Title: CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou and Peace Activist Brian Terrell
Show: Tell Somebody
Date: 2015-05-21
URL: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/tellsomebody/ts_2015_05_21a.mp3?dest-id=20629
Duration: 58:00

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[00:00] Hi, I'm Amy Goodman. Stay tuned now for Tell Somebody with Tom Clammer. Prisons in our country reform no one. They rehabilitate no one and they train no one. There are no vocational education courses. There are no college courses anymore. There's nothing except a GED class. And if you already have a GED, you get nothing else. The CIA lied even to those of us inside the CIA, and the reports from the field said that

[00:41] torture worked, that Albus Abedah had cracked, and that he gave us information that saved American lives. This week on Tell Somebody, whistleblower and former CIA officer John Kiriakou and And peace activist Brian Terrells remarked last Sunday at the gates of Whiteman Air Force Base. Stand by for tell somebody.

[01:27] Hello and welcome to Tell Somebody for May 21st, 2015, www.tellsombody.us, on Twitter at TellSomebodyNow, and on Facebook.com slash TellSomebodyNow, please like that page. remember you can subscribe to the podcast for free at the iTunes Store. This is your host

[02:00] Tom Clammer. It's good to be back after two weeks off. Big thanks to Bill Claus and Craig LeBeau of KKFI's Radioactive Magazine for filling in with wonderful guests on a couple of great shows. And thanks as always to your old pal and mine, Mike Murphy. your calendars, folks. KKFI's next pledge drive is coming up real soon. Looks like Tell Somebody's Day will be Thursday, June 4th, 9 a.m. Central Time. I hope you'll make plans

[02:36] to tune in and call in with your support for Independent Community Radio and for Tell Somebody. And I'd like to point out to all the podcast listeners in over 90 countries around the world, you can play too. You can stream the show live at KKFI.org, and whether you do that and listen live, or if you only listen by podcast, you can click on the donate button at www.KKFI.org, make

[03:12] your donation, and add a note on why you appreciate Tell Somebody. Before we get rolling with the rest of the show, a quick note from Stand Up KC about an event coming up later this morning, just under two hours away. They write, Join us this Thursday, May 21st, 11am for a minimum wage rally to stand with working families. We will meet at the front steps of City Hall in downtown Kansas City, Missouri to

[03:45] rally before the City Council hearing at noon. And that will be 414 East 12th Street in Kansas City, Missouri, 64106. And they say, we know that when working people come together, We have the power to make change. On with the show. Once again we will hear some of Brian Terrell's remarks from last Sunday's drone protest at

[04:19] Whiteman Air Force Base. But first, from Wikipedia, John Kiriakou is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies and a blogger for Huffington Post. He was a CIA analyst and case officer, senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and counterterrorism consultant for ABC News and an author of several books.

[04:51] He was the first U.S. government official to confirm in December 2007 that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, and he described that as torture. On October 22, 2012, Kiriyaku pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information about a fellow CIA officer that connected the covert operative to a specific operation.

[05:23] He was sentenced to 30 months in prison on January 25, 2013 and served his term from February 28, 2013 until February 3, 2015 at the Low Security Federal Correction Facility in Loretto, Pennsylvania. I called him at his home in Arlington, Virginia. Give a listen. John Kiriaku, welcome to tell somebody.

[05:57] Thank you so much for having me. Very glad you're able to take the time. We appreciate it. So you've been home for a while. You were in prison and then under house arrest. But you're totally free now, is that right? For the most part, free. I have three years of probation. So from May 1st until July 1st, I'm under a travel ban, meaning I'm not allowed to leave the Washington, D.C. area.

[06:27] And then from July 1st until May 1st of 2018, I have to get permission to travel outside the Washington area two weeks in advance. And if I need to travel internationally for any reason, I have to go before a judge and ask for permission. But this is, I was reading about your house arrest conditions, and I'm sure it was It was great to get out of actual full incarceration, but these seem like pretty harsh methods.

