John Kiriakou, «Φυλακισμένος πράκτορας»

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[15:01] [Laughter] good good thing that wasn't on I did that once in a journalism class of mind a couple of students in the back they're still trying to peel them off the ceiling a few years ago my name is Andy DeBellis I am the Athens correspondent for a newspaper website in New York City called the National Herald which pretty much the paper of record for the Diaspora and people around the world Greek heritage Helena files who want to

[15:32] know what's going on here it's taking me a while to find out myself too when I first came here I I met a priest who knew someone I knew in Boston and he told me a story that was uniquely Greek made me feel more comfortable you said it was you've been assigned to an island and it was a kind of a old the Greek man was a bit of a hermit had a dog and the dog died and he said the man came to him said father could you please say a service in the church and he said I gosh no we don't say services for you know

[16:02] animals take it to the Catholics they'll do it and he said well father I'll make a small donation he said no no no please go to the goal of the Catholic Church so I'm a couple days later and said how did it go across and he said they were very nice to me they said the service for the dog and they were happy with the ten thousand euros I gave this is ela cost you didn't say it was a Greek Orthodox dog before I introduce the panel a little bit please I want to acknowledge a couple people made a lot of work here P where are you Gracie

[16:37] oh right here there she is I'm transparency international do wonderful work helping organize this Yana My partner Yolanda Neal who helped immensely do you know do you know where I you my buddy Dino's hero goes from New York City he's just it didn't certainly read our own paper because he moved here everybody else was moving there so he says he's a real crackerjack time when do I need to know George you're just pop meows was set up Oh signor me Elena Pataki who did the publisher of this

[17:08] wonderful book thank you very much for helping put this together it's it's very very invaluable and it really brings a spotlight to Greece at a critical time when there's so much much so much going on as it is a man you don't know a favorite of mine for many years ago in the United States I'm sure someone the panel know the American humorist Will Rogers said that everybody when it comes to corruption which is tight inherently to whistleblowing said it's awful hard to

[17:40] get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it that's kind of the problem here in some ways that people more expert than I are no panel talked about because it really is difficult to break that cycle when if you go to the doctor and it's going to be 100 it turns out to be 60 without without the receipt we're going to lead up to the overarching problem of whistleblowing and how it ties into national security defense international terrorism and all that that entails to

[18:13] first I'll introduce the panel and we'll have them speak a little bit and after each person speaks they will happen to take questions so we don't have to wait till the end for it and please jump in and my experience as a journalist has taught me that all the best questions are under 10 words so please try to keep them 6 synched as well - if most doctors let Dreyfuss in the University of Melbourne she is an information systems academic she's a very noted researcher in public attitudes on the impact technology and

[18:45] Anna anodizing anodizing I'm gonna wanna miss technologies whistle blowing she's the executive director of the international NGO blueprint for free speech and it set up a little print grease to track corruption in whistleblowing I said you won't have to look to hide too far we'll be able to find that okay very prominent in the background in a way with a little social media thing called WikiLeaks and as the author of the 1997 cult classic underground

[19:16] hacking madness and obsession on the electronic frontier john psaropoulos i'm happy to say a buddy of mine was formerly editor and of the athens news managing director of the Lambrakis group commentating contributor for CNN al jazeera english The Daily Beast Washington Post American scholar the Weekly Standard can't hold the job more than one players okay another my school a doctor under Moscow is the chair of the board of

[19:46] transparency international Greece specialists and anti-corruption banking compliance laws can help you out with euro bank I got a little problem with them but financial criminal law you financial criminal law specialist she before joining the compliance Department of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank she worked for the Greek in Cypriot desk of the European Central Bank a legal service hellenic initiative development hellenic capital market commission the compliance Department of the National Bank of Greece and has been in the forefront both as a researcher

[20:18] now as chair of transparency international and trying to bring bring his levels down she has her PhD from Queen Mary in University and an LLM degree from the London School of Economics and political science masters tell her glue yeah he needs to introduction so we'll skip over him oh no I'm sure you know him he's one of our most famous and best investigative journalists in the country in any country for that matter he has been with Kathy Immunities presenter of the weekly news program the new folders for Sky one of the best report of the year for

[20:50] expose on the semen slush funds a scandal in Greece and of course John Kiriakou is let me get his credentials right before I say something better more personal about him former CIA officer and Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior interrogator blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program the closest I got to it was watching zero dark thirty but I was in the back row of them will be theater hiding under my popcorn so you have the coverage award here to

[21:20] offer counterterrorism consultant for ABC News he was the first US government official to confirm the waterboarding was used to interrogate al-qaeda prisoners in his book in the United States now here in Greece thanks to Pataki publishes I invited by the bus several copies and myself the right there in the back you like his members Proctor ass and if you don't think waterboarding is isn't torture try it I ran into a noted writer some years ago Christopher Hitchens has now passed away who wrote about it for Vanity Fair and

[21:51] he couldn't he couldn't take it very long now before we get to John speaking I want to say something that you can quibble with whether he's blowing the whistle crossed the line in terms of what his position meant but not with his courage because he spent two years in jail for that and you don't think that's a form of torture try it so please we're going to move directly to the panel try to cover as many bases as we can and after each person speaks I'll come around and you can ask free to

[22:23] ask questions select a good evening force well thank you so much for having me here it is an absolute delight to come from Australia for this event it's my second trip to Greece I brought my teenage daughter on this trip and she says it's her favorite foreign country she's ever visited I'm going to have to scrape her off of Athens because she never wants to leave so that's that's a wonderful thing so I had a conversation I'm sitting on a wonderful rooftop patio here overlooking the Acropolis the other evening with some friends

[22:54] and one of them asked me why why whistle blowing why this is this anti-corruption channel and it was a good discussion but the explanation I gave is is actually one that comes from my technology background so increasingly if you've seen with the Cambridge analytic a story with a Facebook reporting story the individual has in a sense less and less power dealing with powerful institutions whether their companies or the state as we lose our privacy in a digital age we have less and less power in this structure and so

[23:25] power is very important to be able to have corrective mechanisms about corruption as well as general wrongdoing not just financial corruption in society and my own study of whistleblowing academically has really shown that et is one of the most effective tools and a very cost effective tool to actually be a corrective mechanism in society to fix when there are powerful institutions or people who are doing things that are immoral or corrupt so that really

[23:56] answers that that sort of first question in fact we know there was a study done by the Association of fraud examiners and they surveyed fraud examiners and found in fact that tips whistleblowers accounted for more than 40% of reporting about fraud and that was actually more than every other major form of reporting about fraud combined so it's actually very very effective at revealing fraud the other thing I think that's important about it just to set this context I've

[24:27] done a bit of research in countries for example in Eastern Europe and their attitudes to whistleblowing and corruption and one of the great things about whistleblowing is when you have mechanisms that actually work when you have laws that work as well as implementation that works it does actually empower people and it gives them a sense of being able to have some control in a society that they may feel is very corrupt and they've kind of given up hope of ever being able to get society back on track and so that's that's a really important thing it provides not just a corrective mechanism

[24:59] but it gives the citizen hope so one of the reasons I'm here tonight is to talk about two reports that blueprint has just released a blue report and a green report there's some available on the back pay you can download them from the blueprint for free speech net website they're important reports because we actually studied all 28 EU countries laws and evaluated them against 9 international standards for whether or not they meet

[25:30] criteria of best protection of whistleblowers and then for the first time ever we looked at EU countries to evaluate is implementation of whistleblower protection actually working in practice so no one's done that before and that's that's the blue report that's more qualitative but what we found when we actually examine this and if you do look at it online because there may not be that many copies left we actually ranked all the EU countries against these 9 standards and gave scores so the top score was 27 points if

[26:02] you got 27 points here a perfect score no country in Europe got a perfect score some countries such as Ireland and France and the UK were in the top tier and they were above 50% that's that's pretty good Greece was actually round about the middle so it scored in the 14th place but it only scored about 22% so about 6 points out of 27 now it's good it's sort of in the middle because you don't want it in the very bottom but 24 percent 20 percent if you were a university

[26:34] applicant you would not be getting into a university with 27 percent you would not be passing at a university with 27 percent so you'd like to actually see something a little more ambitious than that in terms of performing and there are actually five categories where Greece got a zero and one of those categories that have got a zero is a full range of disclosure channels and that's a little bit of what we'd be talking here tonight so in this standard what it says is you have an internal channel so you blow the whistle internally about wrongdoing inside your

[27:04] organization there should be a mechanism for that then there should be a independent agency channel so for example if it's about environmental illegal environmental dumping of pollution there should be an EPA or Environmental Protection Agency something like this and then the final channel is the external Channel and that might be to the media most famously a WikiLeaks or a mainstream media organization it might also be to a member of parliament it could be to a trade union but basically this channel is the failsafe channel in

