Title: THE DIVE IN WITH RATTAN
Show: The Dive In With Rattan
Date: 2022-09-20
URL: https://youtu.be/IYF3-fJ8QEY
Duration: 115:00

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[00:05] foreign [Music] hello welcome to the round table this is Round Table number 21 and I'm your host Gonzalo Lira and today is uh Tuesday

[00:38] September 20th 2022 and we're going to have a very interesting discussion I have three wonderful guests and I'll introduce them to you in turn Ray McGovern is a former CIA officer Ray how's it going good to see you my friend doing well thank you oh it's a pleasure having you on again uh I have John kiriaku the famous CIA whistleblower John a pleasure to meet you the pleasure is all mine Gonzalo thanks so much for the invitation oh thank you very much for accepting it's a real pleasure a

[01:09] real delight and Susie Dawson uh a activist on the intelligence front Susie nice to meet you nice to meet you sir Gonzalez thank you so much for coming on and uh the thing that the the reason I wanted to have you on is the listeners know that uh I was away for almost two weeks because my YouTube channel got uh suspended got a strike because I talked about the malady that shall not be named so you all three are warmed we cannot mention the malady or much less the

[01:40] medication that's been used for it but talking about that forthrightly is no longer possible and what I found fascinating is all these Revelations whereby the US government is working with these private platforms to essentially censor information now I actually lived in the Peniche dictatorship I always bring this up that in the penetrative chairship there was less repression and more free speech in the west than there in in Chile back in the day than there is in the west today and I'm I wanted to the the thing that I

[02:12] I find fascinating is how the government has outsourced repressive technology measures and I want to get your uh opinion John because you're you're like you were one of the first whistleblowers that started talking about the excesses of the uh American intelligence community and I want to get your opinion about what you think of how the US government is outsourcing repression uh what do you think of all this oh yeah well you know it's a it's a very

[02:42] appropriate uh question because today is the 75th anniversary of the creation of the CIA uh I didn't know that yeah yeah that's kind of funny yeah we I've been thinking about this a lot lately because uh there have been calls uh from some important people people who might have a great deal of respect for uh to create a new church committee or something akin to a new church committee

[03:13] uh you know the church committee did wonderful historic amazing work and exposing crimes that the CIA and the FBI were committing against Americans and against uh uh foreign Nationals well post 911 and and don't forget that 21 years have already passed since 9 11. uh the the reforms that the church committee enacted have really just Fallen by the wayside uh we've got a CIA now that has an

[03:45] active assassination program a CIA that won't even acknowledge that there is such a thing as a drone program a CIA that had a a secret prison system around the world a CIA that carries out International kidnappings that they euphemistically call Renditions there are there are so many things that the CIA is doing in in the name of the American people for which there is no oversight or very

[04:16] little oversight that it's essentially undone all of the good things that the church committee had accomplished the FBI is is just as bad NSA is just as bad you know it's a part of the nsa's charter that it's not permitted to collect information on American citizens or U.S persons that's any anybody here on a on a green card um and in fact that's almost exclusively what they do uh we haven't even begun

[04:47] talking about DARPA and about uh the the Myriad of of contractors and uh defense and intelligence related uh consulting firms around the Beltway here in Washington you know Gonzalo it's not an accident that there are now more millionaires per capita in the Washington DC area than anywhere else in America including Silicon Valley it's not an accident yeah I know got

[05:18] very rich 911 and its aftermath but what I find what I find incredible is is how so many of the repressive measures that are being implemented by the American government are being subcontracted out so that there there's absolutely reliability absolutely I mean look at look at well they call them butts in the seats that that's the that's what they call them at the CIA there are people who don't really work for the CIA they work for

[05:48] Booz Allen Hamilton or they work for saic or happy or any any one of a number of uh of outfits uh and they have a bud in a seat and they they punch in information in a computer or they you know run some clandestine program um the CIA doesn't have to pay for their health insurance or their pension contribution and uh and then everybody's happy but then at the same time even while everybody's happy there's no

[06:18] accountability there's nobody that that has to answer to anyone again you know one of the great things that came out of the church committee was the creation of the Senate select committee on intelligence and the house permanent select committee on intelligence oversight committees for the intelligence Community well they're just cheerleading organizations yeah oversee anything yeah you know I saw a video of yours Susie that that how you discussed the um the the the the motivation of these

[06:51] intelligence firms since there there are for profit corporations they want to be increasing their revenue and so basically they start targeting everybody yeah well that's the problem when you subcontract um the targeting of citizens to for-profit agencies in order for them to make more profit they need to Target more people and I think I I mentioned and I think I know the film that you're talking about and I mentioned in there how when security cameras first came

[07:22] into residential areas or commercial districts you know you had like one camera and then another kilometer One camera and then it was like 800 meters and it was 600 meters and now you have four cameras on the same wall of the same shop and um it's just this cycle where to make more money they're actually Target more people um did you hear about how there's an AI that if you take a picture on Instagram this AI can look at the picture and figure out which cameras were filming

[07:54] you while you took the picture and and and show them to you and this is a commercially available product that is for people people's Amusement so in terms of intelligence you can imagine how much you're being surveilled yeah absolutely and studying NSA documents from Snowden Falls you say the same thing they talk about wanting to be able to geolocate to the meter anywhere on the planet no matter which country it's in they do it from space the national geospatial agency later in our uh as

[08:24] well in this area National surveillance officers that I think Ray would know there's a whole bunch of these agencies that are aside from the CIA and NSA which are part of this ecosystem of spying and their agencies that in some cases have more Personnel than NSA or CIA but which nobody ever even cares about but they're end game and they admit it in their own documents that the end game is to create a control grid of the entire planet it's it's in black and white in their own documents it's basically a panopticon a panopticon

[08:56] prison where where the warden can see every single prisoner and and nobody can make a move with without any any kind of Freedom Ray let me ask you to bring you into the conversation you know how do we solve this what would be the Practical steps necessary in order to change this around and have an intelligence service that does its job but serves the people and doesn't try to in essence it seems to me kind of like enslave the people well Gonzalo I I uh compliment you on

[09:28] your Greek derivative panopticon yeah it literally means see everything you know uh and that's pretty much as Susie has already indicated the name of the game now I'd like to go back to what uh John kiriapo said uh he's an expert on torture having refused to be trained in the techniques of enhanced interrogation techniques and having blown the whistle on it now

[10:01] it's very courageous thing to do uh it ended it ended up with him having to spend two years in prison I visited John in prison I saw all kinds of folks were there with John and how I was so glad that John could defend himself uh that's neither here nor there let's talk about the so-called oversight committees right well long since they have become Overlook committees you know the

[10:33] overlooked Committees of the Senate and the house now just yesterday a federal judge or district judge a ruled that we are not allowed to see the extensive 6700 page Senate intelligence committee research document on CIA torture based on CIA documents okay

[11:05] now people need to be reminded how this evolved uh it took five years to do it started out when when under the order of Gina haspel the chief CIA person in the first CIA black site in Thailand waterboarding and worse we're done okay she was there she watched it she wasn't right there she rushed it through the proverbial window

[11:36] make sure as you know what she wanted okay now the tapes that were made were destroyed by whom oh bite you to Asheville and her boss now even a Republican senator was outraged at then we have to creation later the Republicans bowed out of the investigation but what came out of that was a really gutsy report shepherded by Dianne Feinstein who unfortunately is

[12:09] now in her dotage but in those days uncharacteristically I think because she stood up for these people that she saw working night and day to get to the bottom of this and who came by quite quite felicitously serious bear original studies done at the behest of the then CIA director Leon Panetta I mean they had all the goods right there okay now what happened

[12:41] they started drafting this thing and President Obama was opposed to it he had his chief of staff attend all of these meetings that were sensibly designed to to redact it to to sanitize it okay every one of those meetings what did this person do I think it was McCullough is that his name anyhow uh he was there to make sure that the CI interests were protected why because John Brennan and Barack Obama uh had this twin

[13:11] relationship where Barack Obama was going to do everything he possibly could to defend John Brennan now when it came out that John Brennan sent his folks into the Senate intelligence committee computers Dianne Feinstein got a little girl got a little upset at that okay suffice it to say that she oversaw a document of 6700 pages but reduced to 525 page redacted executive

[13:46] summary now the summary is enough to indict everyone involved the summary is awful you you have to the the summary yeah just the summary I mean it's redacted but you learn that these these terrible techniques and they're named were not effective they didn't produce any valid information that the CIA lied about it to the president and to everyone else that oh

[14:18] yeah we're getting good information on tourism and anything and that the techniques themselves were followers than any briefed to the White House or to anybody else okay those were the main conclusions and gory detail is included now what happened it's the end of Dianne Feinstein's term as head of the Senate select committee on intelligence what's she gonna do is she going to go ahead and publish this redacted summary or is she going to Bow

[14:50] like most people and do Overlook rather than oversight I don't know what accounted for her courage I think it was her loyalty to these folks who worked so hard for her okay who did so much and came up with this redacted versions which spoke volumes in and of themselves but she was also helped by a senator named Udall Udall lost this re-election capability and you had all said you know if you

