Title: Kiriakou & Rebecca Vincent: Assange Countdown to Freedom
Show: Live on the Fly (Randy Credico)
Date: 2020-12-24
URL: https://youtu.be/FZO4p1ag9LQ
Duration: 69:00

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[00:01] the vietnam war and the push for u.s involvement was a result of the gulf of tonkin incident a lie the iraq war famously is a result of lies wars in somalia are a result of lies the second world war and the german invasion of poland was a result of carefully constructed lies

[00:35] that is war by media let us ask ourselves of the complicit media which is the majority of the mainstream press what is the average death count attributed to each journalist

[01:22] it's anton carys third man i'm uh randy credico hello everybody radio credit go live on the fly 99.5 fm wbai.org here in new york city also uh assangecountdowntofreedom.com and randycritical.com you'll be able to get this show uh and it's our assange uh countdown show which started right here on wbai four years ago folks four years ago and uh the situation is like very dire right now and there's a lot of things up in the air so we're going to continue doing these

[01:57] shows here at wbai where it all started until at least after the decision by judge uh bait zazar on january 4th or uh when trump gives him a pardon if he does and then we can move on to other people that need pardons but this is very significant because the entire uh journalism community is at risk here if assange is uh extradited here and put in prison all right so i want to mention on sunday january 3rd the day before judge baithesar comes out

[02:29] there there will be a press conference and a rally at the um uk embassy on 47th street at 1 00 p.m actually 11 a.m but uh 1 p.m in somewhere in the middle of the ocean all right so it's 11 a.m on january 3rd i'm not doing this again and so be there it's going to be great call up 212-726-1385 for more information all right so look we have two great guests on this show today

[03:01] uh guest list that we have the two are unbelievable we have rebecca vincent from reporters without borders will be here uh halfway through and right now we got someone who was in the very first season and second season third season fourth season earlier this year on uh assange countdown to freedom and he is a a former cia counter terrorism officer he's a whistleblower he's spent time in jail he's written a million books uh he's a hero a real great guy and gee

[03:33] i've already spent five minutes john kiriakou how you doing buddy hey it's always a pleasure randy good to see you yeah i uh you know this is um we're at a weird time here john as you know uh you know what do you make of all of this talk about trump giving assange a pardon well you know stranger things have happened and i think that if trump wants to to take one last swing at his detractors and his enemies pardoning julian assange would be a really great idea yeah

[04:06] so uh so it is possible i mean you know look we're asking a guy who has executed nine people in the last uh month and got all those children in cages which actually started under obama uh but we're asking we're asking him to show some heart uh and nils melzer has come out and so many others have come out asking for him for the same reason that you said it it would be first what's the right thing to do you know he's talking about cleaning up the house the intelligence agencies this would be one way to do it am i right oh yeah and you said something

[04:40] in your intro that i think is so important and bears repeating these charges against julian assange really are an attack on the entire media uh the entire institution of the media and one of the great disappointments here randy is that the new york times and the washington post and the la times and the wall street journal and all the others are ignoring this case if you want to read about what julian assange is going through if you want to read about the details of the case and about why this is so important you have to go to the alternative media and i think that's just

[05:14] a disaster over the long term for the american uh the american media yes well that's that's a question here's something i wanted to ask you um you know do do they understand what would happen in this uh city in alexandria uh virginia you know you you've been there before uh would you get a fair trial there no i i've maintained from the very beginning it's not possible for julian to get a fair trial in the eastern district of virginia in alexandria virginia

[05:45] they call edva the espionage court for a good reason because that's where most espionage cases are tried and it's because no national security defendant has ever won a case there you know they charge stack they add felony upon felony upon felony and they venue shop and they charge people in the in the district where they're most likely to be convicted and the most likely to receive a harsh sentence that's what they've done in this case yeah it seems so let i wanted to you know say that people like yourself and uh and manning chelsea manning and um and julian assange

[06:21] and snowden uh whistleblowers uh you know you are not traitors you you are you are like the ultimate patriots in this country tell me why people think that these are crimes and it's anti-patriotic to do what you have done and what others have done yeah i consider myself to be a patriot and i know that ed snowden and chelsea manning uh consider themselves to be patriots as well you know when when people see the word espionage when they see that somebody has been charged with espionage they

[06:52] they recognize immediately this is this is one of the gravest crimes with which an american can be charged and in some cases it carries with it the death penalty but what is espionage espionage is is spying for a foreign country a foreign power it's leaking classified information in order to damage the united states whistleblowers national security whistleblowers maintain that it is illegal to classify a crime therefore it's illegal to not blow the whistle when you

[07:22] recognize waste fraud abuse or illegality or threats to the public health or public safety you're compelled to blow the whistle on your first day as a federal employee randy you raise your right hand in the air and you swear to protect and uphold the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic i only lament that when i put my hand in the air and i i took that oath that i was the only one in the room who actually meant it right yes well you know that's that's definitely the case uh you know i think you would have

[07:55] betrayed the country if you had not stood up is that how you feel that is exactly how i felt and you know i i kept waiting i i became aware of the of the torture program at the cia in 2002 just as it was beginning and i kept waiting for somebody to come out and say something and then i resigned from the cia i went into the private sector and i kept waiting for someone to say something finally five and a half years passed and i decided i just couldn't wait any longer well five and a half years went by and then you got like swept up and you knew

[08:29] you didn't have a chance we're going to talk about that later in the second half of this interview telling the truth even when it's painful is the right thing to do is that is that your uh ethos it's always the right thing to do and you know there are two components to that for me uh one is the truth always comes out sometimes it takes a little bit of time but the truth always comes out and one of the things that i learned in this whole experience and i learned it from a prominent psychiatrist he said that whistleblowers have a very clearly defined sense of right and wrong