[27:35] case the other channels don't work in case the other channels are corrupt or they don't exist at all so this is actually an area where Greece the analysis or a report said Greece got a zero and that's really unfortunate because if you don't have that channel it doesn't create competition with the other channels to keep them honest that's a really important thing and we see that this is particularly true in cases that we've seen of journalists for example most recently the important role they played in anti-corruption and

[28:05] indeed two cases in Malta and Slovakia of journalists who've hit such a raw nerve reporting on corruption that they've actually been assassinated the final thing I want to mention is around the fact that next week the big news is the European Commission will be releasing its proposed EU directive on a whistleblower protection this is a very big deal it's something that we at blueprint have been working on for two-and-a-half years along with lots of

[28:36] other NGOs and civil society groups trying to make this happen it has not been made public but we have actually been able to review a copy of what will be out there and our first pass review of it we've only had it for a short time is that it's very good it's very comprehensive it will provide that third Avenue for people to go to other other channels provided they've tried internal channels first or that no internal channels existed or they couldn't reasonably have

[29:06] found them it provides protection for whistleblowers who are revealing wrongdoing for public procurement matters financial services products safety if you think about the Volkswagen case environmental protection nuclear safety food safety animal health and welfare public health consumer protection protection of privacy of personal data and network security tax breaches and unfair tax advantage and state aid so

[29:38] these are all areas that we would like to not have corruption um so I think that's kind of my little summary of this I know I've given you a giant data dump but hopefully that'll set context for the rest of the conversation well first before we get to go to John dexing some question first I choose me I forgot I don't want to say a few words before we get to her would you like to say so I thank you very much we're happy to have this panel tonight we've had quite a lot of discussions in panels so far during the last year's

[30:10] also in Greece concerning whistleblowing bird tonight we're very lucky because we have an actual whistleblower in a case of international dimension and thank you for that and peptides publications really thank you for that so this is like the privilege of the night but before like what sure let's really submitted to this panel it's all very important it's very current just let me go step back and set a bit like also the Greek framework because this is of interest to us tonight back in 2013

[30:41] transparency international published the Polish paper actually asking the Greek states to adopt alone whistleblowing at the time we had nothing we had only article authority of the Code of Criminal Procedure saying that whoever knows a crime that's going on every every citizen of no the crime could go to the prosecutorial authorities and submitted but not much was happening really I mean how secure can you feel with just this encouragement I mean no protection actually and we have mentioned just like three cases taking

[31:12] place at the time three scandals actually to convince the state thank you very much the convince the state that you know we do actually need such a framework and why do we need that at the time we had the voter fraud scandal scandal taking place primarily in the private sector but also with like public sector implications we also have the first all submarines in the Ministry of Defence scandal with the procurement processes and then if you also remember we have the case with the Social Security with

[31:43] the eke out calathea shoe scandal taking place there what were like the similarities between those cases and the differences as well we realize that you know across three different scandals not all of them took place for like economic benefits no vodafone was not like that then there will cross-reference is with the public and the private sector so corruption takes place in both sectors then we realize that corruption develops behind closed doors but over a significant

[32:13] period of time and with a significant circle of people usually clean handed even knowing about it that it's evolving and nobody speaks up and then we realized you know that article 4 does really help we hadn't helped and we proclaimed for a framework the framework was adopted next year like May 2014 not because of transparency international's reported because our lenders insisted having a whistleblowing framework so as to tackle tax evasion

[32:46] and everything so this was the primary reason perhaps why this framework was just like not a standalone whistle blowing framework law it was just like some scattered provisions here and there with a very limited scope with regard to the crimes Robert and with regard to the persons covered as well I mean I could go in detail through the rest of the flaws of the law I mean not enough protection for the whistleblowers not enough security inspired by the law and

[33:17] feeling of safety because I mean there is not like a point where it does this protection start what are you gonna take for granted I mean the most important element of the whistleblowing law is like the person read the law and feels safe secure to go and speak up this was not the case very recently we were also I mean there is a discussion about like an amendment of the law but very recently we also saw some let's say a trauma also this Ramar in the context of

[33:48] the Novartis scandal and we heard quite a few times like there we heard that there were whistleblowers involved we don't really I believe they're genuine whistleblowers many clean handed but it was a shame seeing those people that's really voted for the law meaning our peril darienne's being the first ones criticizing those figures they're whistleblowers meaning that we heard like like the Musketeers or like cool affording materials like this kind of

[34:19] characterizations which are really traumatizing this institution that we took it took quite a lot of courage from the public sector and also from the civil society so as to be adopted luckily recently we also had like a positive development as well and we in the context of this scandal taking place in Malta in the dead journalist we have the whistleblower flying over to Greece and being protected by the Greek authorities against the the Maltese

[34:50] arrest warrant so this is a positive in development we could say so let me mention also about the EU directive that where drop directive that we're now waiting for and just try to remember the lux leaks scandal and why there's a need for a me you wide a harmonized protection because I mean where as Luxembourg perhaps deems those bills like tax agreements as like the sweetheart agreements and that the

[35:23] whistleblowers actually violated their professional secrecy perhaps the rest of the European countries which evaded the taxes and income because of those privilege deals they would have an interest in the whistleblowers speaking up and being protected so we do need a pan-european harmonized framework and let me just finish with mentioning some psychological aspects of whistleblowing and perhaps John could then like I don't know like give us his input on that

[35:55] there have been resources and they have me statistics about who becomes a whistleblower and they they're very very villain perhaps even shocking whistleblowers like in people that are high ranking employees become more easily whistleblowers people who feel that their company is like in good financial standing become more easily more often blowers people who belong to trade unions below become easier

[36:25] whistleblowers and people who feel accepted by their environment and by society what's the bottom line of all that it's like security environment these people still secure they feel confident they feel safe that's why we want a good legal instrument to give this kind of feeling and this kind of protection to whistleblowers also in Greece and this is all seems like a good opportunity for people to jump on the questions but I I wear myself actually as a journalist writing about these scandals there's so money you need a

[36:56] scorecard like a playbill in the theater and it seems like they're announced three weeks later they're forgotten with very few exceptions nobody seems to go to jail and be prosecuted whether it's a defense contract with you sit with notable exceptions etc and one of the questions I have Hoppa don't steal anybody's thunder yes ma'am recently has

[37:27] been committed in in channel of the on invest State old channel of media and we have made a council that controls it in many sectors like health political issues and many other things and I would like to say it's very important because it could be default deposit excuse for

[38:01] my bad bad English could define many other channels and it's it's about corruption we find so it there won't be a corruption in in the in the in the media that's a that's a right trench a point and I will address it at some at some point of shore because it goes to the heart of the matter I question I have real fast is is there any concern this is for anybody in the panel that a three year problem and debauchee scandal

[38:32] and now with the parliamentary committee saying it has no jurisdiction if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's a duck what they're really saying is they have no evidence after three years it seems to me is there any fear that crying rape without actually being one is going to hurt the cause of legitimate whistleblowers who if indeed it turns out that these people are hiding behind the law and that nothing happened but please anybody else want to jump in at this point before we move on yes sir

[39:11] thank you I heard about in the worst case what the phone case but they didn't mention the case of a golden tongue that we had the whistleblowers and after some days that we hear that we have a whistleblowers about this case we we heard the names of these guys that they were the whistleblowers and I may find the connection with the case of Novartis that after some days we heard the names of a girl that were the whistleblowers and many politicals MPs I said who are

[39:45] they whistleblowers and they were seeking to find the names of the whistleblower so what take a shot okay all right I'm gonna go sad what one thing that I think is really important there's a lot of debate around anonymity and whistleblowing and and in some cases technology is running way beyond the law in this because a number of media organizations around the world have set up anonymous secure dropboxes not just

[40:17] WikiLeaks other organizations and these Dropbox's allow for a whistleblower to drop information in and you will in theory not be able to find out who they are in some ways they are good because you actually don't want to focus on the whistleblower the whistleblower isn't the matter here the issue here is to investigate whether the material proves wrongdoing or not it doesn't really matter about the whistleblower I mean it matters how you treat them if they're known but in a sense they should be irrelevant to the task at hand which is a proper

[40:48] independent evaluation of the accuracy of the accusation all right now we'll turn it over to John he knows the players the politics the landscape the climate that creates the kind of corruption that exists here why it is how it is how it feeds into each other in the kind of an intern essent way media business politics all kind of coming together in this kind of a triangle so please you have it thanks Andy

[41:20] contrary to what Andy told you I I was not managing director of the Lambrakis Press I ran a newspaper within the Lambrakis Press the Athens news from 99 to 2009 since 2012 I've been working only for foreign media as a foreign correspondent I'll give you a small example maybe is a little bit of leavening in these heavy proceedings of what whistleblowing can

[41:51] do for all of us before the Olympics there was a strong argument being made by the government here that the facilities ought to be permanent because that would leave a greater legacy after the games and one of the more controversial venues that was being built at the time was the Olympic rowing Center in Marathon there was a lot of

