Title: Belmarsh Tribunal Sydney
Show: Consortium News
Date: 2023-03-06
URL: https://youtu.be/47ucQ6ZdV0E
Duration: 18:00

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[00:00] John kiriak who would be truly belongs in a hall of the pantheon of the the greatest whistleblowers of this century John was a CIA analyst who revealed and more significantly confirmed rumors of the U.S torture program in particular the waterboarding techniques virtual drowning of interrogation subjects it was the first Insider to do that

[00:31] could you imagine Crossing that threshold to reveal something like that knowing the semi-trailer that's coming your way but it was an issue the the torture itself some sort of mad invention of Donald Rumsfeld so I I imagine some Dark Fantasy that so directly corrupted all that America had stood for most profoundly corrupted all that America stood for that prompted

[01:03] John kiriaku to reveal that program and of course there was hell to pay he he went to jail but beyond going to jail he lost uh friendships he lost Korea he was mocked and vilified and threatened and yet through all of that he's still standing and he's here today and he's in Julian assandra's corner so uh John Curry

[01:34] thank you very much and thank you very much I don't deserve it first I want to thank Progressive International and all the organizers for the the opportunity to be here and to address all of you this is a real thrill for me it's a thrill because we're all here for Julian Assange that's how important this is and it's important for several different reasons I'm going to begin by asking for your Indulgence and I apologize if you've

[02:05] heard much of what I'm going to say before but I think it's important and it deserves repeating at the CIA they teach us in briefing training to give your main point up front so I'll do that the American government is lying about Julian Assange that's the bottom line they're lying and they're going to continue to lie

[02:36] where do we even begin to talk about this Julian has been charged with multiple counts of Espionage Espionage is the gravest offense or at least one of the two gravest offenses with which a person can be charged in the United States in some cases it carries with it the death penalty I think that the justice department wants us to be happy that they haven't charged Julian with a death penalty

[03:06] case within the Espionage Act but let's talk about the Espionage Act for a moment so you can see how ridiculous this law is the Espionage Act was written in 1917 to combat German saboteurs during the first world war it has never been updated in any meaningful way it does not even contain the term classified information because the classification system wasn't invented until the 1950s

[03:38] it says National Defense information but then it never defines what the term National Defense information means it means whatever the prosecution wants it to mean many of us have argued over the years that the Espionage Act is is unconstitutionally Broad and vague but we never get far enough in the court system to actually make that case before The Supreme Court Dan Ellsberg one of the greatest heroes in modern America

[04:10] tried and continues to try but we just haven't quite made it that far well the Espionage Act even though the Congress has not taken it up to update it it was actually updated judicially in my case at the time that this happened I didn't realize how important it was but uh in the very first hearing that I had before my judge in 2012 my attorneys argued that

[04:42] I did not have a Criminal Intent when I spoke to the New York Times and to ABC News my intent was to inform the American people that the government was committing a crime and by law in the United States you cannot classify a program if the program is Criminal you cannot classify it for the purpose of keeping the information from the American people my judge said that she would not just reject that argument but she would

[05:14] refuse to respect precedent that was set in the case of Thomas Drake the NSA whistleblower she then looked at me and she said Mr kiriaku you either did it or you didn't do it and I think you did it and that was it so she defined Espionage in the context of these cases very simply as providing National Defense information to any person not entitled to receive it

[05:44] National Security journalists at the Washington Post the New York Times The Wall Street Journal and everywhere else do that every single day that's one of the reasons why this case is so important it's because and I don't mean to overstate this the First Amendment of the Constitution the freedom of speech and the freedom of press is resting on this case if Julian Assange is successfully prosecuted if he's convicted of

[06:16] Espionage never mind the fact that he's not even an American but he's a journalist and a publisher every journalist and publisher in America will be liable to this kind of prosecution everybody will be facing decades centuries maybe in prison that's how dangerous this is let's also look at what exactly it was that Julian did Julian reported on war

[06:49] crimes as I said a moment ago it is illegal to classify a crime that's actually a law in the federal code it's never been prosecuted right why is it that CIA leaders were not prosecuted when they created the torture program or when they created the illegal extraordinary rendition program or when they created the the secret prison program it's because they're the good guys

[07:22] and you don't prosecute the good guys when they're trying to keep us safe at night you remember the old saying about uh men being willing to do dark things uh to keep us safe have we lost our Humanity it kind of seems that way another problem is that the United States does not have an official Secrets act thank God at least we don't have it yet but I can tell you that at the CIA they like very much what they see in the UK

[07:53] and their official Secrets Act and so this is a way to sort of create an official Secrets act through the back door that if they can if they can successfully prosecute Jillian Assange they know that they can then prosecute anybody we're just going to have to take their word for it that they don't want to prosecute the people that they believe to be legitimate journalists another issue and I say this all the time but I do because it's true the

[08:26] American people own the information that Julian has released we have a right to know what our country and our government is doing in our name I want to know if my government is murdering journalists in Iraq I want to know if my government is disappearing people in secret prisons around the world where nobody knows that they're there and then they torture them in many cases to death

[08:57] in which case they just cremate them and throw them away but we have a right to know this information it was only Julian Assange who gave it to us for that we should be grateful I also want to talk about the kinds of conditions that Julian might face would face will face when he uh if he's extradited to the United States and convicted I want to come back to my initial statement that the government is lying we know about this provisional promise to not send Julian to uh to a Sam unit

