it was described to me was that Obama had a Nixonian obsession with leaks and he was being egged on by John Brennan, who at the time was the deputy national security advisor and then became director of the CIA. And so this is, this was music to Brennan's ears. This allowed Brennan to go after anybody he wanted. And so in those eight short years, eight of us were arrested and charged

[22:06] under the espionage act. Let me make one other point too that I think is very important. Espionage is one of the greatest crimes with which an American can be charged. And in many cases it carries with it the death penalty. So can you imagine giving an interview to ABC News, which is what I did, and being charged with a death penalty crime? That's America in the 21st century. And you know, it's not just, it's not just Barack Obama.

[22:37] When Donald Trump was elected, you know, of course I was as anti-Trump as anybody else was, but when Donald Trump was elected, I gave an interview to Mint Press News. And they had interviewed me, they interviewed Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower, they interviewed Jesslyn Radek, the Justice Department whistleblower, and they asked all of us the same question, are things going to get better or worse under Donald Trump? And I said, I was the only one who said this and I was foolish and wrong in retrospect. But I said, I can't imagine

[23:10] a scenario where anything could be worse than Barack Obama. I can't imagine that Donald Trump would be worse. And then Donald Trump was worse. The only thing that saved us from Trump was the fact that he was only in office for four years. I'll add one other thing too. Trump had this weird fascination with Julian and by extension with Ed Snowden. And so for my own part, I hired a

[23:41] Republican lobbyist to try to get me a pardon. For whatever reason, the White House staff put Julian, Ed Snowden and I together. And in the final days of the Trump administration, you remember it was a period of chaos. The January 6th insurrection had just taken place. Trump was on trial in the Senate after being impeached for the second time by the House of Representatives. And in those final days of the Trump administration, the staff sent pardon

[24:20] requests from Julian, Ed and me together as a group. That if we were to be pardoned, he was going to pardon the three of us together. Someone, we don't know who, we'll never know who, told Mitch McConnell. And Mitch McConnell flipped out like the way that could do that he is and called the president and said, if you pardon Julian Assange and Ed Snowden,

[24:50] I'm sure he had never heard of me. You will lose the vote in the Senate and you will be convicted. You'll lose every Republican Senator. And so at the very last minute, Trump killed the pardon that would have freed all three of us. And that was the end of it. He's not going to get that kind of treatment. Julian's not going to get that kind of treatment from Joe Biden. Yeah, speaking of Donald Trump, right after the Vault 7 leaks,

[25:24] it turns out that the CIA director Mike Pompeo and others in the administration were actually pushing Donald Trump to assassinate Julian Assange for publishing those leaks. That's right. And there's background to that. The first time that a covert action program was proposed to either kidnap or murder Julian Assange was by John Brennan in the last two years of the Obama administration. And then with Pompeo as CIA director, just after Brennan left

[26:00] the position, it took on sort of a new life. Now, what you're talking about, Chris, is an article that appeared in Yahoo News in which they interviewed, count them 36 current and former intelligence officers. This isn't just some renegade CIA person calling it in a tip. This was real investigative journalism. And what the plan was was to flush Julian out

[26:33] of the Ecuadorian embassy to attempt to kidnap him and render him to the United States for trial or if he resisted to shoot and kill him. An agreement apparently had been made between the CIA and the British MI6 that the Brits would be the ones to do the actual killing. But the CIA said, and this is very common in CIA operational planning, you have to have scenario A, B, C and D, that were he to be rescued by the Russians and bundled onto a Russian government

[27:07] plane, in which case he would be treated as like a diplomatic pouch would be treated. You can't mess with it. The CIA was going to shoot the tires out of the Russian plane and create an international incident to keep it from taking off so they could snatch Julian. Well, I would have to ask then, how in the world this guy is going to get a fair trial? We're the ones who are trying to murder him. I just don't understand how this can even be allowed

[27:42] to stand. And I hope that that his attorneys and I know his attorneys, both in the UK and in the US, and these are some of the finest legal minds that money can buy. I hope that they're able to use this to their, to their advantage and win his freedom. It's, it's so outrageous to me. I just can't even contemplate it. For sure, John. I kind of feel like the lengths at which, I mean, just there's so much of this, but the lengths that they would go, the lengths that they would go to be able to capture Julian