[06:58] Can you talk about what kind of restrictions you were on there? Frankly, I was surprised at how difficult house arrest was. I just figured house arrest, I'm going to be with my wife and kids again. It's going to be fantastic. But the truth of the matter is house arrest means literally that. are confined to the four walls of your house and you can't leave for any reason except to go to the doctor to go to work or to go to the halfway house to which you're assigned.

[07:29] And I worked from home, so I literally had no reason to leave the house except to go to the halfway house to check in and be drug tested on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And if I remember right, it seems like it took a couple hours, three, four hours out of just about every day to do this. Yeah. At first I had to go to the halfway house every day. And of course, like most halfway houses, it's in the worst part of town.

[08:01] I was not allowed to drive. And so I had to walk to the subway, take the subway to Capitol Hill, then get a bus the rest of the way into southeast Washington and then walk from the bus station to the halfway house. So it took me two hours to get there, two hours to get home, plus whatever amount of time I was in the halfway house, which was usually another hour or two. And this was in the middle of the day, so these officials at the halfway house are yelling at me every day to get a job, get a job, get a job, but I'm spending six

[08:37] hours in the middle of the workday just getting up there to see them and getting back again. It made it almost impossible to find work. This is just almost Kafkaesque weird, it seems to me. That's what I called it. I called it Kafkaesque because it says though the entire system is trying to force you to fail. It's like they don't want you to succeed. They don't want you to find another job and they're looking for a reason to violate you and send you back to prison.

[09:07] And how typical is this kind of craziness for people getting out of prison generally? Or do a lot of people with maybe less ability to deal with it than you had have to deal with this kind of thing? That's a very important question and the answer is a resounding yes. I'm very fortunate because I have a master's degree and I have extensive work experience. I have areas of expertise and I have a lot of friends. But if you're poor, if you're a minority, if you have no education and no job skills,

[09:44] and you're expected to get not just a job, but a good job, a real job, a job with which you can support your family, as soon as you get out of prison, you're in for a rude awakening. Part of the problem is that prisons in our country reform no one, they rehabilitate no one and they train no one. There are no vocational education courses, there are no college courses anymore, there's nothing except a GED class.

[10:15] And if you already have a GED, you get nothing else. That's it. So if you went to prison and the only thing you knew how to do was to sell drugs, chances are pretty good that you're going to sell drugs when you get out of prison. You got to go with what you know. You got to go with what you know and they're always on your back about being able to provide for your family and for a lot of guys who know nothing else and and really have no job skills who do want to provide for their families the only thing they can do is to sell

[10:47] drugs. Well we could do a whole show or two on that and we do have some shows on this station that do that, but I'm wreaking havoc with any kind of chronological telling of your story, but before we get to some of the CIA stuff, can you briefly tell me what what the actual in prison part of your experience was like? Yeah, I thought that I was going to go to a minimum

[11:19] security federal work camp the judge had recommended that the prosecution had agreed to it and so when I when I turned myself in at the at the prison at Loretto Pennsylvania February 28th 2013 I just assumed I was going to the camp because that's what everybody had told me in fact I was escorted to the back of the prison and taken into the actual prison itself and when I said something to the corrections

[11:51] officer who was leading the way I said hey wait a minute I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street and he said not according to my paperwork you're not and so I went to the actual prison so I figured there was no sense in complaining I had a relatively short sentence if I even filed a motion with the court it would probably take years to get a hearing so I just toughed it out but about halfway through my stay in prison I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see if I could determine why they had pulled

[12:26] a fast one like this and sent me to prison rather than to the work camp and I got 250 pages of nonsense but tucked in those 250 pages were 6 or 7 or 8 pages marked FOIA exempt do not release to inmate and they were accidentally included in this package that I received and what they said in big bold large type letters it said caution inmate has access to the press and it was in those documents that

[13:01] they decided to classify me or categorize me as what they called critical threat the highest security level wow and that meant that I could not be outside the double the double fences I had to be inside that barbed wire greatest severity is what it was called greatest severity and it wasn't because I was dangerous it wasn't because I was trained by the CIA to escape from places

[13:32] like this I wasn't the sole reason was that I had access to the press yeah Yeah, that is the greatest fear of a lot of these folks, I'm afraid, isn't it? It is. And there's no oversight. I mean, these Bureau of Prisons people can literally do anything they want to anybody and you have no recourse. So many things I want to ask you, but given the shortness of time, I want to make sure

