Title: John Kiriakou & Dana Gottesfeld conversation
Show: Free MartyG
Date: 2019-07-22
URL: https://youtu.be/hCaPEPF_Cmc
Duration: 42:00

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[00:02] yeah yes hi John how are you Dina good thanks for making the time to talk long time no see yeah my pleasure I was there better circumstances yeah agreed how was your trip to Greece good successful I'll tell you I've made what eight trips to Greece in the last three years and the the dichotomy between

[00:33] being in Greece where I'm treated as a conquering hero and being in the US where I'm treated as just another ex-con scumbag is dramatic I go to Greece the news networks are there to cover my arrival at the airport the Minister of Justice sends a car to take me with a police escort to my hotel and I give interviews to all the papers and then I come back here and I'm detained by ice

[01:05] at the at the airport and it's just a nightmare I'm not sure why I'm smiling but that's funny and sad simultaneously so I guess I have this mantra that I just repeat at Dulles Airport you can't stop me from reentering my own country I just keep repeating it over and over and over again and it's usually between an hour and four hours later they finally just give up and stamp my passport let me back in

[01:37] it's naughty yeah traveling with Smarties the first piece he has dark skin it's the first time that I have ever been like checked and with someone who's been checked at the airport I yeah that sucks um but I have a feeling they're gonna take that as a challenge now so good luck yeah yeah oh yes without a doubt yeah so you know it's always it's always good to get out of

[02:07] the United States I hate even saying that because it it might sound wrong to the wrong people but it's just nice to be a normal person again and not to be John Kiriakou who the whistle blower John Kiriakou who the felon John Barry Kuryakin the the ex-con you know that gets tiresome very quickly yeah well I don't know that I don't think that's how the people on Facebook see you I think

[02:37] then you have a lot of admirers people are good to me it doesn't feel that way yeah people are good to me on Facebook they're less Twitter but they're on Facebook and you know I I was exchanging messages with someone today I I post them on Facebook today that I while I like my current job and it's good fit for me it's a job it's not a career and I'm looking for something bigger with more responsibilities and with more money and I've gotten a lot of nice comments but more importantly I got a

[03:07] lot of private messages and one woman told me that she was shocked that I would see myself as as just some criminal she said after all you've accomplished after all you've done and they you know part of my problem is I have literally zero remorse for what I did I know in my heart I did the right thing and so people want to hear an apology

[03:37] for violating the law and they're getting no apology from me the law is wrong you know it's wrong it's that the law was wrong and I'm not apologizing for anything yeah at at Marty's trial judge Gorton asked him if he wanted to had anything to say any remorse and he said I wish I could have done more sooner there's something to that effect I yeah I I think that

[04:10] take ownership like you it seems like you already do yeah totally that's you apart that makes it awesome and people ask me reporters mostly say so did you do it well of course I did it yeah now did I have an intent to break the law no that wasn't it at all but it is illegal to classify a crime in this country and I exposed a crime I

[04:41] shouldn't have been the one punished for it yeah should have been punished for it we're seeing that in Julian Assange's case publishing you know and with Manning about exposing crimes and I think people are getting lost in the different layers of what the actual you know is exposing the right thing what are they exposing I think sometimes people lose sight of the content and

[05:13] more of the reaction which seems like intellectually dishonest yes agreed yeah it's intellectually dishonest yeah and you know whenever I sometimes people disagree with me about something I think is very black-and-white I say like some percentage of the world's believes that the earth is flat and you can't save everybody but you can't help the people that are willing to think honestly and listen to the truth and are open to

[05:45] facts and not just coming in with blinders on so you're never gonna be able to convince everybody but a lot of people are paying attention that's right yeah yeah but you know we live in a society that's that structured in a way that that there's no discerning between whistleblowers and common criminals you know if you've been

[06:16] to prison your criminal if you've been convicted of a felony you're a criminal and that's where the story normally ends and so you are lumped in with you know the mortgage fraudsters and the drug dealers and the pedophiles and it doesn't matter if you say that you went to prison for the right reason you know you went to prison in the in the interest of transparency people don't want to hear that they don't want to hear the details they don't want to get

[06:47] bogged down in the details either you're and it's funny that that in our society in our culture that we've been conditioned to think that way it's a shame you just have to own it harder yeah that's it you have to come come to the table with let everybody know right away I don't yeah I don't see anything to be ashamed about but I agree it can be very difficult when

