Title: Freedom Hub Working Group
Show: Freedom Hub Working Group
Date: 2020-04-20
URL: https://youtu.be/p8QQGwrN5Ag
Duration: 64:00

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[00:00] [Music] I could welcome all we are at the June 5th meeting of the freedom hub working group gonna be a pretty interesting day today again and I want to welcome our guests as well as everyone visiting today we're still waiting for some people to arrive and for the one of the

[00:30] couple of guests would be able to get online here so we'll start without them a little bit while we're feeling a little time I just want to show you real quick that this is the link you would use to share this webinar series with others and also if they just register let's say they can't make this timeslot with regularity because they always have something going on just by registering they're gonna get a reminder every week of what's coming up for the forthcoming Wednesday as well as a link to the last Monday and also then there's the link

[01:02] for our channel so we've got a couple places but we're trying to help promote brighty on a little bit frankly so we have a channel up on that site as you can see it up in the URL again and all of the videos from the various webinars we've done are in here so far and you get a chance to review some of these too there's been some really fantastic ones though for those that couldn't catch them at the time and will periodically review them in the list of videos that want to give up that Monday blast will say here's some greatest hits give you a

[01:34] chance to take a look at some of those old ones Charles are you there okay no problem well we're waiting to get a couple of guests on like I said so we can sort of get a few things underway here now we're gonna start today with John and let me bring up his little bio here and then we're gonna let him talk for a little spit and then we'll bring some of the guests and here's this government

[02:06] accountability project and this was part of the there's whistleblower activity and so on and it's been pretty interesting to see you know what happens to people that are trying to do the right thing and and he's gonna be a good representative of that just won some different awards and so on here I'm not looking to take the time to go through this whole bio here as I got it up on the screen but John you might want to give us a little rundown on yourself initially and then we'll start to go from there and I'm gonna give you the camera here to at this point also so here we go

[02:38] so this way you can't put some stuff on your screen if you'd like as well okay thanks all right and you just accept it and off you go all right so we're looking at your desktop is the image part so go right ahead please give us a little bit of a bio and let you'd like to provide and then let's see what you've got to lay on us today you bet well first of all thanks for having me it's it's a pleasure I enjoy these

[03:08] events and I'm very happy to to do one myself so my name is John Kiriakou I am a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I spent 15 years at the CIA the first half of my career was in analysis the second half was in counterterrorism operations that's a long story that I'm gonna make very short I switched from analysis to counterterrorism in 1997 because I was

[03:43] bored writing papers that I knew nobody would would ever read and I wanted to do something exciting I'm a linguist I spoke both Arabic and Greek and I wanted to do something that that I felt was more of a serious contribution to the national security and so just as I felt like I knew what I was doing in counterterrorism 9/11 hit and I was named chief of counterterrorism

[04:13] operations for the CIA in Pakistan so I went to Islamabad to to take up that position which I was thrilled to do I'd been there for several months when we began the hunt for Abu Zubaydah who we believed at the time was the number three in al-qaeda that turned out to not exactly be correct he was certainly a bad man he was a facilitator and a logistician for al-qaeda had created and managed al-qaeda's two training camps in southern Afghanistan he had founded al-qaeda's safehouse in

[04:48] Peshawar Pakistan called the house of martyrs so he was a bad guy it took us about six weeks and we finally tracked him down and on the night of March 22nd 2002 we effected 14 simultaneous raids on 14 separate al-qaeda safe houses and sure enough he was in one of them and we captured him he was shot while while trying to escape I know that sounds very very nazi-like but Pakistani policemen

[05:19] shot him as he was jumping from the roof of his house to the roof of the neighboring house to try to get away he was shot in the thigh the groin and the stomach and and was nearly killed he nearly bled to death that very night we rushed him first to a hospital in Faisalabad Pakistan and then airlifted him to a Pakistani military base nearby outside the city of Lahore I sat with

[05:51] him in that hospital room for 56 consecutive hours I never left his side those were my orders my orders were to fold one to take him alive which we did barely and the other was to sit with him and not leave his side George tenets exact words were 24/7 CIA eyes on and so I was frankly afraid that I would fall asleep and that he would escape or somebody would help him escape

[06:21] or something so I tore up a sheet and I tied him to the bed arms and legs arms back here tied to the bedpost and the same with his legs after about 24 hours he came to and I'm telling you this because it's important background when we get into my own situation he came to and the first thing he asked me was to kill him he asked if I would smother him with the pillow he was crying and he actually cried a lot

[06:52] in the period that I was with him but he said please brother kill me take the pillow and kill me and I said no nobody's gonna kill you Abu Zubaydah we've been looking for you for a very long time and so he was very worried about what was gonna happen to him he asked me repeatedly what was gonna happen and I said I frankly don't know but I'll tell you one thing I am the nicest guy that you are going to encounter in this experience I said my colleagues are not as nice as I am so if