[42:21] opposition to it because of the vulnerability of Marathon as a sacred battleground in Greek history and because of certain environmental issues to do with indigenous species there as well the government's position was that in order to circumvent these concerns that the trench of the rowing trench was being built on a piece of the plane that

[42:52] did not exist in antiquity it was subsequently created by currents I won't mention names but at some point a oh and and foreign schools of archeology had been threatened directly with non-renewal of their annual digging permits if they dared to oppose the official position I won't mention how

[43:25] this happened but the only GL archaeological report that had taken place on the plane of Marathon landed on my desk at a very sensitive time and we ran it on the front page the report found that if you carried out borings on the plane of marathon in randomly selected places you could find what the

[43:56] plane what were point to the plane of marathon extended to in antiquity by examining the substratum and the report found that the plane has grown by maybe two or three yards since 490 BC because the crustaceans found at the appropriate level the appropriate depth for that time period are exactly the same as those that exist now which means

[44:27] organisms that thrive in the brackish water of the marathon plane it was a great source of gratification to me that my publisher was extremely displeased because it meant that we had got to somebody in the government but those were the days when misunderstandings could go unpunished

[45:00] between publishers and the executive because the relationship was extremely tight between the two and to his credit my publisher did not censor the paper on that occasion or ever and we continued to embarrass him on many occasions in the subsequent years that I was editor we were able to do that because he was himself a journalist and understood how

[45:31] journalism works there are no newspaper publishers in Greece today who are journalists they are business people with other concerns for whom journalism is a means to an end that is one of the biggest problems that I think we have today in the media landscape I was going

[46:07] to make this rather lighter than it is Andy but I can't so in addition to improving the laws protecting those who deliver information to the media and protecting their anonymity and the media's ability to keep them anonymous you also have to have the appropriate funding financing ownership structures but also the the moral underpinnings of what the media enterprise is about it's

[46:39] about authenticity it's about telling people the things that they don't know they don't know unless you go out in search of information that you're not sure is there you will never discover those stories and it's also about correcting stories that are being deliberately misreported or accidentally misreported because misinformation and non information of the two best ways to undermine the functioning of democracy this is how fladam irritant is trying to

[47:10] undermine democracy he can't directly attack it but he can undermine it I'll give you an example of non information during a certain period of time in the crisis and I don't want to say which years there was virtually no reporting on the banking industry in Greece because it was simply too sensitive and too dangerous to talk about the fact that the banks were bankrupt during the same period of time

[47:42] there was no reporting on immigration because it was convenient to some people to simply deny that we had a rising level of legal and illegal resident aliens it was a it was a story that was undesirable and therefore it wasn't discussed and the issues concerning how the country was going to be financed the private sector was going to be financed wasn't discussed financial security

[48:14] wasn't discussed the issues of non indigenous residents weren't discussed I think these are particularly dangerous and insidious threats to how democracy functions you simply deprive the debate of information there's nothing to talk about I personally see only a darkening landscape regardless of political hue in

[48:46] these very very difficult times for the Greek economy I see political leadership attempting to reduce the number of television licences to manipulate the ownership of print media and to try and produce media that will offer competing points of view with points of view that any the government the who that is in power at any given time doesn't agree

[49:19] this isn't the right way to go about refuting positions that make you uncomfortable there are better ways to counter information to disseminate information but I think that this is a society that hasn't yet understood the value of transparency we instinctively tend towards less information we instinctively believe that more

[49:50] revelations more information we'll simply embarrass more people and and I think it's something that starts from our own culture we didn't have an Enlightenment we missed out on some of the more important developments of Western civilization in recent centuries but we've had 200 years to learn and I think at this point there are no excuses thank you thank you John now you know

[50:26] why Joseph Pulitzer said a newspaper should have no friends and the question I have the plays into this is if there are fewer or controlled media outlets there are no outlets for whistleblowers where can they go because the media is part of that that conduit and if they can't go you very well know what happens to our so when people's squeeze you for telling the truth where do the whistleblowers go if not to the media fortunately there's social media now so

[50:58] you can read it revert to that so the word is going to get out but what you said it is true of course - I I came here from my way of the Boston Globe where four of my friends won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Catholic Church scandals I wonder if that could happen here for example the form of pisaq a new democracy oh banks 215 million euros aren't paying but a few Oh mm you're gonna get a call and your loans been sold to Luxembourg and they're coming after you where is

[51:29] the reporting on that where are the whistleblowers within the government within the banks people who are unafraid and other laws in place to protect them from speak out if they do please anyone want to have a question here of John or anybody here so far this is I I hand-picked this audience to ask him tough questions no nobody okay yeah well we'll give you two then just a short question why to become a crystal

[52:00] blower become why should you become a whistleblower oh I'm sure you'll have an answer but I tell me yet to you but that's a good question you should ask within yourself would you do it how many of us here have not you know taking a lesser price you know what do you suppose exceed right because part of the problem is we discuss the other day is in some way people benefit from corruption until it gets to a level where it bleeds them I don't like to

[52:33] jump in again or have you had you'd have you said okay so what I am winning on watching this guy on TV Maira for a long time I thought I knew a thing or two about journalism from being in the States but why I learned by watching him and I'm right here probably honored to be in his presence now so please i I want to say a few words about the book we have in front of us doing

[53:06] time like a spy one of the first questions I wanted to go to - John and I think I asked him was if he liked his time in the CIA and this this is a this is a question that comes in both books the first one the reluctant spy and this one it comes often and both books I

[53:39] think give a positive answer yes his time with the CIA was worth spending but this this book is a peculiar one is how to learn spending mercy time in prison Tiago loves to learn with his rather sophisticated knife standing it's naive in the first glance but it's

[54:10] a sophisticated naivety he absorbs and processes the news he analyzes characters with great accuracy and he also chooses persons around him he could learn from and he does this even in the prison this is something which is were very worthy I think it's the the most important reason to read this book this book is a great reading

[54:42] about human characters in prison or a decent person like John succeeds in surviving and learning based on this solid fundament of what he had probably perfect perfection eyes as a spy which is a paradox I mean without the spider here it would have been very difficult survived in the prison now to the whistleblower issue which is another paradox and increases wise paradoxical

[55:16] as it is in other countries as we may know and as Anna said before the Greek Republic has changed its law in protecting whistleblowers or especially for the harm of public service with the article 45 B of the Penal Code that has been established back in the year 2014 I want to say a few things about the background I have been present in both reviews of the OECD in 2012 and 2014 and

[55:51] I have felt the pressure from the OECD on our and the corruption charges and on our political responsibles to responsible to change the law and implement a kind of protection it was the time when the late mr. Baucus and Anna were fighting to to get this legislation done this and the

[56:22] corruption close that a whistleblower protection clause that has been brought in was a kind of compromising of a formal there was really nothing about the private sector where all the other countries have started from I can remember especially on the second review where the mr. afanasiy was the then

[56:56] Justice Minister with a great curiosity confronting a lot of my fellow reporters that we're trying to pursue it they all CD that Greek companies do not take part in corruption operations outside the country we were talking just about foreign companies at this time already

[57:29] some steps have been implemented in the direction of the protection of people that cooperated with the state prosecutors there was the Castaneda's reform but in the year 2010 2011 when somebody contributing things that were unknown to the prosecutors could get a lighter sentence and this was the case of the relative of mr. Tovar jobless IRA's that contributed to the prosecution of the then the PX Minister

[58:04] of Defense he was accused of taking bribes for defense material procurement but general speaking whistleblowers within the framework of Greek culture are considered as rats and this is the main philosophical problem loyalty in a highly personalized private economy where the main shareholder uses to be the CEO of the company also is a good

[58:36] that isn't to put into risk here more than in other places as the first speaker has said next Wednesday the European Commission is going to published its draft directive for the protection of whistleblowers all over Europe and this will force the Greek government to change its own and their their work day the whole thing will

[59:07] start from the beginning what are the differences between the draft I have seen because I have seen also the draft and the Greek law first of all the the the European draft touches as the first speaker said nearly all of the matters a whistleblower could come up with information secondly it the whistleblower can be everybody from the CEO of the company to somebody who is

[59:40] having or she she is having her practice in the company just for six months and unpaid practice a contractor can be whistleblower everybody can be whistleblower so an interesting thing is how the Greek parliament is going to adjust this legislation in Greece we will experience some interesting times the way there were some questions about from the

[1:00:11] gentleman on the second road on on how whistleblowers are protected I want to I don't want to get into politics about Novartis but I will tell you one small thing that was interesting to me as you may know the public prosecutor cent has sent to the to the Parliament some of the documents they were passed to her from the protected witnesses in the nobody's case if you have gone on

[1:00:43] with your cancer on this documents on the properties you would have discovered who has written these papers so what kind of protection is that I mean protection is is a whole thing of measures and as we speak about protection most of you may not know that the first whistleblowers to be protected in the Greek law order were the ones