[07:20] but it can be hard but I I see it as an asset yep a lot of potential breed yeah yeah I wish I remember Marty telling me some of the stories about how he started his first jobs or his first job as a senior systems engineer and he had dropped out

[07:50] of Drexel was his first semester and he went to his interview and they said you know you're good but why should I hire you versus somebody who has you know four years of experience already he said because I and I hope I'm not paraphrasing but he's like I live eat and sleep this [ __ ] and if you don't move out of the way I'll run you over or something like like he's ready to do the work and he's there and he's prepared

[08:20] and the guy was like I couldn't agree more and he hired him so he's been a senior systems engineer since eighteen and you know a lot of people will you know you'll lose some people but I don't think those are people that you'd want to work with anyway yeah that's right yeah I think you're gonna find the right fit I sure hope so yeah um but it's been it's been 85 days now since I've talked about that you

[08:51] haven't heard from Marty in nearly three months are you able to get five days yeah 85 days almost three months oh sorry I'm not okay have you heard from anybody else who's been in touch with Marty do you have any idea what his physical condition is like what his mental condition emotional yeah well he does have an open case in the Southern District of New York he's suing the acting director of the Bureau of P hew

[09:23] Hurwitz and some of the staff from MCC nior while he from the time that he did his hunger strike there you can read his article at The Huffington Post called how the Bureau of Prisons or how the Bo key is trying to break my hunger strike and he goes into details and now it's a court case so we've been able to see some of the things he's filed he documents a lot of stuff and includes it's his exhibits and basically it looks like he's being

[09:55] punished for helping someone else with their legal work yeah now this place this is a CMU communications management unit which i know that you were at a modified one yes and you can I'll ask you more about it but it's basically like hyper vigilant on your communications hyper restrictive at this place it won't even give you a list of rules there's no handbook to give out so you can't be you know doing the right

[10:25] thing or doing the wrong thing because they can just punish you at any time yes right point to anything in writing and so this is insane this is absolutely insane so they're not letting his mail go out except for the court and the nut stuff is filed like 20 days late so but from his writing we've been able to gather that most recently one of the guards did a prea violation against him Priya's the Prison Rape Elimination Act he was on the toilet and I guess he was

[10:59] naked and the guard pulled down a towel which people use just when you're in the bathroom because it's in the cell and I think it was foyer is unlike the guard stared at him and it's thick like that really bothers me like and then he in the filing fee said that there's no Priya hotlines there's no one you can't call the prea auditor he can't write to the DOJ Office of Inspector General confidentially and he feel and he suspects reprisal so the content of this

[11:31] motion that he filed in the Southern District of New York was saying like I know you gave me till an extension till August thirtieth to reply to the government's motion to dismiss but I don't know that I can do that not because I'm not working on it and trying but because they're literally preventing me from work and you know I think there's gonna be reprisal so you know we're we're able to gather from the stuff he's filed but it just is so far from

[12:05] justice from rules from expectations I mean my expectations are very different now than when I started but like this like this doesn't even resemble America anymore this is a black site prison that was created under Bush after 9/11 for terrorists yes and it's so different yeah it's so disproportionate to what he was charged with you know a website going down for a week to ten years to a

[12:36] CMU you know I followed Marty's case closely which you know yeah you've been great thank you so much oh no no no it's I wish I could do more it's the least but Marty's case in any other courtroom in America even in the in the horrible Eastern District of Virginia where so many of us have gone on trial yeah any other judge would have given Marty two and a half to three

[13:07] and a half years and sent him to either a low security prison or a minimum security camp maybe possibly to teach him a lesson they take aways his email privileges but ten years at Terre Haute where they have al Qaeda where they have the Somali pirates who hijacked and kidnapped captain Phillips where they have some of the most dangerous criminals in America and then on top of

[13:40] that to put him in the CMU which was created as you rightly noted by george w bush to house terrorists to keep them away from the media yeah to prevent them from passing terrorist instructions out to their followers that's where Marty ends up I mean this is overkill of epic proportions and this just shows this just shows the the personal animosity that the that the judge had for Marty