[07:25] there's one thing that you do it's that you have to cooperate and he said you seem like a nice man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate I said suit yourself for the next 24 hours we talked a lot and again he cried a lot he said he would never know the touch of a woman he would never know the joy of fatherhood he would never see his mother again and I said you're not the victim

[07:56] here there were 50,000 people in those towers what did you think was gonna happen did you think we wouldn't try to find you to kill you lock you up to kill bin Laden and he said that he didn't want to attack the United States on 9/11 he wanted to attack Israel he said all he ever wanted to do was to kill Jews but he had been overruled that bin Laden had made up his mind that it was going to be the United States on 9/11 with the idea that he wanted to crash our economy

[08:27] that was what bin Laden had told him in the middle of the night on that third night an unmarked CIA private jet flew in and landed he asked me to hold his hand so I did and three FBI agents and I carried him out on a gurney to this airplane we maneuvered him onto the plane and we laid him across the luggage rack at the back I tied him down to the luggage rack and I leaned over and I

[08:58] said remember you have to cooperate and he squeezed my hand the plane took off I never saw him again so a couple of months later I returned to CIA headquarters and I had been home two or three days I was in the cafeteria at lunchtime and a senior officer from the CIA's Counterterrorism Center approached me and said very casually he said oh hey I'm glad I ran into you I wanted to ask

[09:29] you do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard that term before so this was this was May late May early June of 2002 I said what's that mean enhanced interrogation techniques and excitedly he said we're gonna start to get rough with these guys and I said ooh what's that mean and so he explained these ten techniques to me I said I don't know man that sounds like a

[10:00] torture program torture is illegal and he said no no it's not torture program we got it approved by the Justice Department and the White House I said be that as it may I'm one of those rare people who's actually read the United Nations Convention Against Torture and that's a torture program but I said you know what let me think about it for an hour so I went upstairs to the to the seventh floor of the CIA that's the executive level there was a very senior CIA officer up there for whom I had

[10:31] worked in the Middle East about a decade earlier and I knocked on his door and I said I said I need some advice they just approached me and asked me if I wanted to be certified in these enhanced interrogation techniques what do you think of this and he said first of all let's call a spade a spade he said it's a torture program they can use whatever euphemism they want but this is a torture program and torture is a slippery slope and you know how these guys are somebody's going to go

[11:02] overboard in an interrogation and they're gonna kill a prisoner and when that happens there's going to be a congressional investigation and there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and somebody's going to be arrested and jailed he said do you want to go to jail I said no I don't want to go to jail it turned out I was the only person who went to jail but I said no I don't want to go to jail I went back down to the counterterrorism center I said this is a torture program I am NOT interested count me out now ironically motion panel

[11:36] met just a couple of days later now here I've just caught the number three in al-qaeda and I was passed over for promotion you

[12:08] friends of mine are our children played together we we would go to dinner together our wives were friends I like these guys they were friends and I realized then that that they had a dark side that I just had never really recognized I guess is the word so I declined I was not interested in this torture program and I went on to to be the executive assistant to the deputy

[12:39] director I had a great career early 2004 I resigned and I went into the private sector fast forward to December in 2007 I've been out of the CIA almost four years at this point and I get a call from Brian Ross at ABC News the Brian's a famous newsman 14 time Emmy winner one of the longest-serving investigative

[13:09] journalists out there I didn't know Brian but he called me and he said that he had a source who told him that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah I said that was absolutely untrue I had never laid a hand on Abu Zubaydah or any other prisoner I said indeed I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah the only one I said your source is either misinformed or he's a liar and Brian responded and I had no idea that

[13:39] this was an old reporter's trick but he said well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself I said I'll think about it later in the week President Bush gave a press conference and during the course of that press conference he looked directly into the camera and he said we do not torture I said to my wife who was a senior CIA officer as well I said he is a bald-faced liar he is looking the American people in the eye and he's

[14:11] lying to us but still I kept my mouth shut and then a couple of days after that the president's on his way to the helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House and a reporter shouts a question to him and he turns and says well if there is torture it's the result of a rogue CIA officer and I said to my wife Brian Ross's sources at the White House and they're gonna pin this on me and I decided that I could no longer

[14:42] wait for somebody who was actually involved in the torture program by torturing somebody to come forward and go public with his information I decided I would do it and I decided in the days leading up to that interview with Brian Ross that no matter what he asked me I would just tell the truth a week later I gave him that interview here in Washington and I said three things three things that have utterly changed the course of the rest of my life I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was

[15:14] official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue as the president had intimated and I said that the policy had been personally approved by the President himself as you can imagine the FBI began investigating me the very next day the CIA filed what's called a crimes report indicating that I had revealed classified information and from December of 2007 to December of 2008 the FBI investigated me they determined in

