Title: Doing Time Like A Spy — On Prison Survival & the CIA
Show: Disruption Network Lab
Date: 2017-06-06
URL: https://youtu.be/4-5yxHqYJ-k
Duration: 1:34:00

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[00:20] so hello everybody thanks for being here at the Gruner salon at the forks Boone I'm really excited to present the 11th event of the disruption network club I am Satya basically I'm the director of the disruption at the club and I'm working together with other two wonderful women Claudia doors muler and Nadia Barker that are the project manager of our great conference and so I really would just would like to ask you

[00:51] first so to do an applause to them because then we will go into the speakers so I'm also quite excited here because I mean now I don't see anybody on stage but I suppose that there is a lot of people but I will try to you know just behave like the bodies there and then I will feel comfortable so I wanted to say that this event under the name of

[01:24] prisoners of dissent locked up for exposing crimes in a sense follow also another event that we did in the past in November the truth-teller events in which we already started to speak about the discourse of whistleblowing through telling and also for more persecution on whistleblowers and the first of all I would like also to thank our founders before going in depth of the events topics the RIBA and David Lagos

[01:54] foundation there was a look symbols pistol and the open society initiative for Europe part of the open society foundation and then of course I want to thanks a lot of the Gruner salon of the forks Pune for inviting us here and I think as possible to do this event in this great location and our cooperation partners that are there with the global network and the Chelsea Manning initiative Berlin and finally also our

[02:24] collaboration partners a while holland system they are this protection funds the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and society and the resistance study initiative University of Massachusetts harms from USA and our media partner sex Berliner and further afield so thanks a lot also for all this support so I would say that this event really started with

[02:56] the reflection on how to discuss about the discourse of whistleblowing in particular about the discourse of repression on whistleblowers and the we also wanted to have a positive aspect here because we want as well to celebrate the upcoming freedom of Chelsea Manning that will be free the 17 of May so we thought also to in a sense link this event to this really important events that we are going to also address

[03:27] later more in detail and then also the fact that we have great speakers here starting with John Kiriakou that is also launching this book in this occasion the book that also you find at the entrance over there under the title of doing time like a spy and all I wanted to tell you that resource that's the income of the book selling of today that starts from 10 euro donation will be given to John

[03:58] directly also because he will tell us later yes to afford the loss of cost for his trial and the situation that is also a consequence of a lot of repression as we will say later and so I really hope you want to support him I mean of course it's a really small contribute but I think you know the big change also starts from small things so please buy the book and so going a bit more into the discourse of the events the

[04:31] important aspect for us was really to try to reflect on this growing number whistleblower activist and also truth tellers that have been charged with heavy and unproportioned sentences for blowing the whistle for example do espionage act so that goes back to 1917 and so it's really crazy that in a sense still whistleblowers are charged with the legal persecution that goes back so much in time so in a sense we are part of a

[05:02] legal gray gray zone here that demonstrates as well that probably in the legal system there is a lot of non understanding of what whistleblower does whistleblower do and at the same time also would say in the general society because often they are persecuted for something that we would define like making social justice so today we want to speak about that and so I will start to introduce our great moderate or that I don't see because everything is really

[05:33] bad Magnus AG and I so we start with the keynote status I of John Kiriakou and Magnus is our moderator the title of the keynote is doing time like a spy and we twisted a bit the subtitle of the book and the subtitle which was for the keynote is on pre prison survival and the CIA is war on terror because we also thought that was important to focus on this aspect and just to introduce

[06:05] briefly Magnus that by the way will be also back later during the panel he is a Berlin base the international human rights and freedom of expression advocate and he worked for a free muse an international civic society organizing and defending and promoting the right sorry civil society organization defending and promoting the right to artistic freedom worldwide and his work has been also a lot into the

[06:35] discourse of protection scenes and also before 2017 when he was also part of the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York so we also thought that mangas could be the perfect moderator for this keynote and just that I want to remind you that after the keynotes at 9:00 we will start a panel and just briefly mentioned we will have with as animation again Magnus Ark and also under great faster but this is coming

[07:08] after and I will explain more in detail later so thanks a lot John and bangles for being here and I leave the world to you thank you John here hey I start thank you so much Tatiana for these this introduction and and for

[07:39] the opportunity to be here and really honored to be in the share stage with John Kiriakou and thanks to the whole the disruption lab team for putting together this this impressive panel and wonderful event I'll do my to make sure it becomes interesting for everyone I'm sure since you're here you probably know John already but John Kiriakou of course known for blowing the whistle on on the US government's use of the torture and what specifically waterboarding back in and into you he

[08:11] did in 2007 with the American ABC News yeah before that and why he was in that position with because John worked 14 years for the CIA he spent time in Greece and in Pakistan and all over the world thing and based in the US and different assignments also I know he's going to get into more of that later but after this interview in which he was the first CIA agent to confirm the use of waterboarding the Justice Department started prosecuting and investigating

[08:43] John and that ultimately led to three charges of the counter espionage one charge under the intelligence identities Protection Act and one count of making false statements as a result of this into that made John one of the eight individuals under the Obama administration that was charged under this Espionage Act in the u.s. that Tatiana also just mentioned from 1917 so it's highly controversial to use this old act that is actually

[09:14] supposed to go against spies not internal people and following this John made a plea deal so he was found guilty for violating that intelligence identities Protection Act as the only thing the other charges were dropped but that was a plea deal that resulted in a 30 month sentence and John was then in prison subsequently being actually I believe the first CIA officer ever

[09:45] convicted for exposing information to the press and and then you were 23 months in prison in in a lower Loretto comes to correction institution in Pennsylvania and just been released not too long ago in in 2015 John has now published this book that Tatiana also mentioned doing time like a spy that is a really interesting read and combines of course the whole legal

[10:15] paradigm of being charged as a whistleblower within the experience of being imprisoned and how rough the American prison system is and how unfair it is and having someone with John's insight and experience from CIA kind of observing and very much living big hard experiences is a really interesting insight so plan I know that's part of what John's going to go into and I don't want to take up too much time I just want to give the floor to John and say I'm really happy to have you here and we'll be back with a cue I'll be back with a Q&A when after this thank you

[10:48] very much thank you thank you thanks everybody thank you so much for having me this is my first trip to Berlin although I've been to Germany many many many times I've never been to Berlin before and it's just in the matter of two days it's become my favorite place in the country I'm really happy to be here frankly in today's Washington Washington has become such an angry hate-filled bitter acrimonious