[09:03] more clearly defined than the general population i don't think that's a bad thing i think that's a good thing because sometimes things are black and white they are right or wrong and in my case torture was wrong in ed snowden's case uh warrantless wiretapping was wrong you're compelled to say something you have to say something well you know i i think that whistleblowers like yourself are basically a safety valve you know when it that make noise when something bad is about to happen or is happening do you look at the whistleblowers in the same light

[09:36] absolutely i was very happy when when uh congress passed the federal whistleblower protection act uh the problem with it at the time was that it exempted national security whistleblowers from its protections and so it was amended a year or two ago but even then you have to you have to check so many boxes if you're a national security whistleblower that there still really aren't protections no protection this is ralph nader actually had his hand in the uh way back in the 90s with the uh whistleblower protection act and he says it's been watered down

[10:10] uh you see all of these people that violated it uh you've seen friends of yours swept up a lot of them uh with the sam adams group with the uh veteran intelligent professionals uh you know who come out and they they've been very gutsy to do this it's just a handful it's more difficult now to do it am i it's difficult because uh it's you're afraid you see what's happening to assange it's difficult because uh you basically have been neutralized by fear is that what you think

[10:44] is happening right now oh yeah scott shane at the new york times said that on the day of my arrest every single one of the new york times national security sources went silent and they stayed silent for more than six months and that's really what the point was the point wasn't you know to to grab john kiriakou and send him to prison um i was facing 45 years i ended up with 23 months so it wasn't that it wasn't to punish me so much as it was to frighten everybody else into silence

[11:15] so if you were thinking of blowing the whistle on something did you really want to end up like john kiriakou you lose your job you lose your clearance you lose your pension you lose your family nobody wants that we're gonna talk more about how it's affected you personally uh john in the second half of this uh interview um but uh someone just texted me saying that the pro that the whistleblowers aren't the problem uh they they are this the symptom or the alarm for the real problems you agree with that absolutely absolutely i agree with

[11:48] that whistleblowing should be encouraged uh in in national security and it's not it's actively discouraged well so uh i don't see too many lately uh coming out and blowing the whistle uh particularly on government uh wrongdoing i mean real wrongdoing i'm not talking about deal in uh in the ukraine i'm talking about whistle-blowing major stuff that's going on maybe in saudi arabia uh what's going on right now we don't know what's going on in afghanistan what's going on uh in iraq

[12:19] we just don't know but there's got to be someone out there that i'd like to know is the press mainstream media doing their job no i don't think i don't think the media are doing their jobs uh you know we know for example and this is just one example ken delanian from nbc and msnbc is the chief national security correspondent in a freedom of information act request filed by buzzfeed's jason leopold he found that ken dolinian at nbc was sending his stories to the cia

[12:56] for clearance and comment before he was even sending them to his own editor so we know that that it's not uncommon for these national security correspondents journalists to be in bed with the cia or the pentagon or nsa they're not independent they're not trying to root out corruption or to get a scoop they're just sort of going along to get along and they're all one big happy family yeah kendallenian really is the lowest i mean if there's anyone on the

[13:26] planet that uh is emblematic of that cia program which probably still exists operation mockingbird it would be kendallenian and then probably barbara starr at cnn maybe the cia's got that entire uh you know foreign foreign entity at cnn uh under their veil you you know i spoke to uh uh melzer the other day and he said that it's it's it's uh what you and others are doing uh it's a very selfless act to blow the whistle and it's a very uh significant

[14:05] personal risk and you just like before we go to break uh address that for a second yeah the risk is very very high you have to go into this with your eyes open this isn't a decision that you can just make on a whim you have to really understand what's going to happen to you you're going to be arrested and as soon as you're arrested you are automatically separated from friends and family people run screaming from the room they don't want to talk to you they don't want to help you they don't want to contribute to your defense fund they just want to be left alone you're going to

[14:37] lose your job you're going to lose your pension once you're convicted of a felony they always charge you with multiple felonies and then they'll drop all of them but one if you if you agree to take a plea to one but once you have a felony you can never get a security clearance again you can't get a professional license you can't ever work in the corporate world again no no company is going to hire a convicted felon especially with a national security conviction you lose your pension you know and then you finally get home from prison and what do you do you end up working at starbucks

[15:10] or something and that's if you're lucky well yeah i i understand look at thomas drake he's working at uh you know one of the big firms but you know he's a salesman he's not what he wanted to do in life all right uh we're we uh um have to go we'll be uh right back folks uh thank you john i've traveled around this country from shore

[15:42] it really made me wonder the things i heard and saw i saw the weary farmer a plowing sad and lonely i heard the auction hammer just a knocking down his home but the banks are made of marble with a guard at every door and the bolts are stuffed

[16:28] uh i'm randy credical randy credico live on the fly assange countdown to freedom all that stuff uh on wbai uh and go to assangecountdownfreedom.com we've been talking with john kayaku who is a award-winning author a pen award not just that but you got the sam adams award you got your portrait up somewhere i mean you take a look at your resume the last three weeks i've had cornell west and they had nils melzer and you and you guys have got resumes if i were to like lay it all out we'd only

[17:03] uh have like three seconds for questions so uh i congratulate you john uh you've made an incredible comeback you've done radio for a few years you've written a lot of books but you went to that hardship being charged under the espionage can you just uh you know what what happened that drove you in a nutshell to blow the whistle when you got back and put yourself in the jam that you're in yeah uh well i had left the cia as i said uh about