[15:21] don't release that terrible document I'm gonna release it from the floor of Congress whoa that that allowed or propelled even Obama to say okay we redacted the 525 page summary so all right let it go out there and we just will tell the Press don't play it up it's just you know we're trying to catch terrorists right okay yeah so that so it's published in December of 2014 I think okay so what happens

[15:55] um it's pretty much kept the wraps on uh and when Richard Burr I live in North Carolina now uh he's still one of our Senators when he became chair of the Senate intelligence committee replacing Dianne Feinstein he said those are congressional documents I want them all back here I'm going to take care of them every one of you executive agencies give me those documents and they did now I S I suspect that

[16:28] there may have been one kept at the CIA but I also suspect that cheetah haspel destroyed that before she left office as get this director of the CIA what's the morale what's the moral of this story well uh not only are the Senate and House intelligence committees feckless and unable to do what the uh what the commission asked them to do very early on uh but they're actually facilitate the hiding of these things and I dare

[17:00] say they know that the CI the FBI have as much on them as as would be very embarrassing or they just step out of line and do the right thing lastly Richard Burr was caught selling stock when code when he got a briefing on Covert and he he just you know really just did what he could to enhance his profits that's well known he's going out of out of office in January and the sooner the better but you know it's not only he I'll just add

[17:32] one more thing the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by a super annuated guy from Iowa whose name will occur to me in a second John kiriako you probably will Grassley Congress okay all right so here what happens with respect to Watergate is this lawyer kleinsmith is discovered to have falsified documents to justify a

[18:04] fisa request okay kleinsmann okay what does he get well his wife is pregnant and so he gets no jail time okay for deliberately falsifying this document okay that's a felony okay so what happens restly comments in a in a we call it a tweet okay a grassly queen and he says oh so this this shows that the justice department has no power over these over

[18:36] these people uh what happens is uh it's the department of just us is what Wesley says and no one will ever go to no one ever go to jail they take care of themselves now why is the significant regressively is the chairman of the them or almost chairman now he has been chairman he'll be chairman again probably of the Senate uh Judiciary Committee he's 91 years old I think that's even older than I am I think he's

[19:08] even less accomplishmentous than I am sorry to carry on so long that's all right that's all right it's it's delightful to hear you uh but you know one of the things I notice and uh John helped me out here because it seems to me that the uh Obama administration oddly enough the Democrat Administration that's all for civil liberties and you know free speech and all the rest of it it seemed to be more obsessed with intelligence and cracking down on intelligence

[19:38] I had friends at the White House at the time who described Barack Obama's obsession with leaks as nicksonian it was a nicksonian obsession with National Security leaks and I was told also at the time that this was because of John Brennan remember Obama tried to name Brennan as CIA director uh in 2009 at the beginning of his first term and progressives just threw a fit and so

[20:08] so Obama the thing is I just want to be clear I'm I'm politically conservative and very conservative that and I think that John Brennan is just you know he is he looks like a shyster you know drug dealer almost I mean I would trust him as far as I could throw him to tell you the truth so I understand the progressives exactly you know there's there's actually a great story to the career of John Brennan I I worked for John Brennan when I was still on the analytics side at the CIA uh John was a

[20:39] gs-15 uh Deputy Chief of the Arab Israeli group in the office of near Eastern South Asian analysis okay he was a mid-level functionary like so many of us were and um he worked for a woman named Martha Kessler who was like the U.S government's leading expert on Syria Martha wrote a book called Syria fragile Mosaic of power that we all had to read when we went oh god oh oh so she could get you know pick up some royalties

[21:10] right he worked for her but she didn't like him and finally he went to her this was in this was in like 1996 I'm gonna say and um 1995. and uh he said look I've worked for you for a long time I think I'm ready for promotion into the senior intelligence service and she said that not only will you never be in the senior intelligence service I don't even want

[21:41] you working for me anymore you're fired and at the agency when you're fired fired you're not really fired you have six weeks to to walk the halls and find another job and if you do you're good and if you don't then you're fired six weeks within within the agency itself within the agency exactly well it's Christmas time and you know the normal turnover for jobs is in the summer so John goes out there and he starts

[22:11] looking for a job he ends up going to the pdb staff the president's Daily Brief where where Ray was uh was a star and because it was off cycle uh they were able to offer him a job as a briefer for the lowest ranking person entitled to a pdb briefing that was the director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council who at the time happened to be one George Tennant

[22:42] so yeah they immediately hit it off because they were exactly alike their mean aggressive alpha dogs cigar smoking you know just two awful people hit it up George was promoted to Deputy uh director of the CIA and he brings uh uh John Brennan back with him and what does he do he makes John Brennan deputy director of The Office of near Eastern

[23:12] and South Asian analysis Martha Kessler's boss so John calls Martha oh his office oh now you're fired okay I mean I gotta admit as a story it's pretty good and and pretty sweet for Brennan I mean let's give the devil his due can you give us background on John Brennan because

[23:43] you don't want to I I absolutely no I think it's important to actually because there's a trail of dead bodies behind John Brennan not many people talk about and I don't actually just mean um those that you would assume in the war on terror um but I mean actually on Western soil and particularly journalists and Brennan was the attack dog of Obama that is true but Brennan absolutely relished the role and Brennan had very personal beefs with

[24:13] Julie massage and with Wikileaks but also with someone else who almost never gets talked about in fact has almost been disappeared from the discourse that's an extremely Brave Rolling Stone reporter called Michael Hastings Michael Hastings was going on CNN and MSNBC and major mainstream platforms and he was completely eviscerating the Obama Administration the war on terror particularly the military U.S military effort in Afghanistan he wrote an extremely famous expose on it was

[24:45] General Stanley mcquisto am I right Ray yes right who ended up getting fired by Obama on the basis of the reporting of Michael Hastings while Michael Hastings was also the first famous or earliest famous reporter outside of Glenn and Glenn Greenwood and Laura poitrus um to openly support Snowden and when I say support Snowden I mean in the minutes after Snowden coming out when before he had even left Hong Kong when everybody

[25:16] was waking up every day expecting that they would see the news that Snowden had been captured or killed Michael Hastings go and look at his Twitter timeline at MM Hastings and see the tweets I'm talking about more than 50 of his tweets on his timeline were advocating for Snowden and far and wide and that was at a time where it was extremely dangerous to support Snowden in those first minutes and hours and days after the first known disclosures Michael Hastings was also working on his next big story

[25:47] at that time and his next big story was an expose on Ron Brennan then director of the CIA likely in the context of Brennan's targeting of Julian Assange and Wikileaks who Hastings had also been outspoken and supportive Hastings had met with Julian several times Hastings had written a series of articles about Julian and Wikileaks um so Hastings was on the proverbial [ __ ] list I don't know what else to call it for a number of reasons but having taken down a general having supported

[26:19] Wikileaks and Julian throughout the smear campaigns and the the D platforming and the attacks that Wikileaks was facing in that period of 2009 through 2013 then openly advocating for snow and then the final straw endearing to investigate the director of the CIA John Brennan and who expose him for his own mentality Michael Hastings then reported uh that he believed his cut his vehicle was being tampered with he borrowed a neighbor's car he reached

[26:50] out to Jen Robinson Wikileaks lawyer and shared his fears that he was being targeted by the FBI and his his car his late model BMW borrowed from the neighbor in fact exploded into some of the Reigns on a Los Angeles Boulevard um less than 48 hours after he first started complaining to those around him that he was in fear and he was being severely targeted by U.S intelligence agencies that is a U.S citizen on U.S

[27:21] soil um exercising their first amendment rights exercising their political freedoms doing so to enormous audiences and with the motivation of protection of Truth tell us and um you know be it Julian beard Snowden bit whoever and um we needed that voice and we needed that voice no we need that voice now we've needed it ever since 2013. that voice was silence and the there was to be an investigation it was swiftly covered up

[27:53] everything was smoothed over and now nobody speaks the name Michael Hastings so um in respects to Michael and the work that he did I wanted to tell that story now and also there was something else that made me think of it and that's John's sacrifice because John right here is why the world knows about CIA torture John is why Obama had to address it John is why there was a report and that we have the information that we do have and John has paid a deep price for that as well so I just want to show respect to

[28:25] you too John you're amazing yeah go ahead go ahead you don't have to ask permission no well you know I'm a Catholic and I always ask for permission um I'm a lapsed Catholic I have found it it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission [Laughter] with respect to Hastings thanks so much Susie for bringing that into a wider view

[28:56] um what happened to uh Hastings I can be readily explained by something that Julian Assange himself revealed and that is a so-called set of offensive cyber War tactics that came out of this Bevy of things that were released what was they a minute uh Vault 17 yeah yeah okay now just to remind folks uh

[29:27] there were all kinds of really fancy techniques that the CIA had had devised and implemented one of them was you could be asleep in your bedroom and you'd think that your TV was off right yeah I think I think again TV is recording everything going on in your bedroom right well another one of these offensive cyber tools was the ability to take control of a late model car using its computer system Make It Go 100 miles