[11:20] City to come here and see this free exchange of ideas and progressive politics and support for whistleblowers and you know WikiLeaks and it's just it's a different world I've come to the conclusion that that the Europeans are so far advanced compared to the Americans there's just we should all be ashamed of ourselves I don't know I am I've been saying since I got home from prison that the government has made me a

[11:52] dissident and I only say that half jokingly I actually do feel like a dissident not because I've changed I'm adamant that I haven't changed my country has changed I consider myself to be a patriot I love the United States I believe in the US Constitution I believe in our constitutional guarantees and the freedoms that are outlined in the Bill

[12:23] of Rights and so as a patriotic citizen I can only object when I see my government trying to take those rights away from us I've drawn a parallel in previous speeches with with a very small country in which I spent two years it's called Bahrain and it's in the Arabian Gulf just off the coast of Saudi Arabia I was there from 1994 to 1996 on loan to the State Department and in that

[12:54] position I was the I was the human rights officer now the United States has a law saying that the State Department has to write a human rights report forever country with which we have diplomatic relations well most State Department officers I subsequently learned just go through the motions and put something down on paper and then just send it to Congress I took that job very seriously in Bahrain at the time there was something of an uprising and and there

[13:28] were extra judicial killings where the government would just disappear people now this is a government that has had historically very very close ties to the United States and indeed the US Navy has a military base there which is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet so the State Department and the Pentagon have a vested interest in making sure that our relations with Bahrain are very close I did whatever I could to threaten the Bahrain ease and to frankly ensure that

[13:59] they respected their citizens human rights the reason I bring this up is because in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks the United States became just like Bahrain in a lot of ways we torture prisoners just like the Bahrain ease were torturing prisoners nobody's writing a human rights report on us we use drones to kill people including American citizens without benefit of a trial and then there's no transparency nobody ever reports to the press or to the American people what the

[14:30] government is doing in their name we all complained about george w bush and how george w bush began this drone war well Barack Obama was far bloodier and far more violent with the use of drones than george w bush ever was we set up an archipelago of secret prisons around the world where we could disappear our prisoners where no one would ever know they were no one knew if they were alive and in many cases after being handled by

[15:03] the CIA they weren't alive but there was no price to pay that's not the American Way that's not the American Constitution and so again I concluded that I didn't change my country changed as I said this all started with the Patriot Act which passed into law in October of 2001 the Patriot Act has legalized governmental actions against American citizens that were absolutely

[15:34] unthinkable just 20 years ago for example when I first entered government one rule was that if NSA picked up the communications of an American citizen or a u.s. person which is any person in the United States on an alien resident visa heads rolled and I mean even if this information was picked up accidentally Congress had to be informed the information had to be deleted from NSA's databases an investigation was launched

[16:07] it was a big deal well now NSA has built an enormous facility in the desert of Utah that is big enough to save copies of every email metadata from every phone call and every text message made by every American for the next five hundred years where's the transparency there especially when it's law as well as a

[16:40] provision in the NSA Charter that NSA is forbidden from collecting information on American citizens there's just no excuse for it we Americans have a constitutional right to freedom of speech and the Supreme Court has interpreted that right to include a constitutional right to privacy it's just simply none of the government's business what we say in our personal communications I hear all the time too people say well I I don't have anything to hide that's not the issue at all the

[17:12] issue the issue is that it's not the government's business anybody who has spent any time working in the intelligence community will tell you that even if you have nothing to hide a case can be built against you for just about anything and I mean just using metadata um the CIA the FBI and the NSA even have access to the websites that you visited and just from the metadata of your phone calls your emails your text messages and

[24:02] your time is short because you have to go through Petraeus's underwear drawer later don't you oh no I didn't think so my mistake so this is my revenge right here my revenge I would like to read a few passages to you this book comes out on Wednesday officially but we have some advance copies today this actually started out as two books I wrote this like very serious political science book

[24:33] about prison reform and the prison system it was so incredibly boring and then I wrote a fun book and I sent them both out to publishers and they said no this is one book take all the boring political science stuff out and just put your letters from Loreto in to the funny book and make it one book so that's what I did so I'd like to read a couple passages on the morning of February 28 2013 jesselyn Radack Tom Drake Jim spean and

[25:03] my cousin Mark Kiriakou and his son-in-law Matt McCarthy drove me to prison in Loretto Pennsylvania to drop me off when we pulled into the parking lot and I saw the big blue water tank the double fences with concertina wire and the roving guard vehicles I said holy [ __ ] this is a real prison I was thankful that I was assigned to the minimum security work camp on the other side of the parking lot I walked through the front door and announced to the first guard I saw that I was John Kiriakou and I was there to turn myself

[25:33] in I got to the prison at 10:30 a.m. because the judge and prosecutors both recommended that I served my time in the minimum security Federal Work camp at Loreto that's where I went when we pulled into the parking lot a CEO or corrections officer there told me that all self surrendering inmates had to go across the street to the Federal Correctional Institution that's the actual prison the FCI to check-in first I went there said I was there to self surrender and said goodbye to my family and friends a CEO

[26:05] then had me go through a metal detector so far so good I had brought nothing but the clothes on my back and a driver's license the CEO asked if I was ready I am I said although I wasn't quite sure what in the world he meant we walked out of the main entrance turned right and began walking around the building to the back of the prison away from the camp wait a minute I said I think there's been a mistake I'm supposed to be at the camp not according to my paperwork he said welcome to prison I told myself to stay

[26:37] calm you can call the attorneys on Monday and get this worked out I thought in the outbuilding at the back of the prison I went through a more rigorous body check and a more sensitive metal detector from there the CEO escorted me to receiving and discharge rd inside the main prison building i was strip-searched again given a cursory medical exam my fourth DNA swab and a set of khaki 4xl pants and shirt which for the next three days I had to use one hand to hold up they said sorry but that's the only size

[27:09] we have they gave me a pair of blue canvas slippers a pair of underwear a pair of socks and a roll of toilet paper the CEO took a mug shot photo for my identification and put me in a holding cell for 45 minutes my new first name was inmate I was also known as prisoner number seven nine six thirty seven zero eight three a second Co finally arrived and took me to my housing unit central one trying to be very helpful along the way by saying things like you only have

[27:39] 30 months that's good a lot of guys die here because their sentences are so long he offered one word of advice if somebody comes into your room without being invited that's an act of aggression great I thought I've been here for 45 minutes and I'm going to get my ass kicked he pointed out the hall that I needed to take to get to the cafeteria and said that I would probably have an easy time of things we arrived in an overcrowded cubicle with three bunk beds he pointed at a top bunk said home sweet home and