[17:36] five years four and a half years earlier and um and i got a call from brian ross at abc news who said that he had a source who said that i had tortured abu zubaydah i was a beta we believed was the number three in al qaeda at the time i led his capture in pakistan in march of 2002 i had never laid a hand on abu zubaydah or on any other prisoner and i told brian ross your source is either mistaken or he's lying and the more i thought about it randy the more i was worried that someone at the white house was going to try to pin the torture program

[18:11] on me because word had begun leaking out you know human rights watch had written about it uh amnesty international had written about it the red cross had written about it so i decided that i had waited long enough for somebody to say something about this torture program and i was going to go public i was just going to just tell the truth whatever he asked me i was just going to tell the truth and so in december of 2007 i gave a nationally televised interview to brian ross and it ran on abc and ran again actually a longer version ran that night on

[18:44] nightline and the rest is is history the the very next day and this is this is where it starts to get kind of ugly the very next day the cia filed what's called a crimes report against me saying that i had leaked classified information the fbi began investigating me and they investigated me for an entire year from december of 2007 to december of 2008 and then they closed the case and said that i hadn't committed a crime they sent my attorneys something called

[19:14] a declination letter where they're declining to prosecute so i thought you know all my troubles were over and a month later barack obama becomes president john brennan becomes the national the deputy national security adviser and brennan then secretly asked the justice department to reopen the case against me i had no idea that for the next three years my phones were tapped my emails were being intercepted there were uh surveillance cars following me all over the place and then in general wait a second this is john brennan yeah john john brennan the guy that's on

[19:49] cnn that is the avatar of of democracy that john brennan right john go ahead i'm sorry manchester united sarcasm great enemy of uh democracy yes go ahead it's so ironic that this guy is being heralded as a hero but go ahead i'm sorry oh i'll give you more irony it wasn't just john brennan uh it was peter strzok is the one who put the cuffs on me and um i didn't know that and and robert mueller created the john kiriakou task force at the justice department to prosecute me

[20:23] wow wait a second why would they be interested in you why would miller be interested in you uh you would think the cia would be uh brennan went to the miller yeah john brennan had a nixonian obsession with national security leaks and he was determined to make an example of me wow but i just i can't believe it when i see him for the last four years you know he's on cnn and msnbc nbc calls themselves leaning forward and it's like wait do they he supported torture

[20:59] am i right brennan just give a brief encapsulation of of his politics when it came to the cia yeah john brennan john brennan famously voted for gus hall the communist uh party candidate for president i did two he likes to tell people that because he's constantly trying to prove that he's neither a democrat nor a republican that's just silly uh he was the only major former cia official to sign on to the obama campaign in 2008 everybody else had gone to hillary or to mccain and that's

[21:33] why he ended up doing so well for himself well once he became the deputy national security adviser his next goal was to become cia director which he got in the in the second term and as soon as he became the cia director he began telling everybody who would listen that he wanted to be the secretary of defense and so that's why he's been on on tv for the last four years yelling about donald trump you remember in 2017 when trump first became president it was brennan that was on msnbc and cnn yelling about trump and saying that he was a madman and then trump suspended his

[22:09] security clearance and it became this big public affair that was all done on purpose john brennan did that on purpose to keep himself relevant so that once a democrat re-entered the white house he might be in line for something big that was just it didn't work but that's what the plan was well he must be happy with gina whatever her name is yeah at the cia isn't that his protege yes yeah gina haspel was was his protege and she supported torture no not only did she support

[22:43] torture but she actually participated in the torture wow well john let me ask you when when you saw this going on what did it do to your stomach no am i you're between a rock and a hard spot you have your colleagues there that you're friendly with that are engaging in this and that you got your conscience uh that you've got to deal with what what it must have been inside such a dilemma you know on the day that the torture program started it was august the 1st 2002

[23:14] a friend of mine who was deeply involved in it pulled me aside in the hall i was on my way to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee and he pulled me aside and he said it's begun and i said really already and he said yeah we began on abu zubaydah today and i said man this is wrong wrong wrong it's a slippery slope and somebody's going to get in trouble they're going to kill someone and somebody's going to get in trouble i was the only one good would it do john if you got information i mean what were they trying to stop i mean isn't uh us foreign

[23:48] policy the result of our foreign policy many of us believe uh have encourages terrorism i mean are you able to put it out by getting information out of this absolutely not absolutely not you know the official the official answer to that question is that osama bin laden had said that there was another attack that was imminent and it was going to dwarf 911. that was nonsense we disrupted we disrupted al qaeda from the very beginning as soon as we started bombing torabora

[24:20] so there was no imminent attack the real reason that we did it is because we needed to to sate that that need for revenge that's what it was it was revenge right but also there's a lot of money involved that that's thrown out there uh and the cia doesn't forget uh you know the i think that is probably the driving force behind uh this zealous movement to quiet assange and bring him over here is is maybe what he did when it came to exposing torture and all of that but all by cia

[24:57] operatives but also um for vault seven how much do you think that influence and angered uh the cia brass you know he did that yeah it's one thing to talk about a torture program it's another thing to talk about warrantless wiretapping but vault 7's information was absolutely landscape changing right a lot of people don't know what it is can you give us some of the sure examples yeah sure the vault 7 revelations were the result of of a red well a leak i guess i can use the word leak

[25:33] by a cia officer a technical officer and the information that he leaked called the vault 7 documents are really the crown jewels of the cia's electronic capabilities so what he told us was for example that the cia can hack into your your tv your smart tv and use it to eavesdrop on you they can take over the um the electronics of your car make you drive into a tree off a cliff