[30:00] an hour without any intervention by breaks or anything else and cause a crash yeah now um it's actually quite easy you know it could also be done on motorcycles I know more about on motorcycles but yeah John kirocco knows about motorcycles so yeah you could tell that one anyhow what I want to say is uh the rest of the Susie's story is ironically explained I think by volt seven uh documents and um

[30:31] and that this is uh partly why uh the new CIA director of Pompeo uh branded uh Julian a non-state terrorist outfit or is that what they call them yeah non-state hostile intelligence agency and that's when they really started going after him using the Ecuadorian uh patsies to to get him out

[31:02] Adam finally you know there's background to that too uh which I didn't realize until after the fact but if if the CIA director declares an organization a non-state um actor then the law says that the agency is exempt from Port from informing the oversight committees if there's an operation against it well you know it's it's all like legalistic [ __ ] I mean you're you're making up your rules so that you can follow these

[31:33] new rules to get what you want so you know it's it's legalistic [ __ ] I I can't think of a nicer term for this and by the way you can curse all you want this channel is demonetized I'm not making a penny off of these videos so you know cursor yeah you know although Rey being a good Catholic boy he might get get the vapors actually actually I should revise that I made John 23 uh Progressive Catholic and the pope and I

[32:04] have very little in common except for one thing that is when in 2015 he had the guts to stand up before a joint Congress and say you know the main problem is the blood-drenched arms trade and all those congressmen get up and said yes

[32:34] see the latest envelope from Lockheed and yeah giving hypocrisy a bad name okay but he had it put a thumb on it why he doesn't act on it is still complicated but we don't wait for the Poke attack these days we do it ourselves but John to get back to your point of calling Julian Assange a a non-state intelligence service you know I mean like how how is it possible that people just

[33:05] accept this because my thinking on the Julian Assange show and I really want to have Susie on but I I guess if something's happened to her and she'll be back all right there she is well I want to bring the conversation to Julian Assange because from my point of view number one he has not committed any crime in the United States number two he's not a U.S citizen number three whenever the the government documents were released he was not in the United States at the time so how on Earth can you justify Prosecuting a man who didn't

[33:36] commit a crime in the United States is not a U.S citizen and the crime itself is not committed on American soil I mean yeah you're you're exactly right and I think that's frankly the argument that his attorneys are going to make too besides the flat the fact that this is a very very slippery slope hang on John let me rephrase my question why is it that the intelligence Services hate this guy so much why him specifically because I've never quite understood there have been other leakers all right I'm I'm saying this with with

[34:07] uh respect of course you yourself were a whistleblower and I'm sure a lot of people at CIA were unhappy with you for you know informing on the things that you did but why is it that this guy Julian Assange is hated so desperately inside and such a psychopathic way what was it that triggered this boundless hatred for the man and we all have different answers for that I've definitely got one but take the floor okay let's go piece by piece we'll go we'll go John John Susie and Ray you know just to keep some semblance Awards

[34:39] by the way I'm gonna I'm gonna mute my camera but I'm just going out to I'm just smoking a cigarette I'm still here okay go ahead please John so why do they hate it I'm told that it's it's twofold the reason is twofold uh first it's because he was doing it with impunity he was urging people to uh send documents he was offering protection and and you know he was taking talking uh people's personal security very seriously they were redacting documents to protect uh the identities of people that just

[35:10] enraged them the other thing and and I'm told this is what sort of pushed the agency over the edge was the release of the Vault 7 documents uh those were the most uh sensitive most important crown jewels perhaps ever in the history of the CIA that was just that was just too much for them bridge too far so they've gone after him like they have but I mean it's been years now I mean he was in that uh Ecuadorian prison for what seven years I mean all together this drama has been going on for 10. and

[35:44] I mean how does anybody endure that that that just uh um that hatred for so long now Susie you have a different View well there's different sides to Julian there's Julian the technologists and software faculty who devised the first ever encrypted Dropbox for whistleblowers what later um secure drop was modeled off of even though some claim otherwise it was it has proven to be um there was Julian the Deep political

[36:15] thinker who was a walking encyclopedia who had studied so many tens of thousands hundreds of thousands millions of documents that he possessed a uniquely uh diverse and just profound understanding of how the agencies worked how the world worked how zero politics work and was sharing that with other people there was Julian my mentor and the mentor of mini independent Independent Media people he would take people under his wing he would lift them

[36:47] up he would platform them he would give them a name give them exposure spread their work share their work um there was someone in that regard he was always increasing the number of us that were working on this type of thing um but probably most importantly of all and I think personally what they hate him for the most is there's Julian who is the only man on the planet who had the ability to add a whim sees the global media narrative when Julian was free and working even when he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy not really free but

[37:18] still able to work the Empire of Lies would have to chase Julian's narrative Chase Wikileaks narrative Chase Wikileaks work they were never able to drive that narrative and you see since they have seized Julian kidnaps him from the embassy since they have silenced him they have finally for the first time and the better part of a decade regained control of that narrative and now they are driving the

[37:50] narrative now all everything you see in the media everything we're discussing you know it's the Russia gate it's the covert it's the whatever is next it's Ukraine it's whatever this is all being planned strategically planned and devised and implemented by the people who were on the back foot through all those years of Julian's um I nearly said Julian's Reign it was Julian's reign in terms of control of narrative and I cannot think of any other person on this planet who is able

[38:22] to direct the focus and attention of the media class of the political class and of the intelligence agencies the way that he did and that made him uniquely terrifying to them completely terrifying and they also need they need to make an example of him because their deepest fear is the other Julians rise and achieve the same thing and I'd like to as my final thought on this point out that Julian was the crash test I mean

[38:54] for D platforming Julian was unpersoned as you say before anybody else was Julian was cut off from PayPal Julian's bank cards were shut down Julian went through the massive smear trolling campaigns online defamation campaigns Julian was subjected to the false charges false allegations Julian was hung out to dry first and that template now we see being used against with greater and greater frequency against

[39:25] more and more people and that has now become part of the for-profit model there is now for-profit agencies that not just Target for silencing but smear anti-platform and every everybody is being made into a Julian Assange because they were able to get away with what they did to him and now they think they have free license so that is why they hate Julian to the end of time yeah Ray what are your thoughts well I agree with everything that's been

[39:56] said by Susie and by John and I have other things that they hate him for you know I'm I'm reminded of a of my youth when we used to have Gene Autry uh pictures okay and he used to be driving he'd be riding through this uh this terrible Rock fill landscape and oh the iragosa Indians are over there they hate you nut tree and they say why do you hate they hate Gene Autry from

[40:27] another picture okay so the reason the powers that be hate Julian Assange is from lots of other pictures and I'll just fill in some of the blanks that I think may arise first off uh Julie Susie put her her finger on it uh back when Julian first appeared the fourth estate was well on life support the Foster state was as The Princess

[41:00] Bride would say almost mostly then mostly dead it was mostly okay and Here Comes The Fifth Estate with an instantaneous way of getting valid stuff out into the ether and down into computers whoa it was a difference in kind okay it was a shock and what did these things include not only war crimes in Afghanistan or Iraq but things like

[41:31] warnings one specific one I'll sight warnings by Sergey lavrov the Russian foreign minister on the first of February 2008 calling in Bill Burns who ironically is now out of the CIA he was Ambassador in Moscow okay call him in as Mr Burns do you know what nietz means

[42:04] net if you allow Ukraine into NATO we are going to have to retaliate because this is this is a bridge too far we will have to decide whether we have to inter intervene invade Ukraine so please tell your people tell your people this congolesa rice at the time for God's sake tell your people now Burns to his credit played it straight which have the cable if I've seen one cable from Moscow Embassy I've seen about 8 000 of them

[42:34] okay we have the cable Wikileaks made it available that the title of Burns's cable is niet means yet Russia's red lines on Ukraine advancement into NATO it went through the whole nine yards suffice it to say that's really really bad for the people who want it who want to fool around with Ukraine want to fool around with the west of the rest of Eastern Europe now the couple other things I'll be briefer here um

[43:07] 2016. the unpardonable sin not mentioned yet but he published documents from the Democratic National Committee that showed that show that Hillary had stolen the nomination from Bernie Sanders pure and simple yeah they were right there yeah right there in black and white there's another unpardonable sin okay that's 2016. now the other thing is Snowden

[43:40] Ed Snowden what a patriot you know what a patriot what he did okay now Snowden got out of Hong Kong Snowden happens to be a friend of mine I've met him a couple of times he lives pretty good life now he's got a little boy they live in Russia let's just say that okay now how was it how was it that what everyone from the CIA to it to the most to the least liaison service was looking for for it's

[44:12] a how do you get out I don't ever float playing of all things it was surely a Assange he called in all his chips from that part of the world Susie probably knows his brother and I do but well I'll what I'll what I'll include here is a little vignette last time I saw Julian or maybe it was next to the last it was in the embassy in Ecuador I said Julian you know I admire a lot of things that you've done all right but none more than getting it snowed in out of out of Hong

[44:43] Kong so it could be free and Julian is not a he's sort of a tax return person normally but he jumped off the couch and he said yes that a fellow like Ed Snowden would not be not suffer the fate of so many others so there again uh this was against the the uh the Deep State and finally as has been mentioned Vault seven man that was just that was those