[14:07] we get what you did, what they say you did, what you were convicted of. Can you find a starting point for that tale and what were the charges and what's your take on what you did and so forth? Sure. My life changed completely on December 11th, 2007. I went on ABC News on that day and I said in a nationally televised broadcast that the CIA

[14:43] was torturing prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by the president himself. Now, the president had said just days before that we were not torturing prisoners. And he looked right in the camera and he said, we do not torture. And I knew that that was a lie. And then later he said that if there was torture it was a result of rogue interrogators, rogue CIA officers. Well I knew that was also a lie.

[15:16] And so in 2007 I decided to come forward and to tell the truth about torture. I've been convinced ever since then that I was prosecuted because of that interview. Now I ended up taking a plea to a lesser charge, a charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I confirmed the name of a former colleague to a journalist who never published it.

[15:50] And for that I was charged with a felony to which I plead guilty. Now I'm convinced that that was just, you know, they got me on whatever they could get me. People leak in Washington every day. The last three CIA directors released the names of covert operatives, most famously General Petraeus, who released the names of dozens of officers to his girlfriend. But there were no prosecutions for two of those three CIA directors, and General Petraeus

[16:20] got a sweetheart deal in which he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, no jail time, $100,000 fine and 18 months of unsupervised parole or probation, I didn't get that sweetheart deal. Neither did any of the other whistleblowers that have come up on espionage charges since Tom Drake at the tail end of the Bush administration. And $100,000 fine that Trace had to pay. Yes, the quarter of his normal speaking fees. Yeah, I was just going to say that would be a lot of money for a lot of us, including

[16:53] me. He's just donated part of one of his speeches. But apparently, General Petraeus makes that in 45 minutes. I don't think he'll have any problem. That's amazing. I was going to ask you what you thought of his sentence and compare it to yours, and then what was this latest one, Sterling? Yeah, Jeffrey Sterling. Well, regarding General Petraeus, as much as it causes a knot in my stomach to say it, I really don't believe that General Petraeus should have been charged with a crime.

[17:27] For the same reason that I shouldn't have been charged with a crime. First of all, neither one of us had any criminal intent. And secondly, neither one of us caused any harm to the national security. But General Petraeus is friends with the president, and so he got a sweetheart deal. I didn't get a sweetheart deal, and neither did Jeffrey Sterling. Now, Jeffrey Sterling was a CIA case officer, an operations officer, who was accused of providing information about a botched CIA operation to provide flawed information to Iran's nuclear program

[18:00] by using a Russian scientist. Sterling complained about this botched operation to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. For whatever reason, the CIA got it into their heads that Sterling was the source of a book written by the New York Times reporter James Ryzen, called State of War in 2006. Ryzen has never said that Sterling was the source, and Sterling has always maintained

[18:30] that he was not the source. And indeed, at his trial, Ryzen would say only that he had many sources for that story. But without any direct evidence, there were no emails, there was no smoking gun, there there were no recorded conversations, nothing. Just metadata indicating that emails had been exchanged between Ryzen and Sterling. Sterling was found guilty on nine felony counts. That

[19:01] is seven counts of espionage and two counts of theft of government property, with the property being the information. Now, Sterling was facing life in prison because of this verdict, which I thought was just insane. There was literally no evidence to convict him, but in the Eastern District of Virginia, where both Sterling and I had our cases, it's called the Espionage Court because anyone charged with a national security crime is going to go to prison, whether he did it or not. That's just the reputation of the court and of

[19:35] the juries that appear in that court. So Sterling was looking at life in prison and his attorney told him you know something on the lines of twenty five years the prosecution recommended a sentence of nineteen to twenty four years certainly judge who happened to be the same judge that i had judge leonnie brinkama uh... you know just brinkama read the newspapers to which he thought that sweetheart deal that tray scott

[20:06] the district of virginia while it's a tough district it doesn't operate in a vacuum and so instead of the nineteen to twenty four years uh... she ended up giving sterling three-and-a-half years now even three-and-a-half years is too much because like i said i think the guy didn't commit the crime and i think he certainly has appealable issues but he'll have to appeal those issues from a prison cell um...