[26:07] whatever they want to do i mean there was stuff like right out of the movies in the vault seven revelations things that we just had no idea that the cia was able to do wait this is this is not james bond ish uh kind of fantasy this is true stuff i mean they cannot do it oh yeah they're actually doing it so so let's say look all right they're mad at him still they are angry they want to get even even if he gets a pardon all right and then and and and the brits go along with they have their own dirty laundry and interest in keeping

[26:40] assange muffled uh really uh the foreign office they got they're involved in the same crimes we're involved in sure they're partners in crime uh so uh you know and their intelligence uh units there so what happens to him if he gets a pardon is he in the if he gets out he's not in the clear i mean there's gonna be people that have a price tag on his head i would say yes that's true i would say that even with a pardon i would be worried and i think really in the event of a pardon

[27:13] julian needs to get to australia as quickly as he possibly can he'll be under very heavy police and intelligence surveillance there but perhaps that's what would keep him safe but otherwise yeah i don't trust the brits i don't trust uh the americans frankly in the event that he's pardoned so people gonna have to be worried about the safety people be just as rigorous and vigorous and and supporting assange until he really gets out of harm's way and that even with a pardon or if he's if if the high court in britain says all right let him go we're going to have

[27:49] to continue protecting him because right now let's be honest he's in this terrible prison you know how bad prison conditions are you were there is it possible that he would have access to good health care in this country would he have access to communicate to the outside world what would happen to him in american prison well first of all health care is is nearly non-existent lots of people die in prison they die in prison every single day uh some prisons have uh government health care which is you know bad it's just members

[28:21] of the national uh whatever they call themselves they wear uniforms the national health service uh and um and they you know whatever you have they give you a tylenol and wish you the best of luck so uh i i wrote extensively in my second book about problems with prison health care uh others are private health care providers like corizon for example they've got about 27 of the of the private prison health care contracts in america and the way they make their money is to

[28:53] not give you medication to not send you out for an x-ray or an mri the the fewer procedures that they approve the less medicine that they give out the more money that they make they're a publicly traded company and there are others too like geo for example so there is no health care it's not it's non-existent well private prisons are a whole different story man that you and i can talk about forever in the future so but uh if he ends up in the super max he's got the sam's uh restrictions

[29:24] that was going to be my second point you know the there are these communications management units where he'll just be completely cut off from the outside world no television no radio no telephone you can't write letters you can't write emails literally no contact with the outside world and that's what they're going to want to do i i was in a communications management unit um and and i ended up writing a blog that i had to smuggle out so what they did with my in my situation is i did have email access but my emails were delayed five days and everything outgoing and

[30:01] incoming was was checked all my letters were slid open and read then reinserted and sealed uh and um and my phone calls were all recorded and monitored sometimes sometimes they were monitored you know live as i was carrying on these phone calls so uh there's no there's really no way to get word out when you're in a communications management unit they're they're going to be on them like white on rice all right just a couple more questions here john i mean uh i could talk

[30:31] to you all day long and someone should do a ten part series do you like to do with this like ken burns the civil war search to just go through the entire job yeah career i'm serious not too much blood pressure there's so much i have like a million more questions but you know um the um why are they going after assange what are they doing to assange and um what is the message uh ultimately and what are the consequences ultimately if in fact he is extradited

[31:05] he is convicted and sent to prisons what kind of implications do we have that's the most important question the implication is that every member of the press would be subject to arrest for doing his or her job that's really the bottom line here and that's why i'm flabbergasted that the mainstream media haven't rallied around julian assange they have to to save themselves they have to uh and i think that secondarily this this is meant to frighten everybody into self-censorship right

[31:38] do you really as a reporter do you really want to solicit that classified document on your website do you really want to put your pgp key on your website do you really want to encourage people to send you internal documents because you're going to face arrest now and if you're overseas you're going to face extradition to the united states to stand trial on espionage charges so what this does is it serves to to chill the entire uh environment in national security reporting at the very least people are going to self-censor at the very most the government is is creating a path by which

[32:14] they can snatch a reporter domestically or overseas and bring them back to face trial this is an incredibly dangerous development and it's sickening to me that the the the reporters national security reporters around the country aren't up in arms yeah well maybe ken dolanian will change i'm joking that's not gonna happen but listen this has been like the fastest 30 minutes i'm serious that i've ever gone through seriously just like boom and there's so much more uh but we're we'll have you back on uh i look forward to it right after assange is either um

[32:48] convicted by that judge batazar whatever uh and sent over here that's not gonna happen i don't think but uh or after trump gives them a pardon we don't know there's a lot of variables uh and nothing's conclusive yet so uh john thank you for your service you are a hero you are a whistleblower nils melzer considers you a hero and a whistleblower he's a hero of mine yes he's great and uh really uh for all your sacrifices uh that you've made and the consequences that you've had

[33:20] to suffer uh keep up the good work uh people can uh reach you and get your books at your website yep john kiriakou.com you spell that for people sure it's john john kiriakou is k-i-r-i-a-k-o-u dot com i'm glad you pronounced it right all right nobody does nobody does i know my friend from kpfa had a hard time with it all right and i'm sure i don't get it right no one ever got my name right when i was growing up credico all right so uh thank you very much we are thank you john you're

[33:52] just wonderful and we'll talk to you uh again soon we're going to take a short break and uh we'll be joined on the other side by rebecca vincent who i met in uh belle morris during the first phase of the assange extradition hearings and she's great and she's from reporters without borders we'll be right back folks thank you once again john thank you good to see you again yeah you two which side are you on which side are you on boys which side are you on

[34:29] they say in harlan county there are no neutrals there you'll either be a union man or a thunker j.h blair which side are you on board which side are you on