[14:12] the fix was in from the beginning you know in retrospect for all the preparation and all the arguments Marty never had a chance not with that judge not with that judge and not with his court-appointed lawyers either which are even worse you know at least at least the prosecution wears wolf's clothing you know the defense attorney is appointed by the court all right you know put on sheep's clothing on top which is just I don't know how they found a way to be more offensive than

[14:44] the prosecution but they found it yeah the bad part too is that if you appeal to the Court of Appeals they won't rehear facts of the case they won't rule on whether or not something is fair they'll rule only on the application of law so they won't say oh boy this guy got screwed he should be resentenced or this guy got screwed he should go back to have another trial they don't do that kind of thing they'll rule only on the constitutionality of the decisions that

[15:17] the prosecution made and that the judge made and overturning a district court verdict is almost unheard of anywhere well you know at the time we did Marty did file something with the Court of Appeals I think it was about the judges conflict of interest yes they didn't rule in time and they didn't do whatever but in this case I do think we have a strong case no the Court of

[15:49] Appeals will agree as remains to be seen but we do have some strong issues and you know with the Court of Appeals - there are so many appeals thousands and thousands of Appeals most of which are pro se they come from the prisoners themselves that preliminary decisions are made by panels of three three of the nine appeals court judge judges and usually they're not really even made by those three they're made by the clerk's clerking for those three and so if you

[16:21] don't get satisfaction in your first pass at the circuit court of appeals you have the right to ask for and on what's called an unboxing en ba NC hearing and that means a panel of all nine judges has to hear your appeal now your appeal has to have a constitutional basis marquise I think is rife with constitutional basis and some

[16:58] justice now one good thing you're in the Marty's in the what the First Circuit yes yes Boston yes yeah the First Circuit has a reputation as being relatively liberal unlike the Fourth Circuit which is in Richmond Virginia seven of the nine judges were pointed by the two bushes and so nobody ever wins in the Fourth Circuit the First Circuit's different you might get some satisfaction there and even if you

[17:28] even if you lose at the circuit court level because you have constitutional issues raised in this case you can then appeal to the Supreme Court and because Marty didn't take a plea because he went to trial he automatically has standing so you still have a ways to go you have three different stops on the road to exoneration that you you need to exhaust I think he's actually not in bad shape right now

[18:01] but in a table but yeah well you know I think that this is actually a pretty good case for president Trump I think you have a conservative girl she doesn't need to be conservative but it does happen that it happened to a conservative family who was separated from her family forced in a psych ward by the state by liberal Massachusetts where they tried to you know get her adopted out into

[18:32] foster care and then another family and it's just government intrusion into the family unit and when the DOJ and the government became aware of this like we said similar to your case they're not are similar to whistleblowers they're not interested in writing the problem keeping families with their parents and you know away from lack of investigations rulings that aren't based on facts or evidence and instead they want to protect Harvard

[19:02] it's a harvard institution they're interested in money and this is just a huge case of DOJ malfeasance going after the wrong person and in some ways I think that Trump has been really great about being able to separate himself from the government and do what's right for individuals I know that people have split feelings on him and I'm not trying to deny anyone's feelings but I think this is a fun if I think that's something that I really like about him is that he's so different than everyone

[19:33] that came before him and it's it feels like a ray of hope for a lot of people that have been so ignored by Obama which I know that you agree with yeah and I think you know just him continuing to pardon and commute sentences it's a really good way to stick it to the DOJ that they can cause havoc on people's life but Trump is the final check and I think I think this is a good case for him I think you are exactly right I am NOT a natural Donald Trump supporter but

[20:06] with that said Donald Trump has done something that very few presidents have done in this area Benni yeah sorry and it means it's a good we're really the last one that hardened people whenever he felt that he had founded injustice the last one to do that was Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln pardoned people all through his administration I always liked that guy I always liked him yeah we presidents don't have the guts to do that though wait until a lame-duck period after an

[20:39] election and before a following inauguration to issue pardons this president hasn't done that and he's he's partly some very controversial figures like Joe Arpaio the former sheriff of Maricopa County Arizona dinesh d'souza the conservative publisher and activist this Navy guy who who was convicted of of taking photographs on a submarine that's okay

