Title: Live on the Fly with Randy
Show: Live on the Fly (Randy Credico)
Date: 2021-11-05
URL: https://youtu.be/XYd28m0_Zfo
Duration: 82:00

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[00:00] wikileaks founder julian assange has been arbitrarily detained by sweden and the united kingdom since his arrest in london on 7 december 2010 as a result of the legal action taken against him by both governments the expert panel called on the swedish and british authorities to end mr assange deprivation of liberty i think the recommendation is quite clear respect is physical integrity and freedom of movement and afford him the right to compensation

[00:45] so okay hello everybody i'm randy credico this is randy critical live on the fly here on 99.5 fm in new york city uh with a very big show today last week we had a special 90-minute program

[01:22] on the first day of the assange hearing well it's been a week now and there was another day a lot has happened and so thank you linda perry barr for giving us the extra space today this is normally a 30 minute show but we've got 90 minutes and we have an incredible lineup we have daniel ellsberg coming up we have julian assange's partner mother of his two children uh stella morris coming up and we got bob boyle who was a witness and john kiriakou but we're going to get underway right now with uh

[01:59] one of my favorites uh ben weisner if you don't know who he is he's the of course you know who he is he's he's uh ed snowden's attorney he's also the director at the acl aclu i can never do this right with him acl speeds privacy and technology project and he's blocked by the real donald trump who's not online anymore or on twitter uh hey ben uh welcome back it's been a long time hey randy good to be here all right good uh i i gotta tell you we've talked about this

[02:29] the last time was like eight months ago and then uh earlier that year in 2020 we we spoke uh and you know we cover some of the same ground uh on this assange case uh but you know the aclu along with 25 other groups just sent a letter uh to merrick garland uh asking for them to dismiss the case uh before you get into that what is your overview of what you saw last week in london well look i think a lot is riding on what happens in london um and you know i say

[03:04] that because um none of us really wants to see what will happen um if this case ends up back in the u.s courtroom um you know we talk often about how there has never been a prosecution under the espionage act of someone for publishing truthful information that this indictment is the first time that the department of justice has gone down that road but you know i recently did an event for the 50th anniversary of the pentagon papers case and i know you're going to have daniel ellsberg on later and he may want to add to this and we think of the supreme court's decision in the pentagon

[03:38] papers case as establishing this extremely broad first amendment protection for journalists and in one sense that's true it prevents the government in almost all circumstances from blocking publication in advance but it says nothing to prevent the government from prosecuting publishers and in fact the justices on the court pretty explicitly left open the possibility without deciding it that the government might be able to do what it's now doing to julian assange so we should not see it as a done deal that if he ends up

[04:13] in the u.s courtroom the first amendment will knock out the government's case just because this prosecution is unprecedented um doesn't mean that it isn't extremely dangerous and we can talk about you know more why i think this was a really deviously chosen one to set this kind of precedent um uh but but again many of us will be making strong first amendment arguments if that ever ends up here but by far the superior resolution here would be for the uk courts to correctly rule that this is a political offense um the espionage act is by definition a political statute and

[04:49] therefore not an extraditable offense that that um that that in itself would set a terrible precedent if publishers could be sent to face prosecution for violating other countries secrecy laws so um so we really want to see a strong ruling from the uk courts as your listeners will remember the courts have so far blocked his extradition on the ground that he would face brutal treatment in u.s prisons and that his life would be in danger that's of course true um but i think that it would be a much stronger ruling if those courts said

[05:23] that neither julian assange nor any other publisher can be extradited to the united states to face trial under the espionage act well what makes what is going on at the department of justice merrick garland seems like a fair-minded individual i know somebody that i worked with who i think was connected to the aclu who's third in line there vanita gupta and i'm wondering why they would continue a trump prosecution when we thought this was going to be a new page when biden came in look let's think about why they might not be doing anything right now real talk

[05:58] right um assange is not popular in either party um and right now they don't feel the urgency that they should be feeling because they know that this case is going to be in the courts in the united kingdom for months or years longer and my strong belief is that there are many people in the in the department of justice who are quietly hoping that the british courts will take this off the table and not force them into what will be an extremely complicated situation

[06:29] if uh the british courts green light the extradition because then they really will have to decide whether they want to be the first department of justice in the history of this country to prosecute someone for publishing truthful information provided by somebody else they don't have to make that decision yet because they you know they can sit back they can focus on their other priorities they certainly have enough on their plate uh and they can watch this play out in the uk courts and if and only if the british court system says that there's no obstacle to extradition will this become a political problem for them that's

[07:02] my belief but look and we've talked about this before there has never been a unified u.s position on the assange case we know there was a criminal grand jury from the very beginning from right after the manning leaks we know the obama administration considered bringing a case and ultimately decided not to because they thought they couldn't get around what they call the new york times problem they couldn't find a way to construct a case against julian assange that would not put other national security journalism at risk even in the trump administration i'm

[07:36] sure there was a difference of opinion about whether to you know to bring these charges some from some people in the department of justice and others in the cia we'll talk more about that in a minute um and uh and and some in the fbi and and you know ultimately what you lost was the people in the obama administration um who put the stop sign up and the hawks um won the day that's going to be the case again i'm in the biden administration you're going to have people in the fbi and the department of justice who want to see this case go forward

[08:07] and you're going to have people like the ones you refer to a moment ago who understand what kind of precedent it will set so i am very very very much hoping both because i'm worried about what will happen in the u.s and also because i think this is an important global precedent that the uk courts will issue a very strong ruling against extradition um let's go back to the yahoo news explosive story that they put out when we were talking he was saying in a minute talking about the cia what kind of impact did that have on washington

[08:41] if any well we'll see look i i was a little bit surprised that the really important investigative reporting that yahoo did uh michael isikoff and his team was not picked up by other news outlets because i think it was a massively important story um and i was expecting to see the new york times the washington post and others try to recreate that reporting and come up with their own visions maybe they still will um but look you're going to hear this when you speak to daniel

[09:12] ellsberg in a little while remember that there wasn't one pentagon papers case there were two yes go ahead tell us there was a case where the nixon administration tried unsuccessfully to prevent the new york times and washington post and others from publishing the papers and then there was the criminal case against dan and that case was never concluded because the judge in that case dismissed the charges with prejudice meaning they couldn't be refiled on the basis of outrageous government conduct and what was that outrageous government conduct it was