[20:37] both in Sterling's case and in your case, was the espionage act? I believe it was in your case, what about it? Yeah, we were both charged with espionage and Tom Drake was charged with espionage as well. I was charged with three counts of espionage and the government's explanation for my charges was laughable. The government said that I revealed to the New York Times and to ABC News

[21:08] top secret compartmented information that they decided to declassify solely for the purpose of prosecuting me. And that information, I can tell you now what it was, it was that the CIA had a plan or a program to capture or kill members of Al Qaeda. Now, I allegedly said this in 2008. Honestly, I don't have any recollection saying this, but my God, it was on the front page of the newspaper for the previous seven years, practically every day,

[21:41] that we're out there looking to capture or kill members of Al-Qaeda. In fact, we were killing members of Al-Qaeda and we were trumpeting it on the front pages of every newspaper in America. But the CIA said that that information had never been formally declassified. And so I was charged with espionage. Now, all of my espionage charges were dropped, Just like all of NSA with the blower Tom Drake's espionage charges were dropped, because very simply, I haven't committed espionage. This is a 1917 era law

[22:14] that was enacted in order to target German saboteurs during the First World War. It was updated very briefly in 1950 in the aftermath of the Julius Neffel Rosenberg case. But still this law is so old and so broadly written that it doesn't even contain the phrase classified information because the classification system had not yet been invented. It discusses only national defense information. And what it says is that any person shall be found guilty of espionage.

[22:47] If they provide national defense information for any person not qualified to receive it or not, not entitled to receive it. Well, Like I say, that's the front page of the Washington Post every single morning. So why aren't those leaks being investigated, and why aren't those people being charged with espionage? That's why when it comes to whistleblowing, if you say something that's not flattering for the government, if you, and there's a legal definition of whistleblowing, it's

[23:19] bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. So if you make the government look bad, you're going to get an espionage charge. If you leak to make the government look good, you're going to get a pat on the back from the president and you're going to get a free ticket. Get out of jail free card. Wow. Now, I think it's been often mentioned in the press the number of times this has been used. 1917 law that through the end of World War One, through World War Two, through the Cold

[23:57] War, three times it was invoked, and Obama was sterling the eighth? Sterling was the ninth. Ninth, okay. Yeah, from 1917 until the election of Barack Obama in 2008, his inauguration in 2009, Espionage Act was invoked three times. Since Barack Obama became president, he has charged nine people with violations of the Espionage Act. Nine people and almost every one of those.

[24:31] In fact, I can say every one of those nine was was for a leak to a member of the press or to an academic. None of them to a foreign country. And was all of your prosecution initiated and carried through in the Obama administration or did any of it start with Bush? Yeah, mine was solely Obama. Although the FBI started investigating me in 2007, they had determined by the end of the Bush administration that I had not committed a crime and they dropped the case.

[25:06] But after Obama was inaugurated, in March of 2009, the FBI picked up my case again and moved forward with the prosecution. Well, how did you first become aware that the U.S. was engaging in torture? Well, I was asked, when I returned from Pakistan in the summer of 2002, I had been the chief of the CIA's Chief of Counterterrorism Operations in Pakistan, when I got back, I was asked by

[25:41] a senior officer in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center if I wanted to be certified, what he called certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. And I didn't know what that meant, I had never heard of enhanced interrogation techniques before, so I asked him, well what's that mean? So he said, well we're going to start getting rough with some of these guys and here's what we're going to do, and he described these torture techniques to me. And I said, whoa, I don't think that's for me. That sounds like torture. I have a moral problem with it, and I'm not interested.