[15:45] December of 2008 that I had not committed a crime and they closed the case they sent my lawyers something called a declination letter declining to prosecute me my wife and I actually went out to dinner that night we were so happy we said well this is the end of our year-long nightmare three weeks later Barack Obama becomes president and he names John Brennan the deputy national security adviser John John is an old nemesis of mine I I met John in

[16:17] 1989 and we didn't like each other then and we've never liked each other since what I did not know was that Obama became president John Brennan asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me I had no idea that for the next three years until January of 2012 that Robert Muller had created something called the John Kiriakou

[16:47] task force at the FBI there were a dozen FBI agents on me 24/7 they were intercepting my phone calls they were intercepting my emails I had no idea finally in January of 2012 I was arrested and charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage coming out of that ABC News interview now espionage is one of the gravest crimes with which an American can be charged and it frequently carries with

[17:18] it the death penalty the death penalty but they were gonna go easy on me and so on the day of my arrest they offered me a deal plead guilty to one count of espionage and do 45 years and one of the FBI agents a woman said to me take the deal mr. Kuryakin and you might live to meet your grandchildren I said I am NOT doing 45 minutes I haven't done anything wrong the laws on my side and I said to her

[17:50] that day I said on the day that I took my oath of office on my first day at the CIA I put my right hand in the air and I swore to uphold and to protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and I said I will not allow myself to believe that I was the only person in the room that day who actually meant it I said I'm not taking your deal look the next week they came back and they offered me ten years take a guilty plea

[18:23] to an espionage charge do ten years I said forget it that was a Monday on Wednesday they came down to 8:00 and on Friday they came down to five I had 11 lawyers the Washington Post called my attorneys legal Titans the most important criminal defense attorneys in Washington they have represented the likes of John Mitchell during Watergate and Monica Lewinsky and Aldrich Ames and every big name in Washington these guys have

[18:55] represented one of them said to me I've been an attorney for 50 years in this city and I haven't never seen them come down in time with each offer usually when they offer you 10 years and you say no they come back the next week and they offer you 15 years and then 20 years but with me they kept coming down I said why are they doing that and he said because they have a [ __ ] case and they know it's [ __ ] so he said we're going to trial you haven't done anything wrong

[19:26] that was January of 2012 what I didn't know was that the Justice Department uses two techniques that are impossible to defend against one is called charge stacking charge stacking is let's say you may have done something wrong maybe you didn't either way instead of charging you with a crime they'll charge you with five ten twenty felonies they force you to defend yourself until you

[19:58] go bankrupt and then they come back and they say okay we'll dismiss all the charges but one if you take a plea what are you gonna do you're bankrupt you can't pay your attorneys and according to Pro Publica which came out with a report in November of 2012 the federal government wins ninety eight point two percent of their cases so do you roll those dice knowing that you have a 1.8 percent chance of winning I said to my

[20:31] lawyers I said if I end up going to trial and I'm convicted realistically what am I looking at here and they said 18 to 24 years well that's pretty much a death sentence - well I figured I had nothing to lose so we continue to go forward in our defense I actually hired OJ Simpson's jury consultant if you can imagine he happened to be the uncle of my best friend's wife and so he did it for for

[21:02] nothing and we got him a security clearance he went through all of the files and we all sat down all 11 lawyers with him and me and he said listen the other technique that the Justice Department uses is what's gonna do you in it's called venue shopping what they what the prosecution does is they will charge you with a crime in the federal district where they are most likely to

[21:33] get a conviction so let's say you run into trouble in New York they don't charge you in New York they'll charge you in Washington or Alexandria Virginia or Atlanta right wherever they think you're gonna get a guilty guilty decision and the longest possible sentence that's where they charge you well they charged me in the Eastern District of Virginia it's known as the espionage Court because no national security defendant has ever won

[22:06] a case their ever so I knew what my chances were my chances were nil there's also one judge judge Leonie brinkema who reserves all national security cases for herself me Jeffrey sterling Julian Assange Ed Snowden Zacharias Moussaoui John Walker Lindh all of these cases were argued before Judge Leonid brinkema I knew I was in trouble from the

[22:39] beginning because we found exculpatory evidence in discovery of course literally every page of my discovery was classified we receive 15,000 pages of discovery among the discovery we found several things that I thought pushed us over the finish line one was a series of memos between John

[23:09] Brennan and Eric Holder John Brennan sent a memo to Eric Holder and he said charged him with espionage and Holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage and Brennan wrote back and said charge him anyway and make him defend himself that was one thing the other thing was when I was working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee between 2009 and 2011 I was John Kerry's intelligence advisor in addition to being the senior

[23:40] investigator on the committee one of the wonderful things about a job on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is that you get to have lunch with foreign diplomats all the time and you can talk about all the issues of the day and foreign affairs that was my life and so I loved doing that one day I got a call from a Japanese diplomat who invited me to lunch we go to lunch and I remember the lunch being delightful we talked about Israeli elections Turkish elections the peace process terrific