[45:14] of the Family Jewels and everybody knows about them now and that of course was somebody who had some patriotic instincts within the NSA apparently according to what's been in the price and gave them to Julian and Julian was circumspecting at first in publicizing the ones but when negotiations for his release fell apart and this is on very good authority when people intervened like the head of the Senate intelligence

[45:45] committee intervene I said no no we're not going to bargain with Julian Assange he said all right the whole nine yards gets released now and that's when you got all virtually all of of all seven so here there's a Litany of sins for which uh for which Julian would be put in at least Purgatory probably hell forever together with Don Rumsfeld and all those other guys uh if the Deep state had had its way I I I want to focus on both of those

[46:17] issues that you raise array and so I'll start with you Susie is how exactly did Julian help Edward Snowden get to Moscow because that seems to be a a spy story and and I don't know if you guys know that uh after college I got my start writing in Hollywood and I wrote a couple of Thrillers and I haven't written a thriller since then but you know this might make for a good thriller so Susie could you fill us in on those details it's the best thriller really um it was in hot water it applied for Refugee status in Hong

[46:49] Kong at um Wikileaks suggestion edit had reached out to WikiLeaks um and it wanted to keep the distance actually it made a lot of very Noble decisions that were uh probably to his detriment at the time um but he wanted to keep distance between himself and the the reporters he didn't want to contribute in any way to detracting from the potency of the stories that were being reported based on the documents which he had leaked so

[47:19] he leaked when I say leaked I shouldn't really used that term because it's not really true he leaked to the journalists for them to use their journalistic skills and expertise to filter through and to report on the content um so he found himself somewhat adrift in Hong Kong for a period of time and so this has been covered extensively elsewhere so I won't go too much into detail he was taken care of by some other asylums because is in Hong Kong for a short period of time while there

[47:49] was a literal Manhunt on for him yeah and probably the extent and veracity of that meant Hunter's not been reported on so much to date but suffice it to say I would say that half of the spies in South Asia had been rerouted to Hong Kong to go for him uh in that period of time and fortunately Julian decided to take a few extra steps and first thing Haley did was send an extremely Brave journalist Sarah Harrison who was then a Publications editor for Wikileaks to

[48:21] Hong Kong to meet up with Snowden from that point they got a really great legal counsel International wise as well and they managed to get Snowden out of Hong Kong originally he was to go to Ecuador via Cuba I believe but that fell through by this point it wasn't just uh spies on The Manhunt it was International media leader as well he had a slew of MSM reporters flying various places around the world and booking themselves on flights definitely

[48:53] because desperately thinking that they were going to be able to sit next to Snowden and ask all the questions of course Julian however had booked Snowden onto Myriad flights on Myriad Airlines to Myriad locations in order to obscure snowden's actual path of Escape he flew from Hong Kong it was quite famously known I think that the US had Frozen snowden's passport however they had managed to misspell his middle name

[49:24] in the order to cancel his passport and so the Hong Kong authorities have said we're sorry but this documentation is actually not accurate therefore we can't apply this order and um it was a really brilliant press statement actually put out by the Hong Kong authorities at the time which explained exactly how how this administrative mistake had occurred which had allowed Snowden to escape and then and the next paragraph It said In the meantime you know Snowden documents

[49:56] expose you were spying on Chinese University students blah blah blah so it was absolutely hilarious obviously somebody made a decision that um they should buy the book to the documentation which was inaccurate and therefore allows known to leave uh Snowden was transiting through Russia and um at that point his passport was canceled red notice was issued etc etc and he ended up stuck in the transit lounge with Sarah Harrison for some it was definitely more than 30 days I can't

[50:27] remember I want to say 36 or something like that days here in the meantime he applied for temporary Asylum and a large number of countries all of which got the U.S state Department called threatening them with God knows what if they accepted the temporary Asylum claim and ultimately Russia granted him to temporary Asylum because what else can they do they can't let them live in the airport for the rest of his life so um and in the meantime of course Very helpfully you had heads of U.S intelligence agencies threatening to

[50:57] kill him or jail him for his life on International television which is pretty good evidence for an asylum claim sorry that's how that happened but it was absolutely Julian Wikileaks Wikileaks funds and network that were used to save Stone's life and Julian did say on multiple occasions that this was a watershed moment it was important to show that if people were to take the brave step of leaking of sharing the truth with the public that there were others

[51:30] and other avenues that would help and assist them and that there would be an opportunity for them to achieve some level of safety and to and even to be able to work in Snowden has done all types of amazing and incredible work since his life was so by Julian while we're waiting for it go ahead Ray go ahead Ray please you know that's really really helpful that background is essential I would add just two small things

[52:00] um now when this unprecedented worldwide investigation to try to find uh Ed Snowden was in train they were looking at all the likely places right I mean they were looking in all the high rises and all the fancy hotels in in Hong Kong and they were looking among the Upper Crust okay thank you Julian was nowhere to be found I mean Ed was nowhere to be found he you know my

[52:33] Irish grandmother told me about the Upper Crust she said there's a bunch of crumbs held together by a lot of dough okay now no those crumbs I'm gonna steal it by the way yeah please yeah the Upper Crust a bunch of crumbs held together by a lot of dough okay well he was not among the Upper Crust he was somewhere else this is no secret now it's been sort of revealed Julian had this incredible capability to tap into what's needed you know and he

[53:04] was a friend of oppressed people to people living on the margins and people not living in the high rises in Hong Kong okay so that's that's another little facet of the story I hope you'll agree with that Susie okay the other thing uh what's the other thing I was gonna say oh yeah pooching up I put you doesn't like Ed Snowden well no he was asked you know uh he was asked on film uh Mr President poochie do you think that Ed Snowden did the right

[53:36] thing and Putin says no it didn't do the right thing well then why did you give him uh why did you give him permanent sound now no well permanent residency technically okay and now citizenship got it but poaching said well you know he didn't say what Susie just said we're gonna leave him and shut them yet to the airport forever he said

[54:09] well uh nobody else would take them and it's the right thing for for a country to do to give political Asylum and such cases so now why did Putin say that no he didn't agree with what what Ed Snowden did well for God's sake is is the next kcb officer is he going to say oh yeah of course not but when push came to shove he said I

[54:39] followed at the national law here he asked for Asylum nobody else would give him Asylum everybody else was too afraid of the United States I gave him Asylum enough said yeah that's the issue I wanted to raise with both of you and and with John when he comes when he hops back on um do you guys think that this affected uh uh the West's uh reaction towards it's not or not not not the west but rather the intelligence service that they just had it in for Putin over

[55:10] Julian over uh it's known that this affect their their view of Putin or do you think it was you know minor just a blip on the road I'm going to lean on the amazing MI6 whistleblower Annie Marshon who's the only person that I've seen to date who made the very astute observation that the vitriol the hatred with which with has targeted Russia particularly since 2013

[55:40] is a absolutely in direct relation to uh them granting Asylum for Snowden um that the whole Russia gate that everything else that has been you know manufactured since then has been about the defaming of Russia the de-platforming of Russia that everything else that we see is directly tied to that that is the is it's not only for that reason obviously there is generations of beef underlying it but it

[56:11] is absolutely a sticking point for them and um such as I said in the case of Julian they want to create a precedent like they want to put the word out don't even dare do this and of course they have their own Workforce to worry about and they were absolutely petrified post noting that there would be other snowdens from within the agencies and they actually went to great they introduced an entire like um anti-snoden protocol where they reworked all of their internal processes and procedures to try and make sure that

[56:44] they could identify the next Snowden before he ever even got out of the United States let alone to pass documents here and anyone else Etc so yeah I I absolutely believe that's a Vector in this and I respect greatly that um all of the people and countries and groups that have one way or another helped to get to preserve Snowden for the world for all of us and I I wish that we could achieve the same thing for

[57:15] Julian I very much wish that yeah and it's the thing is see uh and I mean not just respect to these two gentlemen when when I say the following that see uh uh Edward Snowden um uh a brave man no question but the fact is the information that he had access to now that he is no longer in the American intelligence service or an intelligence service subcontract uh his danger into the future is fairly limited whereas I think there's a perception that if Julian Assange were

[57:46] let loose he'd continue with Wikileaks encouraging more people to come forward with abuses and illegalities and your moralities and so I think that in in a sense and and I don't mean this in in any pejorative way but I think that they're they're more afraid of Julian Assange being free than Edward Snowden being free do you see my rationale rate would you agree well I think it's hard to distinguish these things

[58:16] I would point out that again what what Susie says is right on On Target any Metro is one of the most astute political observers I've run into what there's another factor in broader geo-strategic terms 2013 um you know in some ways this was the apogee now you'd be surprised to hear this probably but this was the height of friendly U.S Russian relations yeah how

[58:50] so yeah this before before the coup of uh 14 13 14 in in yeah well this is 13 we're talking about and who change pulled Obama's chestnuts out of the fire Obama didn't want to start a war in Syria he was under great pressure by all his advisors and by Congress to do precisely that poutine offered him a way out to have those Syrian chemical weapons destroyed under U.N supervision