[09:31] there are other units called cmus communication management units there's also solitary confinement it is not up to the prosecutors in any case to decide who goes to what prison and who is kept in what unit they have literally no say on the matter the judge has no say on the matter the only people who get to decide that are the senseless bureaucrats in the

[10:03] Federal Bureau of Prisons and even if they decide not to send Julian to a restricted unit all that has to happen for him to go there is for any random prisoner to walk up to a prison guard and say I just heard two people talking about stabbing Julian Assange then Julian will be sent to solitary confinement indefinitely for his own safety when I first arrived at prison

[10:34] I decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request about myself and the reason I did this is because I had begun writing an open letter from prison that I called letter letters from Loretto it enraged the warden and so I would smuggle these letters out to my attorney and then she would send them to the media and they were getting millions and millions of hits and so I was put in what was called a modified Communications management unit there was

[11:05] a five-day delay on my incoming and outgoing emails my phone calls were not recorded they were listened to live by a live guard and uh and both my incoming and outgoing mail was uh was opened and read so in this in this modified CMU all of a sudden I felt my style cramped so I wrote a

[11:36] letter to the Bureau of Prisons and I said uh under the Freedom of Information Act I request all documents that you have on John kiriaku and um much to my surprise about six weeks later I got a package 220 Pages 200 pages of it was nonsensical my medical records my visitors list things that nobody can nobody cared about but there were 20 pages that were very clearly stamped at the top and the bottom foia exempt do not release to inmate so

[12:08] either someone in the Bureau of Prisons foia office was brain dead or they took pity on me and decided uh you know I should probably see this what it was was a series of memos that the warden was sending out to prison guards preparing them for my arrival the one that was the most fun for me was one page with very large print large fonts and it said caution

[12:39] inmate has access to the media imagine Jillian Assange he won't be in any modified CMU he'll be in the CMU now there are two cmus in the United States one is in the former death row at the maximum security penitentiary in Terre Haute Indiana the other is at the supermax prison in Marion Illinois both of these prisons are hell on Earth

[13:10] and I'll tell you about that in a moment but when these when these communications management units were set up in the 1980s they were meant to house the most dangerous criminals that were in the American prison system and I'm talking about the last surviving member of the Abu nidal terrorist organization a terrorist who blew up an Egypt airplane that killed something like 183 people uh the the so-called blind Shake Omar abdulrahman who was sort of the The

[13:42] Godfather of the first attack on the World Trade Center that's not really the case anymore now the CMU houses a medical whistleblower by the name of Marty goddessfeld it houses the the famed drone whistleblower Daniel um Daniel Daniel Hale thank you Daniel Hale uh it houses environmental activists this isn't why cmus were created but

[14:14] this is what they're going to do with Julian and why are they going to do with Julian because they don't want him to tell anybody what he knows and he knows a lot he knows a lot about crimes that have been committed by the American government war crimes and crimes against humanity so when they say that he'll be treated fairly it's a lie he won't be treated fairly I'm going to repeat something that I say a lot too about the court in which Julian would be tried were he to be

[14:45] extradited this is the eastern district of Virginia this is the court that I was tried in the court that CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was tried in it's the court that Ed Snowden has been charged in there's a judge there well there are a couple of Judges the one that that did my case in Jeffrey Sterling's and everybody else's uh judge leonie brinkama used to reserve all of the uh National Security cases for herself and no National Security defendant has ever

[15:15] won a case there well she's not Julian's judge Julian's judge would be the chief judge and what did he do before he was the chief judge he was a judge on the fisa court that is the court that is so secret that we don't even really know what they do that's who's going to try Julian now in my case my best friend's wife had an uncle who was O.J Simpson's jury

[15:46] consultant most of you I would assume know who O.J Simpson was football player actor most likely double murderer and um and they won the case so this jury consultant offered to help me for free he flew up to Washington we got him a security clearance and he went through fifteen thousand pages of classified Discovery and in the end he told me that if we were in any other District in

[16:18] America he would say let's go for it we're going to win this case but he said the eastern district of Virginia your jury is going to be made up of people from or with relatives at the CIA the Pentagon the FBI the Department of Homeland Security and dozens of National Security and intelligence contractors he said my friend you don't have a chance and that's why I ended up taking a plea

[16:48] now I was charged with Espionage three counts but I hadn't committed Espionage and so they dropped those charges they're not offering Julian a sweetheart deal they've made this as difficult as they possibly could from the very beginning of the case there's really no reason for us to think well you know they've made their point and Julian's a journalist even they have to agree with that it's not going to be as bad no no

[17:19] it's it's bad as we think it is when the CIA comes up with a plot to murder Julian in the Streets of London in broad daylight because they don't like the journalism that he's doing that's a problem so I wanted to say again that Julian's case is bigger than Julian Assange this is a case about the rule of law it's a case about the Constitution it's

[17:52] about the way the United States presents itself to the rest of the world the United States professes to be a shining Beacon of Hope for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties and the rule of law and that's just simply not true it's not and that's why we have to stand up and stand together because the case isn't about Julian it's about all of us thank you very much

[18:23] thank you
