[00:00] John did serve two years in prison and was released in 2015 he is now a columnist and author and is an advocate for whistleblower rights prison reform and transparency in the government John thank you so much for coming on how are you doing doing well things thanks for having me absolutely so we do know we have some breaking news kind of involving jeremy hammond and he is now being called to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and I do want you to kind of weigh in with your
[00:30] thoughts in on this because this is obviously very problematic so if you could please go ahead and just address the you know potential complications that this adds to the case and your concerns sure I am very concerned actually not just for for Julian and the conduct of this grand jury but also for jeremy hammond for a number of reasons I think our viewers will recall that jeremy hammond is a is a former Anonymous hacker and whistleblower who revealed really the scope of private
[01:02] intelligence in in government one of the things about Jeremy that I've always respected so deeply is that he never ever ratted anybody out he was set up by the FBI the information is freely available out there for anybody who wants to to look for it but he never testified against anybody he was one of the the great champions of transparency in government as you might imagine the
[01:33] government came down on him like a ton of bricks and he was convicted of of computer hacking and sentenced to the maximum of 10 years in prison 10 years not in a minimum-security work camp where he was eligible to serve his sentence not even in a low-security prison but in a medium-security prison which is a real honest-to-god prison like you see on MSNBC at 11 o'clock on Saturday nights well Jeremy is nearing the end of his 10 years his behavior in
[02:04] prison has been impeccable remarkable he is due to be released early not just for good behavior but also because he's been an active participant in the our debt program that is the the the drug drug and alcohol program that's offered to to prisoners when you finish this intensive 12 or 18 month program they take a year off of your prison sentence he's halfway through it well the government decided
[02:36] that it needed Jeremy Hammond to testify before this grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia here in Alexandria the Eastern District is notorious in the federal system it's known as the espionage Court it's known as the espionage court for a couple of reasons number one most espionage cases are tried in the Eastern District because the Eastern District is home to the CIA to the FBI training center and to the Pentagon as well as home to hundreds
[03:06] literally hundreds of defense and intelligence community contractors second it's referred to as the espionage court because no national security defendant has ever won a case there so of course that's where they're that's where they've charged Julian Assange now far as I'm concerned they are also subject to see Papa is that correct and can you explain what that is yes CIPA is the classified information
[03:37] Protection Act SIF I was invoked in my case as well it is such an onerous law that a defendant literally cannot receive a fair trial once CIPA is invoked and let me tell you the modalities of CIPA - before I finish with Jeremy when CIPA is invoked the courtroom is cleared the only people allowed in the court are the judge the clerk the bailiff the jury the prosecutors and the defendant and his
[04:07] attorney that's it they actually take duct tape and seal the cracks around the doors and then they take plastic sheeting and seal the windows so that sounds don't accidentally make their way through the cracks or through the windows and classified information is not revealed now for the jury because the jury is not not cleared for classified information the government will insist that any information that is
[04:40] classified be instead referred to by a code so let's say if the the term NSA is considered to be classified it won't be called NSA in court it'll be called the swimming pool let's say and so how long have you worked at the swimming pool well everybody knows the swimming pool means NSA but they can't say it now imagine doing an entire trial that way where you have hundreds of words or or hundreds of phrases or ideas or programs
[05:10] that you're not allowed to utter what kind of a conclusion is the jury going to draw the jury is going to say oh my god if this information is so sensitive that even we aren't allowed to know what it is well this guy must be guilty so this is what Julian Assange is up against in the Eastern District well you have now two witnesses that we know of that have been called before the grand jury to testify that will not testify one of them is Chelsea Manning now Chelsea Manning has gone back to jail rather than testify
[05:44] Jeremy Hammond has a history of not testifying he will likely be held in contempt which could then be added consecutively to the remainder of his term plus one year for not fulfilling his our debt obligation the bottom line is this is onerous it's heavy nothing good can come of something like this and the fact of
[06:16] the matter is and I think this is really the most damaging is that this testimony is not necessarily in the first place you know Chelsea Manning's retort upon being subpoenaed was she had already had her trial her trial was on the record all they had to do was to get the transcript and enter the transcript into the official record in the julian assange grand jury that's it absolutely what they wanted
[06:47] was to catch her in a lie they were furious at her that her sentence was commuted at seven years she was supposed to be doing 35 and this would give them the excuse to add five years they're gonna try to do the same thing to Jeremy Hammond Oh without a doubt and the the Jeremy had him and support collective on Facebook immediately issued this stay on Twitter issued this statement it says hello everyone thank you for the overwhelming support already shown to Jeremy just as Jeremy had no intention