[34:59] that was uh pete seeger and i want to thank john kiriakou he was great and joining us now here randy medical live on the fly here on wbai 99.5 fm in new york city also this show as you know will be on the assange countdown to freedom website we continue that series uh that really started right here back in 2017 and now we got someone i actually met earlier this year way back in february 24th in london at the belmorisch courtroom uh the first uh half of this

[35:37] proceedings this kafka-esque set of hearings uh on assange uh and that is rebecca vincent who's the director of international campaigns for reporters without borders which is known internationally as uh reporters sans frontiers and she was great uh you know she loaded with energy uh commitment and uh you're really such a personality charisma too uh rebecca thank you for joining us here

[36:08] again of course randy and i would have to say the same to you with your energy and charisma you kept us all going in that queue in the mornings in february very cold mornings outside uh belmarsh yes no you too you were i'm telling you that was thank we did have a nice crew there you stefania marizzi and we had craig murray but of course we needed that didn't we before we went inside uh for that dreadful experience let's go back because i haven't spoken to you in a long time uh to

[36:41] that period what you saw then uh at belle morris and then what you saw recently uh in uh at the old bailey in london rebecca well february uh as you know we were all queuing up very early every morning to try to get access uh to the hearing so the only way that we could do that was uh to get into the public gallery so that of course is meant to be for members of the public um i work for an ngo i was there as a professional ngo observer but from day one this judge has refused to recognize

[37:14] ngos as having any legitimate role in these proceedings she won't consider us as any different to the public so the only way that i can do my job is also by cueing to get into the public gallery i mentioned that because it later became a bigger issue in september and we'll come to that but we're not accustomed to doing our jobs this way we monitor trials in countries all around the world and i have to say in february so far that had been the most difficult proceedings uh that i had to access ever now that got much worse months later when we returned to the old bailey um but in

[37:46] february i believe we had 20 seats in the public gallery at the time the family usually had about six of them so there were usually on any given day about 14 left for the rest of us right so i think it was about around 5 30 was the cut off most days if you didn't get out there by 5 30 a.m there was no way you were gonna get in it was cold it was winter weather this was a 10 a.m start um sometimes they let us into the building a little earlier sometimes they just arbitrarily made us suffer the last day i think right after you left randy there was a really cold and rainy

[38:16] day that was particularly miserable they left us out for quite a long time and then the thing is once you were in you weren't necessarily in all day you had to jostle and fight to kind of just to get back into the public gallery at every point in the day if the court rose for five minutes we got kicked out so it created this really um hostile darwinian attitude amongst people that were there with legitimate reasons to want to monitor this hearing um and of course then on top of all of these kind of atmospheric things then we're trying to actually get in and listen to

[38:49] quite complex arguments because in february that was both side laying out their legal arguments so so that was quite an important week and quite full of substance and ranging from you know extradition law to you know to the political nature of the offense to many things and so those were very very long and tiring days but i have to say we thought that was bad we thought that was uncomfortable i would take that over you know a hundred times uh versus what we then whoa whoa whoa are you i know what you're going to get into that was pretty bad what you just described i was there and i was

[39:20] there on the day that it rained and i tried to get a taxi uh yeah to the tube to get back to new york that day that was on the 27th and i know how nasty it was there and it was pouring and getting there so early all right so and then that of course was before you get to um just a minute describe what you saw in those three days i mean you must have been alarmed by oh oh absolutely i mean but it was it sort of solidified already our thinking and our position on the case because

[39:51] and i think it was four days of proceedings in the end they were there were five scheduled but they finished in four so um i was able to to get in just with sharp elbows i have to say and uh quite a lot of um determination because i'm going to get back in every day but um i was able to systematically monitor the entire proceedings throughout those four days and what we saw is that the u.s government really did not seem to have any evidence lined up for these you know outrageous accusations that they're making against mr assange uh and then of course that we we learned more

[40:23] about that with the witness testimony in september but i have to say in february at least we could see him we had sight of him we were we were in a glass box and so was he he was held and you know we've described this many times he was held in a glass dock at the back of the courtroom like a violent criminal like a terrorist we were um up above looking down from another glass box but we could see him we had sight of him we could also see the magistrate um judge baritzer we could see the various lawyers on both sides we could see what was going on we could follow proceedings

[40:53] properly right because we were in the courtroom and that is one reason i would take february over you know right over what we then experience right now i was there sitting next to you too or close by uh and i could see him and it was alarming as you just said to see him in that box i mean and he did not look well did he randy he was clearly not well he was clearly not able to engage properly to follow his own proceedings properly and the judge somewhat arbitrarily denied his uh his lawyers application for him to come sit in the well of the court where he can participate properly so

[41:25] yeah that's what was going on that week but that was something that as an ngo observer part of what i'm looking at i i don't cover it in the same way that a working journalist would so part of what i'm looking at is is like his conditions is how how he is how he's able to follow and i couldn't see any of those things later in september for the reasons that we'll get into yeah well listen i i want i want to jump to uh september because you went back there in september i know how bad he looked when we were both there uh and that entire spectacle that was going on it was you know nazi

[41:57] war criminals were in open court where the lawyers next to them at nuremberg and you know it's you would think he was a hannibal lecter or something the way he was uh you know in wisconsin that glass cage it was really bizarre you know eichmann in in israel had lawyers next to him so let me go to september what we just went through i haven't spoken to you you were there you monitored it uh what and you had a hard time tell us your experience and what you gleaned from the whole thing well it might be worth just briefly touching on uh what happened between