[09:45] all kinds of things but principally it was about surveillance of daniel ellsberg's attorneys and their attorney client relationship breaking into his psychiatrist's office um all of these kinds of um dirty tricks um that were in this yahoo news article so so if these kinds of facts um were put before a judge in the u.s i hope what he would do right away is hold an evidentiary hearing and haul the government into court and make them give a full accounting of whether they conducted

[10:20] surveillance on assange's attorneys we know they have in the embassy whether they have records of that relationship being compromised what they can say about it if they can't demonstrate that assange's right to counsel wasn't compromised by their bad acts then this prosecution should not go forward but look before we even talk about what effect it will have in the u.s courts i really hope that this provides even a stronger basis for the course in the united kingdom to say

[10:50] um this is definitely not an extradition that should happen this case is just it stinks to high heaven well you know they're spending a lot of money they're going against i mean someone's just got x amount of money you're dealing with a mammoth uh organization which is the justice department and the crown prosecutor services they got endless supply of money uh where how does assange fight this legally i know there's a lot of volunteer attorneys but there's a lot of paperwork and there's a lot of investigating to go on let's say he's he's he's he's got some of

[11:24] the finest lawyers in the united kingdom who are on his side um the one thing that i'm not worried about is his having the best defense that's available to him uh because there's an all-star team of lawyers who are in his corner both in the uk and in countries around the world who are you know standing by ready to do their part when they're called upon that that doesn't bother me i mean we're always used to having you know the aclu is huge in the united states but we're just a few hundred lawyers the justice department is 11 000. right that's what i'm talking about there's

[11:56] so many layers the quality of the arguments and right now um that that is at the bottom of my list of concerns here's what's higher on my list of concerns and again we've talked about this before um the united states is in court in the united kingdom making the argument that an australian publisher needs to be sent to virginia to be prosecuted for the felony of breaking the united states secrecy laws think about that for a minute

[12:29] that the united states is making the claim that its own secrecy laws bind foreign publishers criminally um and that they can be forced in chains to fly to the united states and go to prison for violating u.s secrecy laws um so much of what we're talking about when we talk about these kinds of prosecutions is about precedents and traditions not necessarily black letter law what precedent is it going to set if one of the leading democratic nations

[13:00] um extradites a foreign journalist and publisher to be prosecuted for violating secrecy laws and what ground will we have to object if china if iran if azerbaijan if any country in the world says we now want to extradite a guardian journalist we now want to extradite a new york times journalist because they published our country's secrets in violation of our laws now i i'm not suggesting that that extradition would happen i'm just suggesting that the united states would have no principle basis for denying it right what what are do we have daniel on the

[13:36] other line is he there do we have we we actually have daniel but we have stella morris in one minute i'm gonna be uh kind of extemporizing this at this point it's an embarrassment of riches for you randy well that's a good all right okay i want to just see if he's there if daniel's there can you hear us dan i'm here i can hear you can you hear me yes yes we got stella morris coming on i just want her to know we're going to spend a few more minutes and get you on in like five or six minutes uh i know i know ben was just talking you missed the first 15 minutes why

[14:06] don't you gentlemen say hello to each other it's been a long time hi ben hi good to hear from you i wish i'd heard from any any news that i miss okay no we're not on the air are we yes we are we are on the air we just want to make sure you were on the air because i know uh we uh we we have you there is stella on the air do we have her i want to make sure all right so we're waiting for stella morris to get on the air i'm going to have to uh continue with you guys uh that

[14:37] which is a good thing daniel um let me ask you uh right now ben just laid it all out the dangerous precedent this would set and and uh why don't you kind of take it from there what you think uh would happen if assange is brought over here and successfully prosecuted and sent to prison yes first of all i suspect ben would know more than this but i suspect that contrary to their assurances if they don't send him to australia uh he'll be in isolation uh just the way chelsea

[15:09] manning was for ten and a half months until a popular pressure got her off mordecai vanunu my friend in israel was kept in isolation for 10 and a half years out of his 17 years that he got for revealing israeli nuclear program and i think they would take the attitude that julian has information still to give that he hasn't put out they don't want him in the general population that's just my guess but the precedent in terms would be the very first time that a journalist had been prosecuted for telling the truth to the american people they've avoided that

[15:43] they've considered it often as a matter of fact in my own trial in which back in 1971 to 73 when i was the first person to be prosecuted under the espionage act same charges as julian is facing now for giving top secret information to the american people none of which was ever demonstrated or even plausibly claimed to have harmed national security meaning it should not have been classified but in any case at that very time nixon was trying to had a grand jury looking into prosecuting neil

[16:21] sheehan and hedrick smith of the new york times and probably others and that uh grand jury ended was was terminated we don't know exactly why but probably for the same reasons that my trial was ended finally the discovery of illegal wiretapping of us and perhaps other intrusions in my case the trial has ended in large part because of discovery of government crimes against me that have been considered or perpetrated against julian specifically uh illegal wiretapping

[16:53] in julian's case surveillance of him even his lawyers conferences and his doctors conferences in the ecuadorean embassy going just the information going to cia and then consideration discussion of assassinating him or kidnapping or poisoning him either kidnapping or killing him by poisoning in my case a dozen cia assets were brought up from miami bay of pigs veterans to incapacitate

[17:24] me ellsberg totally which meant either killing me or shutting me up i think was probably the latter the special prosecutor felt their intention was to kill me and when that came out my charges were dropped and more importantly those figured in the impeachment of richard nixon and made the war endable when he resigned facing impeachment obviously julian's trial should be terminated the charges should be terminated just on those grounds alone just as mine was and however

[17:57] if as you say they do bring him back that will set a precedent it will not be the last we know that a previous president would have certainly continued with other with other uh prosecutions but that appears to be true of biden as well a few people have really commented on just how outrageous it is that president joe biden a democrat or liberal is carrying on this blatant up contradiction

[18:34] violation of the first amendment of freedom of the priest press freedom of speech which is the basis of our democracy and uh for trump to do that is somehow not surprising it was predicted by the aclu even before he got in that he would build on the president of president obama bringing many cases like mine against sources to the press but obama refrained from doing that