[07:19] of cooperating with the government during his original trial he has no intention of testifying before this or any other grand jury he may be called in front of and the what you said about Chelsea and in her reasoning may you have the transcripts from the last time I was there it they're trying to force her into a perjury trap they're trying to force Jeremy Hammond into a perjury trap and this is basically because especially in light of the the dnc
[07:49] lawsuit dismissal where they they have less of a leg to stand on against Julian Assange so they're going after anyone and everyone remotely connected to him as a means of lashing hangout that's absolutely correct and you know I gotta say something too about about Chelsea Manning Chelsea Manning looks like uh looks like a small wave right she's one of the toughest human beings I've ever encountered in my life
[08:21] you know how hard prison is he now how hard it is to be in solitary confinement it's the United Nations has declared it a form of torture no yet she chose to go back rather than twofold there was an easy way out of this and that was to go in front of that grand jury and to answer every question with the words I don't recall but she didn't do that she stood up and she told them I'm not gonna let you push me around and Jeremy
[08:51] Hammond is doing the same thing I think that's something to be proud of it's something to emulate and something to respect I don't you need to note with that too as it ties back into the whole like original theme of the cyberpunk books which is you can't use force to solve the math problem of encryption because a lot of this probably has to do with the fact that they don't have all of this information so they don't they're not able to get it without having these people actually testify or put themselves into perjury traps to then have to to almost lie their way out
[09:23] of that situation to regain some freedom so it's the simple fact that they don't have all of the information they need to do this prosecution and that's why they're trying so hard to get other people involved I think you're probably right you know in most cases the government just can't make a case without having the leverage to squeeze other witnesses you know they just don't have all of the information there and then you know you have this idea hanging over them that it's not even an idea I think it's a fact that Julian Assange is
[09:55] a journalist who is practicing journalism he's been awarded journalism awards and so it's a slippery slope right over the First Amendment if you're gonna try to take down a working journalist um they need the help of people like Chelsea Manning and and Jeremy Hammond to try to prove that Julian Assange is not a journalist and they're not get it from those two and interestingly to John is that Julian status as a journalist actually has no weight in his case because the US
[10:26] government doesn't even make a distinction between who is and who is not a journalist it's not like a doctor or a lawyer where there's a government licensure for that so it's so interesting and it really shows the arrogance on behalf of the US government and it shows the cowardice on behalf of the major news networks and major news print outlets as well you're absolutely right the Supreme Court has never ruled on who is a journalist and who is not a journalist there are certainly state court decisions especially in New York
[10:58] that have identified for example bloggers as legitimate journalists but you're right it's important to note that there is no government-wide standard this has not been adjudicated in the federal system I think the Chelsea Manning's actions and now Jeremy Hammonds actions to stand up this grand jury really do show also the entirety of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and the respect that these people that whether they are sources or not or somehow tight the WikiLeaks have
[11:30] for what WikiLeaks stands for and what Julian Assange builds I think our media is spending too much time smearing him and trying to do a character assassination and not really tying the two together that shows how people are standing up for him I think that's exactly right and you know I just wish that we had a way of conveying that to Julian because by by all accounts he's really not getting news he really doesn't know where he stands he'll get the occasional visitor recently John
[12:01] Pilger for example and the occasional letter but I think he really doesn't fully appreciate the support that he has out here so this is sort of I don't know if you could maybe answer this but I think this will be just very telling and I kind of think I know what your answer may be but what is your perspective on the CIA in general and do you think that they are or it is a source for a force for good or bad oh no I don't think it's
[12:32] been a force for good in many many years if if it ever was you know I'm on the record on this I don't think that there ought to be a CIA I don't think that in a perfect world there would be a CIA certainly there are other organizations in government that can do what the CIA is supposed to be doing and that is providing analysis to policymakers to make the best informed foreign policy decisions although that's always been a failure but certainly the
[13:04] State Department can do the analysis and the Defense Department can do the collection and NSA can do the technical stuff there doesn't need to be a CIA there was a there was a brief period and it sound a little naive but I actually believe it there was a brief period during the administration where there was a there was a presidential directive to respect human rights I was at the CIA at the time I had been there for several years and the CIA went through something called a column C ull where the White
[13:37] House said if there are any sources that recruited sources on the CIA payroll who have human rights problems in their backgrounds they have to be fired with that we won't work with people who have human rights abuses in their pasts and easily a third of the CIA sources were were fired they were let go and I remember not believing it at the time and then realizing later that no this was actually serious and the Clinton
[14:08] people were serious about human rights and it was applauded by Jimmy Carter at the time then September 11th happened and everything went right out the window you know in my mind September 11th happened you know day before yesterday it's amazing to me to think that 18 years have passed next week and so you know you have to come to the conclusion that we're never gonna have our September 10th country back never it's changed the worse it's never going back