[26:12] That was in, I guess that was in June of 2002. Well, by July or early August, maybe it was early August, I started hearing stories and reports from friends of mine in the CIA that we were engaging in torture. We were torturing up as a beta, for example, the first prisoner that we tortured. and that these torture techniques had broken him. So that was the first I had heard about it. And you were told these torture techniques work,

[26:47] but they really didn't, as far as you know. They didn't, you know, and this is another thing about the CIA, is the CIA lied even to those of us inside the CIA. And the reports from the field said that torture worked, that Albuzebeta had cracked, and that he gave us information that saved American lives. And we believed that until the release of the Inspector General's report on torture in 2009. And the Inspector General found that that just simply wasn't true, that torture did

[27:19] not work, and that American lives were not saved because of these techniques. Of course, the Senate Torture Report concluded the same thing, what was it, five and a half, six years later. And, you know, I guess in some important moral sense, it doesn't matter whether they work or not. We shouldn't do them. But the people saying that it works, they just can't really back that up. Yeah, that's right. There are two questions here, really.

[27:51] I mean, if you want to be really analytic about it, there are two separate questions. Number one, does it work? and the answer now we we know that the answer is no we know that from primary source document that the senate the select committee on intelligence cia original cia documents to come to that conclusion that the first question the second question is it moral is it ethical is it right and that is a resounding now on on that line uh... a lot of us have heard

[28:24] seymour hershey's If we haven't read the whole long article, we've maybe seen an interview on Democracy Now or heard about his debunking of the Bin Laden capture and kill story. I think I read something online that you are a bit skeptical of at least some parts of that, but the CIA working with the filmmaker of Zero Dark Thirty and giving this strong

[28:54] impression that torture led to the finding the location and taking out Osama bin Laden. Any comments on all of that? Yeah, I did read Cy Hersh's piece in the London Review of Books and I think overall the story was plausible. I think that he had sources who corroborated his main source, and while

[29:30] there may have been inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the piece here and there, I think by and large what he reported could have happened. One of the things that's really struck me about the reaction to this piece the viciousness with which but many members of the media have gone after her saying things like he's off the rails he's a conspiracy theorist uh... he uh... has lost his marvels

[30:02] he's too old i mean nobody is complaining about the actual article they're just trying to discredit him and when people attack the messenger rather than to do analysis on the message, that makes me think that he's on to something. Yeah, and he does have something of a track record, and I forget the woman's name, but there's somebody else that had a similar story out much earlier than that. And these herces and her stories don't jive in every detail, but in large measure they do, right?

[30:41] I think that's right. I think that's right. And look, we have to think about another issue, too. The story that the White House came out with in the immediate aftermath of the Bin Laden killing was just simply not true. And in the days afterwards, people were scrambling to try to issue corrections and retractions. And I remember the White House finally put a muzzle on John Brennan because he kept coming out with these various stories, None of which turned out to be true

[31:12] So we already know that the White House lied to us about the bin Laden killing I'd like to know what I hers has to say about it And frankly if the White House and the CIA have a disagreement with Hersh's reporting Well, I would like to I would like to hear what their complaints are What is it that we're not supposed to believe because what they told us originally just simply wasn't true Yeah. Some specifics and not all these ad hominem attacks that just make me more suspicious.

[31:44] I agree. I feel the same way. I know you have to go in a few minutes, but you have a website and you have plans for going forward from this point. Could you give us the website and a little bit about what you want to do now? Thank you, sure, I appreciate that. My website is, it's pretty easy. It's johncurriaco.com, J-O-H-N-K-I-R-I-A-K-O-U dot com.

[32:21] I'm trying to post, boy, everything I'm writing, news appearances, As well as articles about whistleblowing and national security that I find interesting, I'm proud of this site, I think there's a lot going on on it. I've begun a job as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, one of the most highly respected think tanks in Washington, and I'm going to handle issues related to intelligence reform, torture policy,

[32:52] and prison reform, things that have become very important to me over the last several years. Okay, well, any other final words you want to leave with our listeners before I let you go? Oh, thanks. I don't mean to sound like what Spiro Agnew once called a nattering neighbor of negativism, but after 19 years in government, 15 of those years in the CIA and two-and-a-half in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, I can tell you that you really

[33:23] can't trust what the government says. We need real oversight. The American people need to take an interest in what the government is doing in their name. We need to demand that our elected officials in the House and the Senate exercise true oversight over the intelligence community. And we can only do that through elections. We need to take these elections very very seriously okay well I guess for now we'll leave it at that I'd love to talk to you again and get into more detail on some of these

[33:56] things somewhere down the road but really appreciate your taking the time tonight John Kiriakou thank you very much thanks for having me I look forward to speaking again soon. Sounds good. John Kiriaku, that's K-I-R-I-A-K-O-U, www.JohnKiriaku.com. We need to play a message or two for you right now and we'll be right back after you

[34:27] listen. Welcome back to Tell Somebody This Is Tom Clammer. Last Sunday, Missouri peace activists rallied at the entry to Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Missouri, the aim to oppose drone warfare and to seek peace. Brian Terrell, co-coordinator of Voices for creative nonviolence spoke at the rally.