[19:05] in the case of julian because it was so obviously a blatant violation of the first amendment much so even more so than in my case and by the way there's strong legal opinion that to use it against me and the others that obama did was already unconstitutional and the supreme court has never ruled on that it has not come up to this it's come up but they have rejected uh hearing it so it's never been ruled as to whether that use of the espionage act against

[19:37] whistleblowers is constitutional and the earlier supreme court would almost surely have ruled that it was constant unconstitutional obviously with the present supreme court you can't count on their taking the bill of rights very seriously so it could be that we would lose the first amendment essentially and live like most countries in the world on government handouts when it comes to information about what the government is doing in our name especially in the area of so-called national security so it's extremely serious uh

[20:12] problem here which the press i have to say has been very derelict generally in not recognizing that this is aimed directly at them that julian is not distinct from other members of the press as some have wanted to imply his precedent would clearly be used to prosecute other journalists we're talking with daniel ellsberg and ben weissner of the aclu uh ben uh listen i'm uh working on getting stella on i want you to uh either riff on that or ask mr ellsberg a question

[20:47] if you would well i just just to riff on that for a second i mean dan is absolutely right that the central questions of this case have never been resolved by the us supreme court which is um the reason why i think both of us fear this particular case being the first one that would go up um because of the cross partisan hostility here but but dan as i said earlier on the show it's not just that the supreme court has never ruled on whether the espionage act can be used against the source in the original pentagon papers litigation it left open whether

[21:20] it could be used against the publisher that was not resolved in new york times versus united states either so we shouldn't be confident as dan suggested that the first amendment will solve our problems if this case washes up on our shores by far the better chance here and the stronger hope um is that the courts in the united kingdom um will refuse to extradite both on the humanitarian grounds and on the very strong legal ground that this is a political offense that should not be extraditable damn ben can i ask you something this is ironic i'm i'm glad to hear you say that they

[21:57] have a good basis for refusing exhibition on those grounds isn't it the case that in england with the official secrets act uh either i or but or even julian would be clearly held to be in violation they they have an official secrets act we don't we have a first amendment they don't that was a product of the american war of independence uh is that wrong no am i wrong it's right it's right i mean the problem is that as we have both commented over the years the espionage act has been creeping

[22:30] closer to being an official secrets act at least as to people who work for the government um but this is the case if you read carefully the opinions in new york times versus united states which was the pentagon papers and junction case the court leaves open expressly leaves open the possibility that the new york times or others could be held criminally liable after the fact even though they can't be enjoined before the fact and we haven't in these last 50 years seen a single instance of that because of the culture of the first amendment in the united states and

[23:05] the recognition by the department of justice that the there is massive over classification the public has a right and need to know lots of uh important secrets but this is the case that could break things open um you have democrats that don't like julian because they blame him for trump being elected you have republicans who are very enthusiastic about setting a precedent that prosecutors can be reported so of all cases to go to the supreme court to test these vital principles this would be the worst one yes you know am i that's you've really

[23:40] turned my head around in a bad way um ben because i've always thought of those oberder dicta if they're i believe they're called in the supreme court where people made the comment the justices made the comment five four in particular and five by implication that there could be a prosecution i've always read that as uh allowing a prosecution of me a source are you saying that they left open the prosecution of the new york times yes very much i just did an event with bert newborn who you know um uh formerly of the aclu who represented the aclu in that case and and

[24:16] and he said the very same thing that that what we've had in this country is not um a legal precedent that's prevented these prosecutions but a very very strong constitutional tradition that has prevented these prosecutions look i think and we would raise very strong first amendment argument if this prosecution ever happens um and i'm not suggesting that we would necessarily lose those i'm just saying that the fact that there has never been a prosecution of a publisher under the espionage act is not because there is any holding of the supreme court that would prevent it

[24:49] right well i i knew there was no holding that would prevent it what you're telling me is that they made comments that not only opened the way to the prosecution which occurred i was prosecuted but uh that that they would have they were actually allowing let's say the grand jury proceedings they were going against nick uh rick smith and neil sheen at that time and i i really had never thought of that my own thought about those of course i read those opinions at the time

[25:19] and my own thought i was not happy of course that they were almost calling for my prosecution on this uh unnecessarily they didn't have to say anything about that but um i put it down to the ignorance of these supreme court justices like all other lawyers to the law and the application of this of any act including theft or espionage act to leaking because there never had been a case

[25:54] i've talked to large audiences of judges in the past believe it or not and lawyers and journalists on separate occasions and found that almost none of them really knew anything of the background of the first amendment law in this case but especially the espionage act and that was natural they hadn't studied it in law school at all there were no cases and that's the situation the supreme court found itself in several of them complaining about it that in a matter of days or a couple

[26:26] of weeks they were addressing these things for the first time and so i thought okay they made those comments but maybe they wouldn't stand up later you're not you're not encouraging me we'll see look uh you'll you'll remember and randy please cut in when stella is ready um and and interrupt us because dan and i can speak to each other all day yeah yeah i understand that it's okay she's uh there's some kind of transmission problem they're waiting but we're gonna go to the uh you guys stick with us we're gonna go to the news we have to take a news break

[26:57] right now a short news break can you guys both stick around sure sure okay we'll be right back

[27:38] okay i'm randy credico this is randy critical live on the fly 99.5 fm wbai free speech radio in new york city here in brooklyn um our friends over there in london i i think you may want to unmute uh i think you might be on mute so uh please uh unmute because we'd love to be uh listening to you as well we have uh this is a special edition of uh assange's countdown to freedom here at wbai we are talking right now with ben weisner of the aclu

[28:08] and the great whistleblower mr daniel ellsberg thank you gentlemen for holding on and just can you kind of continue uh where you left off before i know weisner you got a bookmark on it dan what were we talking about man i have a question for you did you agree with me what i just said that it's particularly outrageous that a democratic president is pursuing this particular case yes um i i do as i said before you joined i think they're

[28:43] not feeling any sense of urgency because they know that it's going to be tied up in the uk courts for months or years probably some of them quietly hope that it will be resolved there so that they won't have to make a decision whatever decision they make is going to be unpopular with some people in their own party and so they would prefer i think for this to be handled in the courts in the united kingdom and then of course there are others as there always have been including democrats who have wanted to bring this case um the obama administration ultimately decided not to do it but that's not because there weren't people who were pushing for it internally