[28:17] Assange and potentially assassinate him speaks volumes. I mean, he's a journalist. That's all he's doing is just putting out there, as you've said, the information that we all have the right to know. So it says a lot to me about internally what the priorities of this government really are. I mean, the price of this government to keep all of its dirty laundry safe and to keep the status quo as it is to keep the system operating and functioning in the interest of really a small tiny portion of the population of the wealthy. It really isn't for us in any way,

[28:47] shape or form. And I think sending that message to the world to journalists around the globe and to activists too, around the country and around the globe, that if you in any way, shape or form, expose the truth of what the U.S. does, this will be what happens to you. I think the unrelenting nature of it to me kind of speaks that. It's just really that is the message being sent. And I am curious, John, you were exposed. I mean, you exposed the U.S. torture program and you were the only one who went to jail for it. And so for you,

[29:18] also seeing this with Assange as well, I mean, what's your own kind of gut reaction on your own case? And if you could speak a bit more on your experiences through the process that you went through and everything after exposing the torture program. You know what? I can sum up my entire experience in the federal legal system with one thing that my lead attorney said to me. I really believed that I was innocent. And I convinced myself that once I could get in front

[29:54] of a jury, they would realize how ridiculous this was that I had done a public service. I hadn't committed a crime, right? Torture's illegal. I exposed an illegal program. I was convinced that I would be found not guilty. So they made their best and final offer. Two and a half years, I would do 23 months and then have the thing behind me. And I thought about it, not just thought about it. My wife and I stayed up literally all night long,

[30:29] researching this law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. I was the first American charged with this, with this crime. And so there were no precedents. There were two articles from the Harvard Law School Journal saying that the law was probably unconstitutional, but no one ever had standing to challenge it. So I decided I was going to turn this deal down and I was going go to trial. Now I was facing 45 years in prison and they're offering me two and a half.

[31:02] And I said, I'm going for it. I'm innocent. I'm going to prove I'm innocent. My lead attorney who has a reputation for being very difficult to get along with, pulled me aside very angrily and said, you know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage, take the deal. And I realized at that moment

[31:34] that he's right. It's not about justice. It's not about who's right. It's not about public service. It's about accepting the fact that you're screwed and trying to come out of it with the best possible ending. Now Julian hasn't been offered a deal. And so it's up to the rest of us to keep up the pressure on the government. I'm going to say it for the third time. He should be celebrated, not prosecuted. And so it's up to us to keep yelling at the likes of the

[32:11] Washington Post in the New York Times that they're next if this prosecution continues to move forward. You know, another thing that has surprised me is I believed that at the very beginning of the Biden administration that there was an opportunity for the White House or for Merrick Garland to say, you know what? This guy's been effectively imprisoned for the last 12 years. We're just

[32:42] going to declare victory into home. Just walk away from the case. They proved their point. He's suicidal. They've broken him physically. Just declare victory and walk away. But they didn't walk away. They continued to prosecute him or to push for his prosecution. Now into the third presidential administration. I don't understand what the Biden administration thinks they're going to accomplish from this. I just don't get it. If they think that this is

[33:16] going to force people to reconsider the idea of becoming a whistleblower or force people to reconsider sending documents to WikiLeaks, on the contrary, this is what motivates us to cooperate with WikiLeaks, to support Julian Assange, to blow the whistle when we see wrongdoing or waste, fraud, abuse and illegality threats to the public health and public safety, which is the legal definition of whistleblowing. If they think this is going to frighten people

[33:48] away, they're entirely wrong. It's going to motivate us. I definitely agree. I mean, I think even to see this is a different example in a different way, but even to see the whistleblowers that blew the whistle at Wells Fargo, which is kind of a very separate thing, but the Wells Fargo about the kind of predatory loan practices that they were doing. I mean, if it wasn't for them, who knows. I mean, after 2009 and the housing market collapsed and the type of practices that were going on, who knows where as everyday people we could be. I mean, the work of what

[34:22] a whistleblower does, the exposing of the truth is so profoundly important to this country on every way, shape and form. And so I think it's really profound that you say it's not about justice because I think it's important to name that. The system is not a just system. There's no element, frankly, at all, in any way that we could say the United States is a just system. Just look at the Supreme Court. Look at what's going on right now. Even with the fundamental idea of the fact that Donald Trump was president. He did not have a mandate from the people to

[34:54] be president. How can we call that justice in the system that's not built for justice? And as you're talking, I'm thinking also about the case of Leonard Peltier, a political prisoner. He's an old man. He's an old man who, for whatever it's worth, I mean, absolutely is innocent on all levels, but he's an old man. What are they doing keeping him behind bars? And it just goes to show how sick the system is because they want, it isn't even just about punishment. On some level, I have a feeling it's personal. The same way they go after