[28:11] walked away I didn't really know what to do at that point so I climbed up into the bed and fell asleep the truth was I was in shock I figured I would get my bearings when I woke up I would introduce myself to my cell mates generally keep my mouth shut and figured out the lay of the land two hours later I awoke and introduced myself to my cell mates three Mexican drug smugglers one of whom was a major prison gang leader a black drug dealer from Virginia and a Chinese drug dealer who despite having been in American prisons since 1988 could barely speak of

[28:44] word a word of English besides [ __ ] which he said in literally every sentence soon after awakening I was sitting in a chair next to my bunk when two neo-nazis walked in the first one a tall pale-skinned head had a swastika tattoo that took up his entire neck the other was small and fat with a swastika and white power tattooed on his arms along with a small skull on his left cheek I jumped out of the chair and put up my dukes what do you want I

[29:14] shouted and I mean I what do you want take it easy the big guy said are you the new guy I kept my fists up yeah so the big guy leaned in are you a [ __ ] no I said are you a rat no I didn't have anybody else in my case are you a chomo I had never heard the term before I don't know what that means I told him Jomo he said slowly like I was stupid child molester of course I'm not a child molester I

[29:46] said outraged okay he continued you can sit with us at the Aryan table in the cafeteria great I thought so I'm with the Aryans now sometime later I was sitting in the chair again when two hugely built African Americans wearing skull caps walked into the room I recognized them immediately as members of the Nation of Islam the first one was holding a newspaper and again I jumped up again I heard take it easy

[30:17] are you the dude from the CIA I am I said wearily he handed me the newspaper Reverend Farrakhan says you're a hero of the Muslim people we want you to know that you're not going to have any problems with us I thank them again and they went on their way we never spoke to each other again about a year later after I had struck up a friendship with a senior captain from one of New York's five organized crime families the

[30:48] captain stopped me in the hall let me ask you a question why in the world do you sit with those naughty retards in the cafeteria I shrugged I don't know on my first day they said I should sit with them he looked at me like I was the one with the mental handicap he put his finger in the air dramatically and said from today you're with the Italians I attended every Italian party and dinner

[31:18] we exercised in the yard together and we became good friends it was an inauspicious beginning but I decided once the shock wore off that I wasn't going to go to the camp I called my attorney I finally got a telephone access after five days and I called my attorney and I said hey listen they put me in the actual prison with the the drug kingpins and the murderers and the

[31:50] child molesters what do I do and he said Wow well he said we could file an appeal but it'll be two years before we get a hearing and you'll be home by then so I'm sorry you're just going to have to tough it out well I decided at the end of that phone call that I was trained for this Loretto Pennsylvania and the psychopaths who live in it could not possibly be worse

[32:20] than Yemen Afghanistan Iraq or Pakistan and I was going to rely on my CIA training to get through it I figured I was smart I was resourceful as I say on the very first page of the introduction I'm an [ __ ] when I have to be I could do this so what I did was I took an inventory of the life lessons that the

[32:52] CIA had taught me and some of these were actually very formal and some were more informal one was actually kind of a joke but it's it's one that I ended up using with some great regularity while I was at the CIA so I wrote them down and then for the benefit of the reader I tried to explain some of them I'm not going to read them all I don't want to spoil them for you but I'll read some of them to you rule number one the first and most

[33:25] important thing the CIA taught me in operational training at the farm its famed training facility in the Virginia countryside and the first thing that I set out to do in prison was to recruit spies to steal secrets or anything else that I wanted this was how success was determined at the CIA that's how we got promoted the cool gadgets technology and spy gear were all ancillary the bottom line is you must identify a target identify its fault his vulnerabilities

[33:55] assesses access and move in for the kill every time James Bond goes into Q's workshop for the latest spy gear every time the NSA rolls out another program to intercept communications every time a trainee fresh from the farm targets a potential source he's doing it for one reason to facilitate the stealing of secrets but what is a secret the secret is any piece of information that is not publicly available but in the context of prison most secrets are held by the administration and the COS

[34:27] the only way a secret becomes valuable to an inmate is if that inmate can use it to his advantage I'm not talking about rumors which I discussed later in the book and which you can start for your own purposes I'm talking about actionable information that you can use to your own benefit it's the same way with unavailable goods and this is in the prison context you won't have access to everything that you want or need and so you'll have to recruit people with access to get them for you there are four reasons why a person would go against his own best interests to steal

[34:58] something for you revenge greed ideology and excitement the best for your purposes is ideology even though you may have nothing in common with your target and even though your interests and backgrounds may be diametrically opposite you must convince him that you are kindred spirits if your target is a true believer he'll do what you want the ideologues are the easiest to manipulate they would likely do what you want anyway they just need a little guidance I use an example in here one of

[35:31] my cellmates Robert was an Australian arsonist Robert did something really stupid he was a what we all did he was a used car salesman in Buffalo New York and he sold millions of dollars worth of cars but he just didn't like paying taxes on them so he didn't well one day he went to the I should add this was the day before Christmas he went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get his new license plates and at the

[36:03] Department of Motor Vehicles they told him you can't have any new license plates until you pay your tax he was so enraged that he shouted I'm going to come back here and I'm going to burn this place to the ground so that night he went back and he burned it to the ground it took them like five minutes to arrest him so I say here I became friendly and later roommates with Robert the Australian inmate that I mentioned earlier on my very first day in prison

[36:35] Robert checked every box on dr. Robert hares book psychopathy checklist revised among the many characteristics used by psychologists to identify sociopaths is pathological lying and Robert was a pathological liar a person with Roberts personality would rarely be motivated by greed or ideology frankly a person with Roberts personality would rarely be motivated by revenge but he was an unusual case he was an excitement junkie first and foremost and it was very easily easy to manipulate Robert you

[37:08] just had to make him feel like he was involved you wanted to make him admire you and want to like you because his self-centered personality demanded attention Robert was only interested in other people for what they could do for him whether because being associated with them enhanced his own status or gave him access to people who otherwise wouldn't have spoken to him or so that he could mark them for his next scam as long as you know what this kind of person is you do not need to fear being his next victim and you can use his sociopathy for your own benefit soon