[1:01:16] that were bring bringing information about terrorist groups or closed groups in this first law there was a provision that a presidential decree had to be published for the so called identity change you can't protect the whistleblower if you don't give him or her the opportunity to change the identity to change the identity card to change the place he or she lives this

[1:01:47] presidential decree has not yet been published after 16 years 17 years so as we speak about this protection of whistleblowers we must keep in mind that the Greek arsenal of measures in protecting the whistleblowers is still a torso that needs to be fulfilled with a lot of measures technical measures technological measures and others to

[1:02:18] have a very basic protection of the whistleblowers one one thing that we have to do to push for sure is do to extend that protection also for informants from the private sector thank you very much [Applause] Louis is a your source is still willing

[1:02:50] to speak with you are they drying up do you feel in this current atmosphere because according to the current government there's been no corruption of the last three years people still going to talk to you or they feel reluctant the way things are these days the people talk to us and they we talk if you prove because you have to prove it every day that you are keeping the basics of this

[1:03:20] profession which is keep save their identity try to to make digital to make data as little as possible from what they tell you and try to contact them through the normal way to people talk about matters that have not to be revealed thirds that means not on the phone or on the computer and John D Drive if you were managing editor of a

[1:03:52] newspaper in Greece major newspaper people came to you with the same kind of report we're talking about in a different matter I know you do it at any cost would you be squeezed by interests that were not journalistic one thing I've discovered from work in newspapers is if a publisher could print only ads they would do it the only reason they have newspaper reporting staff is to get people to read the ads I think there's

[1:04:29] always a balance newspapers are also businesses and they have to survive within the economy that they report upon and they have to be credible to their readership and those two girls are often our offering in the in contradiction one one recent publisher try to relaunch

[1:04:59] a defunct newspaper on the basis that it would not accept advertising from any state agencies or banks which was I think a reasonably good moral position but the market being what it is it couldn't survive on the basis of subscriptions and ayahs alone and this is one of the big problems that the media face there's been a huge defunding

[1:05:29] of the media which is why we've seen so many sell-offs of historic newspapers both in the States and in Europe and the the buyers are not always people who committed to serving the public so I think the Internet has done certain things for us for transparency blogs self-publishing wiki leak YouTube there's a whole different universe of means of expression out there but it's

[1:06:00] destroyed the old publishing model and that still hasn't been fixed and the truth is this as anyone who looks at videos on YouTube will quickly discover there is not an undiscovered pool of fantastic talent out there a group of bloggers does not replace a coordinated and well-managed newspaper and well-funded newspaper The Boston Globe had to pay those four investigative

[1:06:31] reporters very well to produce nothing for two years before they came up with the Catholic Church expose that is what is now missing coordination and funding if the internet model is a bit of a I don't to say thought on Averell as we say in Greece it's given us things but it's taken away a lot that people have forgotten about

[1:07:03] anybody yes sir please can you pass it down hello maybe dozen only my name is vasiliy estimate o+ i'm the co-founder of small young at their price which called the fraud line our main services is whistleblowing and personal data software quite sensitive to both of those issues I don't know if you know that in beginning of Mars is so maybe fair return Ellington demotious dicus is

[1:07:34] the internal let's say body of controllers of the public sector that the whistleblowing system was compromised so a few thousands of whistleblowers their data was in the public domain so everybody could see it somebody could be their name and so that he had reported this about somebody else I believe this took us years back because there is no security if you see the main whistleblowing platforms of the public sector it's just not even security to be no security no

[1:08:06] technological security whatsoever and they are still you know using those systems if there has been no resignation because of this let's say small problem and nobody knows why this happened and in what sense can we encourage people to go out and just blow the whistle since they know that they're not protected at all so sometimes we overheat the situation we encourage people to go out but the I believe the security is not there thank

[1:08:37] you well so that is there a is there a chilling effect in the last few years a couple of members of secure drop have died as well couple of key things the first thing I'd say is I know from my own research of public polling gold standard public polling across almost 10 countries that in fact the public would rather go to a journalist than they would go to social media to report wrongdoing this is very important

[1:09:08] because your comments about the media dissipating and and and being sort of decimated by the change economic model means they're fewer options I trained journalists and data security to protect them and their sources particularly their whistleblower sources it's actually somewhat difficult to do to a high standard certainly to an intelligence you know agency standard and increasingly journalists are aware of it but actually a surprising number still don't realize that they have a moral obligation to the whistleblower that

[1:09:39] goes beyond just taking their data they actually have to protect their data as well and that's kind of an emerging field but it's it's hard and we've had cases in Australia of whistleblowers and indeed of the u.s. of whistleblowers who have been identified through basically technological means and then you know people are often running to to actually be engaged in reprisal against them for their whistleblowing in the station now newspapers have a lot of leverage as just saying there that people don't want to tangle with them

[1:10:11] because they don't want to get into a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel digital media is changing that now to a small example not at this level some years ago you know some years ago I did a story about a young man who died in a fire there was no no smoke no smoke alarm and the windows were barred in violation of law and I had a very good source in the Public Safety Department and I was subpoenaed by the attorney for the management company turned I was a greek-american lawyer I had a few choice words for her and she sat down I want to

[1:10:43] know the name is your source John you can know with you know what this is going I said his name is geo pou NDS a India go pound sand or appleís okay we're not telling you she said well then we'll go to court I said fine that's fine with me because we'll have a story every day for some weeks with your managers name in there and I can't promise that my friends from a plea be ap Bloomberg Reuters UPI etc won't be there they settled you know you have to read

[1:11:26] it the I wrote it for you to say it don't know how this phrase translates into Greek but I will say something that will be like the proverbial fart in a perfume Factory first I will say that this is an incredible panel that you put together Andy and I want to congratulate you and thank you from here right now I also want to say it is an absolutely vital

[1:11:57] issue it is vital to the survival of democracy it is vital to with the well-being of our societies because you've touched upon it corruption also distorts the economic and commercial decision-making that's supposed to lead to prosperity and and economic security in our countries and societies that said I wonder if you might comment on what I think legitimate a critic might say given what you've all touched upon about how easy it is for

[1:12:29] misinformation or lack of information to be manipulated by forces within societies from outside and we can talk about Russia and and and Putin but I imagine somebody might say you know these laws could be manipulated by people like that so that people could be planted to create chaos where there isn't corruption and sir undermine societies there so how how can we protect against such laws which I will

[1:12:59] say should be as powerful as possible and protect we suppose as much as possible what are the thoughts about making sure that they're not also manipulated and exploited I try to have him after you with some questions if you have done something wrong did somebody else raise a hand did I say please yes sir thank you I am a major retired 8th and Cosmopolis intelligence ranked forces I would like to ask mr. Telugu

[1:13:30] something about the journalism after recent years journalists were mainly paid for their reporting and four things they knew and they reported now there is a half the impression that many journalists are paid for things they know but they are not reporting all right and they keep them in safe deposit boxes in banks or elsewhere I would like your comment on that if this is a correct impression or it's not the case

[1:14:01] here thank you very much sounds like a field i I don't think journalists report now less than they use the report previously they always there is an old journalistic joke that when you are yank you don't know anything to report and when you become older you know everything but you don't report so but this is this is partially

[1:14:32] true there are three main difficulties one difficulties you need resources to follow up a story that may may last for months may last for years this these resources are not available now this is the one thing when we did with some

[1:15:02] colleagues when we worked with some colleagues back in the year 2008 2009 on the Simmons case we need to travel very often to other places and then study papers overnights and and cross check why wire transfers among various banks and and the result of our for work didn't appear so for for our for our

[1:15:33] newsroom we knew that we work but they didn't know that we worked so this is always a problem in Greece it used to be a problem also prior to the crisis it's not just today a problem the other thing so the first thing is lack of resources I think is this big investigative works are team work so you need to build up a

[1:16:04] team you don't do it by yourself you are not a lonely artist and there are two problems here the newsrooms don't like teams in Greece because of we have this mentality and the other thing is if you put up teams for a specific work you have to pull them out of of other work and then you get back to the problem number one of resources so they don't do anything else

[1:16:36] or if they do something else they have to do both which is a problem and there is a third thing which has to do with specific areas of social activity and this areas of social activity are not just a Greek phenomenon but it's also European phenomenon like banks there was a reluctance in reporting on the banks but it was not just a reluctance in reporting on our side but it was a

[1:17:07] reluctancy of reporting also of state authorities or banks for other reasons you don't touch the fountain where you get some drops of the water you need to survive I'll put it in that way but this used to become a problem because for example some banks became the sole advertisers in the Greek landscape for example the Piraeus Bank it became more

[1:17:39] dominant on the content that we laughed to and and and this cost cause serious problems also in the content for some time this is not only a Greek problem it's if you read the Spanish press it's exactly the same in Spain and in other places where they had a credit crunch so I think this these are the three answers to your question and well we gotta clean up hitter anybody else sorry if I may add to what