[59:20] on a U.S ship outfitted to destroy chemical weapons that got Obama off the hook to the point where the New York Times on the 12th of September 2013 published an op-ed by Vladimir which said you know our growing trust is something I really relish not only the trust between our countries but the trust between our presidents President Obama and myself the only thing I I

[59:52] don't agree with President Obama on is what he said last week that the U.S is the sole exceptional country in the world I don't think that makes sense I there are there are poor Nations there are nations close to the Microcenter I I think that God looks on all these countries and finds no exceptional one finds them all to be equal now that threw down the gauntlet to people like Victoria Noland and all these other

[1:00:23] growing trust growing drugs six months later we have the coup in Kiev on the maiden and you know the rest of that story so you know it was uh you know it was certainly Ed played into this but also the geopolitical things here where you had the budding trust here Obama grateful for it and Obama not willing or able just to stand up to the likes of Victorian old and John Brennan and the

[1:00:56] rest of the deep state which is a very real entity yeah I I mean this whole situation from the world view of the Russians that they helped them out in a serious situation and all the rest is building trust and then six months later they manufacture the coup in in Kiev that was the wake-up call for for the Russians that was when they realized hey we're going to have a war with these people so we have to postpone this war so that we can prepare and here we are you know in in the

[1:01:27] middle of it um I I wanted to bring I I wanted to toss a question to John but John is still not back with us but let me let me intervene here it's not that the Russians had to prepare it's that NATO had to prepare a fighting force to force the Russians out of dunbas we know what happened now John Brennan John Brennan went to Amos yeah right

[1:01:57] after the coup and the idea was okay uh we're gonna rebuild your forces we're going to train ten thousand uh people uh each each year and then we're going to take back the dunbas and we're going to threaten Russia okay now that's that's what was in play here and Putin uh was trying through what we'll call the Minsk Accords uh which Ukraine had signed up to and which Germany and France had guaranteed which would have given these

[1:02:29] provinces in the East uh vignetsk and Logan's a measure of our autonomy under the new Constitution that went by the board and we have the former prime minister of Ukraine owning up to the fact that they were never taken Minsk seriously it was just a stratagem to postpone the years until they could get trained up so that they could think on the Russians and that happened what 2014 uh 2021 so you got six or seven

[1:03:02] years uh and that's why Russia uh faced a much more vulnerable folk than anyone expected including perhaps the Russians well no that that's uh I think that the Russia Russians had a very very clear idea at the beginning of this conflict now in 2022 as to what they were dealing with and they were very well prepared for it and uh the the proof is in the pudding because people in the west have noticed uh don't quite understand um how this war has been prosecuted and

[1:03:34] it's been this very slow grinding process because it's been a deliberate strategy of the Russian army to just slowly be grinding away as opposed to trying to make any dramatic and spectacular move because they realize that politically uh it's to their advantage to make it a slow grinding process that in essence bores the West because after seven months people are at the end of their tether and of course with the loss of energy resources Europe in particular is is you know going through Dire Straits and

[1:04:05] it's going to get a lot worse in the winter and so the the way the Russians have been handling this war has been uh very effective uh but I wanted to go back to um the the famous Vault seven that you and John um mentioned a couple of times and I don't know what what's happened to John I hope that you know he sorts out his Communications issues because I really wanted to bring him in what were these crown jewels of Vault seven I mean first of all what is Vault seven and what is

[1:04:35] what's in it and what was released specifically that just made the CIA and the intelligence Services of the United States throw a hissy fit so that I intro at Ray and new Gap Phil okay go go okay I'm sorry oh I said I'll intro the Publications and and you can get Phil on whatever yes oh yes you are oh my gosh um okay so Vault seven was a Wikileaks

[1:05:06] publication of a large case of documents that had been supplied to them by a whistleblower who some people think was Joshua Schulte who is unfortunately an extremely parallelistic consensus in a U.S black site slash prison right now and on you know on U.S soil he's an American citizen CIA whistleblower we don't uh Julian would never confirms or uh denies who the source of a Wikileaks publication is so that's why I kind of

[1:05:38] go around the issue there I can't definitively say one way or the other um as to who is the source but that's who many people believe to be the source can you repeat the name please Joshua salty it's c h u l t e am I correct correct and he was CIA he would have been a CIA contractor um one of the bums on seats that John karaoke was telling you about before um he has been arrested he has um been

[1:06:10] accused of uh possessing child pornography which is this strange charge that somehow seems to be applied to a multitude of whistleblowers that end up leaking files or documents uh Joshua Schultz is not the only leaker who has somehow then um had the accusation labeled at him but obviously they're far more concerned about whether or not he actually leaks these documents so um Wikileaks always themed and named their Publications so that they could um promote and get the most uh possible

[1:06:42] views for them which they did very successfully so Vault 7 is the name that they branded that publication they released a series of uh very enigmatic images that cost about a six week period to let people know something was going to drop and then this these documents hit um the documents contained a number of absolutely shocking revelations actually part of that was about the ability for intelligence agencies to hack and comment their vehicles as Ray was

[1:07:12] mentioning earlier another one which I won't talk much about because I know it's Ray's favorite topic is the marble framework in which this it laid out the cia's um method of impersonating Russia North Korea and and there was royalty who the the third was um because China Chinese uh win their perpetrating hacks and penetrations of networks so they would disguise themselves as being a Chinese intelligence agency or a Russian

[1:07:43] intelligence agency etc etc and this was their whole framework for how how precisely to do that at a technical level um there was all types of things about zero day exploits of major commercial software platforms and operating systems devices Etc one of the big Revelations particularly for activists and independent journalists and anyone who was using um encrypted into and encrypted messaging applications was the cia's ability to completely bypass encrypted

[1:08:13] messaging systems on your mobile device so that they would penetrate to your device at the hardware level and therefore um operating system and therefore any encryption that was occurring in application after that sorry too late they're already recording every single keyboard stroke so there is no and I just like to be very clear there is no encrypted messaging application in or email service which provides you any type of personal

[1:08:45] protection if you are in any way targeted and if you're not all of those comms are getting drag knitted anyway because they will store the encrypted data packets for the day in the future that they will then be able to Via Quantum Computing or otherwise break the encryption protocols if they can't we'll really do that which they may well be able to we just don't know yet so unfortunately you can have privacy from like you know some script Kitty down the road who might try and hack you but you're not going to get privacy from the

[1:09:16] CIA and we've learned that definitively from Vault seven there had been some questions prior to that as to whether or not there was some degree of security for users um and that was just completely blown apart by Vault seven um but there were other revolutions and marble framework in particular was very significant in terms of other things that were happening in politics and media and then I will hand you over to the expert on that array right now oh by the way I'm I'm I'm still here I'm just uh moving to a better lighting Source

[1:09:46] because I looked a little too Darth Vader kind of like Dark Night of the Soul kind of thing so anyway Susie go ahead what about marble what is marble well I have to admonish Susie for spilling the marbles here um and Susie has already indicated uh you know this gave um this gave the CIA with lots of help from NSA we're talking about a billion billion billion dollar program here okay

[1:10:21] uh my friends uh from NSA were there when this was started so NSA and CIA were in there together now mobile framework uh allowed uh people to fiddle around with uh some of the evidence and make it seem uh that this or that intercept or whatever you call it uh came from North Korea or Russia or China

[1:10:51] or Iran or an Arabic country they worked in five languages okay now we all remember all the charges about uh Russian fingerprints on some of those some of those terrible interventions in the the uh the election of 2016. that was all hogwash oh yeah some of it had to do with this uh uh this

[1:11:24] capability to uh impute blame to Russia China North Korea Arabic countries or Iran but others were just clearly discoverable by people like Susie who had the expertise but yeah mobile framework was big and I mentioned before that when this uh when this came out it only came out uh because uh as I understand it and and since you may know

[1:11:55] more there had been an attempt in early March actually it started around February of 2017 I believe where Julian was was willing to tell the justice department who didn't give those uh that terribly damaging information on Hillary and everybody else uh and in in return for a measure of Freedom uh measure of not being you

[1:12:28] know and the negotiations were at a Tipping Point when some some dumb lawyer who knew the vice head of the Senate intelligence committee Senator Mark Warner he said well hey Senator Warner do you know about this uh do you know that there's this trade going on between the justice department acting and as a agent of CIA and Wikileaks people you know about that and want to say no nobody

[1:13:00] told me that totally looked into it he immediately called Comey head of the FBI at the time Comey told the justice department shut that down we're not going to give Julian uh any any measure of comfort now it was just a week later if memory serves that Julian said okay here it goes the rest of Vault seven was released correct me if I'm wrong uh Susie I wouldn't say that it was punitive the rest of the

[1:13:32] release because Julian was extremely committed to maximizing the scale of Publications and putting as much out there as possible um you are correct that there were indications on being very like politic here there were indications um that he was for the first time ever prepared to not say who did it but who didn't do it and we know who didn't do it and we know and in this case it's a country rather than a person that didn't

[1:14:02] do it and we um we know that that was absolutely derailed at the highest levels just as the engineering of Julian's exposure expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy was similarly um orchestrated at the highest levels um I'm not particularly convinced that it would necessarily make a difference one way or the other I don't really what makes me say that is Trump's failure to