[37:42] after my arrival the prison went a full week without any meat in our meals in the cafeteria the problem was that many of the inmates in the kitchen who got no money from home stole the meat before it was cooked so that they could sell it to other inmates as a result the chicken pot pie was vegetable pot pie and the chicken fried rice was vegetable fried rice all of the meat that had been stolen was for sale in plastic bags in three or four different cells I understood of course that many inmates have a hustle by which they earned black-market money but we were entitled

[38:14] to three and a half ounces of meat at lunch and dinner and I wanted my three and a half ounces I immediately went to work on Robert this is an outrage I told him we're being ripped off and they're taking food out of our mouths Robert became so angry that he did exactly what I expected he would do he dropped an anonymous note to the administration telling them where the meat could be found and who was stealing it the result was that almost the entire kitchen staff was fired and replaced the meat sellers were shaken down and the meat

[38:45] confiscated and the meals over the next few weeks were a bounty of meaty goodness coincidentally two of the meat thieves lived next door to Robert and routinely picked on him as part of the shakedown they were sent to solitary and eventually to other prisons Robert what else would often ask me would I make a good CIA officer my answer was always a resounding no it was because of his congenital inability to keep his big mouth shut I did tell him that he would make a good asset and in

[39:15] the real world if he had had access to classified information I would have recruited him but he loved the clandestinity of doing operations and he would freak Lee frequently do things on his own and then report back to me he recruited somebody in the prison laundry and very proud of himself came back to the cell with new sheets pillowcases socks and t-shirts for all of us thanks to Robert successful operation to recruit a spy to steal laundry I had underwear and socks to left last a lifetime there were other rules just as

[39:49] a broad overview there are things like seek and utilize available cover that's at the CIA meant for you to take cover in a gunfight in prison a fistfight can break out at any given moment and everybody is going to go to to solitary if you happen to be in the area so you run away there were others one I mentioned was not a serious one but it was one that I took seriously in prison and that was admit nothing deny

[40:20] everything make counter-accusations so for example I had been called down to the lieutenant's office where I was constantly harassed by the two investigators there and they said to me so there was a fight in your unit last night why don't you tell us about it and I said there was a fight in the unit last night while I was in the unit all night I didn't see anything I think you're making it up we're not making it up they said tell us about the fight I think you were fighting I think that's what it was why are you [ __ ]

[40:52] with me like this you're the ones who are fighting now you're just trying to confuse me and finally they said just get the [ __ ] out of our office and I thought exactly number seven and I hope you don't think less of me as a person after I read this one number seven is eliminate potential problems using dirty tricks I acknowledge that this one doesn't sound very nice but prison isn't very nice as

[41:23] in life you'll encounter people whom you just can't win over no matter how hard you try your charms will get you nowhere at that point you may have to get nasty wallace was a prisoner during my stay in Loretto whom everybody hated but whose company everybody nonetheless enjoyed good looking smart and sophisticated in his dealings with others he claimed to have had a child with an a-list Hollywood star and he appeared many times in People magazine and he loved the notoriety he was well-read spoke

[41:55] multiple languages and was an accomplished con man wallace was serving 38 months for fraud he just couldn't help himself he loved the good life the fancy restaurants ocean-going yachts exotic vacations and handmade sports cars he learned the trade from his conman father Wallace subscribed to yachting magazines and to the DuPont registry of Holmes and his and he bragged to unsuspecting saps about which yachts in the magazine his family used to own and which mansions and exotic locales he intended to buy

[42:26] when he got out of prison the funny thing about Wallace was that he was also a coward and a crybaby every time he felt stressed he would pretend to faint whether it was in court when he was caught cheating in a poker game or when he thought he wasn't being treated with due respect in the medical unit when he wasn't fainting he was crying he cried when his lawyer didn't answer the phone he cried when he didn't get responses to his emails he cried when he had a visitor he cried when he didn't have a visitor I even heard him crying in the shower one time for all to talk about

[49:11] now a little bit sorry listen I say in the beginning of this book that a CIA psychiatrist once told me that the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies not sociopaths sociopaths have no conscience they can easily pass a polygraph exam because they don't feel any regret or remorse or sympathy but they're impossible to control people who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience and do

[49:44] feel bad about things but they're perfectly happy to work in moral ethical or legal gray areas as part of my application process I sat in front of a panel made up of a psychiatrist a psychologist and a sociologist and they asked me questions like would I describe my relationship with my mother I said sure she's a good mother she was nurturing and you know I loved her

[50:15] uh-uh was your father the disciplinarian of the family I said well no I said my dad was a big strong guy and I think he was probably always afraid he would hurt us if he if he hit us or something so now he was actually a sweetheart and they're looking at each other have you ever betrayed a friendship I said oh my gosh I I don't think so I hope not let me think about it for a minute they said no no that's the response we were looking for I said okay so finally they

[50:48] said we want to ask you an operational question let's say that you've been tasked with recruiting an asset overseas and you work on this guy for six months twelve months maybe and you strike up this great friendship with him and you like him and he likes you but you conclude that he's not recruitable well the reason that you were developing him in the first place is because he has a file in his office and you really need that file but he's not recruitable so

[51:19] what do you do I said you break into the office and steal it they said that's exactly what you do so I got the job that's my sociopathic tendency okay five minutes I'm going to make this one I'm going to make this one quick one of the rules is when you can let others do your dirty work I took my rules very seriously when I

[51:51] was in prison and I tried hard to live by them they had served me well and I believed had kept me safe overseas but near the end of my sentence I nearly went off the rails because I let emotion get in the way of the rules after dinner one evening in August 2014 just six months before the end of my sentence my bunkmates B knew he was telling people you were a rat I could feel my blood pressure rising I genuinely don't care what people think of me but calling somebody a rat in prison usually results in blood

[52:22] being spilled and I had to defend my honor or die trying point this guy out to me Frank I want to see who this [ __ ] is I said the next morning I met up with my friend Clint for our daily walk around the track as soon as we saw each other he said hey there was a guy in medical this morning telling everybody that you were a rat you might want to take care of this before it goes any further I was incredulous point this guy out to me Clint who does this guy think he is those are fighting words I frankly wasn't sure what to do by saying that I was a rat in public he was

[52:54] asking for a hearty ass-kicking I knew that if I were to deliver it I would likely spend the rest of my sentence in solitary I didn't care I was furious and God knows I've lived in worse places over the previous 25 years than the solitary confinement unit in Loretto Pennsylvania at dinner that evening both Frank and Clint pointed out the transgressor I had never seen him before he was definitely new he was about my age thinner six feet tall and with a bushy beard covering a severely pockmarked face he got a tray of food and sat with