[35:26] Assata Shakur. I mean, the state troopers in New Jersey have a very personal vendetta. I think there's just something so much deeper. I don't know, like so many things. Yeah. Oh, Mumia too and Philly. I mean, you look at how the cops there respond. Sure. Sure. I don't mean to sound cynical, but you're exactly right. It is personal because they don't get promoted by not prosecuting you. They don't get promoted by not asking for the longest

[35:56] sentence, right? They don't get promoted by advocating for your release from prison. They get promoted by being as tough and mean and strong and ruthless and brutal as they possibly can. Leonard Peltier is a really great example. Not only is he old and in poor health, but he's factually innocent. You know, finally the FBI, after all these years, all these decades,

[36:27] they finally came out and said, well, okay, our analysis now is that he actually didn't fire the shots that killed these two FBI agents. So why in the world is he in prison serving a life sentence? You know, so many of us believed that, that Barack Obama was going to finally, if not pardon him, at least commute a sentence and let him live out his days at home. And that never happened. There was never any interest in his case in the Trump administration. And Joe Biden has issued the fewest number of pardons at this stage of his administration

[37:06] of any president in modern times. He's pardoned three people, two drug dealers and a secret service agent who sold a classified file to a journalist. Nobody else is worthy of a commutation. Even if you don't want to pardon people and formally legally forgive the crime, the least you can do is allow a commutation. I just don't understand it. Yeah, I mean, there are so many people who should have that commutation, who should have that pardon.

[37:38] I think, John, I include you in that list. I think, you know, among many, many others. Thank you, of course. So I wanted to ask, I mean, there are, you know, people know about whistleblowers like Assange, like Ed Snowden, like yourself. But who else should we be paying attention to? Whether people who are currently being prosecuted, historically who have, I mean, of course, we're on covert action. People should go and look up and read on our own website about Philip Agee, the founder of covert action and what happened to him and what he

[38:11] exposed. But who else would you encourage people to be looking at? Oh, that is such a great question and such an important question. I would strongly encourage people to take a look at Daniel Hale right off the bat. Daniel Hale is a young guy, young whistleblower who blew the whistle on the U.S. government's drone program, right? The Pentagon has always maintained that our drones are precision instruments. There are few,

[38:44] if any, civilian victims and Daniel Hale was a drone operator. And he said that is simply not true. We kill civilians all the time, every day. And he told his own story about how he was operating a drone in Afghanistan and the drone is circling over a target automobile

[39:15] and his commanding officer ordered him to fire rather a rocket. And he says, I can see children in the car. And then the guy told him, fire. Well, we're not supposed to fire. There are children in the car. There are no children in the car. I'm looking at the same feed you are, fire. Well, eventually he fired and he killed two little girls. And he said he can never forgive himself. He's a murderer and there's nothing he can do to change that. This happens all the time.

[39:53] You know, we've even killed famously, we killed Anwar Alaki, an American citizen, who was accused, although not formally, not legally, of being associated with Al Qaeda. We killed him using a drone in Yemen. Well, seven days later, we killed his 16-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew who were sitting at a cafe, both children, neither one of whom was ever accused of a crime. And then months after the fact,

[40:26] the US government finally came out and said, oh, our bad, that was a bad strike. Yeah, sorry about that. Well, that's not acceptable. It's illegal, it's murder. And so Daniel Hale is the one who told us about that. Now, Daniel Hale's judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, I went to the sentencing hearing, sentenced him, I think it was to 40 months in prison. And I told Daniel that night, he called me from jail that night and I said,

[40:56] you know what? I said, when the judge issued the sentence, I was sitting with Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower, and Tom and I hugged each other when we heard 40 months because the government was asking for years and years and years, but 40 months is not even really 40 months. You get 15% off for good behavior, right? That brings you down to 34 months. And then you get six months of home confinement and you get another six months of halfway house time.