[1:14:33] Pardon Snowden or as such um and yeah he might have got on the wrong side of Trump by rejecting Trump's officially not an emissary of trump that was sent to be an emissary of trump to the Ecuadorian Embassy um but uh we we can't say definitively but certainly the timeline of events and the events are as Ray described um absolutely no I mean this whole situation of uh juliusange Edward Snowden you know of

[1:15:06] course they fell on them like a ton of bricks to worn off anybody else but I has it been effective because um as far as I know and I'm not as on top of this as you both are uh has there been any kind of leak like the Julian Assange and Edward Snowden leaks well yeah I mean the correct I mean Susie made the point uh that a lot of this was to preempt what uh right happened what uh Ed Snowden did

[1:15:39] from anybody else doing it but Ed Snowden was 2013 right yeah volt 7 2017 right so I mean there still are good people around willing to take great risks to make sure that that we're informed about some of the mojinos things going on now I don't know if it was Schulte or anybody else but uh this this attempt to make sure that this never happened again fail I witnessed

[1:16:09] the fact we have Schulte and hopefully others that will speak out people of the character of John kiriako who will speak out on a matter of principle so you can't shut good people down forever and uh and the proof is in the pudding they can try and they are pretty effective intimidating a lot of people I give you a little example here that I people probably don't know about about two months ago I said to myself McGovern you know a good bit about Russia China Ukraine uh you know the history of all

[1:16:42] this because you're so old for God's sake um look why don't you do a little why don't you ask somebody to interview you and let you speak for an hour about how all this happened okay and Regis Tremblay a uh a videographer said okay ray I'll do that for you uh and he did on the 6th of July I called it uh a taste of the truth and I took it through my experience

[1:17:13] there as a CIA analyst early in the 60s and so forth all the way down and I and I pointed out that look you know I learned a hell of a lot at government expense here's my way of of giving back believe it or not but this is what I experienced this is what I know okay called it a taste of the truth it got up on YouTube it got all of a sudden 26 000 views YouTube shut it down

[1:17:46] so a taste of the truth was too much for YouTube well luckily it was saved on bit shoot in a couple other places but this it doesn't speak volumes that that the taste of the truth is a little bit too much tasty for for YouTube so this is how it is going here uh it's harder for people to to see what I say or what I write uh but you know it's still available and I'm still hopeful well we do what we can you know there are

[1:18:16] reverses but we don't stop and uh you know one of my one of the things that I'm asked very often McGovern for God's sake don't you get tired I mean you've been doing this for what 20 years now since you told that you told us all there were no weapons of mass destruction why did God go to that too don't check your tires so I tell them this little story a good friend of mine he was a representative from Wisconsin his name was Dave Obi okay he's a good guy he

[1:18:50] went to church together okay so he's headed the Appropriations Committee okay but before that during Iran Contra he's really upset that Schultz and Reagan and the others didn't tell him about Iran Contra so he brings Schultz toward the end of this investigation brings him in to it to appear before a subcommittee and he says now uh Secretary of State Schultz I would like to question you about this and Schultz very uncharacteristically says

[1:19:21] Congressman Obi the American people is just they're just sick and tired of this Iran gate and nobody doesn't admits of bread he looks down at Schultz and he says Mr Schultz I didn't swear to support and protect the constitution in the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic until I got tired that's the way it is with us okay we

[1:19:52] took that same oath and well even even though the odds are against this we don't get tired and maybe maybe we'll come to a no good end but it isn't because we get tired well what's happened to me what I find deeply disturbing about this whole situation is that this kind of repression of uh leakers and whatnot it spreading like a cancer and uh because what you said Susie in that video that I I watched of yours it was like an hour

[1:20:23] long video where you went through a whole host of different issues and and the notion that these companies of repression are expanding and expanding not just into intelligence to prevent leaks whether you agree with that or not it's understandable at least that they would want to prevent leaks from their own agency but now they are expanding out to silence people who say the wrong thing who say the thing that they don't agree with or who highlight information that is publicly available but that they

[1:20:54] they want to tune down they don't want people to hear as much of and this kind of repression is spreading out and nobody is safe and it's becoming deeply creepy that uh so many people now regular civilians quote unquote feel nervous about touching certain topics because there are afraid of the repercussions that they that could befall them that that you know they could lose their job or contracts or or business opportunities or educational

[1:21:25] opportunities it it just seems deeply bizarre and it's not just intelligence it's also things that are properly the purview of personal belief or political opinion that is frankly inconsequential to the National Security of a nation and and so that's what where the part for me uh uh has really changed because it's sort of like um the scope of this repression and and cutting off leaks has expanded and the

[1:21:56] remittance has gone global and and that I find deeply disturbing because I myself uh I'm a nobody I'm a stupid middle-aged YouTuber who's doing these videos for fun this is an amusement for me it's like wait a second there Gonzalo you went to an Ivy League school uh when they accepted me away don't don't try to disguise the fact that you have

[1:22:27] very good pedigree all right so you're a pretty bright guy so to go after you they have good reason yeah Ray tone down the the thing I I promise you 20 bucks after the show for sending those things Ray's done his homework I said I'm not surprised at all um no but but the thing you see like what's happened to me I I did a a solo live stream yesterday about this particular issue is that in last uh the last couple of weeks you know I got uh suspended from YouTube I I got my

[1:22:59] Twitter um you know eliminated does it permanently suspended add 70 000 viewers and it was because I was uh saying that the Europeans had essentially committed suicide and you know that was enough to get me the platform from Twitter uh and also um back in April I was uh I was I was arrested and held by the state Security Services of the Ukraine and uh they took my accounts and and what have you um

[1:23:29] because I I used to have a fairly large Channel about 300 000 subscribers and another one of 150 000 and a Twitter account of 60 odd thousand people and I lost access to all that stuff and that Twitter account for instance which I had not had access to since the 15th of April that too was deleted I mean it just to unperson me it was deeply creepy no worries no worries Gonzalo nobody please tell us all about pankoy

[1:23:59] hahaha damn it I wanted to start at censorship and then to get into the deep platforming and then before we talk about pancake I'll tell you a few things you don't know about pancake in fact I might just um tell the whole world something that I know about pancake uh pancake delivery is happening um regardless of what happens in terms of crowdfunding though please do donate at pancake.com as soon as the broadcast is over I'll

[1:24:30] have those links in the description below chat so 3700 ordinary members of the public who are sick of getting arbitrary suspensions and Shadow bands and sending messages and not knowing if anyone will even be able to see them and having moderation actions taken against them with no transparency about what the networks are doing and are thirsty for a not just right or not just left or not you know partisan platform and actually want to be able to put their voice out

[1:25:03] and be free of the commercial constraints and not have the data captured and sold to corporations and Big Data companies and security agencies which happens every single day came together and they raised a hundred and eighty three thousand dollars uh us and they funded pancake which is pancake.com which is a new platform that's going to free us of all of the constraints that we have been facing now of course we're going to be a massive Target of course

[1:25:33] we're going to it was funny someone was saying to me um yesterday well what if YouTube does this to you and what if Google does this to you and I said to them I don't think about that when I'm doing my security planning I think about targeted access operations at the NSA and what they're going to do to me I don't know what YouTube is going to do to me but the YouTube stuff the lawyers can worry about but our architecture our thread assessment model is slightly different than just like YouTube but what we're trying to do is give well what we are in fact doing we've already built our interface and we're now just

[1:26:04] doing our back end Integrations so we can release our betas to the public is to give people cryptographic proofs of the action taken on the network via the blockchain including our actions as the network provider which means if we ban someone if we suspend someone if we remove some child porn or whatever off our Network which we absolutely will remove be all clear about that there is a cryptographic proof on our blockchain that we took this action against this account on this day at this time this is the reason why this is the moderator ID

[1:26:37] that did it so that we are bringing transparency to we'll just change it we're fixing the power imbalance between the platform and the user right it shouldn't be all about the focus on the user I actually need the focus on the platform so the whole network will know what we as the provider do and can hold us accountable for that but they also have cryptographic proof of their actions that they take when they publish public content so so if 50 people like your Quake message on pancake there are 50 blockchain transactions to prove that

[1:27:09] those people click that like button on that piece of content so we can't come along and unlike it or unretweet you know and and share it we can't we can't violate the actions taken by the users on our Network in the shadows which is what's happening right now because I am seeing I am seeing absolutely hands down call me a conspiracy theorists if you want I'm seeing manufactured statistics on Twitter they can decide how many retweets they want to be on something they can decide how many likes they want

[1:27:39] to be on something they can decide whether or not you see it the other thing about paintwork is it is algorithm free your timeline is in chronological order you see only content by the people who you followed so it's completely opt-in for user content if you didn't follow the account you don't see this stuff if you unfollow them you don't see their stuff we don't recommend stuff we don't um use any personalization algorithms we don't decide what we think you might like and stick it in front of you we have no advertising no sponsored content nothing like that you can't buy