[21:12] Scooter Libby who was who never should have been convicted of the ridiculous crimes that he was convicted of perjury and making false statements so this president's not afraid to stick his beacon where where a right or wrong needs to be righted and I'll tell you another thing Jared Kushner for all of his from of his detractors and and his problems he's right on this issue of of judicial

[21:43] reform and sentencing reform and he's personally intervened to get a lot of people out of prison in fact the president famously commuted the sentence of a woman who was doing life without parole for selling drugs African American woman this is one of the highest profile commutations that president Trump had done I learned just yesterday from a friend of mine who happens to work in the White House yeah the Jared Kushner actually called the CEO of Walmart to get this woman a job

[22:13] haha called every six months since to make sure she's doing okay Wow so there Alice Cooper right yeah that's right yes yeah you know you know where Jared's uh share its passion comes from yes father did 14 father from I'm security federal prison what's what's that guy what's his name the old governor of New Jersey who put his father away I'm for Chris Christie chris Christie yeah that's why could I think

[22:44] that's why Chris Christie never got a job in the White House that's exactly why Chris can't come on the yep you pick the wrong side yeah and I think that I often feel that I wish judges and lawyers and people who are going who are making decisions in the criminal justice system had to actually experience what it's like before they're in a position to make decisions on somebody else's behalf just because like

[23:17] you know having gone through this stuff and sing it myself firsthand and I've seen only only a 30th of what Marty Fein and I've only heard but there are so many cases of FBI entrapment bogus charges of just and not only that but like they bring charges only to drop them later after years of having somebody spent wrongfully in jails like the older people that's called stacking it's called what charge stacking they charge you with

[23:48] multiple multiple felonies they wait until you go bankrupt and then they offer to drop all the charges but one if you take a plea that's why the government according to ProPublica wins ninety eight point two percent of their cases let me tell you a story about yes the FBI from from 2009 to middle of 2011 I was the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wow yeah I was working for John Kerry at the

[24:18] time and that it was an important position I was one of four senior staff members and so one of the great things about that job about any job working on the Foreign Relations committees you get to have lunch with foreign diplomats all the time and you talk about the issues of the day what's going on in the world Foreign Affairs one day the number three at the Japanese embassy called me and invited me to lunch and so we went to lunch in a little place on

[24:49] Capitol Hill delightful lunch I remember it I remember what we talked about we talked about Israeli elections and Turkish elections and the Middle East peace process and at the end of the lunch he asked me so what's what's next for you I said actually I think I'm gonna resign soon I promise Senator Kerry I'd give him two years it's been two and a half I have five kids I need to really start making some money to put them through college and very excitedly he said you

[25:20] know in a very loud whisper no if you give me money I'm sorry if you give me information I can give you money and I said shame on you you have any idea how many times I've made that pitch what's the matter with you and I got up I walked out and I walked directly without stopping to the office of the Senate security officer and I went in and I said I was just pitched by foreign intelligence officer so he asked me the

[25:52] details he told me to write the story on a standalone computer not connected to the internet so it couldn't be intercepted he printed out the memo that I wrote and he hand carried it to the FBI the next day he told me that two FBI agents would be up to interview me so sure enough a day later two FBI agents came I repeated the entire story and they said okay here's what we want you to do we want you to call him back invite him to lunch and try and get him

[26:24] to tell you exactly what information he wants and how much he's willing to pay for it and because I'm a patriot I said you want me to wear a wire or something and they said no we'll be at the next table we're gonna listen to the whole conversation I said great I called the guy I invited him to lunch he accepted the morning that I was supposed to have lunch with him the FBI called me back and said that something had come up they couldn't be there but to go ahead and do the lunch and just write him another memo so I did

[26:54] and then they asked me to do it a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time and in the final lunch the guy gave me a little gift of chopsticks and he told me that he had been promoted and he was being transferred he was going to be the number two at the Japanese Embassy in Cairo I shook his hand I wished him good luck and I never saw him again a year later I've been arrested and we get fifteen thousand pages of discovery

[27:24] from the Justice Department and as it turns out there never was any Japanese diplomat he was an FBI agent undercover trying to get me to commit real espionage because they wanted to charge me with espionage but I hadn't committed espionage and finally their supervisor who's now infamous in his own right by the name of Peter Strock said we should just drop this case because I dropped this operation because the guy's obviously not going to take the bait