[53:25] the Aryans I was at the next table sitting with the Italians I fixed a stare on him Hey I shouted you have a problem with me about 50 heads turned including several cos the cafeteria is the only place where the COS worry about their safety it's the only place where they're generally outnumbered fifty to one at any given time consequently they are always attuned to any hint of trouble you know what I said you know where I live he responded [ __ ] that I shouted it too loudly again heads turned

[53:57] if you have something to say to me you say it now and we settle this right here a young Aryan ran over to me please don't fight here he said if you do the cops will send all of us to solitary I didn't care I was ready to do it in the meantime the bearded guy and I were in a staring contest as I weighed in my mind what to do next Pete the Bonanno family crime captain gently tugged at my sleeve what in the world old are you doing he asked quietly are you crazy

[54:28] doing this in the cafeteria as God is my witness Pete I'm gonna kill this guy I said still staring no you're not you're going to go to Mark's room and you're going to sit and read the USA Today while we take care of this I was still furious but I knew that I wasn't thinking straight I took Pete's advice sat down quickly my dinner and went to Mark's room Mark and Polly apostille appleís showed up a few minutes later they were been used by how angry I was I was spewing epithets I

[54:58] wanted to kill this guy or at least I wanted everybody around me to believe that I wanted to kill this guy I was so furious that I had completely forgotten the rules I should have been thinking about eliminating potential problems using dirty tricks were about knowing my enemy but as things stood I just wanted to see the guy lying in a pool of his own blood mark smiled at me I have never seen you work this worked up before what did this guy how did this guy get to you nobody else has I couldn't explain

[55:28] myself maybe it was because I had worked so hard to cement relationships with such diverse groups all over the prison maybe it was because nobody had ever called me a rat before maybe I just didn't want to take any [ __ ] from this white piece of this piece of white trash mark handed me a soda and said that he and Paulie would be back in a few minutes I perused the USA Today sports section unable to focus mark and Polly returned about 15 minutes later everything's taken care of Mark said what's that supposed to mean I said still incredulous it means it's

[56:01] all taken care of this guy's not going to be a problem mark and Pauly were smiling at me Mark continued the guy apparently didn't realize that you're a highly respected member of the prison community and especially of the Italian community we made sure that he understood that okay I said I'll take your word for it a moment later came the call for a 10-minute move and I went back to my room five minutes later I was sitting on the edge of my bed reading the Wall

[56:31] Street Journal it was the middle of the ten-minute move excuse me the voice was to my left I turned I looked up and I saw the guy it looked as though his face had recent has recently undergone a serious rearrangement his left cheek was swollen blood was drying in his left nostril and his hair was askew now is not the time to feel sorry for him what the [ __ ] do you want I shouted he hung his head down I'm very

[57:04] sorry for what I said about you he said near tears I should never have said it I want you to know that I'll never say it again I looked at him for a love it and I had to appear tough get the [ __ ] out of here before I break your legs too I shouted my wife hates the story she hates it he turned and walked quickly all the way out of the housing unit I went back down to mark and Polly's room at the next move I really appreciate you guys stepping up for me I said they

[57:34] laughed you're always talking about those damn rules Mark said I figured somebody should take them seriously well I've used too much time but we did it block off some time for Q&A s I apologize that the lights are in my eyes and I literally can't see a single one of you so maybe somebody in the audience has a microphone yeah yeah that one I you can have that one time and it can help us spot who's asking I thought I would start with the few questions and

[58:06] then we have like half an hour so please start thinking of some good questions but John I can imagine there's people out there that have some really good one I want to start off with maybe just my background I think part of the reason why Tatyana asked me to do this was I worked for five years with the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York based the press freedom organization and I joined in early 2010 moved to New York Obama had been in office for like a year with optimistic times in the human

[58:37] rights community still and I remember this organization founded in the early 80s with American journalist realizing we have the First Amendment but our colleagues around the world don't and can use journalistic tools to help them get out a person or a bad situations and kind of this outward-looking American based organization that then gradually grew into and while I was there realizing not that we ignored the us but the focus was just from the start on the

[59:09] other like a broad kind of starting to okay organize yourself definitely internally to be better at looking at the US and then suddenly seeing all these leak prosecutions and with the Obama and stration some were of course initiated before Obama under Bush but it really took this whole organization by surprise how significantly and how like it's eight prosecutions under the Espionage Act just which is more than any other all other of US presidents

[59:39] compliant it was almost three times the number of all previous presidents combined which is mind-boggling taking Obama as the candidate who came in promising an open transparent government all these things so it kind of us at the press freedom group thought we have to do something about this and we engaged a Len Downey jr. the former executive editor of The Washington Post like a big figure in US journalism was the editor from like executive editor from 91 to 2008 and he was an editor

[1:00:12] back during Watergate one of the few that knew who deep throat was the source for so so he's he doesn't vote because he want to see impartial so it was really scooped for us to to get him on board and could kind of address this and your case was of course one of these significantly prosecutions that we were looking at so once that John asked me to do this I thought how about an email Len and asked what would his question be for you that's a great idea so here it goes as surprised by the simplicity and I had something similar in mind but I really

[1:00:43] liked it so would you do it again and if so it was there anything you would do differently absolutely yes 100% I would do it again but I made a mistake and the mistake is and this is what I would do differently the mistake is that I hired an attorney after blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program if you are considering becoming a whistleblower you have to have legal advice before you go public my problem

[1:01:14] was that I had to be reactive and so I was reacting to the FBI launching an investigation I was reacting to the CIA engaging with the Justice Department and I felt like I was always behind the eight-ball if I had gone to an attorney first I could have better crafted the message to protect myself and especially in national security whistleblowing cases there are attorneys who specialize solely in national security cases there

[1:01:45] aren't a lot of them but there are you know six or eight in Washington and so this is something that I that I wrote to Ed Snowden in an open letter that I wrote from prison hire the best national security attorneys that money can buy and indeed he ended up hiring my attorneys which I thought was a smart thing but yeah get legal advice first that was a mistake that I made and and in that process I'm really fascinated with your rules that you come up with

[1:02:18] and I think for this whistleblower community and activist human rights community a lot of us you could claim a little naive or don't have this CIA security training of surviving so I thought it was really interesting take for me and I think it's something we probably in the West or like in stable situations like privately and in relatively stable democracies that are governed to some extent by the rule of law I think we sometimes underestimate the stress level you're under when you make these decisions and time to make it