[41:32] Daniel had a problem with alcohol. If you can enroll in what's called the RDAP program, Residential Alcohol and Drug Program, they take another 12 months off your sentence. I said, dude, you're gonna do less than two years. So what did they do to screw him? Which is, you know, they just has a matter of policy. They screw every whistleblower in prison. The judge ordered that he be sent to a low security prison at Butner, North Carolina. That Butner is the national,

[42:02] it's the Bureau of Prisons National Prison Hospital Complex where Daniel could get treatment for very severe PTSD as you might have guessed, and also for an alcohol problem. One of the things that I learned the hard way is that when the judge makes an order like that, it's not really an order, it's a suggestion. And it's usually ignored by the Bureau of Prisons. So where did they send Daniel? They sent him to the super max penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

[42:34] He's living in the cell that John Gotti died in. On his cell block, he's in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. And then one hour a day, he's allowed to go into a cage that's attached to his cell and walk around in circles in a 10 by 10 foot cage outside. He's not allowed any phone calls. He's not allowed to write letters. He's not allowed to have any communication with any other human beings.

[43:06] And this is the same cell where the last, or same cell block for the last surviving Abu Nidal terrorist is being housed where one of the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists is being housed. The most violent, the bloodiest Aryan nation murderers are being housed. That's where Daniel is being housed. Just as an aside too, because of COVID the Bureau of Prisons said

[43:38] that they were trying to figure out a way for prisoners to be in closer contact with their families. And so every prisoner in the system has allowed 300 minutes a month to talk on the phone. So they decided to give everybody 400 minutes except Daniel Hale. They said because he was convicted of espionage that he's not entitled to have contact with his family.

[44:11] Now they just made that up just off the top of their heads. But this is what he's up against. You can't win in this system. I mean, the system's not built for you. I mean, I think too of another person I'm thinking of as you're talking, Ola Bini. I think a lot of people don't know about Ola Bini's case. And I think it's so important to bring it forward. I'm not certain all of the details. I mean, what last I saw in terms of what happened is that he was just arrested for a legend participation in the crime of assault on the integrity of computer systems. I don't know exactly what that means,

[44:42] but ultimately the truth of it is he's a personal friend of Julian Assange. And he's somebody who's been doing this work for a long time to fight both for an internet for all a safer internet for all, but also just fighting for the right to talk about these things that need to be talked about. So I feel like Ola Bini is often kind of, I haven't heard as much about his case, but it's so important that this happened in Ecuador. So it also that's part of it, but still. Yeah, it happened in Ecuador. Ola Bini was a friend of Julian Assange.

[45:15] He's a Swedish national. He's a programmer and an activist. They use the word hacktivist. And he was arrested on a charge of, like you say, having something to do with attacking the integrity of computer systems. His arrest was ordered by the president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, who to me is one of the biggest traders that we've encountered in this entire experience. It was Lenin Moreno. I mean, he's named Lenin because he's supposed to be a communist, right?

[45:46] His parents were communists, named him after Nikolai Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And he just couldn't get on his knees fast enough in front of the United States and do the US's bidding. Moreno ordered Ola Bini to be arrested. He was arrested in 2019. He was supposed to be held for 90 days. And I'll tell you what, that 90 days came and went. And he's still under arrest. We don't really get much in the way of news about him.

[46:20] I know that he had a pretrial hearing about a year and a half ago and he's supposed to go on trial. I think it's in June, but there's just no real movement in this case at all. I mean, can you imagine being held in an Ecuadorian prison without any real charges and you don't have any idea when or even if you'll actually go on trial, you could just be there forever.

[46:51] I don't understand. It doesn't make sense, no. I mean, he was held in preventative detention for 70 days until he was granted habeas corpus and he was moved, but he was still detained. So it's like, I just indefinitely detained. It just reminds me of detention centers in the US. I mean, in general, I just think it's kind of insane that we live in a country. I mean, this is Ecuador, we live in a country where people are detained indefinitely, just indefinitely. Cause what does that really mean? I mean, what does that mean when it comes to a justice system? I don't know. I have all these feelings about it, you know?

[47:24] Well, that's a good point and an important point. And it reminds me, what's Julian being held on? Do you know he's being held on a bail jumping charge and the maximum sentence for the bail jumping charge has come and gone. There's no reason to hold Julian Assange. Even as he's awaiting extradition, there's no legal reason to hold him. But they just decided they're not gonna pay any attention with the law. Yeah, there's so many cases, so many people who,

[47:55] you know, whether, even if they've, you know, completed their sentence, they're still just, you know, just suffering and, you know, under the eye of the government as well. I mean, you know, I think also about folks like, you know, Bill Binney and Thomas Drake. And so, just so many others who have just come out and exposed what the US government or private corporations. And, you know, we often don't talk enough about people who expose, for example, you know, Wells Fargo or, you know, ExxonMobil and all of that.