[29:16] there were many people who were pushing for it they had wait let's let's name names there for a minute i think we can assume hillary clinton is one of those and conceivably that influenced biden he's vice president she was secretary of state but let's see do you mind naming names who besides hillary clinton in the democratic party wants to see the first amendment uh stopped and julian convicted who who would that look i'm not i'm not i'm not just talking about elected officials in the democratic party i'm talking about people who work in the fbi people who work at the u.s attorney's office in the national security

[29:50] division of the department of justice right okay always been a debate in government this has never been a uniform decision there were always people who were pushing for this prosecution and at the end of the day it was people on the political side and eric holder who said we can't get around the new york times problem we can't prosecute julian assange without exposing other national security journalists to criminal liability for doing their work there's no way that we won't be loading that weapon to be used against other journalists there's still plenty

[30:21] of people who work for those agencies but i also think that you know if you look at the democrats who sit on the intelligence committees in the house and senate not all of them but certainly plenty of them um they would be delighted to see this case go forward okay you've answered yeah i understand right the the the incredibly dishonest investigations and reports they put out about snowden um you know tell you that i mean these people are very much um doing the opposite of oversight over the intelligence agencies uh they get the most donations from the security

[30:55] contractors and i i i mean the real question is who will be the first democrats in congress to stand up and denounce this prosecution because so far we haven't really seen any god that's terrible well yeah you know you say democrats oddly enough i think ron paul and randy paul both both criticized that in fact they're among the only two members of congress who ever said anything favorable about me in public i've met plenty of them at their

[31:27] fundraisers or shaking hands or even taking a photo which i notice if they're willing to do that but in terms of saying it in an interview or in congress no uh rand paul and ron paul are the only ones that come to my mind well let me ask you guys here about the media you know we we are on it uh pacifica in san francisco dennis bernstein has done plenty uh we've been doing this here for five years i know there are people who give us some heat over it but uh you take a look let me i don't want to name names myself but airy melbourne seemed to be very interested in me when i was

[32:02] supposedly the back channel which i wasn't there was no back channel but msnbc has totally dropped the ball isn't this like leaving in my opinion a guy in the trenches and going awol because so so two things randy i mean first of all i will say this that the major news organizations when the second indictment of julian assange was released that included um felony charges for publication not this really concocted really contrived kind of hacking charge which is factually nonsense but but

[32:37] uh but that charged him under the espionage for publication most of the major media outlets condemned that and said that it would be a threat but they haven't done two other things that would be really vitally important and helpful number one they're not reporting on it enough um they actually need to be raising a stink um it's it's they got scooped by yahoo on a big story but they haven't followed up and they're not covering um the proceedings in the uk closely enough this should be a huge story in the united states and it hasn't been and number two

[33:07] uh the the corporate side the owners the people who own dow jones and the wall street journal and nbc um and the new york times should be going to the white house and saying that this case is an existential threat to national security investigative journalism um and i'm not saying the reporters i'm saying the owners the people who who hobnob with the the president in his circle they're the ones who should be putting this at the top of their agenda and not things like you know don't be rude to us at press conferences um or don't kick us out

[33:42] of the white house right this this case um if it proceeds and you know they they should not sit back and say oh we're different we wouldn't do the things that he did because as dan said before if this case proceeds to conviction not only are we going to see more prosecutions of publishers and journalists but there's going to be a massive chilling effect because the lawyers for those institutions are going to know that prosecution is possible and they are going to advise the editorial side to be much much more cautious in their reporting and that's going to be the

[34:16] biggest impact well and ben that reminds me i'm gonna i rarely addressed as you just did very well the media role in this but let me uh make two points very one very personal during my trial which lasted two years and had it just we had to raise a lot of money in the course of that there were two grand juries involved there were people who had to be housed and fed during the trial for essentially two years the new york times never mentioned in the times in any story about the case and we were in that

[34:50] we were on the front page during the actual court proceedings every day never mentioned there was a defense fund let alone suggesting no member of the new york times picked up a phone and the publishers you know knew everyone picked up the phone and suggested anybody that this was a good case to support and actually the times lawyers refused to give my lawyers any of their briefs that they any any research material they'd collected for the supreme court case as one member

[35:22] of the new york times said to a to another lawyer who a young lawyer who suggested they do that it's one thing to defend the new york times it's another thing to defend a traitor and uh the uh they just didn't do it so and meanwhile there was uh a scurrilous uh slanderous story about me in the uh in the magazine section which was the basis for my warning julian don't be so shocked by the way they're treated you that's what they do with every whistleblower

[35:54] essentially keep absolute arms arms length but the more the other thing i was saying was about journalists oh no i'm sorry i didn't say this i rarely have said it in this connection i think there is a symbiosis between the media and the secrecy system and that's not obvious i think they're uh it works very well for them they like to say uh as various uh editors have said well the government tries to keep secrets we try to get them there's kind of a balance it's good for democracy

[36:26] nonsense the government wins that enormously more of the time than is good for democracy why would the press go along with that let me just make a guess i'm not a journalist i'm a source but my impression is that when they are told as happens every day when a an official of the government tells a reporter a secret something that's classified something they would not put out in a press conference and they do this all the time to serve their legislative

[37:01] program or to serve an agency benefit or to grant make better the reputation of a particular official they do it all the time when they give them that exclusive it's an exclusive because it's not given in a press conference and so the reporter gets that scoop of high officials usually they can't name them high officials but their editor editors know who it is so they know they've got something here uh say this and then the next week uh and know that other reporters don't have that story because

[37:35] it's classified it has not been declassified by giving it to that particular reporter then the next week that official gives another secret to another reporter well that's okay with the first one because his term will come again if he's a good boy if he doesn't criticize if he doesn't quote anybody who contradicts what this official has just told him he'll get his scoop again so i think they like the fact that uh they're able to get news on an exclusive basis because of the classification system information that should never have been held secret at all

[38:09] and that the the public deserve to have uh or needed in some cases now that's my guess as i say as a non-journalist maybe randy you are well i'm not a journalist wait a second i don't think anyone's ever taken me seriously i'm a radio host and i'm a political satirist and uh sorry i didn't mean to insult you no no but you know i'm i don't do any investigative reporting you know what yahoo news did that was investigative reporting we had alan dortmund now there are a lot of