[24:11] lunch at the end of the lunch this guy says to me so what's next for you and then said well actually I think I'm gonna resign soon I promise Senator Kerry I'd give them two years it's been two and a half I have five kids I need to make some money and get my kids through college very excitedly this guy says no don't do that if you give me information I can give you money and I said to him what's the matter with you you know how many times in my career

[24:41] I've made that pitch shame on you cold pitching me like that what's the matter with you and I excused myself and I walked directly to the office of the Senate security officer without stopping directly I went in and I said I was just pitched by foreign intelligence officer he asked me what the story was I told him what had happened at the lunch he said all right write it up as a memo I'm gonna send it to the FBI he did that so two days later two FBI agents come to see me and they

[25:13] said okay here's what we want 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'm a patriot you want me to wear a wire or something they said no we'll just be at the next table we'll listen the whole conversation I said terrific the next week they called me the day of the lunch and they said that something had come up they couldn't be there but go ahead and

[25:44] do the lunch write up another memo and send it to them so I did and then they asked me to do it a second time and a third time and a fourth time which I did and after each lunch I would write the memo and I would send it to the FBI we learned in discovery that there was no Japanese diplomat he was an FBI agent undercover trying to get me to commit real espionage trying to get me to take

[26:15] money in exchange for classified information but I kept reporting the meetings back to the FBI and finally Peter Strock who later became infamous on his own said look he's not going to take the bait we might as well just end this operation and they did so we wanted to declassify all of this evidence of entrapment in addition to declassifying the fact that I was not guilty on the

[26:47] facts I was not guilty of the crime for which I was charged that there was a disgruntled CIA officer named Steven Kim in Bethesda Maryland who had leaked this information as classified information for which I was charged judge brinkema set aside two days for us to argue our motions we we filed 70 separate motions to declassify 70 separate documents

[27:18] crucial to my defense on the day of the hearing we went in and judge brinkema said I'm gonna make this easy for everybody I have decided to deny all 70 of these motions and my lawyers objected she overruled them my lawyers called for something called I forget what it was called but what it was effectively was an in-camera interview with the judge

[27:50] she denied that but she did agree to an in-camera interview with the prosecutors when she came out of that meeting she reiterated her denial of our objection as we were walking out of the court I said to my lead attorney what just happened in there and he said we just lost the case that's what happened he said we can't defend you she won't allow us to defend you we can't use any of that exculpatory evidence because it's classified I said well now what do we do

[28:22] he said now we talked about a plea well the FBI knew that they they had me because I I was simply unable to defend myself and they came back and they said five years I said forget it I'll go to trial they said you'll lose at trial I said I don't care because if I go to trial I'm going to testify on my own behalf and I might accidentally talk about some of the hideous crimes against humanity and war crimes that I've

[28:53] witnessed with my own eyes in 15 years at the CIA and so they came back and they said all right two and a half years you do 23 months take it or leave it you have until nine o'clock tomorrow morning my wife and I stayed up literally all night that night and we decided to turn it down I was confident that I had done nothing wrong and I convinced

[29:27] myself that once I got in front of a jury they would realize how ridiculous this was what a miscarriage of justice this was so I called my attorneys at 7 a.m. and I said I decided to turn down the deal I'm going to trial two of the attorneys drove to my house and the one that I liked and respected the most pulled me aside and angrily said you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about justice it's not about justice it's about mitigating

[29:59] damage take the deal if you were my brother I would beg you to take the deal and I realized then at that moment the internet I never had a chance from the beginning the deck was stacked when you have the FBI the CIA and the Justice Department stacked up against you with an unlimited budget literally an unlimited budget and they've already

[30:29] spent six million dollars of the taxpayers money to send you to a low-security prison for twenty three months you can't win well that's what this jury consultant told me if we were in any other district in America he said I would tell you let's go for it we're gonna win this thing but the Eastern District of Virginia you don't have a prayer and so I took the deal now more information has come out in the interim actually since I got home

[31:02] from prison in February of 2015 two of those 12 FBI agents have actually called me to apologize and say that this was a political case they were sorry but they were forced to do it we've learned that this was completely and totally at the instigation of John Brennan because he was living that I had exposed the CIA's dirty laundry in public and I had confirmed that the CIA was indeed

[31:32] during its prisoners remember John Brennan was the executive director of the CIA at the time he was the number three ranking officer at the CIA and he was in up to his neck in the george w bush torture program which barack obama helped to cover up so i learned a lot one of the things that i learned is that i'm a whistleblower you know the the day after my arrest I sought out jesselyn Radack at the Government Accountability Project jesselyn Radack specializes in the