[48:26] And so many Chevron. Chevron, Chevron. Exactly. We actually just, we just talked about last week with our friend, Rania Khalik. And, you know, she shared, you know, just thinking about what you were saying a minute ago, you know, coming out of, you know, prison time at Danbury FCI. But then, you know, during the worst of COVID and then, you know, a halfway house and house arrest. And thankfully, he's finally free, you know, and done with those legal charges as well. But you know that the government

[48:56] is going to continue to keep an eye. But all of these, and there's also the whistleblowers who we don't know of, you know, the ones who remain anonymous who, you know, for their own safety, they don't want the attention, whatever it is, right? And there's so many whistleblowers. We have to really, I really consider, you know, whistleblowers and journalists as such an important part of, you know, a functioning system, right? It's kind of cliche, right? And I get that. But it's, they're so important, you know, to understand exactly what it is that's going on

[49:30] and what is being hidden from us. Because you're right, and you've said it multiple times, but we should reiterate it. We should know what the government is doing in our name. We have a right to know that. This excuse of national security, I mean, I think, again, back to Philip Agee, they said, oh, he exposed CIA agents. No, he used open public information to publish those lists. That information was openly out there. That excuse of national security is used so often, it is overused. It is abused and we really we have a right to know because even if the government says it is national

[50:07] security well what national security is there in bombing people in Afghanistan for somebody in the U.S. How does that impact my security you know as somebody in the United States other than potentially making it worse? That's right. That's right. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. You know there are so many whistleblowers out there that we don't know about like you said. We still don't know who leaked the Panama Papers. In fact there was a journalist in Malta who was murdered after refusing to divulge the name of her sources relative to the Panama Papers.

[50:44] So you know the stakes are high here. These issues are real and you know while I have a second too we should tell our listeners that if they have evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality or threats to the public health or public safety, there are several different organizations that they can get in touch with. They can they can go to GAP, the government government accountability project. They're at whistleblower.org. They can go to the national whistleblower center here in Washington DC and there are top attorneys there who can

[51:18] help them file a whistleblower case or whistleblower protection case and then there's WikiLeaks. You know WikiLeaks is the only organization out there that solicits information and vows to protect it and protect it they do. Unlike the Intercept, unlike the Guardian or any host of other organizations or outlets, WikiLeaks is the only one that takes your security seriously. It's not. I mean you know it's kind of crazy too just as you both are

[51:50] talking I'm thinking about. I'm involved in something I'm very excited about coming up in June. It's called the People's Summit which is in response to Biden's summit of the ninth summit of the Americas in Los Angeles that Biden is hosting and I just think it's interesting in the context of this conversation of the fact that Biden is coming to Los Angeles to hold up Los Angeles of all cities as a city of prosperity, human rights and democracy and that that the US is this is how the model of democracy literally where Skid Row is just blocks away from

[52:24] from multi-millionaires like it's just outrageous that Biden would claim that but I say this to say that I think in summarizing in this conversation and seeing everything we've talked about I think it's very clear that we have to understand that the United States is not a democracy. It's not in every way shape and form it is not a democracy and so when we're seeing Biden uplift the US as if it's going to export democracy around the globe that's not what this is and I really encourage people in all the different ways that you can get involved whether you blow

[52:54] the whistle yourself like you both are talking about in these great resources to do that or you get involved in organizing get it active you're actually coming out in the streets because in the People's Summit we're going to be uplifting the Sanges case and uplifting all the other people who are still behind bars the political prisoners we have so many political prisoners in the United States and we never talk about it whether it's activists or journalists who are being held for the work that they do and have really no chance unless we everyday people make sure that their names are not forgotten it really is on us to not forget

[53:26] who they are their cases and keep fighting for them so I think that there's just so much in my mind around that but I feel very strongly that if you walk away from anything today it's to understand that the United States is fundamentally built and it's a system that's fundamentally built for the interest of just a few the interests of the wealthy and that we are here we are in the system and we are being used by the system and exploited by the system but in reality you know there's no path to justice under it we have to fight to come fundamentally change it you are absolutely right absolutely right and it's hard and

[54:04] and you know we fail a lot just because of what we're up against but we can't stop we have to keep this fight in perpetuity and it's up to us we're going to get no help from the mainstream media so it's up to us to get the information out there and to make sure that people understand exactly what's happening well John we want to thank you so so much for joining us today this has been just a really eye-opening conversation we've been joined by John Kiriaku former CIA analyst and case officer a whistleblower and a member of the editorial