[38:40] what do you call it alternative media outlets out there that have done stories on assange but i know this story that emerged by yahoo news took like dorfman said it was like almost a year ago when they got their first tip on it so they really did their job and there's a lot of substance to that story uh gentlemen uh i i i want don't go anywhere we're talking with uh the great ben wisner and the great legendary whistleblower daniel ellsberg and joining us now

[39:10] because there's been a lot of talk about what kind of uh trial would emerge in the eastern district of virginia and alexandria and someone who knows about that system uh you know over i don't know if you know him ben but i know that uh mr ellsberg does and that is john karioko who has a radio show coming up soon so uh he's on the other line we're still waiting for stella i hope you can hear us and please unmute or reconnect john kiriakou welcome to live on the fly here on wbai

[39:41] again thanks randy thanks for having me and what an honor and a pleasure it is to be with with the great dan ellsberg and the great ben weissner my pleasure all right well listen uh ben you've been doing a good job uh asking questions i'm going to let you you're a journalist on the side uh you're you're you're you're handing me the mic yeah i'm going to let you hand the mic because i thought john and i have spoken a million times uh to bring john into this conversation

[40:12] so i think um one of the things that dan and i were just talking about john before you joined is really where is the media here um we've seen some comments upon the original release of the indictment where they said look this is a threat to investigative journalism but they haven't done um um by my account two other things they haven't been lobbying at a high level for these charges to be dropped and they haven't really been covering um julian's case as the existential threat to national security journalism that it is so you obviously have um have quite

[40:46] a bit of experience with the media on this and and what's your read on why um there's just you know why even national security journalists who should understand the stakes um are not covering these proceedings more closely you know i think it's that well it's a couple of things but the first thing that pops into my head is the fact that so few news outlets have a budget for investigative journalism anymore that what they do is they essentially crawl into bed

[41:21] with the cia they'll take cia pronouncements and cia press releases and gist them and and call it journalism we know from jason leopold for example at buzzfeed that uh that there are supposedly a level journalists who send their their articles to the cia for clearance uh like ken delanian does uh before he even sends them to his own editor so i think a lot of this is they don't have the the

[41:58] wherewithal or even necessarily the desire to uh to really do real journalism and the other thing too is that i think that they're afraid of the cia at the same time i happened to participate in a in a zoom call the other day with a bunch of attorneys and self-professed and intellectuals and a handful of journalists and there was a journalist there from from knight ritter and one of the attendees asked him specifically why haven't you and others spoken out on behalf of

[42:34] julian assange we're spoken about the conditions that julian assange is suffering through or or even spoken about uh the issues that have gotten julian assange into his current predicament and the guy came right out and said because julian assange is an activist not a journalist and the questioner said even even if you don't think that he's a journalist you have to acknowledge that he's a publisher and the guy said you know what i don't want to talk about julian

[43:06] assange and to me that that said that they're just afraid they're afraid of provoking the cia or the justice department and they're hoping that if they just remain silent this thing will go away and not affect them right we're talking john can i ask you john because you you would know this point i made if you heard it earlier that uh the secrecy system actually serves the media to a considerable extent because it provides them with a flow of exclusives to one reporter at a time

[43:38] which gives them scoops which are very highly prized and therefore the fact that the classification system is keeping that information from being given to other people simultaneously is very hopeful uh helpful do you see anything in that i think you are exactly right on that score washington runs on leaks if you pick up the washington post or the new york times any day of the week you'll see ostensibly classified information

[44:09] the the george w bush administration's classifications are bill leonard says that that we have hundreds of millions of classified documents that ought not be classified but they're classified just because just because they can be and because they can be used almost as currency as you said correctly dan where the cia and others can just dole the information out to preferred journalists give them a scoop and have the agency's

[44:40] story or the agency's version of a story be the story of record that's actually a felony what many americans don't understand is that it's illegal to improperly classify information in the united states of course nobody's ever been prosecuted for it it's one of those laws that's been on the books forever that that nobody pays any attention to but the cia and others can use it to their benefit if anyone has ever been demoted uh or in any way administratively punished or reprimanded for over

[45:14] classifying a document i'd like to hear of it i've never heard of one not only have they not been prosecuted i don't think they've they've ever had anything to suffer in their career from making something talk secret that shouldn't be classified and i'll tell you another thing too along those same lines um i sat next to a woman in the 1990s when i was at the cia who was dating a former cia senior cia officer who went on to become a talking head at cnn and in the course of pillow talk she

[45:48] divulged to him classified information that he then repeated on the air okay well we know ever since the obama administration that's the very definition of an espionage charge right the obama people would have charged her with espionage and certainly the trump people would have as well so what happened to the woman uh she was called down to security they asked her did you pass this information to your boyfriend she said yes they suspended her without pay for four weeks and the letter went into her file saying that she couldn't be promoted for one year well now well

[46:22] you've given me example there then there's one person that's uh more than i've heard of it before i don't think they would have done that if it weren't something they didn't want out if it was something that uh served the purposes of cia or the white house policy or whatever uh then she would have been more than uh more than reprimanded but uh when the the the media have never uh or really anybody else but congress or the press have not investigated the secrecy

[47:00] system as it should be investigated because it's not just a matter of some abuses the system itself is an abuse a source of abuses to an enormous extent in in my trial we called as a witness a man named william florence of florence who had just retired and he had just given testimony under oath to the congress uh government information committee on the secrecy system because he had written most of the regulations in the pentagon over a 30-year career and so he came and gave

[47:34] the same testimony under oath that he given to the congress which was this that five percent of the information that was classified he said deserved classification at the time it was classified he said within a few years it was one-tenth of that half a percent so everybody agrees all the time there's over classification maybe 20 maybe 30 maybe 50 try 95 or 99 and a half uh

[48:06] the the presumption that people have when something classified is put out uh without authorization that uh not the kind of uh that it hurts national security to have that out that is not should not be the presumption and in addition to the reasons you gave john you have to add uh the fact or i'm sorry it was randy you have to add uh that so much of it not all of it of course but so much that is classified is classified indefinitely because it would reveal deception