[1:02:51] also like a global argument you worked in in Pakistan Afghanistan you worked in a lot of the high tension areas and I I was wondering kind of inspired of the last year I was in North Korea as a tourist hiding my human rights background but I ever week there on a group tour where we were just like taken to this one Monument after we actually didn't have to do much I was so exhausted I was like the last night in hotel I was keeping this two parallel worlds up not knowing if there's anything rational

[1:03:22] strategy to get out of it I'm pretty sure I would get out but I wasn't sure because Kim jong-un killed his uncle if little while earlier and that made me come to this realization about all these people I work with in the human rights field the level of stress like the vaginal decision from me sitting in Berlin oh I should change something or argue for this law to change it's fairly easy compared to being threatened at a daily on a daily basis not knowing where the threat is coming from and I thought

[1:03:52] having it I couldn't find a better person to ask this question because you've been a given in Pakistan you've been trained by the CIA you've been up against the US government with their whole legal big legal teams and you've been in the u.s. prison with some very harsh conditions how do you as an activist or someone under threat like strategize in those situations how do you think forward you have good advice boy that's that's a hard question first let me let me elaborate a little bit on

[1:04:22] the on the stress the issue of stress the CIA has the highest rate of divorce in the entire US government we're trained to lie we lie all the time you lie for a living it's your job right I had passports from six different countries in six different names and with six different backgrounds and I had to keep all of that straight in my head so it's very stressful crossing hostile borders working in in war zones I was

[1:04:55] twice the target of assassination attempts once in the Middle East and once in Athens when I was there unfortunately in Athens they killed my next-door neighbor instead the British defense attache so the stress level as you can imagine is off the charts it was nothing compared to the weight of the entire US government crashing on my head in January 2012 but it started well before January even though I had no idea before I got arrested I was the senior

[1:05:28] investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee important job most prestigious Committee on Capitol Hill John Kerry was the chairman at the time and one of the things I loved about that job was you're invited to lunch all the time by foreign diplomats and I loved the contact the contact and the intellectual exchange so I got a call from a Japanese diplomat one day and he invited me to lunch at a little restaurant on Capitol Hill I gladly went and I remember that lunch

[1:06:00] being delightful we talked about Israeli elections and Turkish elections and the peace process and near the end of the lunch he said to me so what's what's next for you and I said actually I'm thinking of resigning I promised Senator Kerry that I would give him two years it's been two and a half and I think I'd like to go into business for myself and he got very excited and he said no don't do that if you give me information I can

[1:06:30] give you money and I said what's wrong with you you know how many times I've made that pitch in my career so I got up and I left and I went directly to the office of the Senate security officer and I said I was just approached by a foreign intelligence officer he offered me cash for money he told me to write it up as a memo and he sent it to the FBI two days later the FBI sent two agents to Capitol Hill to interview me and I told them the story they said okay here's what we want

[1:07:02] you to do we want you to call him back invite him to lunch and try to get him to tell you exactly what information he wants and how much he's willing to pay for it I said okay I said do you want me to like wear a wire or something they said no no we're going to be at the next table we're going to listen to the whole thing I said okay so I called him I invited him to lunch he said yes and then the day of the lunch they called me and said that something had come up they couldn't be there but I should go forward with the lunch and write up another memo and tell them what happened

[1:07:34] so I did and then they asked me to do it a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time the fifth lunch he said he had just got his dream job he was going to be the number two at the Japanese Embassy in Cairo and nice to know you I said great good lucks nice to know you never saw him again a year later I'm arrested and as part of the case the government has to provide what's called discovery so

[1:08:06] all the evidence that they've collected against me they have to turn over to the defense and it was in that discovery that we learned that there never was any Japanese diplomat he was an FBI agent undercover trying to get me to commit real espionage but I kept reporting the contact back to the FBI and finally they said look this guy's not going to take the money so we might as well just end the operation and that's why he said he

[1:08:37] had transferred to Cairo I said to my attorney why would they do this and he said because they had a [ __ ] case and they know it's a [ __ ] case but learning that they had gone to those extremes to charge me with a crime that sometimes carries the death penalty with it that is stress let me tell you I'm not embarrassed to tell you that I came out of my Attorney's office one day to go back home we had met and my judge had

[1:09:10] denied we made 72 motions to declassify documents 72 different documents and she denied all 72 motions and so we were leaving the courtroom and my attorney said we have no defense if we don't have those documents we can't defend you I said well what do we do he said we take a plea I said if we take a plea I go to prison and I haven't done anything wrong what I did was in the public interest and he said it doesn't matter the judge

[1:09:42] won't let you have a defense so we went back to the office and we met about this I was so depressed and upset I left the office and went to the subway to go back home and I was standing on the edge of the platform and I was watching the train come up through the and I thought I'm going to do it I'm going to jump in front of this train and I stood right at the edge of the platform and as the Train is coming up I said that's what they want me to do they would win if I did this and I have five

[1:10:15] kids at home and I said no I decided that day I'm gonna fight I'm going to fight them and this isn't just me every national security whistleblower will tell you a variation of the same story Tom Drake will tell you the same thing bill Binney who was pulled naked out of a shower and cuffed behind his back with one leg because obviously he's such a danger to the American people he'll tell you the same thing Jeffrey sterling the CIA whistleblower called me four times the day before he

[1:10:48] left for prison to tell me four times that he was going to kill himself that day so the stress is unlike anything I've ever experienced I mean I've gone through a divorce I've gone through two assassination attempts my father fell down the steps in front of me and hit his head and died it was nothing like this and then on top of that at a million dollar legal bill and then see how you're going to dig your

[1:11:19] way out of it and see what kind of mood you'll find yourself in yeah sorry very depressed yeah very very depressing sorry but I uh you know I was lucky I was luckier than Tom and some of these other guys because my wife stood by me my wife was also a senior CIA officer and she was fired the day of my arrest only because she was married to me and I was leaving the courthouse after having been arraigned and she called me and she said that she was fired and I was devastated I said

[1:11:52] honey I'm so sorry and she said no I'm not and this is after 15 years she said I'm not I told them that's okay because I don't want to work for any organization that treats my husband the way you've treated him so I was lucky in that respect and it was because I had the support of my wife and kids that I got through it and then maybe one quick question yeah she's great hey these rules that I think was part of your solution as she