[35:00] Terrell served six months in a federal prison camp for resistance at Whiteman Air Force Base in 2012. With help from Mike Murphy, Jane Stover recorded Brian Terrell's talk and got a copy to me. Apparently a few folks on motorcycles made a little noise now and then to register their disapproval of the peace rally. Give a listen.

[35:54] And she was released on April 21st and on April 26th, we were together in Northern California, Beale Air Force Base, another drone base, and Kathy and I and 14 others were arrested there. So, she knows we're here today and she sends her greetings. Yeah, yeah, prison it just doesn't work doesn't

[36:24] We need some alternatives like a like a government that doesn't commit war crimes that might be the only way that's going to stem this I was on my way to To be all I was at a before that I was a meeting in Las Vegas Planning more demonstrations for creature for space. We're back in March. I'm 200 people gathered camped out by the Greek Air Force Base, the center of the Air Force, and CIA drones, and 32 of us were arrested there in March 6th. So the resistance is growing, and so is the

[36:58] general dis-ease about this. When I was in Las Vegas on my way to Beale, you probably all remember this. April 23rd, the President of the United States got on television, and for the first time in my lifetime uh... president of the state's apologize for something and he apologized for people being killed by drones and uh... not by the thousands that reprieve and other organizations have identified

[37:31] uh... but only two of them just two an italian named Giovanni Lapporto and A doctor, Warren Weinstein, who was a U.S. citizen, who were hostages being held by Al-Qaeda and back in January, it took them this long to own up to it, they were killed in Pakistan by a drone strike.

[38:01] One of the interesting things that the President said, and this apology, and first of all I want to make very, very clear that focusing on this Italian, one Italian man and one American man, I'm not dismissing or belittling the deaths of the thousands of Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Somalis who've been killed by these drones. But I think the fact that these Americans have died and two other Americans, I'll talking about too. It brings some things into focus. The President used the excuse of the

[38:42] fog of war. Now, some of you I know are combat veterans, but I think we don't need to imagine just what that means is the fog of war, mistakes are made when people are in the field, in jungle in the desert for weeks at a time. There's the chaos of battle, there's explosions going off, there's dirt being kicked into the air, there's people screaming and there's

[39:12] smoke and you don't know who's who and you don't know where to shoot and sometimes you shoot the wrong people. That's the tragedy of the fog of war. And the president called on that on that the fog of war but what are these drones for if they're not to see through the fog of war and also this did not happen in battle not at all the fact that the general in charge of the US Air Force combat command a couple years ago said that the experience

[39:44] of the drones that they've been found useless in combat they're great for assassination They're useless in combat and he said I would never put a drone in a contested situation. So this is not aeroplane or a top gun, you know, dog fights with drones in the air. This is, these are, so what happened here in Waziristan, in Pakistan near the Afghan border where these people were killed, was not a, not a battlefield, it was static.

[40:14] They were watching from from in this case, I believe it was Crete Air Force Base in Nevada The soldiers who launched those missiles were not in any danger themselves They had taken showers and stuff in their own beds that day that night before and they were getting regular bathroom breaks They were sitting in an air-conditioned room watching this on a screen and they've been watching it for days and days and days when the order came to strike.

[40:47] It wasn't the fall of the war. And they came out the same day with a separate announcement from the White House press secretary that two other Americans are recently killed by US government counterterrorism operations in the same region. One of them, a man named Ahmed Farouk, was actually killed in that strike that killed the two hostages. But they didn't, but they also admit we did not have information indicating his presence at this operation.