[48:41] even criminality violation of treaties as in the pentagon papers case for example uh enormous what snowden revealed enormous violation of the force of fourth amendment domestic criminality as you revealed uh torture a uh without even meaning to you know do anything that violated the regulations but uh he revealed as i understand the name of somebody who had been in vail involved in torture uh should that really have been concealed remember that the entire torture report six thousand pages of the senate intel the committee on torture remains

[49:18] classified we have only the executive highly redacted executive summary of that and to this day it's not been released that's that's why it's all it's all domestic crime and international crime every page of that i would imagine reveals that and that's why it's classified and dan that's why authorities at nsa for example or at cia have been forced to come out and say that the information that chelsea manning revealed or that ed snowden revealed did not cause any harm

[49:50] to the national security because it was improperly classified in the first place there's no reason for example that reality winner should have gone to prison that was an analytic document that should never have been classified in the first place it was only classified because somebody from nsa had written it that's not a reason to spend someone said to send somebody to prison for five years and four months right but we see that every day the system is is broken well i'm not sure it's broken it does what it does what it's meant to do

[50:22] it it keeps information from the public not just that needn't be classified that's the most of it needn't be classified but it keeps from the public information the public particularly needs to know that would hold the officials accountable for deceptions for crimes for false predictions let's say all of that has to be kept classified to avoid embarrassment so the system is working to do what it really is meant to do not what the regulations say about national security but the reason that it's really there works very well

[50:58] i'm going to have to leave this conversation in danielle's burns and john kiryaku's able hands randy i've been on 45 minutes longer than you expected yes well i know but you did a magnificent job filling in for me we finally got uh stella there so we're going to say goodbye to you uh and we're going to say goodbye thank you very much ben you were fantastic and uh we'll see you soon and john i know you got to get to work and uh uh you have anything else to say do we have stella now i think she's i just want to say to keep up the good work i can't imagine a more important cause

[51:34] than than the life and the freedom of julian assange and uh i know that this is a process i know it's gonna take maybe another year but in my gut in my heart i know that we're gonna be victorious because julian did nothing wrong okay hey that's uh john kiriakou thank you i want to thank ben weisner uh dan you're going to stick around here uh and uh good luck we'll be talking you to you soon uh mr kiriakou i'm randy credico this is randy critical live on the fly and at last

[52:05] we do have and this is my fault because i thought there was a five hour difference between here in london there's only a four hour difference because they changed the time and we do have now uh human rights attorney stella morris you're still there dan right yes okay so stick around don't go anywhere dan uh we are joined now by stella morris who is the partner of julian assange and the mother of his two children uh welcome stella hi randy hi dan how are you hi hi all right well you know i guess there is only a four-hour difference there stella we've been talking uh

[52:40] for the last hour on this case and i know you've gone through a lot and i don't want to get into all of that but people here don't know what to do at this point in time many of us we feel hamstrung and i know that you have some advice what people can do and which includes supporting the defense fund so why don't you uh give us an overview of what we can do here right um well julian is you know it's really a david against goliath battle here because the way

[53:15] um the the case is rigged against him in so many ways uh the u.s the doj has had you know uh 11 years to try to mount a case they haven't been able to mount a case but they've been able to issue an indictment and and issue an extradition warrant and the uk then represents the us in court and the uk taxpayer pays for the us government's uh bogus case against uh julian and then julian has to raise his own funds

[53:51] to mount to defense so it's it's a it's a david against goliath battle in many different aspects but the financial one is one and that's a way that um people can very meaningfully uh contribute uh to julian's defense into his freedom yeah uh let me just you know dan you were talking earlier about your defense fund how difficult it was to raise money but people did come forward uh and give money to the daniel ellsberg defense fund if i'm not correct absolutely 25 000 people actually

[54:26] contributed to it and that was at a time when they had every reason to think that would put them on a government list of some kind has had happened in the past but it was a very wide participation and and stella so how do people uh and i'm asking everybody out there i know the legal battle i know the lawyers there's a lot of lawyers but there's a lot of paperwork they still have a lot of obstacles ahead of them and how do people actually make i know they can do it here with nyc free assange they have it on their front page to make a donation to the assange

[55:01] defense team how do they do it otherwise well the the easiest way is to just go to my twitter feed which is a stella morris one morris with one r um and my pinned tweet there is the the crowd justice fundraiser that i have set up the the money there goes to to julian's extradition uh legal team and i post updates there um periodically uh during the hearings it's it's daily and

[55:34] uh you get an email with with my updates uh and alerts and so on um and of course there's uh um the defense uh website with with more details and if people want to donate uh via cryptocurrency there's also that option and if they don't know how to donate uh or if um have some specific uh requests about the way they want to donate they can always contact me directly

[56:05] over twitter dm i have open dms and there's always a way that stella morris with 1r stella m-o-r-i-s one at twitter that's one way you can get and and and i'll ask both of you i mean you're going against uh you know two huge you know the endless supply of money we're talking about the cps crown prosecutor services in in the uk and in here you got the justice department how much money i mean

[56:37] do they have dan uh i mean you're facing a giant here money-wise you know in a way people can ask uh how can it be that they can are pursuing julian this way for as you say 11 years and one answer is that julian as david did take on the goliath he was actually threatening the veil of secrecy that protects criminality and imperialism and torture as he revealed uh chelsea manning was giving him

[57:10] information on that death squads all over the world and that was a threat to every pretty much every country in the world especially those that are more imperial than others so in a way he was taking on the world establishment the ruling class the the imperial powers and it's uh shouldn't be a surprise that they're throwing all this at him and that they'll never forgive him and the on the other side stella uh if i may say i i really thank you because as a

[57:43] friend of as a friend of julian though that it is your loving support and your support of his children your children that is keeping him alive so i really want to thank you for your for that thanks donna i i think he it's it's our love for each other that's kind of been an amazing uh

[58:16] thing in this in this in the middle of this nightmare um but you know julian also has so much support around the world and whenever i see him or speak to him i make sure to tell him about you know the the many different actions uh people you know from from the grassroots but also organizations that are more and more organizations are coming on board and making um gestures like uh the german section of of penn international yesterday made julian an

[58:50] honorary member on the day of the international day against impunity of crimes against journalists and it's that kind of thing it's just building and building i just noticed today that the the uh uk the us and australia who have this thing called the in the media freedom initiative they issued a statement about um uh killing killings of journalists and