[1:18:09] jumped it's quite happy if I may add to what thou shalt said I remember distinctly Daschle for a number of years before even the financial crisis the only advertising that newspapers could really count on for the kind of money that major news organizations need were state agencies banks and telecommunications everybody else pretty much had you know had been reduced to very small advertising budgets and the

[1:18:43] state agencies were particularly tricky because do you remember when the common least government created the tourism ministry with a seventy million euro budget for advertising that was the first but advertising budget for the tourism ministry and we thought fantastic this will do amazing things for Greek tourism once you spend that money overseas and lo and behold in 2005 we started seeing the tourism ministry

[1:19:13] taking out full-page ads in all the Greek newspapers because the government was playing its old game of keeping keeping its hand in all right I'll stop now hi there Congrats on the panel I've heard things that are interesting I've heard things that I agree we've some others that I be eminently disagree with but to sum it up

[1:19:45] the new directive or rather a proposal for a directive is coming we've seen our fair share of directives come to Greece and get transposed I've done my fair share of transposing as well so the issue is whether this is an all-encompassing Omnibus legislation or whether it is more targeted number one how will this work given that the EU seems not to follow up

[1:20:17] on the qualitative issues so what they will actually do is send a claim to the ministry and they will say how have you transposed it director we sent them back our provisions there are legal departments tick boxes and they send it back they will never follow up also I've noticed that it's a bit of an absurdity for Europe to say that anti-corruption is at the forefront of its attempts given that and everybody can check this

[1:20:49] if you check the budget the money given for training on corruption is less than money given for training on fisheries and the last issue how do you think that we can tackle the reverse effect over filing of complaints in such cases okay now we're gonna swing for the fences everybody wants to know how many

[1:21:20] mobsters did you meet in prison Lots please the floor is yours and I liked almost every one of them first of all thank you thank you thank you for coming tonight everybody here thank you too and then a Pataki for this incredible it's so much more beautiful than the American version is I I don't even I can't even believe it thank you also to mr. Nicholl ludus the former Minister of Justice who is here I'm so honored to see him and to

[1:21:51] have him here I have a very long story that I'm going to make very short but I want to talk about national security whistleblowing and how I came to the decision to blow the whistle on the CIA's torture program believe me when I tell you that 10 years ago I never ever would have pictured myself in this position recently released from prison of all things I was the good kid in my

[1:22:21] family it was my brother that was the bad one now my brother's a millionaire record producer and I'm a convicted felon so you never really know how things are going to work out but anyway after the September 11th attacks I was sent to Pakistan as the director of counterterrorism operations for the CIA it was a big job and so I had been there for about six weeks and we received word that Abu Zubaydah who we believed at the time was

[1:22:51] the number three in al-qaeda was somewhere in Pakistan and that I had to catch him I had to take him alive was what they told me specifically Pakistan is the size of Texas and it has 200 million people in it so to say he's somewhere in Pakistan you have to catch him it's not possible so I came up with a couple of ideas that were terrible they didn't even come close to working and I asked for an analyst to come out to help me pour through the data this

[1:23:23] analyst came out and three weeks later said that he was able to locate or to narrow at least Abu Zubaydah's location to 14 different sites he might be maybe in one of these 14 different sites we had never hit more than two sites before in a single night so we asked for a bigger team half CIA half FBI we had the Pakistani military there to help us and we did 14 simultaneous raids

[1:23:56] at 2 o'clock in the morning on March the 22nd 2002 he was in the final sight I know I couldn't believe it either one of my colleagues asked me do you think we'll catch him and I said no I think we'll catch somebody but I don't think we're gonna catch him and there he was he tried to escape by climbing to the roof of his house and jumping to the roof of the next house there was a pakistani policeman on the ground and he

[1:24:26] was shooting everybody who was jumping he shot Abu Zubaydah in the thigh the groin and the stomach and he dropped to the ground almost dead I thought he was dead so I went to him and I I said this doesn't look anything like Abu Zubaydah I didn't recognize the man at all he was nothing like the one six-year-old passport picture we had so the analyst told me to take a picture of his eye so we can run a retinal scan but

[1:24:59] his eyes were rolled back into his head and I said he's dying he's bleeding to death what else can I do he said take a picture of his ear well I didn't know until that night that no two people on earth have the same ears they're like fingerprints so I took a picture of his ear I sent it to headquarters they said it's him so we rushed him to a hospital terrible place but word got around the al-qaeda community that we had captured him and so they began driving by the

[1:25:30] hospital and just opening fire on the hospital so I said to the Pakistani I was with if they realize we're unarmed we're dead can you get a helicopter to land here he said yes the helicopter landed about 20 minutes later I went into the emergency room to the surgery room and I told the doctor let's go wrap it up we have to take him so we put him on the helicopter we flew to a military base about 50 60 kilometers away George

[1:26:02] Tenet was the director of the CIA at the time and he sent word his exact words were 24/7 CIA eyes on do not leave his bedside he told me I was already awake for I don't know 28 hours something like that and I was afraid I would fall asleep and he would run away or the doctor was Al Qaeda and he's gonna kidnap him I didn't know so I tore up a sheet and I tied him to the bed he had

[1:26:32] an oxygen mask on and he was tied to the bed he remained in this coma about 24 hours and then finally woke up 24 hours later when he came to he motioned for me to come next to his bed so I went and I moved his oxygen mask and I said to him in Arabic shoulda smek what is your name and he shook his head so I said it again Sushma and he said to me in English I will not speak to you in God's language

[1:27:04] I said that's okay Abu Zubaydah we know who you are and he started crying and he said please brother kill me take the pillow and kill me and I said nobody's gonna kill you we've been looking for you for a long time and I said but I'm gonna give you some advice because I am the nicest guy that you're going to meet in this experience my colleagues they're not as nice as I am so if there's one thing that you do it's

[1:27:34] that you have to cooperate and he said to me you seem like a nice man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate I said well suit yourself over the next 24 hours we talked a lot he cried a lot he would never know the touch of a woman he would never know the joy of fatherhood I said you're not the victim here there were 50,000 people in those towers what

[1:28:04] did you think we were gonna do did you think we wouldn't try to kill you or to kill bin Laden you're not the victim and remember I said your life is over but the rest of it can be easy or it can be terrible it's up to you and you have to cooperate about four hours later a CIA jet flew into the base and three FBI agents and I carried him out to the

[1:28:36] plane he asked me to to hold his hand he was crying we took him on the plane we tied him to the luggage rack at the back of the plane and I said to him good luck and remember you have to cooperate about three weeks later I flew back to CIA headquarters and I had been there about three days I was in the cafeteria getting lunch one day and a senior officer from the CIA's Counterterrorism Center stopped me and very casually he said oh I'm glad I ran

[1:29:08] into you do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard that term before I said what does that mean and very excitedly he said we're gonna get rough with these guys and I said well what is rough mean and so he told me a list of ten torture techniques that were going to be used against Abu Zubaydah and other al-qaeda prisoners and I said oh oh that sounds like a torture program

[1:29:38] torture is illegal and he said no the White House said we can do it and I said I don't think so I said I have a moral and ethical problem with this I I don't want to be involved I'm as I'm sorry to tell you that of the fourteen people that they asked I was the only one who said no the only one and then on August 1st 2002 the CIA began to torture Abu Zubaydah they began by waterboarding him

[1:30:08] not once but 83 times 83 times they did it and not once did he provide any information that saved American lives or disrupted a terrorist attack why because he was the wrong guy there was a cousin also named Abu Zubaydah who was actually the number three in al-qaeda and we had caught the wrong man well you can't tell

[1:30:42] George W Bush and George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld and all of these others senior people we made a mistake we caught the wrong man that's not what they wanted to hear they wanted to hear that we are disrupting al-qaeda we're collecting information and we're killing them when we can't catch them Abu Zubaydah eventually was moved to Guantanamo he is still in Guantanamo he has been in our custody now for almost actually it's

[1:31:14] a little bit more than 16 years he's never been charged with a crime and it was because he was tortured relentlessly it wasn't just the waterboarding we learned for example that he had a terrible fear of insects of bugs and so they put him in a coffin right and not just for a few hours they put him in a coffin for three weeks and they put insects in the coffin just to make him crazy they stripped him naked and

[1:31:45] chained him to a bolt in the ceiling so that he could not sit down lay down get comfortable in any way they chilled his cell to ten degrees Celsius and then every hour they threw a bucket of ice water on him now we killed two people doing that you don't read about it in the newspapers but we killed people well the Justice Department never said we could murder people while we were interrogating them but we did nobody was ever prosecuted well he

[1:32:20] was sent from secret prison to secret prison and each one that he went to was worse than the one before I was in headquarters and I was reading the reports that they were sending back saying we we did this to him and he didn't say anything and then we waterboarded him and he didn't say anything and then we blasted him with light and with loud music for seven days and he didn't say anything and then we kept him awake for nine days for 12 days which usually leads to death by the way