[32:05] defense of whistleblowers and I I said listen I've got to thank you for taking my case I know that you only take the cases of whistleblowers and I'm not a whistleblower and she chuckled and she said you're the poster boy of whistleblowing and I said no I'm not I'm just I'm just a guy who saw an illegality and said something and she said look there's actually a legal definition of whistleblowing it's

[32:36] bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety that's exactly what you did and she said that in her experience with the exception at the time of Daniel Ellsberg and since then also of Ed Snowden that no whistle blower thinks he's a whistleblower they have to be told that they're whistleblowers I've been asked a thousand times why I did what I did and

[33:07] I've repeated the same answer a thousand times and that is that I have always been a firm and staunch believer in the Constitution and in the rule of law that's what separates us from every other country either we're that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan talked about or we're not either we're a beacon of hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties or were not

[33:40] you know I spent three years on assignment at the State Department at the American Embassy in Manama Bahrain and in that job I was the human rights officer which meant that I had to write the Human Rights report every year it's an annual report mandated by Congress now imagine going into the Minister of interiors office and saying your excellency you cannot scoop up a fifteen year old kid in front of his school beat him to death and then

[34:13] dump his body in front of his parents house you cannot kill people extra judicially I have to write that in the human rights report that is a violation of international law and then 15 minutes later the CIA go officer goes in to meet the same Minister of Interior and says don't listen to the State Department guy we'll cover for you we want you to open a secret prison where we can bring these people that we kidnap overseas that nobody knows about

[34:43] and then you torture them for us and then you give us transcripts of everything they say what do you think they're gonna do you think they're gonna listen to the State Department human rights guy or you think they're gonna cash the CIA's check and do what the CIA station chief tells them to do we can't be both of those countries either we're a nation governed by a living and breathing Constitution or we're not and I have always believed that we were and that's worth fighting for and so you

[35:14] know prison was hard hard hard I actually wrote a book about it called doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison it won two literary awards if you can even believe that but I was serious in my convictions in my beliefs that we're the good guys and if we are going to be the good guys we have to select the good guys the rest of the world looks to us for leadership and so we have to lead even

[35:44] if that leadership is sometimes domestically painful and so with that we have 19 minutes I'm happy to take any any calls or comments that questions that anybody may have well that was pretty amazing I would have to say and it was curious they didn't know the actual outcome the world what did have materially had to take the deal in the end though just goes to show like so they had a pretty weak case if they kept wit whittling it

[36:14] down and wheeling it down just to get you to say yes to something yes before I kind of open up I didn't want to get a couple comments that we came because Heidi was able to have meanders to get online here Heidi are you there hello yes thank you welcome wanted to kind of get some comment area and what he had to say and a little bit about kind of your experiences too and probably give it a little fast bio on yourself if you would great um John wow that's really really

[36:46] quite a story I'm proud to call you a brother-in-arms psycho baby um a little bio about myself you want me to start in ah yes jump right in there with both feet okay great my name is Heidi Weber I am a higher education whistleblower in the college or university realm I was a Dean at a for-profit college in based out of the

[37:18] Minnesota Wisconsin area and the school had approximately 25 different campuses under different names and such throughout the United States so although the majority of them are in the Midwest here I grew up in South Dakota my dad was a deputy sheriff when I was younger and taught me a lot about ethics I mean that he was a very very big proponent of ethics doing the right thing

[37:51] volunteering for your country and and being a patriot so he instilled all those things in me and my mom too you know she she was right behind him teaching those things as well and so I grew up with that in the back of my mind I started working for this university system which to be a for-profit college university system and that it's different than a state school or even a private college system where they've been around for you know hundreds of years and have a

[38:22] foundation and all those sorts of things in place for-profit colleges kind of popped up from the 80s until now their primary goal is you know to be run as a business and you know a lot of them do it a great way they really do a lot of a lot of those for-profit schools are good they give people a good education started seeing all these things going on at the school I was at I was promoted quickly I was named faculty member of

[38:53] the year a year after I started promoted moved to the Twin Cities area from South Dakota and I I really started seeing a pattern at that point you know before I had just been at a single campus watching all these things go on and and then when I got up here as Dean in corporate I started seeing a pattern at every campus well long story short my dad had kidney cancer and he ended up passing away about a year into my being

[39:25] Dean at this college and the school made me leave my dad's funeral and go to an accreditation conference and I remember thinking how's the longest day of my life and I had a turning point became a whistleblower four years later went to trial a jury trial and the verdict was in my favor since then I've done a lot of other things with whistleblowing and become an advocate for especially women

[39:56] whistleblowers there aren't that many of us and for others as far as advocacy because as John knows it's rough being a whistleblower the things that you face the scrutiny is unbelievable so that's kind of everything in a nutshell I can get into more detail later but that's basically where I'm at right now I'm starting a podcast and we're gonna dive into a lot of different store and really the the meat and potatoes of what it means to be a whistleblower and