[59:20] persecution of journalists and and this to me it's it's uh it's not really a sign of hypocrisy i've i've kind of evolved in my um understanding of what they're doing it's just deflection they're trying to regain control of the narrative because it's slipping away because the the prosecution of julian is such a clear political persecution um and it's it's plain for everyone to see dan dan you want to respond to that well i i i agree that uh you know he deserves that

[59:56] support and he as i'm saying he should be getting a lot more than he is with the help of the media we're not joining him but stella i'll tell you as i've listened to you i'm thinking this that uh a book that came out about whistleblowers and they've been innumerable whistleblowers in the civil field which also involves a lot of death like tobacco and uh the sacklers uh oxycontin where by the way there seems to have been very few uh whistleblowers uh on the oxycontin case

[1:00:30] but in most of those cases i said the lifespan of a marriage was 18 months according to this energy it almost in in in my time uh there weren't that many whistleblower cases but the uh anti-war resistors who went to prison mostly it broke up marriages the strain was just too great and it didn't and the people hadn't signed on for that and uh it was bad for the marriage my case is very unusual there or patricia and i were if anything closer we've just had our 50th anniversary and

[1:01:06] jeffrey sterling was very much supported by his wife and john my understanding if john has left but john kiriakou's marriage uh helping support him during that well in your case you joined him during this case and as i said before i'm sure that it's that support that is keeping him really sane and alive uh under under extremely bad conditions i is one i am one of the few whistleblowers uh from a national security field who did not suffer personal consequences

[1:01:42] essentially although the government had those in mind i was faced with a possible 115 years in prison nothing compared to julian's 175 but in terms of our lifespan probably come to the same thing but in my case by almost a miracle uh nixon was deprived of his ability to ruin my life uh didn't didn't do it at all but in many cases of course it has done that and so i come back to the thought that i really appreciate stella uh your

[1:02:15] your support and i've talked to his father uh john shipton is his half-brother gabriel and of course they've made a tour over here for funding for him and i'm i'm very glad you're making the pitch for funding and i was just thinking that i i was derelicted not raising it myself all right well you know what we're talking with uh with daniel ellsberg and stella morris human rights attorney uh and you can i want to say it again you can donate to the campaign the defense

[1:02:45] team here and and let me just put in its nyc free assange here they have a donate button that goes straight to what stella has just mentioned but you can also go to and you should follow her because you'll get like incredible information that's uh at stella morris with oner one on twitter and i urge everybody out there please please support this defense team it's really vital at this point in time and and stella uh let me talk about

[1:03:18] uh other actions there are uh groups there's uh here in new york the kurds foundation you got the defend assange uh you've got other groups and dc and denver you got them in san francisco and what's your message to them because they're looking a lot of them what do we do at this point well we need to get the congressional representatives uh aware that people are

[1:03:49] outraged about this case and want it to be dropped that involves you know making the people regular people aware of what this case is if you know you have a cafe or a bar or whatever set up a petition gather signatures get you know information um to people go to the rallies um and get you know good information because um follow me follow wikileaks um follow the dea campaign um the the uh

[1:04:31] uh accounts that that um i i promote are good sources for information and you know don't expect um the media to be on top of this case because they've failed failed dismally yahoo news did an excellent investigation and um the main many of the um well some of the channels did do good coverage of it cbs did a very good report um to their credit uh the new york times tried to

[1:05:02] avoid it they mentioned it for the first time only after it had been mentioned in the extradition uh case on thursday um and then it was mentioned uh so you know that they can't uh avoid the the uh the true nature of this case um forever but in the meantime we have to stay informed proactively absolutely and if there's anything else i know i know it's getting late there and and you got

[1:05:36] you got family obligations at this point um and so if there's anything dan you want to ask her before we take a break and bring in one of the witnesses robert boyle is going to and i want you to stick around dan do you have for uh miss morris just this is uh maybe bad news i don't want to raise it but but i will that is it the case that we expect or is ben still here i would ask if ben no ben's not here ben's gone oh but i

[1:06:10] is it the case that the government is like is able to appeal if this goes in favor of julian which means that he would have to stay in prison anyway if they if they do go in favor of julian is that the case they can they can try to appeal to the supreme court um and then the supreme court could choose to hear it or not um i mean right now we're we're faced with two prospects one is that um

[1:06:43] that julian could um win uh and that he could lose and if he loses this could go on for a long time uh even if he wins there's a there's a risk that um he could be you know snatched um and the it's possible that he could be extradited um to the us uh before the summer as well so we're both prospects of julian remaining in prison for a long time or um you know being snatched uh

[1:07:17] are are terrifying and basically the baden biden administration has to drop this case well that gives us another deadline here if the if they do rule in favor of him that would be the time for a heavy widespread pressure as much as possible on biden not to appeal that ruling to a higher court you know if we'd have another crack at that if if if we face that is that right sounds right yeah that's right um but i mean either way this the the yahoo story uh sets uh uh there's a

[1:07:54] there's a before and after this uh yahoo story about the uh plans to kill uh julian by the cia under pompeo by the way obviously congress should be investigating that these well-supported allegations of criminal activity uh by the cia and others uh against an american citizen and uh they should be investigating that and they're derelict if they don't but i one last question general when

[1:08:24] have has julian been able to see his children face to face under these conditions he has yeah and um we we go to the prison um uh once a week more or less and he's able to hold the kids and and read them stories and you know they love they love going and and seeing him and and it's really nice when when they're together and just through for about an hour and then we go back to this madness well i hope they may be too young to to know but i hope

[1:09:02] they will learn how many people in the world are supporting their father we got to continue that support folks and as i said i want to say it again here in uh the u.s if you don't aren't on twitter you can go to nyc freeassange.org and uh and donate us a directly goes to what stella had just uh informed us on and or you can go to stella morris with one r uh at one at twitter and uh and please folks uh around the world uh let's do it tell everybody and let's

[1:09:37] this is a we're in we're in the in the barricades right now and we got to keep fighting i want to thank you stella we're going to let you go uh here at this point we're gonna come back uh with one and dan you stay there you're a good co-host uh so i'm gonna keep you there stella uh we'll be in touch uh thank you once again uh stella morris uh human rights attorney and the partner of julian assange give chilling in my love will you fella thanks i will thank you thank you everyone all right i think we'll be right back this is a little piece by um by niels