[41:26] So even he wasn't targeted. It's like we accidentally killed an American citizen who was an aid worker, and we also accidentally killed an American citizen who was working with Al-Qaeda, and that somehow supposed to balance it out. But see, this is not the fog of war. This is not war at all. This is not any of the qualifications, as you're telling our friends here from the base, that it's a very real possibility that their comrades, U.S. Air Force personnel in Rampstown,

[42:02] Germany may be facing accomplice of murder charges in Germany under German law because they are on German soil and they're committing murder even though the people are dying or dying in Yemen and Pakistan and other places far away. And they will not be able to to use, I was a soldier. And this was a killing in battle. Because it wasn't in battle, because they were not in battle, they were even, they were hundreds and miles away from where the missiles flew up. So this is really, you know, it really is crime. Another thing from the

[42:41] the April 26th New York Times and I think a lot of us here have all contributed to a change in how the American people and the media are looking at drones. This is a very cynical article, deep support in Washington for CIA's drone missions. Screening creates veneer of congressional review and it describes how Congress people's go to an office at the CIA, and they see some videos that are very redacted, and they see bad guys getting blown up, and then they say, well, we were perfectly, completely, uh, uh, uh, in on this, and we, and we, and we, and in our, uh, uh, video, that the whole, all be the congressional approvals, it's all, it's all okay.

[43:32] These reporters for The Times were able to interview Diane Feinstein, who is not backed off from her statement that, in any given year, the civilian casualties from girls are counted in the single digits. And she believes that the congressional briefings that they're getting from the CIA are accurate. But see, back in December, Diane Feinstein said about the CIA's briefings on torture

[44:07] when the Senate report came out, he said, these people have lied to us. And it was brought up, the problem that the briefings were done by the same people, the briefings on the detention and torture, were the same people who are now briefing about drone strikes. and said well and all she could say was well that's a very interesting question, next?

[44:38] So what we're uh, we're in a very uh very interesting time out in Las Vegas for our shut down speech events. In March, we had a young woman come from a college and a university in New York, a drama student who did the play Grounded. You might have heard about that now Anne Hathaway is performing at New York City.

[45:10] Well, good. Anyway, the director from the University of Professor was there, and he offered that we had a panel afterwards and talking about with the audience who performed it at several events in Las Vegas. Very, very good, very powerful. But the, the producer of it was saying that she was happy that it was going to be on off Broadway. But she said, who goes off Broadway, but

[45:41] liberals, the people who need to be are gonna, are gonna get it. And you know, that's that's all too easy, because this is the liberal weapon. This is the weapon of Obama. This is the weapon of Kerry. This is the weapon of Hillary Clinton. And our indictment was President Obama is a very top responsible person. One of the things that Obama said about Dr.

[46:11] Weinstein and Giovanni Lapporto is, in mourning their deaths, he said that they could not be any starker contrast between these two men and their al-Qaeda captors. And I believe that's probably true. But the contrast is their daylight between the al-Qaeda captors and the people who order those drone strikes we can't can't put it off and the fact that these these are both Ahmed

[46:56] Farouk and Warren Weinstein are two Americans who died in the same same strike on different sides of the different sides of the game but both both killed, and out of the thousands and thousands who others have been killed. And we just don't know who any of these people are. We can parse out the innocence and the guilty. I left my notes at home with the numbers, but I pretty much get close to what this article talks about.

[47:37] The smoke is clearing the fog of water around the Long Guantanamo. We know that there were about 800 prisoners there, all told. And they were all gathered.

[48:07] They're the ones that were on Rumsfeld said that they were the worst of the worst. And that 800 was called out of thousands and thousands who had been imprisoned in Bobrom, Abu Ghraib, lots of other black sites we don't even know about. We're brought to Guantanamo. Right now, there are about 140 left. Even though these people were not allowed trials, but were being had their cases, heard by military tribunals, secret proceedings,

[48:39] secret evidence gained by torture, except all those numbers that they let go were people that they had nothing on. They finally said, even with everything stacked against them, no real defense. We got the wrong people. And we let them, they let them go. Well, unfortunately, what, five have died, number have died in custody. Okay, then out of that number, there are more than 36 who have been cleared for release.