[40:27] go through all of that so that's where I'm at do you want me to keep talking here I can go trying to chime in for a minute manager divvy up the time we've got so I definitely want to kind of open up for some questions and so yeah but the question I would ask of both you at the beginning because you're both coming from completely different places as a word even though you try to make the same thing happen why do you assume that so many people who's seen these sorts of things don't become a whistleblower what

[40:59] was different about the two of you was it just because you had more ethics and everybody else or you were less fearful of the penalties or you were more convinced of the fact that you were totally right there'd be no way you'd pay a price because you knew you were so dead right what do you what do you what do you think it was John do you want to go first I'll let you go first thank you this is a question that I've I've asked a thousand times I've asked experts who cover these things and there there's an Israeli journalist who also

[41:30] happens to be a psychologist by the name of Al Press he's actually studied this and he's written a book about it and he said that whistleblowers have an unusually well-defined sense of right and wrong far better defined than the general public and you know at the CIA they the culture is such that they teach us that that everything is a shade of gray and I came to realize that that just simply wasn't true that some things are black and white they're right and wrong and in

[42:02] my mind this was something that was just plain wrong the other thing for me was I grew up in a very close-knit nuclear family I'm the grandson of immigrants from Greece the Greek Orthodox Church was very important in my upbringing and you know we talk about things like like human rights and so I was I was raised

[42:33] to to believe that on many of these big issues these broader issues there's a right and a wrong and people around me at the CIA spent their time trying to justify their actions actions that I believed to be illegal there was no sense in thinking about it I just knew that it was wrong and so I think that al presses conclusion that that whistleblowers have this unusually highly defined sense of right and wrong is correct yeah I would agree I agree

[43:07] with John I think you know we get into that more in my podcasts too and about talking that because as John said we get that question all the time and people asked why did you do that or they have some they think we have some ulterior motive or something you know you know for money or whatever and reality there are 2,000 whistleblower cases filed with the government each year and whistleblowers save American taxpayers four billion dollars are

[43:37] recovered in taxpayer money because of whistleblowers each year and that's per year people so it's we 2,000 cases are filed only two or three hundred get picked up so you have all these people who are whistleblowers who obviously you know did it for the right reason and not for money because there's the odds are against you more than they are for you in that realm plus to just to go through the process it's a four or five year process to go through everything and you

[44:08] have to stay strong and you have to rely on the truth you know if you were doing it otherwise it wouldn't work I wouldn't imagine it has to be based on the truth before I and I see some hands are raised real quick before we base out on asking this question what can any of us do to see their help you individually or at large and over others that are trying to get out there's or some organizations to get behind or I think I think well I can

[44:38] speak to that first here there are a lot of organizations but I think if they're just the average person what I tell people you know they look at me and say you know you get these things called a traitor your snitch disloyal list or whatever you know um and I look at him and say hey you know when is telling the truth rah when is that a wrong thing and then people kind of come around and I I think just telling people speaking up when people use that kind of narrative or negativity around whistleblowing and whistleblowers will help a lot because

[45:10] man you we each need that support it helps us all and it helps every single citizen in this country when we stand up and if we have support that would make it all better you know more people would be encouraged to do it then so what would you say Jeff I would agree with that entirely if you're interested in organizations certainly there's the Government Accountability Project the Project on Government Oversight there's the whisper program whistleblower and source protection

[45:41] program is what it stands for you know I just as a funny aside when I got home from prison the Greek government hired me to help them write a new whistleblower protection law and so I made ten trips to Greece over the three years from 2015 to 2018 to meet with the Minister of Justice and the Minister of State for anti-corruption when I went for the very first time well the Minister of the Minister of

[46:14] Justice asked me my Greek is very good and so the Minister of Justice asked me what I meant when I kept using this word whistleblower because there's no equivalent of it so our conversation was in Greek except for the word whistleblower so I explained to him in Greek what the meaning of the word was and he said oh you mean like a rat or a snitch and I said no not at all like a rat or a snitch and so we came up with

[46:44] guardian of the public trust which sounds really good in Greek but that's what we're up against I mean this was a friendly audience equating whistleblowing with ratting and snitching imagine what a hostile audience is like and when I say hostile audience I mean on Capitol Hill in the oversight mitties in the halls of the CIA and the FBI and the Justice Department there is a lot of work that needs to be done absolutely that you are a hundred percent right John you are I spoke on

[47:16] Capitol Hill as well and had faced a lot of questions from the press even you know the media comes up with that and I've been on CBS so and I mana CBS Associate Producer and we are in the second season of whistle blower right now on CBS which paints whistle blowing in the the light that it should be you know we're just average people so very nice bright and I see ever cand up yeah the question question for John what and what an amazing story thank you they go my

[47:48] question is what you described seems to be sort of this this untouchability your your experience sort of shows the untouchability of what we call the deep state and it really does you know to normal people seem sort of like this this all-powerful entity that no one dare go up against that you really don't have a chance against and my question is what do you have any thoughts or any ideas for those of us who would like to