[42:31] february and september as well because of course after that weekend um at the woolwich crown court um we had the pandemic started to take hold in the uk and in many other countries as well and so when the uk went into lockdown belmar prison went into lockdown as well and so that meant that uh assange's monthly call-over hearings started to be impacted as well so he's required to appear before the court once a month and it became in his view unsafe for him to even be transferred to the prison's video conference room because of the lack of health and safety precautions and

[43:04] of course he has a history of respiratory issues and other health issues that put him more at risk if he does contract covet and so we we had all of these proceedings um you know i think there were there were around six in between the february week of the legal arguments and then the several the four weeks of proceedings in september which were the witness testimonies case we had all of these administrative call over hearings in between and we tried to monitor those too um we were given phone access but it often didn't work um and sometimes the court forgot

[43:35] to add the line to the court so we were all just on hold and when i say all of us it was journalists who were attempting to cover it right so few people could do anything in person during lockdown um it was really ridiculous and so i documented that we found published on that too um the sort of the difficulty we had with that and assange excuse me assange did not appear in several of those proceedings either because of the coveted risk so i'm sorry yeah well i understand it yet the the whole right now you know he's exposed like a

[44:10] hundred people that got uh covered there uh before we get into uh september uh are you concerned about him right now uh with the spread of covet inside belmorge we are alarmed about him right now because as it stands for over a month now he has been de facto you know confined almost in solitary confinement like conditions to his cell with covet infections dangerously on the rise all around him not just that bellmarsh prison but on his block of belmar's prison so at reporters without borders we

[44:42] believe that he should be released full stop we always call for this we you know we think the case against him is politically motivated the charges should be dropped he should be released but this uh really underscores the humanitarian need for his release as well and we have pointed this out um everywhere that we can we are trying to to pressure the uk authorities to consider this because globally we have seen cases where journalists have died in other countries uh due to covid and this should not be a risk in the united kingdom in 2020 this is

[45:13] ridiculous so um yeah we're not only concerned but we are alarmed at the conditions he's currently being held in um so yeah we talked about the week of legal arguments uh that was heard at the woolwich crown court in february and then the uh administrative call over hearings in the intervening months then september we landed at the old bailey london central criminal court and if we thought things were difficult in february i mean september we honestly we could not you could not make up the level of hoops that they made us jump through so uh we as reporters without

[45:44] borders along with a group of other ngos who were interested in the case tried to get accreditation again to these proceedings were again told by the the court and in fact by the lord chancellor robert buckland that they basically refused still to recognize ngos as having any rule different to the public so we were basically told you know try your chances with the public gallery now that was hard enough in february as you know but now there was coveted in the mix and so it was used really as an excuse to even more severely limit access to proceedings now they opened up

[46:19] an overflow courtroom so there was two courtrooms where proceedings were happening in september the main courtroom where mr assange was being held where the lawyers were and where his family was able to access that public gallery and then the overflow courtroom where a handful of journalists and i really mean a handful were allowed to sit on the floor looking at a television screen and you know they were able to work there now what i was able to access and and i will explain to you with the difficulty that it even took to get into this bit of the building but i was only able to access the public gallery in that courtroom so we were not even in the room where anything was happening

[46:53] i was staring across the room probably at least 20 feet at a small television screen you know to see the same thing that we could see from the public gallery up close in february now there was also another thing that had changed there was now a cloud video platform a video system that journalists had been given access to that they could from the safety and comfort of their homes uh be able to watch proceedings that way and do their jobs um and the court had um before the hearing started given us and a group of other ngos and a larger group

[47:25] of political observers as well because remember there were politicians that were also interested in the case mps meps um but on day one of the the hearing uh when it resumed in september the judge had a look at that and revoked all of our access anybody who is not an accredited journalist so she she referenced the fact that somebody had taken a picture from the public gallery in february but that was not us that was not anybody there for professional purposes i don't know who it was but that's clearly illegal that's clearly an act of contempt of court and that is as a professional

[47:55] not how i would ever do my job anywhere and i'm i'm certainly not going to risk a prison sentence to sneak a photo right um but that meant that we couldn't access this video system so then we were left to fight again first spaces in the public gallery but um any guesses randy how many members of the public were let in this time i think about six right oh that would have been a dream okay so five max but in practice that ended up often being two because of this mysterious situation with vips which took two weeks to resolve actually nearly three weeks to resolve um so there

[48:29] were apparently three mysterious vips for whom spaces in the public gallery were being held and by public gallery i mean the one in the overflow courtroom where you're just looking at journalists and a small screen across a large room right um so they would let in two people and then they would wait each session in the morning they would hold those seats for an hour and a half and in the afternoon a half an hour every day and these vips never turned up finally i ascertained um through i had been trying for for the entire time but finally i was able to work out um from somebody

[49:00] helpful in the court system that um that these seats were being held for diplomatic observers and uh we had it raised with the australian high commission who then intervened with the court and i i believe that these diplomatic observers did not know that these seats were being uh withheld for them and effectively blocking access to ngos and and the public so they were eventually released but then at the best of circumstances five of us were in wait is that wait a second you know we're talking about the biggest trial on the planet journalists all right this is a i

[49:32] mean beyond significant trial the whole world is watching this uh and except for the u.s media but the world is watching this and she knows the judge knows people are watching this what what's the motivation do you think by making you go through this obstacle course to get in to cover this i mean so at this point i'm not going to to hold back on this i had a little twitter rant last week because um i the hell i had to go through to monitor 90 seconds of proceedings in one of these

[50:03] call over hearings right at this point i have to say there is no way that this is purely a matter of incompetence there is no way that this is a coincidence because we have faced these barriers at three separate courts now woolwich count court the old bailey and westminster magistrates court uh the common factor here is the judge who clearly does not want uh you know a significant degree of scrutiny of these proceedings so i will refrain from commenting further on how you know how these proceedings are being handled apart from the access issues but we have categorized