[27:56] I kept reporting the contact back to the FBI what they wanted me to do was to report maybe some of the contact and then take some money whisper little information and then they could grab me but I was writing a blow-by-blow of every topic and every issue in these meetings and finally they just had to give up and in the end I was charged with three counts of espionage all of which were dropped because I hadn't

[28:28] committed espionage as hard as they tried they could not get me to commit espionage well everyone knows Peters drug is the pillar of the community yeah integrity oh yeah cheating on his wife with a woman who's cheating on her husband and all the while texting each other and plotting how to take down the newly elected president of the United States got it yeah damn

[29:02] that's crazy they'll stop at nothing and remember and this is kind of pedestrian but it's important this is how these people get promoted they're just going functionaries they're just going with your notches in their belt for the next career level for sure that's it that's no one you know one of the things that I talked about the Marty and I talked about before he was arrested was TV shows propaganda on TV that make the FBI and the government in the courtroom

[29:34] look like a place that doesn't resemble real life at all you identify with the prosecutors with the judge with the FBI and it is just so different in real life they do not show the tactics and so to some extent we stopped watching shows like that because it's propagated death I stopped watching live which was my favorite show in the world John me to turn on Sam Waterston and I was like you unethical bastard how dare

[30:04] you or just when you know that that guy hasn't done anything wrong I couldn't watch it anymore it hurt yeah it hurts some shows are better than others but yeah I know it's hard you know and I I think you and I both kind of share a libertarian streak like my life you live your life but you know when it really came down to it when I was in the courtroom during Marty's trial be the

[30:36] ultimate deciders are a jury of your peers and that really struck a struck something in me about what it means to be libertarian and what it means to not just worry about myself but you know I feel like we have a responsibility to it's too late for us like for you and I but there's a lot of people that if they hear about what's happened to Marty into you can make decisions before things

[31:08] happen to them and like it's important for our peers to know that I I hate that the gut I hate that the jury knew so little about judge Gordon and about the prosecutors and the dirty tactics they go to and how they judge Gorton won't even let Marty youself the defense of another about Justyna like he didn't even let that be a defense and the jury didn't find out about that but you know there was a lady on Marie's jury um she now judge Gorton was Aaron Swartz's

[31:40] judged to know Aaron Swartz was an internet pioneer he helped co-found read it he was very active against SOPA and PIPA and she said during trial she asked to be removed from from the case she said you know it's come to my attention and we didn't do anything it's just like she's just that it came to my attention I remember Aaron Swartz I don't want to be part of this I don't want Marty to go to jail there's some something to that extent it's actually on the court

[32:10] transcript I believe and judge Gordon's like do you think you can follow the rules and she said yes they ended up convicting Marty and then acts at the conviction at this and she she mouthed to him I'm sorry and he now back it's okay and it was just heartbreaking yeah it's just

[32:41] I'm like I want I want to talk about good things I want to talk about good things I don't want to talk about all this terribleness that's going on I want our justice system to be a beacon of light goodness and hope and light the way that people used to think about America it's not it doesn't resemble it I seen speeches all the time when I was at the CIA working on on Iraq I was at the CIA for 15 years yeah you know Saddam Hussein would run for re-election every three or four years and he would

[33:12] get 98% we would laugh and laugh you know about what a joke it was and the fix was in and then the Justice Department wins 98 percent of its cases and we say they're geniuses my god they're geniuses they won 98 percent their case and that's the fix in there too you know what am i one of my attorneys yelled at me one day we received what

[33:42] was called by the Justice Department their best and final offer to Ripley my wife and I my ex-wife and I stayed up all night talking about this little all night and around 6 a.m. I emailed my attorneys and I said I decided to turn it down that once I get in front of a jury they're gonna realize how ridiculous this is yeah and the attorneys drove to my house

[34:16] by seven o'clock in the morning they were there I put on a pot of coffee and the the lawyer that I liked and respected the most I had 11 attorneys right so the one that I liked and respected the most the head of the white-collar defense practice at the 4th largest law firm in the world bacon Gump and Strauss pulled me aside and said you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice it's

[34:46] about mitigating damage take the deal and he was right in retrospect looking back I never had a prayer I never had a chance of acquittal even though I knew in my heart I had not done anything wrong but I never had a chance because the system is structured so that you don't have a chance that's why almost every one of those 98.2%