[1:12:24] also described I just want to read out a few you mentioned some of them and some of them will be repeated but number three for example and these are the John's rules that he learned at the CIA and used in prison and it's in this book John was kind enough Susanna PhD a couple of weeks ago to that so it looks like this and my part and admit nothing deny everything make counter-accusations that's one you already went through then you have another one that is eliminate potential problems using dirty tricks

[1:12:54] tricks I think you mentioned that one too and then you have number 17 trust no one and number 19 always maintain plausible cover for action I was thinking in this how to survive as a whistleblower and an activist but also then being an idealist going whistle like this is so not idealistic right this is so cynical it's me surviving and there's an interesting dilemma there in how and how do you

[1:13:26] balance that of being I'm a whistleblower but I'm also I can do whatever it takes to survive it's cynical I admit and again it's you have to develop the ability to turn it on and off now I have this core this fundamental core ethical and moral belief my own ethical and moral belief system that's a constant for me but if I'm in danger or potentially in danger

[1:13:56] I'll Bend that system to protect myself I that that doesn't sound very nice but you know prisons not very nice and so you know one one thing one way in which I've changed and this kind of goes to the question is I became far more ideological in this experience I'm a third-generation progressive

[1:14:28] Democrat right my parents marched against the war in Vietnam and marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King and so I come from a politically active left-wing household but the Democratic Party has become the Republican Party light right Hillary Clinton never saw war she didn't love and want to jump into and pretty much all the other mainstream Democrats are like that

[1:14:58] well my core belief system didn't change the Democratic Party did and so I became far more ideological my friends would argue far more left-wing I see it as consistency yeah I think I appreciate your honesty oh that's really like I think we can all learn a lot from this ever event and I want to open it up to all of you I'm sure you have the questions so I have a hard time seeing

[1:15:28] anything but hands even more but there's one there is there more there's one there I think maybe we could do like two or three questions and then John can answer them so we go first there yeah you know thank you what I learned in law school was that there's no democracy without rule of law or no rule of law and human rights without democracy so apparently what you have revealed what it was known every willed it it's basically when it comes to digital the digital space there

[1:16:01] is no democracy there is no rule of law considering that with more and more digital we're moving towards a NH of no rule of law and no democracy would you agree with this because this is like a concern that I'm a bit unsure about I would agree with that because these losses of our freedoms have been incremental and the government always couch's its defense of taking away those freedoms in terms of national security

[1:16:31] right we have to give up some rights in order to protect ourselves from the terrorists I would argue exactly the opposite I would rather be the victim of a terrorist attack than to give up my rights Americans have have fought and died for 240 years to protect those rights and now we're just going to give them away with a stroke of a president's pen instead of the laws especially in the United States being adapted to remain in

[1:17:04] line with advances in the digital world we're regressing and we're losing those rights I think far more quickly than anybody ever anticipated I'm worried about it I consider myself a part of the libertarian left now and it's because I have found that the ideological spectrum is not necessarily a straight line I think it's more of a circle and I think the left and the right meet at a certain

[1:17:36] point where it comes to respect for individual freedoms and civil liberties I think that more and more Americans are coming around to that point of view certainly the last election showed that they were between Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson millions of people voted for human rights and civil liberties but I think it's probably not enough not yet the bottom line for me is I'm really not optimistic about this in the short term

[1:18:07] okay there was one here and then two over here afterwards hi I just want to thank you as a fellow American for revealing what you did about a GI program and our public interest is hugely important moment in our history and you're really a hero I'm very much I wanted to ask you about the ABC interview that you gave at that moment where you gave that interview if you could speak a bit about the state of mind that you were in at that time and what you expected would happen and how you would see what the consequences were

[1:18:37] in hindsight how would you describe the differences between what you expected would come of that moment and what has happened since the big difference is that I underestimated the CIA's response I'll start at the beginning so I gave this interview to ABC News in December 2007 in which I said three things that have completely changed the course of the rest of my life I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue officer as President Bush had said that

[1:19:09] week and I said that the torture program had been personally approved by the President himself the next day the president made the oddest statement he said these were his exact words he said I don't know this man I don't know this man's motivation I don't know why this man threw me under the bus which was interesting because that's an admission that there was a torture program that he approved anyway within 24 hours the FBI

[1:19:40] began investigating me I know that because they leaked it to CNN which was a crime a violation of the Espionage Act ironically and so they investigated me from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and then in December of 2008 they informed my attorney that the case was closed because I had not committed a crime and I celebrated what I did not know was that three weeks later when Barack Obama became president the CIA

[1:20:13] asked him to secretly reopen the case against me I had no idea that I was under investigation and so I went about my life I got a job on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I got my security clearance back I took international trips I went to Somalia and Yemen and Djibouti and all over the place Afghanistan twice serving my country right it wasn't until three

[1:20:47] years later in January of 2012 that I was finally charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage it was like being hit in the head with a brick I never expected it not only did I never expect it I certainly didn't expect it Barack Obama you know I believed in the whole hope and change thing I volunteered for the campaign I voted for him I took my kids to the inauguration so they could see this glorious historic moment you know we had taken back the White

[1:21:17] House the war monger Bush was out we booed Janie when he came on the the podium and it was all just a big lie it was all a big lie but what was in my mind was the president has been lying consistently to the American people I'm going to set the record straight because the American people have the right to know what their government is doing in their name and I think is there where there are two and this they have one to the right of you as well we could

[1:21:48] do both at the same time we're running a little short on time John I am very liked you are how you told two states of mind you have one of the more oh guys good guy and then you have to defend yourselves and you adopt early tricks and I guess it's also kind of model of Western societies now because I'm not threat or so-called threat societies are playing dirty tricks or these governments are playing

[1:22:20] dirty tricks or surveillance stuff I don't want to go further but it would be interesting to know the dynamics how you act from one state to the other and when you decide to leave the dirty trick models and to come back to the good guy models because maybe we can learn from it yeah that can be drink have any other questions just three questions there's another one and I think it's better if you answer that question first because it's a completely different oh okay I'll

[1:22:50] do it closely after that yeah I'll do it quickly then to tell you the truth I haven't used these rules since the day I walked out of prison they they're they're too cynical to be used in daily life you can't you'll make yourself crazy you'll make yourself depressed people won't like you you know and what I wanted to do was to rebuild my relationship with my wife and my children to put this whole prison thing behind me writing writing the book itself was cathartic and it was like therapy for me so I wanted to get