[50:34] this at reporters without borders as barriers to open justice and i will have more to say after we learned the the decision which is coming up but what i will say is it is you know it's been really shocking to to to learn that this is this could pass for open justice in a modern democracy um because it certainly hasn't been it so at every step of the way goal posts are constantly shifting you have to bargain your way in every day i had a whole network of of grassroots activists helping to to cue and to help to get me in because they saw the value in having a professional ngo

[51:05] also able to monitor proceedings so i'm really grateful for the kindness of these activists the public stepped in where the court failed to to ensure that there could be any you know professional ngo scrutiny of these proceedings so i did not witness every second of it um i had one or two colleagues who helped a couple of times but we had somebody in the room for at least part of the proceedings on most days over that four weeks so we monitored as systematically as we could i couldn't see assange like the camera barely went swiveled to him and when it did it was at such a distance that i i could not comment on his well-being or whether he could follow you

[51:40] could not see who was speaking half the time the only reason that i could follow uh to the extent that i did is because i had everybody's voices memorized from february all of the various lawyers right like this is ridiculous so if you just walked in without this context like you did you really couldn't follow what was going on so we did our best but this is not how i am used to doing my job anywhere um and it is really shocking to me that you're talking with rebecca vincent rebecca vincent is the director of international campaigns for reporters without borders uh also known as internationally and most people know it as reporters sans frontiers our reporters since

[52:18] whatever uh my spanish has uh gotten worse uh i'm randy credical we are talking rebecca about the whatever went on there i've had people talking about it you know pilger talked about it he was there watching it the whole thing they're not even like pretend like pretend there's no window dressing there's there's not even a semblance of a fair trial or a fair hearing going on or at least in my eyes do you feel that they're even like trying to make it look like it's a real fair

[52:49] trial i mean at the moment i'll kind of i'll just focus on the open justice side of it um i possibly more optimistically than i should i am still hoping that somehow that justice will prevail so we have uh we have two weeks left to see what will happen here and of course then there there will be an appeals process depending on the decision here but i am still hoping that the system is not as broken as we fear that it might be um and that you know despite these frustrations that possibly

[53:22] you know um that the the court will look seriously at this from an objective perspective um and from our view these these charges are inherently political which in and of itself should be a bar from ex for extradition from the uk but we said that in an article he said we firmly believe assange has been targeted for his contribution to journalism yes and the case against them is clearly a political application of the espionage act you still believe that don't you absolutely

[53:53] and the espionage act lacks a public interest defense so although he's been targeted for serious contributions to extensive public interest reporting things that the public had the right to know about the behavior of the us government and other states illegal acts right um and if he's if he is extradited to the u.s to face trial there he cannot defend himself because there is no public interest defense in the espionage act we have called more broadly for that law to be reformed um but as it stands you know i thought there was some very very powerful testimony from many

[54:24] expert witnesses there that that echoed that as well i thought you know that's it it's not just what's happening here but what is likely to happen to him if he's extradited to the us we're talking about possibly 175 years in prison in inhumane conditions i mean he's very likely to to face special administrative uh measures and and this is a vulnerable individual with serious mental health issues with physical health issues that you know we have sometimes categorized as a possible matter of life or death and it's because of that um so there's many many things at stake

[54:54] there's humanitarian concerns many layers of concerns here but the the bottom line is that you know these these charges are ludicrous and and should be dropped in the first instance and he certainly should not be handed over to the u.s uh if he has no chance of of affair proceeding there we say that in this article you see we also have serious humanitarian concerns which makes assange uh extradition a a you know a pos posit possible matter of life and death you really think it's a matter of life and death if he were to be yeah i'm asking you yeah no but i mean i i absolutely

[55:30] do because i sat through days of testimony from medical experts that were apart from one medical expert testifying for the prosecution we heard days of testimony about how vulnerable mr assange is how he suffers from from depression how he has hundreds of suicidal thoughts per day how he has ptsd audio hallucinations um sleeping disorder all of these issues and when you look at the conditions and what's reported um you know especially if he faces special administrative

[56:00] procedures that is like the harshest possible application of solitary confinement um that that testimony was really chilling to me that stuck out to me more on a personal level than anything else i heard in september um and nobody could nobody could pretend to the extent you know that you would fool so many credible medical experts which is which is what the prosecution at times tried to uh try to insinuate but no it's shocking and that's why and frankly it's not even just a matter of extradition i'm worried about him in belmar's prison now not

[56:33] just the covert risk but the mental health issues especially now that he's basically being locked in his cell because of the covered risk um last month there was an inmate um that that committed suicide that was a friend of mr assange is that must be incredibly triggering for somebody suffering from suicidal thoughts themselves you know so i've said this many times as well if anything happens to him here it is the full legal and moral responsibility of the uk um and we're not out of the water yet i think you know if they think that they're going to expedite this and hands him over and then it will be the u.s problem so there is the risk of something happening to him here and that is

[57:06] alarming he should be immediately released well your your organization with a great organization around the world they've been involved in many cases the implications to you and to your organization uh the does it jeopardize the future of the first amendment free speech journalism in general what what are the implications if in fact they are successful in uh extraditing him to the u.s and then putting him in prison i mean the the implications cannot be understated this

[57:38] this case is historic and i felt that sitting in the courtroom um you probably did too randy it just you could feel this weight um this case will have implications for journalism and for press freedom for years to come not just in the united states not just in the uk but internationally if the us government is able to successfully persecute somebody for publishing public interest information leaked by another source that is going to have a chilling effect on journalism around the world this is one reason that i don't understand the hesitant you know nature of many mainstream media and reporting on this in more strong terms because