[49:14] And the reason they're not being released is totally political. The United States, the military and the CIA admit we have nothing on these people. We don't know anything about them, uh, to, to, to, to, to, that they ever have been a danger to the United States, and they should be let go, but no one will take them and the United, and Congress is doing what it can to block their release. There's another, like 36 people who have not been living.

[50:24] This is also selective prosecution because it's against the law to make excessive noise. But they're not going to call 9-1-1 and report a crime. No, we don't need to do that. It's just tragic. And I think it is very indicative that their tactic is to make noise, to drown out the discussion.

[51:02] Not to engage, but to shut it up. Because once you have this discussion, there's only one place it can go. And I think, ultimately, they know that. So anyway, there's like 36 people there too, who are still there, and Guantanamo, who will probably be there if the Pentagon has its way, they will be there forever. And out of these 36 men, they did nothing that we know of before they were arrested,

[51:36] Before they got to Guantanamo, they were never a threat to the United States. They would never hurt any of us. But now, for 12 years, they've been in solitary confinement, they've been force-fed, they've been tortured. We can't let them go because they might hurt us. And this is not my take on it. This is what the Pentagon says about why these people cannot be released. So, these are the people, the people who made the decision about who would go to Guantanamo

[52:14] are the exact same people, and if you look up this article in the Times, it names them the exact same people who are now targeting, deciding who's going to die. So when you hear that a bad guy got killed, in Al-Qaeda, this fruq, al-Qaeda, that He was a bad guy that he was accomplished with al-Qaeda. Take it with a grain of salt, because we don't know, and there was no indictment. There was no charge. This is just assassination.

[52:45] These are simply murder victims, all of them. Everyone killed in these strikes. No matter what it is they did, as Henry could tell you as a lawyer, it's against the law to kill a gangster on the street. No matter how bad somebody is, they should have a trial. And you just can't kill them because you feel like it because you think they're bad or they look like somebody who's bad. This strike and they killed these two American citizens and this Italian man and who how many others, what they call a signature strike where they're

[53:16] simply looking at the patterns of behavior and deciding that because people were acting a certain way around this building there must be something nefarious going on in there. So the strike happened. It's exactly as reflected in our cities with racial profiling. So anyway, I'm glad you're here. Get in touch with me. I'll get in touch with get things on your email list about coming up April 1 is going to be another shutdown preach. So it'd be great to come and camp out with us in the desert. It's a

[53:47] beautiful time of the year to be there. And keep coming here because this is this is a rising tide and it's something that I do believe is making a difference. So thank you very Brian Terrell speaking at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri last Sunday. Some of the folks who joined Brian at Whiteman will be walking and or writing between Kansas City's old and new nuclear weapons parts plants on Memorial Day.

[54:20] Monday, May 25th, starting at 8 a.m. at the old plant at 95th Street, or Banister Road, and Lydia, and then heading south about 10 miles to the new plant. If you'd like to join them or just want to find out more about it, there is information at www.peaceworkskc.org Or get to your calendar on Facebook and find the event page for the Memorial Day Walk & Ride.

[55:03] Well that's it. We're out of time. You've been listening to the podcast edition of Tell Somebody, www.tellsomebody.us. comments or questions, send an e-mail to mail at TellSomebody.us. You can also follow me on Twitter at TellSomebodyNow. The TellSomebody podcast is produced and distributed by TellSomebody and may or may not reflect the broadcast of TellSomebody heard on 90.1 FM KKFI in Kansas

[55:39] City, streaming around the world at www.kkfi.org. I'll be on 90.1 FM KKFI every Thursday morning at 9, right after Democracy Now. If you haven't heard Tell Somebody before, I hope you'll listen again. Check out the podcast and the broadcast. Click on a tile at www.telsombody.us for a link to a past show.

[56:10] If you enjoyed the show and appreciated the information you got from it, please tell somebody about the podcast and the broadcast. Spread the word to your friends and contacts by word of mouth or Facebook or Twitter or email list or any other way you can think of. This is Tom Klammer. I'll see you next Thursday at 9 a.m. on Tell Somebody, or anytime you'd like, at www.tellsomebody.us.

[58:31] You