[1:23:21] it out I wanted to get it off my mind and to tell you the truth six months into writing this book I stopped having the PTSD prison dreams I had the same dream like every night that I was out and I realized I shouldn't be out and it was approaching midnight and midnight is count time and I couldn't figure out how to get back into prison and I was afraid they were going to send me to solitary then so it took me six months before I I stopped having those dreams and I think

[1:23:54] it was because I was able to turn it off and turn my back on those rules these are not mentally healthy things to do in your daily life so don't use this as some kind of psychological guide to you know get your life in order it's going to [ __ ] you up you know don't do that Thanks my question is um you have obviously been convicted for exposing a very specific crime my question is how

[1:24:25] to the CIA for example now ensure that you won't leak anything else and my other question is do you feel now that you can speak completely freely also good questions yeah I was convicted of violating the intelligence identities Protection Act of 1982 I was only the second American ever to be charged with that crime and and here was the circumstance a reporter was writing a book about the the CIA's rendition program I really didn't know anything

[1:24:56] about rendition not directly rendition is kidnapping and I wasn't a kidnapper so I said look I'd like to help you but I can't so he send me an email with a list of a dozen names he said do you know any of these people can you introduce me to them so I can ask for an interview I said I don't know any of these people which was true and then he sent me another email and he said what about these people I said no I said listen you obviously know this issue so much better than I do I just can't help

[1:25:26] you and then he said what about the guy that you mentioned in your my first book he says I think his name is I'll say John and I said oh you're talking about John Doe I don't know whatever happened to him he's probably retired and living somewhere in Virginia but I had confirmed the name John Doe that's what they got me on that was a crime now with that said people do that

[1:25:56] every day in Washington you pick up the Washington Post or the New York Times and there's a CIA officer who's undercover he's named David Petraeus exposed the names of 10 covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend there was a disgruntled CIA officer in Bethesda Maryland who revealed the names of seven CIA officers neither one of them were charged with violating the intelligence identities Protection Act why was I because I blew the whistle on

[1:26:26] the torture program and that's what made me realize that this wasn't about leaking a name this was about torture from the very beginning they were furious because I had revealed the CIA's dirty laundry in the press and they were unforgiving great we're running out of time but there's another Q&A Sigyn yes oh sorry yeah yeah yeah you

[1:27:00] know what there's absolutely nothing that they can do that can stop me from I mean I could stand up here and make a list of all the every CIA person I ever worked with I wouldn't do that it wouldn't serve any purpose but there's really nothing that they can do you know there's a legal term for that it's called grey mail one of the things that my attorneys said to the prosecution because the prosecution was originally asking for 45 years in prison I ended up with two and a half but they were asking for 45 years it's a

[1:27:30] death sentence so I said listen if they're going to go for 45 years I'm going to testify on my own behalf and I'm going to talk about some ugly [ __ ] that I have seen over the course of 14 and a half years at the CIA and if they really want all their nasty dirty little secrets covering the front page of The Washington Post in the New York Times let's go for it and then they said how about two and a half years I think the

[1:28:04] last question from the floor down here what it what advice would you give to someone being investigated under the Espionage Act asking for a friend number one hire the best national security attorneys that money can possibly buy I had played oka chairs and Bob trout of trout catch heiress and I had Mark mcdougal from Akin Gump and Strauss I ended up having 11 attorneys and that's why I'm still eight hundred

[1:28:35] and eighty thousand dollars in debt but they earned their their money I'll never pay that money I don't I'll never have eight hundred eighty thousand dollars but what I gave them they earned that's number one number two don't trust anybody don't talk to anybody don't give any interviews because you'd be surprised how many people are secretly working for the FBI I was surprised it seemed like everybody was working for the FBI don't tweet

[1:29:08] anything or Facebook anything any time I'd make it up for example I somebody tweeted to me one night would you do anything differently and I said yes I would shout it from the rooftops and believe me the US Attorney's Office was on me the next day like white on rice saying that they were going to charge me with obstruction of justice because I was threatening to reveal more classified information I said I'm not it's a tweet for God's sake so don't

[1:29:39] talk don't tweet don't interview don't Facebook don't do anything just keep your mouth shut keep your head down and rely on your attorneys great thank you very much a just to round up this part I thought just to look forward a little bit and with you saying everyone works with you I one guy that doesn't james comey RS doesn't anymore I was thinking in a times percent like immediate now and

[1:30:11] then maybe three four years forward how should we approach this and maybe with the James Comey thing your insights on an agency I know you don't like the FBI too much and see big differences between the FBI and CIA of course but do you see a lot of leaks from the FBI or the CIA with this whole situation and the whole trump presidency and then carry that into like what should we expect on how should we react in the coming three years the FBI leaks like a sieve they leaked almost as much as the Defense

[1:30:42] Department leaks it's comical how much they leak in fact I say this in the book I it's a very quick story when I was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I got a lunch invitation from a reporter this reporter had a very bad reputation he worked for the conservative paper in Washington and I just deleted the request but he was persistent and he asked me like a second time and a third time and finally I said to my boss this guy keeps asking me to lunch I keep deleting the request but he's persistent so my boss said I'll

[1:31:13] authorize the the lunch go ahead and see what he wants so I went and I met with him and at the end of the lunch he lowers his voice and he says I have a source at the FBI and he says that you're under surveillance I said I'm shocked I said for what and I was in I was surveillance instructor at the CIA I never saw any surveillance so he said they think that you're the source of the Sam Adams project and I said what's the Sam Adams project and he

[1:31:45] said that's not really the response I was expecting I said I don't know what the Sam Adams project is he said it's this ACLU effort to defend the Guantanamo detainees I said I've never heard of it and I've not spoken to anybody at the ecl you but I stupidly dismissed it as a mistake I should have realized that when the guy said I have a source at the FBI and have you under surveillance you would think that with a normal person they would appreciate that information they

[1:32:16] would do something about it I just kept right on giving interviews and poking the hornet's nest on the committee by I was investigate I had three different investigations of the CIA going on at one period so I didn't take it seriously frankly that's what your friend should take seriously - everybody's leaking they're talking about you you know the famous saying just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you they're out to get you okay thank you thanks I

[1:32:48] think believe it oh that touch energy of something you want - yep okay thank you thanks very much thank you very much for having me so thank you very much for this really interesting discussion and presentation just want to say that now we do 15 minutes break and then we go on with the panel afterwards so I would say

[1:33:21] we what time is it we go on 9:20 so please don't go away and remember to buy the book of John thanks very much [Applause]