[1:10:10] melzer and we'll be right back with robert boyle one of the uh who provided testimony last week we'll be right back this is nils melzer playing moonlight sonata don't go anywhere anybody do

[1:10:48] okay that was moonlight sonata who knew that uh niels melzer who gave me that piece of music uh played classic piano uh i'm random critical random critical live on fly here with a special edition of live on the flyers on to countdown the freedom here in new york city wbai um and we're covering the assange uh hearing last week and one of those and we got daniel ellsberg in the my co-pilot today one an honor that is we have robert boyle who provided testimony for during the hearing last year and uh last week during the appeal robert boyle is a great attorney

[1:11:23] an old friend of mine and a student of william kunsler uh welcome back to the show robert thank you for having me randy and hello to uh someone i really look up to mr ellsberg honor to be with you thank you all right so uh go ahead uh bob last week uh the u.s uh u.s government uh they said that julian's okay the conditions are great in this country he doesn't face risk he doesn't face you know depression and suicide what did you actually submit there

[1:11:58] could you summarize that for us sure um in support of its appeal the u.s government gave so-called assurances to the uh presiding officials in the uk uh you know as you know the uh extradition request was turned down uh not on the merits but on the fact that the english government could not be assured that julian assange's mental and emotional health would be

[1:12:34] would be sustained should he be transferred to a u.s prison and we know that he suffered you know up until now um and so they they made certain representations which um as a federal practitioner here in the states i was asked to review them and to to point out to the court you know the the holes in them you know that that are the size of a mack truck so basically they say well first of all

[1:13:05] we're not going to put mr assange under what's known as the sam special administrative measures unless of course they say you know he does something to justify imposition of the sams well you know right there that leaves it totally up to the u.s government as to whether anything he does be it speak to the media be it um you know writing articles can justify being put under special administrative measures and what what they are are a great um

[1:13:42] prohibition on communication with people in the outside world under special administrative measures individuals who are incarcerated and there are a lot in this country under special administrative measures can only speak to certain people if any they're denied contact with other inmates and for example i've had clients under special administrative measures and um you know i'm not allowed to um

[1:14:14] under contempt of court i'm not allowed to say anything about the substance of what they tell me even if it's not i mean i don't do that anyway in terms of attorney-client communications but even confidential communications i can't discuss it with anyone now the government says well we won't put mr assange under a special administrative measures well you know the sams are onerous but being in a maximum security prison in this country is onerous and denies much communication with the

[1:14:50] outside world under general bop regulations um you're only allowed to communicate with immediate family your letters are censored and letters coming in are censored um your uh only allowed a certain minimum number of visits and only then with immediate family and in many of the maximum security prisons in the federal system those visits are not

[1:15:24] contact visits they're through plexiglas so these are the you know even without the sands these are the conditions that julian assange will be under should he be extradited to this country now also the u.s government makes the representation that since the united states and australia are part of a treaty and not an extradition treaty but a repatriation treaty

[1:15:59] julian assange the u.s would not oppose the transfer of julian assange to a prison in australia should he be convicted in this country well you know that's another you know very vague so-called promise first of all the u the australian government has not consented to that so that would um obviously be necessary secondly we're talking something that's

[1:16:30] years down the road at that point and this gets to another i think important point that um should mr assange be extradited to this country his criminal defense and the preparation for trial will only really begin at that point it could be a year or more after he's extradited that trial would even commence wow um the trial itself

[1:17:02] could take months because it's a complicated case involving you know tens of thousands of documents um if he is convicted it's not unusual in the federal system for the sentencing proceeding to take place four to five months after the jury's verdict wow then you um once he's sentenced of course he has the right to appeal to the federal court of appeals

[1:17:36] in my experience in complex cases it takes two to three years for those appeals to be resolved because the the record is enormous you have to write a brief the government has to write a brief you get to reply then it's put on the court's calendar then it's set for oral argument and then the court issues a decision but the court can take however long it wants to issue a decision

[1:18:08] wow and it's in in a in that situation so um the government is making the us government is making the argument to the uk government well you know he's uh you know not gonna be in um uh you know max conditions for very long but the um uh the situation is he'll be under under in intensely um

[1:18:39] egregiously conditions you know on you know while he is uh awaiting trial and even after trial even if australia would would consent to uh to take him which is something you know obviously we want to win at trial but um it's going to be here all right we have been talking we only have a minute left i mean really a minute daniel if you have uh very very um cogent points you made there uh bob uh mr ellsberg if you have we have one minute anything you want to add to that they're

[1:19:13] not gonna have to say oh i've i've been listening and learned a lot not all good news from ben weisner but i i loved hearing from stella morris i'm so uh it i i believe the us government wants julian assange to die in prison and if that's uh i don't think they want a trial here they don't want these issues debated or the immediate to take more concern than they do when he's rotting in a british jail so i don't think they want him over here they

[1:19:45] want him endlessly in that belmarsh prison and uh to die there and it's i think it's the knowledge of our support and the programs like this in all around the world and above all as i said earlier that he has stella morris and two children waiting for him and supporting him now that we'll keep him alive and i don't want to see him die in that person i want to see him out right and that can only be done really by the u.s dropping these charges and that's what president

[1:20:16] biden should do absolutely all right uh bob 30 seconds any conclusion in 30 seconds here well there's not much more that i did than what mr ellsberg said but you know the conditions in u.s prisons are horrendous right horrendous it's uh it's a death sentence to be sentenced you know into one of these places and we must fight to prevent julian assange from ever

[1:20:46] coming back here okay uh that's the last word i want to thank uh bob robert boyle attorney robert boyle the great whistleblower legendary whistleblower a real hero of mine and everybody else and that is um mr daniel ellsberg i want to thank stella morris and uh ben weisner and john kiriakou we're going to go out this is a little bit of my forgotten man this is from gold diggers of 33. this is uh joan blondell it's an anti-war song from world war one put a rifle in his hand

[1:21:18] you sent him far away you shouted hip hooray but look at him today remember my forgotten man you had him cultivate the land he walked behind a plow the sweat fell from his brow but look at him right now

[1:21:50] and once he used to love me i was happy then he used to take care of this is julian assange you're listening to wbai new york stay strong and keep listening