[1:28:12] space on pan on a pancake timeline there is no mechanism by which people can pay us for that and in all we do ask because we don't sell your data we don't capture your data it's a peer-to-peer Network you exchange your data with other people your account data is on your device all we ask is that people pay five bucks a month per user that's it so you pay a five dollar a month subscription and you are free of advertising free control we're registered outside of U.S jurisdiction we don't use any U.S

[1:28:42] infrastructure or infrastructure of the Empire as a whole we are domiciled and independent some of the last independent jurisdictions on Earth and our Network hosting is there as well we also don't capture image or video content and another date we'll talk about how the technology if you're interested just go look up pen quick on YouTube you'll find plenty of stuff now I've kind of done this in reverse order because I wanted to talk about the censorship problem first rather than talk about pancake um because what I I'm finding deeply

[1:29:14] disturbing is that all of these uh big platforms the big gun monopolistic platforms uh number one they are deliberately kept as monopolies and they are protected by the other players the other Monopoly players uh number two what I've I've started seeing is that you're seeing a government-sponsored trolling going on on on uh on Twitter it's been a big thing it started with uh the Ukrainian situation and it's been expanding and I'm noticing it that it's happening in

[1:29:44] different nuclei of Interest where you have paid trolls that Twitter allows where anything else they would you know ban them immediately but these are the approved trolls the Servants of Empire yeah exactly they're they're like the NGO are minions in some countries starting up a uh a color Revolution you know what I'm saying and they're in Twitter and they attack and mass uh anybody who's saying things that counter the narrative uh and so it's it's much

[1:30:16] more interesting than merely trying to suppress information it's trying to discredit it and um uh uh make it vanish Into The Ether so that it just doesn't have a chance to percolate it's it's like when Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan and he admitted that he um he he for he made Facebook suppress the Joe Biden laptop story or the hunter Biden laptop story uh prior to the election at the behest of the FBI I mean

[1:30:46] this would have been outrageous not 10 years ago uh but now it has been completely normalized and and that part of it I there was less shock over that that is the thing I find shocking and the government is acting in ways that are totally fascistic the the um and as I said before I am a political conservative and I'm calling it fascistic and they are the the companies are going along with this because they're the they depend on the

[1:31:18] government for money they don't want to make enemies they're playing it safe um at best they are acting amorally if you will but the government is certainly the US government is certainly acting immorally and you're right the Empire my my feeling is that especially as the geopolitical situation begins to deteriorate further and further for the United States insofar as having perceived losses geopolitically that the repression will intensify I mean if if

[1:31:48] people think that the repression is bad now wait five years it's going to be much much worse that's my thinking at this point you Susie see yeah sorry my I actually haven't been on Twitter for a while now because I spent all my days working day and night but on my Twitter bio um I say like surveillance censorship is a for-profit model and that's what I see so I see that um we talked about the subcontractors the pyramid scheme of surveillance Contracting um and now what I see is the formation

[1:32:20] of a pyramid scheme of censorship so it used to be that these security contractors would get paid to create spreadsheets of hundreds of names of Twitter users and put them forward to the agencies to check them out and decide you know how they want to handle these people what what level of targeting are these people who want to do um now I see exactly the same processes being used and the same security contractors being used where the goal is censorship and suppression of speech rather than just the pure political the

[1:32:53] physical political targeting I just did want to tell you something just that you said before you're saying you know just why me I'm just like some guy I used to have the same sensation all the time I was a single man from the suburb with two kids all I did was go to a activism movement and try and help feed people and look after people and get their messages out like why me and um first of all there is because they make money from doing this to you and secondly because their end goal is to do this to everyone Mass surveillance is about

[1:33:26] collecting all the information all the data all the communication so even if I am not an activist or a journalist or whatever I can still be in that Dragnet and they bill Benny I'm now going to trample over all over Bill Benny's ground age so it's been a couple of hours with him a few days ago Ray um he always talks about the two degrees of separation and how actually for every one target there are thousands of targets because they target every single person you know or have any connection to an any way in your life and then they

[1:33:58] target all of the people that they know as well so literally I mean I come from and you you know country of New Zealand five million people we had 80 known targets of the gcsb our spy agency through the time that I was an activist including kim.com was a major one on that list um 18 new zealanders how many people They Know Each 100 200 each okay well how many did they know each 100 200 each 250 each how hard is it to get those two hops to cover the entire friggin country on one

[1:34:30] surveillance warrant and they do these bulk collection warrants now the collection warrants are the intelligence agencies aren't on an individual it's not on Susie from occupy it's on the city of Auckland that internet service provider whatever they call them bulk collection warrants they can nominate a company a geographic location or get to this they use this word a class of people oh that's a class of people they can get a book collection warrant on so this

[1:35:03] really does affect everybody whether it's because you know someone who knows someone that is of interest to them they will rate through your entire life whether it's because you happen to be in a location that is of interest to them or whether you are part of a class of people what is that is there students at a university is that people at a church is that like what is that class of people we don't really know we know that the leader um the head of the agency of the gcsb um says that he spends a dozen hours you know going and getting these warrants

[1:35:33] but then when they publish the warrant statistics there any of this tiny little number that they that they have um that they admit to having per year so if you have a tiny number of warrants but you spend all these hours at Parliament getting those warrants and you can place warrants on a geographic location or class of people what does it add up to it adds up to we're all victims the only question is whether you know it or not um and um I completely agree we I mean we're past the point of needing another church committee like we need a freaking Nuremberg for these people because well

[1:36:04] we haven't we have what we haven't got to yet is that surveillance kills surveillance kills if you are under surveillance and you know it it damages your mental health it damages your relationships they interfere in every aspect of your life they literally kill people they drive them to suicide in some cases they actually do much worse things that I don't even want to really talk about but yeah at least yeah I mean well the classic example exactly right when I heard that story I

[1:36:35] was like no they crashed his car and no no it's like the the you know the two bullets in the back of the head and it's called suicide you don't know that that was most definitely absolutely yeah they manipulated the um the automobile by the by the way there were some interesting data um this uh actress who who was killed recently and H there's video evidence of her trying to stop the car as it was like carooming at

[1:37:05] 60 miles an hour in some Los Angeles Suburban Street and uh it went by some security camera and you could hear the sound and and if you're mechanically inclined and know anything about cars you could hear how the handbrake had been pulled on the car because when when you drive a car with the handbrake uh which is not designed to do it makes a very distinctive sound it was clearly that that this poor woman's car was had been tampered with and she was corrobing at you know 60 odd

[1:37:36] miles an hour 70 miles an hour through the Suburban Street and eventually crashed and apparently was killed uh uh and you know this kind of thing crazy as it may sound because I'm not one for conspiracy theories you know I do believe that Paul is alive and Elvis dead and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon but some of the things that come up you're like no come on come on that that's that's not how that happened I mean come on I'm you know I I I didn't fall off the tournament truck you know yesterday it was you know the week

[1:38:06] before last but still it's been a while enough that I'm not that damn stupid you know but they they consistently push narratives that are so absurd and they expect everyone to believe them they they use their positions of authority to uh um you know that they're part of the mainstream media and and whatnot so that you're sort of like you you feel impolite to disagree and I think that that's one of the problems that we're having Ray uh Gonzalo a proposed of all this

[1:38:37] what happened to John kiriakov I don't know what happened to him I know you know he actually he actually emailed his apologies his internet went out oh it was choppy and then it was gone no he's safe I did yeah he's safe I did suggest to him that uh he have he seek an alternative method of connecting and hopefully he will come back um I know he's here with us yeah because uh look uh the standing offer to John if he's

[1:39:09] listening that we will I'll be happy to have him on again at another opportunity because it was a delight to talk for him forever briefly yeah yes how come I don't hear any uh Rockets or bombings or anything like that what have you to add from your pers your specific uh message Point well um let me see on September 9th Friday September 9th there was a big strike here in um in the city of Kharkov they hit a

[1:39:40] number of targets they were all about a dozen targets or a little over a dozen targets uh within you know minutes of each other um it was simultaneous clearly a Russian I don't know what I mean it was Russian no question and um they actually hit one of the buildings next to mine I have pretty spectacular pictures but I can't share them because it shows the karkov skyline and you could identify or figure out uh where I'm at and I want to keep that information private for the time being uh but um yeah it was it was

[1:40:13] um very spectacular but after that and there were also two blackouts that day Friday that evening there was a blackout for about six hours and then on Tuesday Tuesday last a week uh ago today there was another six hour blackout but since then there hasn't been any blackouts uh there have been various theories as to why uh the Russians would have taken out the electrical Grid in um in in just about the whole country um one very shrewd observation that was

[1:40:44] made was that this was during the so-called heart club offensive and uh Russian forces might have wanted to slow down the movement of troops because you see the um train system works on electricity and so um knocking out the power no trains Ergo you can't move troops and tanks and so it might have been that or it might have been a show of force or whatever other reason and the Russians um I I mean I I know uh I I know enough

[1:41:16] of the Russian military at least that they don't go to the bathroom without a plan and they don't do things for no reason they have very very good reasons for just about everything that they do and so if if they did this approach of knocking out the lights twice but not bothering after that even though they could do it whenever they want they must have had a specific reason for it it wasn't just you know uh um to um quote unquote terrorize the population because in fact these two