[58:11] it will impact everybody it will it could it could have the potential to completely reshape the future climate of journalism so it applies to everybody and not just journalists but the public because that's that's an angle that really doesn't get enough focus that ultimately yes it's a matter of mr assange's rights but it's also the public's rights to information and if media are not able to publish information like this it is the public that ultimately suffers because there will be less reporting on illegal acts by states crimes that should be prosecuted

[58:43] not the person who published it we will be in the dark as a public and less able to hold our own governments to account so this impacts everybody's right people need to and the media need to really circle the wagons rather than the firing squads because this you know ironically affects them and their futures but they don't get it what about the uh eu how come uh they haven't come out more strongly uh condemning uh the uk and the us for this process well i think there

[59:15] are individual eu states that have been strong germany for example has been stronger than most there is interest there but i you know i think i think it's just a matter of real politique and nobody is quite willing to cross certain lines in uh and how they're approaching the us and uk on this case and i think as well that this year of course you cannot um remove covid from this so many countries are preoccupied with with the pandemic um that they possibly have reduced capacity to engage on other issues compared to other other years more normal years right um so

[59:48] i don't know but this this is one message that i'm really trying to get across now we are in a very critical phase now we have less than two weeks until we learn of mr assange's fate and if the decision is for extradition we understand that the appeals process could be seriously expedited i i've heard from some with with knowledge of this side of the case that there could be scenarios that he would actually be extradited next year so if there's any silver lining i was going to ask you about this the next it's it's january 4th she's going to come out to judge with her decision uh where will rsp be at that point will you be covering this um i will be

[1:00:24] trying to get into the courtroom but from what we understand um what i've been told so far is that there's not going to be an overflow courtroom this time there will only be the main courtroom and so journalists are already being told that they cannot physically access proceedings that they can only access the cloud video platform now the court will not give us access to this video platform which means the only way we can get in is a public gallery but in september if we're talking about the main courtroom only assuming they only let in uh the same number of people that they did before that means only the family would be able to access the public gallery in the main courtroom

[1:00:54] so no journalist present no members of the public no ngo observers we're very likely uh to to find out this historic you know uh decision just based on the very few people which again they're people so immediately connected only only the family and only the lawyers they'll have to inform the rest of us and i guess those journalists who are able from home to watch the remote proceedings but if i can't get in i will be outside the courtroom um but we are making our position quite clear as we speak to the court again and to the uk authorities and i will continue to raise the open access issues um you know as far as we can you know even after

[1:01:30] these proceedings conclude because i have been shocked at how the uk has really handled these issues i in fact several weeks ago i was back in turkey even under lockdown conditions to monitor a hearing there and you know this is a country that does not have nearly as strong of a legacy as a uk in things like free expression and rule of law but i have no problems getting into court there to do my job they understand the role of professional ngo observers so i've compared that sometimes to what we face here i will be raising these issues far beyond this case for a long time but um as it stands they don't want us there i'm telling you when you keep it

[1:02:08] so any last words i know trump is has been pressured by people in his own party and from folks like niels melzer and sarah palin about giving him a pardon are you hopeful uh would you urge him to give him a pardon i can't say that i'm hopeful because i'm i'm very cynical about uh trump's approach to this case but i would urge him to we have called on him to as reporters without borders if he if he can do anything on the way out the door to improve his terrible press freedom legacy it would be to to pardon julian assange to pardon edward snowden um and if that doesn't

[1:02:44] happen we will then be urging president-elect biden in office uh to to consider his own position there and to to drop these charges that's what it should come down to um these charges shouldn't exist in the first place so a pardon is insufficient in that regard but the most important thing is to get him out of prison immediately and then the other issues can be picked up so any means of getting him out and um ensuring his health ensuring that his life is protected that is the immediate urgent concern well well uh you get the last word there well actually i'd like to uh

[1:03:19] let people know how they reach you or reach your organization uh to stay attuned uh as to your work not just with assange but elsewhere so our website is www.rsf so reportersonfrontierrsf.org and if you put backslash e in you'll get the english version of the site um and you can subscribe to the uk country updates which will get you everything we're doing on assange and other issues i'm also pretty active on twitter and i try to live tweet anytime i'm doing stuff on this case especially at court that being said if i get into the public gallery i lose

[1:03:51] my device while i'm in there but but i do update as soon as i come out what is your twitter hand rebecca underscore vincent um and you can check the rsf twitter accounts as well because i share things there too but um yeah we will we will be involved in whatever capacity we can on the fourth of january um even if it's for the first time not in the courtroom uh but it will be a shame on the uk's record if they carry this out uh you know in in darkness which is what might happen wow well thank you for uh you know your work for your commitment and really uh staying on top of this

[1:04:27] i know since february now even prior to that but you've been on top of this the whole year rebecca vincent from uh reporters without borders uh also known of course as reporters sons frontiers and you have been really wonderful uh and thank you for joining us we'll have you back in january we hope with some good news rebecca vincent we're going to go out here i'm randy critical randy critical live on the fly assange countdown to freedom we're going to go out this is

[1:04:58] marlena dietrich uh where have all the children gone written by pete seeger see you next week where have all the flowers gone long time ago wherever the flowers go young girls pick them everyone when will they ever learn when will they ever learn

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[1:07:10] long time ago when the graveyard's gone long time passing wherever the graveyard's gone long time ago

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[1:08:29] wherever the flower's gone young girls picked them everyone when will they ever learn when will they end so

[1:09:14] you