[48:19] fight that to sort of even dismantle the deep state or you know make it such that we're we're not up against this all-powerful thing oh that's a great question and it's actually a very difficult one to answer a preface an answer by saying that there's a there's a Harvard Law Professor by the name of Harvey silverglade who wrote a book in 2012 called three felonies a day and he argues that we are so over criminalized so over regulated in this country that

[48:52] the average American on the average day going about his or her normal business commits three felonies with the the lesson being if they want to get you they're gonna get you and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself okay with that aside what we have to do is to absolute ride are members of Congress our elected official because it's their job to provide oversight it's their job to protect

[49:24] whistleblowers and to make sure that the American taxpayers are being well represented and are not being robbed by the likes of the CIA and NSA and FBI and the rest of the deep state those organizations have to follow the law just like every other American does and it's it's only Congress that can hold them to it I'll tell you really since 9/11 the oversight committees have not overseen anything they've just been in chair to reader

[49:54] committees and that's not what Congress is meant to do amen to that a Kathy I see you've got your hand up as well Kathy are you there oh I got you meet it for month there you go it was we both were muted and I had you muted - by mistake go ahead that's okay thank you John for your great integrity like this and I'm

[50:28] just thinking considering well say Paul Manafort has been going through it game center Rikers Island just yesterday a larger stone and all the people involved in this state thing against Trump well I mean I've heard that they've been told that if you don't agree it isn't this you know we want them to sing her compose or whatever to tell a story what kind of advice would you give people who

[51:00] caught up in this kind of thing right now Oh be true to yourself you know one of the things that the cost the cost of all of this is very very high as you might imagine I lost literally everything I lost my pension I lost my home my wife ran off with her boss better than being married to me I lost everything I never work again I mean not really

[51:31] not unless some courageous you know corporate leader decides to take a chance on a convicted felon so the cost is very very high but I sleep like a baby at night because I know I did the right thing and my kids are old enough to articles and to watch documentaries and my kids know I did the right thing and so yeah you know if this is what God

[52:03] intended for me that I'm just gonna have to I'm gonna have to live with it but I can tell you that I can sleep at night and I don't know how some of these other guys sleep at night yeah thank you David I see you've got your hand there thank you Jeff John and Heidi this David Demarest with roads to freedom and I've noticed that you and Heidi share one thing and that

[52:34] is you're whistleblowers against large institutions both government and private I'm extremely dubious about the government policing itself on issues like this and for that matter I'm extremely dubious about large institutions in general like the education system private or public policing themselves now I understand the motivation the ethical motivation of

[53:05] whistleblowers what do you think is the problem with large institutions that fosters these types of ethical problems well thanks John I think John will probably agree with me here and saying that private or government they're kind of tied together you know without getting too political in there anything a lot of our corporations and certain

[53:39] government entities are kind of friends with each other shall we say in different ways and so I think my personal opinion of why this happens is because we have we don't have competition anymore we don't have the kind of competition that we need that kind of checks and balance system that has an equal pushback for bad behavior you know or by a few and certainly a few people cannot represent the entire government or an entire corporation by

[54:11] their behavior but I think we need things in place that foster more of a balanced system between the two so that they are held accountable for what they're doing and and the corporation itself whether a government or private can actually hold its own people more accountable inside but that's my opinion though I hate to sound like an echo chamber but yeah I agree completely with Heidi I can tell you at the CIA there is

[54:43] actually one good guy and that's the Inspector General the Inspector General when I was there was a man by the name of John helgerson John was already the deputy director of the CIA when I got hired he didn't retire until 2009 and he was essentially forced out because he refused to to cave in to the likes of George tennen and John Brennan and Jose Rodriguez and these other monsters who created this clearly illegal program now

[55:16] inspectors general do not always work the way they're supposed to work Tom Drake who was an NSA officer went to the Pentagon inspector general to report on a program where NSA was surreptitiously spying on American citizens and the Pentagon inspector general destroyed the evidence that Tom brought out with him and then tipped off the Justice Department that Tom had reported on this this abuse so now the DoD Inspector

[55:47] General now former inspector general is under criminal indictment for destruction of evidence so you can't always trust the Inspector General and again this is why we need well staffed and well-funded oversight committees who have experienced investigators on them and there are none I mean the Intelligence Committee is supposed to but but they're partisan and so they don't always cooperate with one another but this system that we that we

[56:18] found ourselves in post 9/11 it's just not workable there has to be a real change and at the very least when it comes to national security you have to take the partisanship out of it that's going to be the death of us it's true - yes we're gonna try and squeeze one more question before I turn it over to Charles Jamie I see you've got your hand up yes hi everyone you know John I think you answered a really big part of my question was so I