[1:41:48] um blackouts were the only blackouts have been the only blackouts here in the city of Kharkov since the beginning of this conflict or more properly since I arrived here on the 1st of March because between the 24th of February and the first of March I was in Kiev and um and there weren't any blackouts there either um uh you know and I came on the first of March and since then until September 9th the the electricity internet

[1:42:19] Everything Mobile phones everything worked perfectly fine until Friday the 9th for six hours and then uh Tuesday the 13th for six hours and since then it's been relatively quiet um I don't know what is going on um except what I get from publicly available sources because you know I'm a chicken and I just want to stay away from the bullets and the artillery shells because they're horrifying and I don't want any piece of that you know

[1:42:49] and and the the people who have had to suffer a lot of damage and whatnot because of this conflict you know my hearts go out to them but uh uh yeah I I try to stay away from all that and the information I get really is from the internet and I'm saying here um I originally came here because uh my my wife and my children are here I had gone to Kiev on business I literally arrived the night before I was supposed to be there just for two nights and then come back but I was stuck there for a bit and took the train down here

[1:43:20] um and uh my wife and children they have already left they spent the summer in Western Europe and they had a lovely time and I stayed here helping out my in-laws and just you know and and now quite frankly uh because of my situation with the sbu they've asked me not to leave the city and um and these they told me that if I try to leave the country they'll know about it because they'll check me at the border and that I'll be arrested and so that's why as a practical matter I really can't leave

[1:43:50] um and uh yeah I'm staying here and quite frankly I want to see what happens I want to see how this uh this situation plays out I'm very very surprised that it has lasted as long as it has I mean if you had told me on February 24th that we'd be into September and this would still be going on I would have been truly shocked because I would have thought that they would have negotiated a ceasefire and some sort of agreement and the hostilities but um the zonski regime clearly has no

[1:44:21] intention of doing that their intent on fighting to The Bitter End and I think it's going to be extremely bitter I I think that um from the very beginning wasn't has to understand two things number one this was an existential War for Russia they had to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and and they and and they certainly were not going to allow Ukraine to invade the donbass as they were planning to number one and that's the first truth and number two uh the Russian armed

[1:44:53] forces are simply better equipped they have more manpower and they are better LED and better supplied than the Ukraine Armed Forces so when you have two unequal fighters in a ring the result is inevitable and there's simply no contest when you have a bantam weight going up against a heavyweight there's no question as to what's going to happen and you see if you have and to continue the metaphor if you have the manager of

[1:45:23] the bantamweight keep it keeps on telling him keep on going keep on fighting you'll win against Mike Tyson here in front of you you are the one who are going to be hurt and hurt in a way that you won't recover from and that's the tragedy of the Ukraine situation they have been goaded by the West into a war that will destroy Ukraine destroy a generation of ukrainians and because of the Exodus of people especially the most educated people the

[1:45:53] most hard-working people those people have fled to the west where they were received with open arms which is all very nice and good but see they will have no incentive to return to Ukraine after the hostilities are over and it's credibly estimated that something like 11 million people have left Ukraine a country of 44 million roughly a quarter of the population has fled the country some 3 million or a little bit more than 3 million has fled to Russia and the rest to the west and those people will never return how about the uh how about the folks uh

[1:46:25] that are still there in haka for example um is there any War weariness or are they uh the Patriotic ukrainians or uh you know how's the man in the street feel about this Darren I have a very little uh limited contact with uh people but I can say that um for the most part in March the city was empty I mean I'm talking empty if you had told me that 80 of the population had fled the city I would have said yeah

[1:46:55] that sounds about right perhaps more um but now there's a lot of life in the city a lot of people have come back you see cars on the roads and going in different places I mean it seems semi-normal-ish there are lots of restaurants that are open and so forth a lot of businesses though are permanently closed um I suspect okay this is my suspicion but it's it's fairly it's fairly correct that the people who came back are Russian ethnic

[1:47:27] Russians pro-russia and so that's why they're here I think that there is the fundamental expectation that eventually Russia will take the city uh because the people who were truly pro-ukrainian who were Ukrainian ethnic Ukraine's they've left them they are not coming back to Kharkov this I know for a fact of certain acquaintances that I know who are ethnically Ukrainian and and and and are very anti-russian and they have no intention of coming back and so I think that a lot of people who have come back and who are trying to go

[1:47:59] get on with their lives are people who fully expect themselves to be Russian citizens within the next year or two uh and and that is an incredible possibility because the cities that have been captured by Russia they've offered uh the people there to get a Russian passport and Russian citizenship and it's a very simple bureaucratic process the line sometimes can be long but apparently the process itself takes you know 15 minutes and you leave there with a Russian passport

[1:48:30] yeah or well actually you leave with a ticket and you'll get the Russian passport but you know what I mean um but but the thing is see um this is a civil war okay and um and people are choosing signs and Kharkov is a Russian city it is a traditionally Russian city it is a majority ethnic Russian uh everybody speaks Russian here unlike in the west where they speak Ukrainian and so yeah the the expectation is that this will

[1:49:01] eventually fall to the Russians that's the expectation at this time good yeah I'm gonna have to leave in about 10 minutes uh yeah we're gonna wind it down because it's been a great conversation but you know there's the the song by Michelle shocked the secret to A Long Life Is Knowing When it's time to go so anyway on that I want to invite you both to give like a final um note uh as to the topic that we've been discussing here um I should have prepared you before and told you about it but is there anything

[1:49:32] that you want to leave The Listener with and any final thought that you think would be worthwhile for them to carry with them uh after the end of the show Susie can I throw it to you please all this so much so much that is so much having read thousands of Snowden documents I have a head full of knowledge that I wish that the average person had and I can only encourage them to um and this goes for Wikileaks documents too to go to WikiLeaks and actually

[1:50:04] search key terms and educate yourself because a man sacrificed his life and many other lives have one way or another been impacted by it for the knowledge that is sitting in that database just waiting for people to to consume learn about how the world really works and in those documents you'll find them because when you read the documents of the agencies you get a completely different picture than you get watching some you know CNN produced like short documentary

[1:50:36] about them the media does not tell you the truth about how these agencies work um it's probably a whole other show for me to share what I know about the inner workings of these agencies it's actually something I would love you to learn about Gonzalo because I think it originally impacts your life and when you uh when you obtain this type of knowledge there are ways in which you can alter your choices and um in your own life which will put you

[1:51:07] in a slightly better position than you would otherwise have been so to be a Target like you obviously are and I feel great solidarity with you because your life is at risk that's a fact and you are a Target that's a fact for you I would love you to learn as much as you can in order to empower yourself in your own situation and Julian did exactly that he empowered targets to better be able to survive their own situation

[1:51:39] um in terms of final messages I just want to say I love Roman government so much she's one of my favorite people and the person is on it I call him great if you want me to leave so I can leave you two alone together I don't know the reason one of the reasons I love them so much is because he reminds me of my grandfather who was a World War cricketer and and who fought from 39 until most nearly all the way through 44 my grandfather and his brother went to war and only my grandfather came home and Ray reminds me very much of my

[1:52:09] grandfather and so I've always just felt a natural Affinity to him for that reason but also because he's a walking encyclopedia like Julian and when Ray talks I feel like I can sit here and listen all night because just as Wikileaks is a great resource and just as the snowing documents are a great resource sitting here and listening to Rey and his experiences and his knowledges similarly a resource like that um so yeah they really don't have much else to say except thank you to for having me on the show oh my pleasure I

[1:52:40] mean somebody whenever you want to please well um yeah I'd love to talk about Russia I don't know much about Ukraine you're actually the only person I kind of know who's in Ukraine um Rey is a totally different different killer fish he will know an immense amount about Ukraine I do know about Russia because I've been here for seven years and I can give my own experiences we'll definitely have you on again to discuss life in Russia yeah that would be awesome yeah yeah love you right yeah and Ray what what final thought would

[1:53:12] you like to leave us with well I'd I'd like to have everyone who's watching or listening know how to spell pen quake it's that tan again that you mentioned initially and I'm going to spell it and Susie you correct me if I'm wrong okay p-a-n-q-u-a-k-e correct okay now that's that's the outcome of an

[1:53:44] immense effort uh by people who know what they're doing and I look I look very hopefully to that as resource uh for something like The Fifth Estate that Julian himself created and enabled us to learn from the thing I'll simply say is one of my heroes uh was a Hungarian Jew named ference

[1:54:14] who became an Army lawyer and was one of the last prosecutors at noon back he was asked you know for his advice as to what we all should do uh to try to be as tenacious as he was in pursuing Justice and he said oh he said is there just three things you never give up

[1:54:48] and you never give up that's it folks I'm pleased to be with folks who never give up and on that note I think that we should call it a stream I want to thank you all my gentlemen all my guests rather including John kiriaku uh Susie Dawson Ray McGovern like I said before the links to find them will be in the description below I neglected to do that before but by the time this this goes up you'll see it and uh John if you're

[1:55:18] listening like I said I'd love to have you back on again I hope you sort out your internet issues and Susie and Ray of course you are always welcome whenever you'd like to chat thanks so much I hope you guys uh enjoyed the show and I will catch you next time take it easy hi