[1:32:52] and he never said anything well I left the CIA in 2004 and I'm ashamed to tell you that I kept my mouth shut I didn't say anything because I kept waiting for somebody else to say something I wasn't in the secret prison I didn't actually see the torturer I had read each of the reports so I knew what they were doing but I kept waiting for someone who was actually there to say something and nobody ever said anything so I left the CIA in 2004

[1:33:25] I kept my mouth shut until December of 2007 finally in 2007 a reporter called me and said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah I said that was absolutely untrue I said I was kind to Abu Zubaydah I was the only one who was kind to Abu Zubaydah I never laid a hand on him or on any other prisoner I said your source is either mistaken or he's a liar well he says you're welcome to come on the

[1:33:55] show and defend yourself an old reporter's trick I'm told I I had never met a reporter before what did I know I said I'll think about it the next thing I know President Bush is giving a news conference and he looks directly into the camera and he says we do not torture and I said to my wife who was also a senior CIA officer I said he is a bald-faced liar he is looking the American people in the in the eye and

[1:34:26] he's lying to us and then a couple of days later a reporter shouted a question at him and he said well if there is torture it's the result of a rogue CIA officer and I said to my wife Brian Ross a source is in the White House and they're gonna pin this on me I said it's time for the truth to come out so I called the reporter and I said I'll give you your interview and I decided in the days leading up to that interview that whatever he asked me I was going to tell

[1:34:58] the truth and so I did I said three things that changed the course of the rest of my life I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue and I said that the policy had been personally approved by the President himself within 24 hours as you can imagine the FBI began investigating me they investigated me for one year from

[1:35:29] December 2007 until December of 2008 but in December 2008 they decided that I had not committed a crime and they closed the case it was the happiest day of my life what I did not know was that three weeks later when Barack Obama became president the CIA asked him to secretly reopen the case against me for the next three years I had no idea that the FBI was listening to my phone calls they

[1:36:00] were reading my emails and they had four different surveillance teams following me this was a cost to the American taxpayer of more than four million dollars four million dollars just to follow me and listen to my phone calls in January 2012 I was arrested and I was charged with five counts of espionage coming out of that interview espionage it's a death penalty charge in the

[1:36:31] United States death penalty for talking to ABC News and the New York time I had never really heard the word whistleblowing before and so I noticed in the Washington Post there was a woman quoted an attorney quoted and she was very supportive of me and so I called her one morning very early it was six o'clock in the morning but she was at the office and she answered my call and I said I'm John Kiriakou oh my gosh please come into the

[1:37:03] office II she says so I go into the office we talked and she agreed to represent me for free never mind that I later spent 1.1 million dollars on attorneys that's a whole different story but when I was leaving her office I said to her thank you for taking my case because I know that you represent whistleblowers and I'm not a whistleblower and she said but you are a whistleblower and I said no I'm not I'm just somebody who just said something

[1:37:38] and she said look this is a theme among all whistleblowers no whistleblower thinks he's a whistleblower none of them do you don't wake up one morning and say today I will be a whistleblower that's just not the way it works out there's a legal definition of whistleblowing it is bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety why you did it why you went to the press is

[1:38:09] irrelevant all that matters is that you did it in the US the justice system is such that you really don't have a chance there's an old joke that an American jury would convict a bologna sandwich and send it to prison and indeed the American government wins ninety eight point two percent of its cases because what they do is let's see maybe you did break a law one law they'll charge you with five ten twenty felonies twenty

[1:38:42] different criminal charges and they'll wait until you go bankrupt and then they'll come and say okay listen we'll dismiss all the charges but one if you plead guilty well even if you're innocent you'll plead guilty because you've already spent a million dollars on lawyers that you can never pay back all of your friends have left you many of your family members have left you many whistleblowers lose their spouses because they just can't take the pressure and if you're found guilty in a

[1:39:16] trial at least in a case like mine I was looking at forty five years in prison that's a death sentence I'm 53 years old I can't spend forty five years in prison but the government is offering me two and a half in which case I would be out in two I have five children at home so what do you do I wanted to see my children grow up I wanted to see my daughter get married and meet my grandchildren so I took the plea just like everybody takes the plea

[1:39:47] but I believed in what I did people ask me all the time if I would do it again and that's a very easy question the answer is definitely yes because one of the things I learned at the CIA was the CIA tries to teach you they try they try to to convey in their culture that everything in life is a shade of grey but that's just not true some things are right and wrong they're black and white and this was something that was just

[1:40:18] plain wrong let me tell you another thing too in 1946 the American government executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war executed them it was a death penalty charge to waterboard someone in 1968 The Washington Post ran a front-page picture of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner on the day that that picture was published the Secretary of Defense ordered an investigation the soldier was

[1:40:50] arrested charged with torture convicted and sent to a military prison for twenty years well the law never changed we changed so why was waterboarding illegal in 1946 and illegal in 1968 but it was perfectly legal in 2002 it's because we changed and we wanted to convince ourselves that we could do anything we wanted and there was no price to pay that is wrong there has to be

[1:41:23] accountability and so I decided that if nobody's going to say something then I will the price was very high but it was worth it and you know one thing one thing that sticks in my mind I was telling a couple of people here well not here but earlier today that when when you're a patriot a law-abiding citizen you dedicate your life to to public

[1:41:55] service and then you're accused of essentially of treason really is what it came down to espionage I mean that's spying for a foreign government is what it at least that's what it ought to be all that goes through your mind is I have to kill myself there's nothing else I can do if I don't kill myself I'll be in prison for the rest of my life and I'll die in there and it takes friends and family to say no you have to fight it you have to

[1:42:25] fight you have to push forward you can't kill yourself I asked my doctor I was telling somebody earlier today I couldn't sleep after I was arrested I was sleeping one hour two hours a night I said to the doctor I need some sleeping pills and he said mmm no I'm not gonna give you any sleeping pills I said look I promise I won't kill myself he said tell me as a man he said man to man tell me promise me I said I promise as a

[1:42:55] man I won't kill myself and he gave me the pill so at least I got a decent night's sleep but this is what the government wants you to do the point isn't just to prosecute you one of my attorneys told me this very early on he said this case isn't about you you think it is but it's not this case is much bigger than you this case is about is about honesty and transparency and openness in government they don't care about you he said eventually they're

[1:43:27] gonna offer you a deal which I didn't know at the time what this is is they want to make sure that everybody else in government who's thinking of blowing the whistle says hmm look what they did to John Kiriakou I better keep my mouth shut that's what they're banking on but then I was in prison for about six months I was reading a copy of the New York Times and it was an interview with Edward Snowden and in the interview he said

[1:43:59] that Thomas Drake an NSA whistleblower and John Kiriakou inspired him to go public and to leak his information to WikiLeaks and I thought God bless ed Snowden at least I had an impact on somebody because without Edward Snowden we would have no idea that the American government was spying on Americans which of course is illegal NSA's not allowed to spy on Americans it's even part of the NSA charter that

[1:44:30] they're not allowed to spy on Americans and they do and they were getting away with it until Edward Snowden told us when I got out of prison I should say just two weeks before I got out of prison the Senate torture report was released I called my wife that evening I was allowed to call my family every other day for 15 minutes so I called and I said how was your day she said it was great I said yeah why and she said

[1:45:01] because today the Senate torture report was released and it proved that everything you said was true and I thought yeah it was worth it I got home February 3rd 2015 and in the summer of 2015 Congress passed something called the McCain fine Stein amendment the McCain fine Stein amendment banned permanently banned exactly those torture techniques that the CIA was using against Abu

[1:45:33] Zubaydah and other al-qaeda prisoners and after the President signed it into law ironically it was Barack Obama signed it into law John McCain who was the primary author gave an interview and said that if John Kiriakou had not said anything if he hadn't told us that this was happening this bill would never have become law and we would still be torturing people and no one would know about it that also

[1:46:04] made it all worth it so the price was high certainly it was very high I'll never really work again I mean not really I had a fantastic corporate job I was the one of the senior most officers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I was a news commentator but my name is mud now in many circles but I don't care it was worth it I know that I was right a couple of days

[1:46:35] before I left for prison the deputy director of the CIA tweeted it me he knew I was leaving for prison soon and he said and I hope that you understand the colloquialism he said don't drop the soap this is what the deputy director of the CIA this is the language he used with me don't drop the soap and I gave myself an hour to calm down and take it easy and I tweeted

[1:47:07] back at him and I said Jose I am on the right side of history and you are not and that's the truth now there are arrest warrants for him in every European Union country and I'm in beautiful Athens sitting with my friends again it was worth it I get a lot of emails now and phone calls from whistleblowers or from people who are considering blowing the whistle and I