[56:48] I'll obby here in DC for medical freedom in that and we're finding that almost every single Oversight Committee is bought and paid for it is just a mess everyone comes in there totally bipartisan they breathe from their script and they leave and it is the most unreal a natural state and no none of these politicians are making eye contact with anyone and they bring their people

[57:20] in and they leave they're not hearing from any sides now not just for my side of medical freedom we're finding that you know there's people with institutions with a about the technology with 5g they're not hearing it from this side even on that I mean so I just wanted to ask you is there anybody on the hill that you personally stand behind and Heidi you as well who you

[57:51] felt like you've been in contact for so many years and who you feel comfortable with working with you know and that's it thank you guys great question the answer is yes there are two people chuck Grassley is the champion of whistleblowers on Capitol Hill Republican senator from Iowa and the other is Rand Paul Republican senator from Kentucky I've met with both of them they are only entirely supportive of whistleblowers and have put their own reputations on

[58:21] the line to support people like like me or Bradley Birkenfeld or Tom Drake or bill Binney they didn't have to do that and certainly no no the other 536 members of Congress have ever said anything supportive so yeah those are the the to go to people that I've dealt with Grassley and Rand Paul no sooner is he drown go ahead finish your comment oh sorry about that mine are not necessarily with the in government you

[58:52] know I talked to a lot of whistleblowers and a lot of whistleblower attorneys which are mainly based out of Washington DC there are a lot of them a lot of those firms really you know I mean it's their job but they're really fighting for a recognition of whistleblowers and and their rights as well so I would say whistleblowers of America is another and gap as John had mentioned before the Government Accountability Project they're really doing a lot of lobbying to draw attention they're great people

[59:23] to talk to that are nonpartisan I don't want to say bipartisan nonpartisan maybe because you know there's certainly government officials who find it in their best interest at a certain time to you know bring up or be a champion for whistleblowers but then when going gets tough maybe they're not around you know so to speak from both parties both are there anyway there whether friends for sure you know and some one of the other people on the call made a comment which is so true that once all these checks

[59:54] and balances disappear then who knows where we're gonna go we could drift into fascism and know these big entities like the vet and the CIA and all the rest of them there's no taxes paid they're doing no financial statement there's no one knows anything what's going on with any of these organizations let alone the individuals that are passing rules and regulations that willy-nilly and what-have-you so it is a disaster we need to get control of Charles we're a little past our time here you want to kind of ask any last question of your own and kind of give us a preview of

[1:00:24] what's coming up the next couple we well sir Jeff and you know we've gone to in hours let me wrap it up quick preview and thanks John and howdy has fantastic I mean if we don't respect whistleblowers how can we ever know what's going on in the bowels of the government so I know John you know I spoke a a year ago so expanding whistleblower rights to the national security employees so if you want to say something that a specific expansion that

[1:00:59] still is needed oh I think I think so I think that there ought to be one focal point on Capitol Hill for whistleblower liaison instead of going to the general counsel and then the Inspector General and through your chain of command and then you go to the you know to the general Oversight Committee there should be one person an ombudsman that you can go directly to and report waste fraud abuse and illegality we're not there yet

[1:01:32] and and I'll tell you things work far better in the Senate than they do in the house the house is just a just it's a basket trance chaos between the Republicans and the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee it's unworkable the Senate is better but we can be better still true the House Senate Veterans Affairs Committee is meeting on some whistleblower things with witnesses and a couple of weeks so I'm just throwing that out there in case anybody wants to help out and support them and

[1:02:04] Heidi how can folks watch our CBS show or your podcast you can go to once it's live we're talking the June here right now season two of whistleblower on CBS is running on Friday night it showcases one whistleblower per week their story basically like John's story from beginning to end my story was featured in season one is the season finale but the ones and two are pretty good I've helped find a lot of them so I've talked to a lot of whistleblowers also my podcast is just diving deeper

[1:02:37] into it and it's going to be joon-hee got a whistle-blower revolution calm fantastic and jeff real quick so next year I mean next week we have Leonard read the founder of the foundation for economic education as my son yells at me in the background and then in two weeks hence Hawaii's think tanker about how to open up the freight travel lanes with the Jones Act and then Robert pull from The Reason Foundation on speeding up the roads and then I must

[1:03:09] now Adam Koch cash and weather will get bigger issues on the presidential campaign so with that Jeff I will meet myself okay very good appreciate that everyone being here today we you know obviously we could have kept going here this was really an exciting episode as usual and we're gonna want to circle back and see how things continue to you know move forward for all of these issues we've been covering so I appreciate the two of you making it here today and everybody else and I'll see in a week and then I said again I'm Monday I will send a notice out so we'll have a link to the recording of this as well as announcing

[1:03:40] Leonard Reed and a little preview of what he's gonna be talking about so thanks all and pass the word around about us and share some of those videos on our Channel [Music]

[1:04:14] you