[35:17] of the cases that the Justice Department hey they win through plea deals because you don't have a chance almost nobody goes to trial and those who do lose unless your name is John Edwards remember John Edwards he was the vice presidential nominee for the Democrats in 2004 I don't think I was born yet just getting OH

[35:50] bunch of federal felonies and he said oh no you don't and he went to trial but the guy's worth 40 million dollars and he spent eight million of his own money on his defense yeah he was acquitted which you could do that's the Eastern District of North Carolina when you have unlimited resources yeah which is what the government comes at you with yes exactly yeah no it's insane I just I just feel like it's it's urgent

[36:22] that it's untenable for Marty to stay at that CMU it is so frustrating to not be able to speak to him to know that he's in such bad conditions like he's strong and a fighter but this is insane it makes me so angry they can break it buddy this is the sad thing about his situation I actually served time with a guy an Iraqi Kurd who had come to us I was at Loreto FCI Loretto Pennsylvania

[36:53] he had come to us from the CMU in Terre Haute and he was in the modified CMU with me at Loreto and and he I mean he had a story as sad as Marty's this guy prison was the last place this guy belong but the deck was stacked against him and they put him to CMU because he was an Arab or he wasn't really an Arab he was occurred but you get the idea yeah and so I asked him how did you get out of Terre Haute I did anybody got out

[37:25] of Terre Haute and he said it took me a little while to to learn the ropes but the only way to get out is to keep your mouth shut for years and after four years they decided okay well this guy hasn't caused us any problems in four years will downgrade him to a low and we'll send him out and that's what they did and the guy had already been in prison he started in a maximum-security penitentiary had already been in prison for 12 years yeah but four years in that CMU and they finally decided just downgrade

[37:56] him you must have kept his mouth really quiet because they can make up charges for anything and they do they don't that's like being a prison lawyer or whatever it's called jailhouse lawyer is that's that's not a crime that's not a bad thing that happens in every jail in America there's something else illegal work so when I was at Loreto they caught a couple of guys acting as jailhouse lawyers nine times out of ten they'll

[38:26] either turn the other way or just say hey you know you really shouldn't be doing that all the times I saw guys working on other guys cases at Loreto twice they wrote up a shot disciplinary violation they call them shots and and the guys went to solitary for you know two weeks three weeks and that was it and then they tell you hey you don't do that again and then it's all over but three months now incommunicado that's over the

[38:59] top and Counting there's no ending yeah we don't know what it's gonna be six months well and he's a journalist too like they're stopping his First Amendment right from publishing about articles and communicating with other journalists and it's just so wrong on so many levels that's why I feel like well you know that's really important for Trump to intervene on this case that's an important point you raise they try to stop me from communicating with other journalists I said you can't do that I

[39:30] have a First Amendment right they said oh no you don't I said oh yes actually I do it's in VOP regulations so in law library and I printed the bo-peep regulations and I have actually laid it out right there in the mailroom and I had you cannot stop me from communicating with journalists and then two of them were sort of arguing well this this is old I said no this was published a month ago yeah it's brand spankin new and then whatever them

[40:01] looked at means that just just go we'll send it just go and they sent it they don't even know their own regulations and they know that you are at such an incredible disadvantage that they can do almost anything they want to you and you have no recourse I know that's why you got to keep up the pressure from the outside because he can't do it himself in there his hands are tied yeah it's been and I hope journalists

[40:31] understand and take that seriously into heart what a big role they play in working with imprisoned journalists and it's how important they are and I hope that they take it seriously because they really matter and Dana he's not allowed to have visitors either is he definitely Wally's not incommunicado and even if he could you know post trial they usually allow for what's a call to in-person

[41:04] visits yes where you can see them and touch them but not at the CMU it's through glass there's no opportunity to ever spend time with a loved one besides birth through glass and we haven't been doing that since he's been in jail and you know pretrial for the most part except for once when he was in Florida because and he said this night I kind of agree but it's just really demoralizing to see your loved ones that way you know what I

[41:36] mean it is yeah and so we haven't done that we just you know talk on the phone and stuff and now I can't even do that 80 80 I think it's 85 days now cuz the last time I spoke to him was April 26th it's just like absolutely insane just terrible yeah so by us it's good to see you it's