[1:47:39] tell them do it don't necessarily do it the way I did it I just did it just like that talk to an attorney first protect your rights if you're lucky you can protect your identity but do it because without whistleblowers all we have is chaos thank you again for taking the time to listen to me very much thank you [Applause]

[1:48:14] Wow I mean while I have a new standard for decency and bravery in my life you're a braver man than I Gunga Din I'll tell you that or I'm a very stupid man which is my wife's no no you you you prove that what a papaya said is true that that's what right is right and what's wrong is wrong even if it helps you since my knees are shaking and I have to sit down who would like to ask the first question because I've got about 200 of them so I'm gonna put them aside

[1:48:45] anybody wanted to go to prison to where I reveal what's going on here in Greece yes sir hello my name my name is colosio Allen's the president of Hellenic at the corruption organization attorney at law and the first-level who took an assignment for his client recognized him as with blower in Greece I can say that

[1:49:18] unfortunately here in Greece we are governed by fear but what mr. kiraku said is true and we are taking this lead this way to reveal the truth because all Greek citizens pays a cause of this fear we have also deposited a draft law for with blower protection to the Ministry of Justice and you can find many information on our LinkedIn web page

[1:49:51] acetylenic at the corruption organization and we want your comments also I want to thank personally dr. Dreyfuss hospitals in his report in blueprint report and we are hoping to have a further cooperation also I want to address I won't say arresting here in this panel I didn't

[1:50:22] nobody said that with blowing derives from the Greek word parasya and also nobody said that for wist blowing here in Greece we have the uncut the United Nations Convention Against Corruption from 2008 which gives us the tools for the concrete protection for whistleblowers but we are speaking for

[1:50:53] according to my opinion a law that is a damaged load of 2014 for the protection with blowers so we must take all a stand and make the difference not only for the whistleblowers might also for the Greek citizens because that will reveal the truth thank you very much thank that's

[1:51:26] the all information I did not know please anyone I'm curious why this nobody wants to know more of our damn work with with John story because apart from wanting to know who your favorite character and homeland is thank you for sharing your story with us I would like to ask you were there any internal channels but were it say encouraging or uestion yes would you if you know going

[1:51:58] back in time would you prefer to start first internally because this is a common issue you know people's a go some people tend to go directly to the press in theory this is not correct you should rest try if there are internal channels and then you should exhaust all possibilities because even in a corporate environment just disclosing a corporate secrets can give you know the opportunity to the company to go against you you know legally yes you're exactly

[1:52:29] right that's that's a very important issue in my case I could I couldn't go through official channels now what they teach you in the intelligence community is of course you go through official channels you go to your supervisor if you don't get satisfaction to the Inspector General to the general counsel and then ultimately to the congressional oversight committees on Capitol Hill the Senate and House intelligence committees my problem was that my chain of command created the torture program and the

[1:53:00] congressional oversight committees approved the program in secret so for me my situation was unusual and so I I could only go to the press there's another case too that gives those of us in the intelligence community pause that was the case of Tom Drake the NSA whistleblower so Tom Drake found that that the NSA had replaced a 100 million dollar interception program with a six

[1:53:31] billion dollar interception program that actually did less to protect American citizens and it was because they were all getting paid so he went to his supervisor the supervisor told him to close his mouth he went to the Inspector General who knew nothing because the Inspector General was not cleared for the information he went to the General Counsel and then to the Defense Department inspector general the Defense Department Inspector General actually destroyed the evidence that he brought

[1:54:01] out with him and then so he went to the House Intelligence Committee which is exactly what you're supposed to do and so what did they do they charged him with nine counts of espionage and they told him that if he pled guilty that they would not ask for the death penalty well he hadn't committed espionage he did it exactly the way that you're supposed to do it and eventually the entire case fell apart and he was never convicted of a crime but not until his wife left him

[1:54:33] and took their five children because she also worked at NSA not until he spent his entire pension on lawyers he was ruined they took his security clearance they took his house he lost literally everything in his life and here we are all these years later now this is seven years later and he works at the Apple Store this was the number for ranking man in NSA and he works at the Apple Store so normally I would say yes for 90 percent of whistleblowers

[1:55:05] they should go through the chain of command if they cannot reveal their identity and they're working in government and I can't put five years ago I would have said you were crazy if you said that I was going to say this but I would go to WikiLeaks I really would at least you know WikiLeaks is going to preserve your identity your anonymity it's really the only place to go we see now in the United States people going to the press

[1:55:35] reality winner an officer who went to the intercept there was an FBI agent a week ago who went to the intercept and the intercept was very careless with their identities and now they're both under arrest reality winner is being held without bail she's been in prison since June of last year and this FBI agent has been in prison for the last two weeks and has pled guilty to espionage he didn't commit espionage all he said was to the intercept I found evidence of fraud at

[1:56:06] the FBI they said espionage so he hasn't been sentenced yet but he's looking at as much as 10 years in prison so yeah if you're going to go to the press get a lawyer first if you're not going to get a lawyer go through your chain of command just wad to John's experience I mean it's not so rare anymore this was exactly the case with the murder of the Maltese journalist just to give you a bit of input in that

[1:56:37] story I mean there is this pilatus bank in Malta Efimova was an employee of that banks he realized that money laundering was going on in the bank and the person responsible for that like it was like the very same the owner of the bank so there were no internal channels for whistleblowing apparently then I mean she could go to the Supervisory authorities of Malta but what was the case there the anti modeling money laundering authority of Martha had jumped in the bank in the past and they found nothing or they took

[1:57:09] no action the same also with the Central Bank of mother could she have gone to the European Central Bank I mean which is supposedly a much more credible institution that perhaps the local authorities she could if for example this was like in in the old times but money laundering particularly in the European new supervisory system I mean just belongs to the National authorities to the central bank so apparently for money laundering issues the European Central Bank has no competence and to

[1:57:40] out that pilato's bank was not significant less significant bank so by definition it was fully supervised by the national authorities which apparently were unwilling to take any action this is why a theme about the employee of Pilatus back felt like she needed to talk to journalists and then for this reason she talked to Galicia and this is where we ended up and a female bird flew to how to fly to Athens and the Greek judicial authorities denied twice the extradition to Malta

[1:58:13] yes despite the two arrest warrants by the multi-dose Ortiz just one one edition Efimova was not employed officially by the back she was making her practice in the back that means under the new legislation of the European Union she is going to be covered if this passes you'd have good protection with most journal so I haven't met a journalist just giving up a source and we'd rather go to jail although if it happens to me could you put in a good word for me with Toni two knives please hello well I'm really feel

[1:58:50] really really lucky that I have the opportunity to be here today and with all of this wonderful panel and the particular young mister directly a coup and I cannot wait to go home and tell her to my men that my two teenagers and my husband that I had this wonderful experience today very much and I hope that many it's not easy to find all this courage to go through all of this but

[1:59:21] completely soon so thank you for all of us I'm wondering though that and I can understand I'm in the area for added corruption and I am a Certified Fraud examiner from Accra and so I am kind of familiar I guess with all of these things and I do understand over to mr. Taylor below said about the team that you have to have in order to investigate some things but I have not talked at all

[1:59:53] about anonymous or reporting system our program that is a according to what we have learned it's a very integral part of an ID fraud by the corruption program that when you set an anti-corruption program that you needed to have an anonymous it's good to have an anonymous report in a line and I can there's some from all of the things that you have gone through that will help of course I

[2:00:24] understand that you needed to have all this framework behind all this is in order to have an anonymous reporting to be effective but I was wondering if in the world somewhere else I don't know if in Greece we have an efficient and effective one but if it works an anonymous report in the line our system

[2:00:56] works to reveal corruption cases or not I mean by the anonymous reporting like anonymous Dropbox to media or anonymous reporting to institutions like prosecutors offices

[2:01:27] [Music] can go and report something that he came to his or hesitation or knows more than just to came to his attention but their standard that you needed to have a group afterwards or you know a wonderful correlation with the appropriate people to follow up with these things but through the anonymous reporting you can

[2:01:59] start an investigation you can you know if it goes to the right ears and there are it minds that then you can do but of course I understand that you needed to have a collaboration with different parts within a country - to investigate but I don't know if it worked if you something like that an anonymous line it has so my understanding is that it has

[2:02:33] worked certainly in the in the journalism sphere I can't speak as much for the investigatory sphere although I understand by word of mouth if that's the case one of the hard things about anonymizing technologies is that often a jerk both investigative journalists and investigators prosecutors or investigators will get a trench a pile of information and they need guidance for how to understand it what am I looking for it's 500 pages of document and so if it's anonymous but you don't

[2:03:03] have a continuing contact cause you don't know how to reach them yeah yes it can be very difficult but there are technological ways where you can enable this you can have systems that set this up and these are often I think the most effective at least I haven't seen formal studies on it but I know from interviewing a number of whistleblowers as well as journalists across 10 countries who deal with them that this is a very valuable system when you can actually set up but sometimes a little

[2:03:33] complex to use for the end user as well as for the organization to actually setup hello Kristen binder so I want to ask you something I mean - in conclusion - what'd you just say so I'm like are you implying that there must be a mutual understanding and a transparency between the two parties for

[2:04:06] for it to work I mean for whistleblowing to have a positive effect it has to be I don't think that the person receiving the information has to know the identity I mean some I think the new Italian whistleblower law that was passed the end of last year for example doesn't give particular protection for anonymity and other laws don't necessarily do so but know you don't have to be so for it to work the thing is you have to set up

[2:04:38] a system that will actually really provide the anonymity as opposed to pretending to provide it I'll give you an example a major media organization in Australia had a place where whistleblowers could come and drop information on their website about it and they ran this for several years it was not even encrypted so anyone who could get a good sniff the electronic traffic would be able to source the IP

[2:05:09] address the internet phone number of where you were coming from as well as see the information that was done I mean this is a basic security element that a large media organization should have done so the answer is you can do it anonymously and you can even have ongoing communication through a an anonymous ID that's given to the whistleblower for them to come back and answer questions and some commercial companies provide that for example outsourced fraud services for big

[2:05:39] companies but it has to be done properly technically - to be effective it's not what oh it's relevant it's very relevant it it matters to the extent that I think a lot of whistleblowers won't come forward unless they're anonymous because they don't have proper protection in law I mean whistleblowing protection is it's not one law or another law an article of a single law it's it's an ecosystem I mean the what the whistleblower sees is

[2:06:10] am I going to be protected in full or not not do I only have protection this little area or that little area but I'm gonna be exposed somewhere else and this is how the lawmakers must think about it but it's also how the company and government must think about it when they design the systems that interact with the whistleblowers completely I don't even know that there's anything I can add to that seriously I think that was it hyejeong one question probably your

[2:06:46] inspiration to all whistleblowers and thank you very much big contribution thank you Thank You Eddie um I have very carefully what the panel said about implementing new legislations to an extent I knew that they're going to protect that was blows I have heard anything about fake news and cyber bullying what do we do about it and how does it affect joint himself especially life and his environment around him

[2:13:39] worked for a man here in Athens who I greatly respected and we lost touch over the years but when I went to prison he wrote to me and and said the same thing that the deputy director had said I wish I had the guts to do it and we've rekindled our relationship and we've been friends ever since so the word that I've gotten from the CIA well it's twofold one of former CIA officers it's been incredible support

[2:14:12] shocking to me support of current CIA officers it's very quiet support they'll reach out or they'll reach out through a mutual friend to say good job but no one has ever said anything against me except at the very highest possible levels George Tenet listen I really wanted to like George Tenet because in a leonis you know he

[2:14:45] nodded by noise but he says that he's Greek right so I really wanted to like him George and I never liked each other so I frankly don't give a with George Tenet thinks about me but there were other people that you know I was disappointed in their reaction very high ranking people there's one other thing too when I caught up was a beta this was the the highest ranking counterterrorism capture in the history of the CIA so I

[2:15:17] got home and two months later I was passed over for promotion and I said I went to the deputy director of the counterterrorism center and I said what do I have to catch bin Laden to get promoted around here and he said look what they said about you in your promotion panel these were the exact words they said that you displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism and I said I caught the

[2:15:50] man and not just him I'm not allowed to say the number but I caught many dozens of al Qaeda fighters that night and they said no because you wouldn't be trained in the torture techniques I said they passed me over for that and he said yeah because you wouldn't play ball with them so I was angry and disappointed well I was also friendly with the number three officer in the CIA and we had lunch one day and I said I have to tell you I'm

[2:16:22] very angry oh what's wrong I said they passed me over for promotion I caught up as a beta they passed me over because I wouldn't learn these torture techniques that afternoon he promoted me that afternoon and he said don't worry we won't let something like this stand so there are actually good people in there another thing too and I left this out of the story just for the sake of time I do say it in in my first book when when they asked me if I wanted to be trained I asked them first just give me

[2:16:53] an hour because I thought maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm just not thinking this through so I went to see this man the number three and I said I need some advice they asked me if I want to be trained in these techniques I said this sounds like a torture program to me and I just want to make sure that I'm not crazy and he said oh it's a torture program he said they can call it anything they want enhanced interrogation whatever it's a torture program and torture is a

[2:17:25] slippery slope and you know how these people are he said somebody's going to go overboard and they're gonna kill a prisoner and when that happens there's going to be a congressional investigation and then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and somebody's gonna go to prison do you want to go to prison I said no I don't want to go to prison I was the only one who went to prison at the end of it but I went back downstairs and I said this is a torture program and I don't want to have anything to do with it and I knew

[2:17:58] then I mean this was 2002 I knew then that I was right and they were wrong and I had to just stick with my beliefs that is exactly right I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post four weeks ago about the appointment of Gena Haspel as the new CIA director Gena Haspel was the director of the torture program and she's going to be the new director of

[2:18:29] the CIA and I said in the Washington Post what kind of message does this send to the CIA work force what kind of message does it send to our friends and allies or even to our enemies I'll tell you the message the message is you can commit war crimes you can commit crimes against humanity you can thumb your nose at the oversight of Congress and you can still get promoted and indeed you can be promoted to director of the CIA so why fall of the law if you're gonna be

[2:19:01] promoted anyway what this tells our allies is when the State Department goes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in any country in the world and says listen we're the United States we're the toughest strongest country in the world you have to respect human rights because we're gonna write this Human Rights report and we're gonna go public with everything and 15 minutes later the CIA officer comes in and says don't listen to the State Department guy we want to open a secret prison in your country and we're gonna we're gonna get

[2:19:32] tough with these guys but don't tell the State Department and then they promote that woman to the director of the CIA and finally the message that it sends to our enemies is here is the most unpopular person we could possibly have found to be the director of the CIA now she is a recruitment tool for al-qaeda and Isis because now they're saying oh well the Americans want to fight look

[2:20:02] who they made the CIA director the woman who was torturing us the woman who threatened to kill our children the woman who tried to kill the wife or the uncle or bomb the village or through shoot a drone at the wedding or the funeral that's who they make the CIA director it makes people want to fight us when I was interrogating these al-qaeda fighters there was one theme through all of these dozens of interrogations and the theme was at that

[2:20:32] level the fighter level not the bin Laden Khalid Sheikh Mohammed those people at the lower level none of those people had any problem with the United States first of all they were not doing it for religion they did not know the prayers they did not read the Quran most of them couldn't even read anything let alone the Quran I told this one guy bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim alhamdulillah Melek Yuma if they don't know the prayers so they said I never had any problem with

[2:21:04] the United States until you bombed my village and you killed my sister and you killed my brother and you killed my uncle and you destroy our town then what am I gonna do I have to fight the United States well this appointment only makes things worse well that sounds like they're the right point and this and before I landed before you speak first of all China thanks to you now now I know what Phil Ochs meant like folks folks gonna sign you we're the cops of

[2:21:35] the world and just intelligence off forum last moment I have an Irish side to my mother's name was Givens and I know we should probably cite Greek philosophy here but I'm gonna go to Edmund Burke who's dead all it takes of evil to triumph is for one good man to do nothing here's one a good man who'd get something and evil did not try them in this case so you should be thanked for that and he also said as an Irish

[2:22:08] flasher there comes a point when forbearance is not a virtue I'm going to dip into my Jameson labor some more Irish philosophy yes ma'am on behalf of a Kuryakin family we love you very much you are hero we thank you for being you first of all okay god bless you and I

[2:22:41] hope to see you in I guess you'll be staying to sign a few bucks correct clean them out hello I'm extremely honored to be here to be standing as a book and as a person and presenting my our publishing family I think that all the panelists were mr. Bayliss who are

[2:23:11] amazing we have been hearing a lot people who didn't know they with blow what with blowing means I knew it of course before but I know and I'm very relieved that you didn't know what you had done and I would like to thank you and I would like to thank our friend Hal Cigna - who introduced me to you I didn't believe my eyes when I saw his email producing me through you and asking if we would like to publish the book and of

[2:23:42] course I didn't expect then that you would be here today we would be asking you to sign the books and a lot of people didn't believe it the invitation was for atrovent hey thank you you are all heroes I think networking is amazing and people who tried to to change the law to change the directives and you are working together I believe that you are here to work and not only to speak tonight so congratulations to all of you and

[2:24:13] thank you very much for being here thank you so wet from coming for coming from Australia my part will grew up in Sydney we went back a couple of years ago to a Greek community she hadn't been back for 46 years and now we have a third highest second or third home I know thank you so much for all with your presence well I got to thank you for what you did or for this panel and for this cause I saw the inimitable well thank you so much and

[2:24:46] please the books are for sale thank you so much and spread the word please okay and don't forget if you see something wrong and also would like to thank our our team - dorita's the a translator

[2:25:18] you