[14:39] and that's something I think we ought to all be ashamed of certainly not within the duopoly that we have offering is ostensibly the public relations firm for an oligarchy no no we don't we're not going to unring that Bell you know I challenged I challenged a democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee about two years ago I ran into him and I ran to him in the green room at Fox News and I said
[15:11] hey senator thanks for all your help right sarcasm very defensive and he said look it takes all of my energy just to not lose my security clearance okay well that's exactly what the problem is you yeah because instead of being the oversight committees which is what they're supposed to be right this is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the house permanent Select Committee on Intelligence they're not oversight
[15:41] committees they're cheating committees and it doesn't matter who the chairman is and whether the chairman is a Democrat or a Republican I look at it this way when we started this torture program in the first place it was Democrats heading those two committees when we approved budgets for a secret prison system or for international kidnapping operations called renditions it was Democrats running those committees there there's a reason why instead of of the titles Chairman and
[16:12] ranking member those committees use the terms chairman and vice-chairman and it's because they're the same there's no ideological difference between them as a fascinating point it's it's something that's so often overlooked especially when there's an election season and so many different distractions that can be thrown at us and I think that it bears repeating often and I'm glad you challenged a
[16:44] sitting member of Congress I think more people should do that either through phone calls or emails or if you happen to run into but it just it it underscores the need for a free press when people are walking around thinking that there's an ideological or fundamental difference between the ars Andy's on the Senate Intel committee and there isn't and then you run into the problem of let's use as an example the Washington Post which is owned by Jeff
[17:15] Bezos the founder of Amazon the richest man in the world and the guy who just got a four hundred million dollar contract with the CIA to provide cloud services so wait a minute is he is he a proprietor of an independent news outlet or is he in the pay of the CIA because you can't be both right well I have you read the book Fink's know about it's the
[17:45] the history of CIA influence and intelligence agency influence and journalism from like project chaos on but there's a in an ID you probably can speak better this to me but there's such a a a collegial relationship between influencers and media and influencers in the intelligence community when it should be the job of journalists jus you
[18:17] don't never be at the same dinner party as these guys for one but to shine a light on what they're doing not share a drink or go on a retreat together yeah and that's not gonna happen you know when you've got reporters for NBC News for example sending drafts of their articles to the CIA's Office of Public Affairs before they send them to their own editors for clearance and comment you know that you have a problem you have a problem when the CIA tells
[18:47] journalists you're not gonna write that story and if you do we'll never cooperate with you again you know unless you're Jason Liebman who has the balls to stand up to people like that you're gonna end up caving and that's why that's why we get only puff pieces about the CIA and what great heroes they are well in its it's bled into our cinema and our television since its inception but was talking about this with a guest on my show today the the military or
[19:21] intelligence community influence in terms of like how movies are scripted and it's not three guys sitting around going oh no you've got to change the shot of that Abrams tank because there's some specs back there that we don't want to get out it's I'm sorry this is gonna have to be removed from the script absolutely true absolutely true Joe Weisberg a former colleague of mine in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center resigned to move to Hollywood and find his fortune and he became the creator
[19:51] and runner for the show the Americans Joe submitted every single script the CIA's publications Review Board for clearance and every single script came back with redactions and we're talking about fiction fiction that was set in the 1970s 1980s and they're still redacting that stuff is just that's it's mind-boggling it really is the the links that the links that people will go to to
[20:23] prevent us from learning about reclaim Abul history not even you know history from hundreds or thousands of years ago but the history that we were you know alive for just recently born after it's all reclaim about history but we have to hear in an independent media land we not only counteract the rewriting of recent history but we have to counter the rewriting of real time by these guys you know unless you're one of the swells if you're one of the in-crowd then you're going to be okay like four zero dark
[20:54] thirty right Catholic Kathryn Bigelow and the writer his name escapes me right now Mark Boal Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal went to CIA headquarters as honored guests as VIPs they were given a bin Laden compound mark ball was invited to a speech by director Leon Panetta in the CIA's auditorium the bubble where where Panetta revealed the name of the SEAL
[21:25] Team six operative that killed bin Laden multiple crimes were committed right but nobody was ever prosecuted or even investigated because zero dark thirty perpetuated the lie that the torture program led to the to the killing of Osama bin Laden and so long as these Hollywood muckety-mucks do the CIA's bidding they basically have free reign over the place so I think it's fair to say to though that the CIA has definitely infiltrated so much of our
[21:57] our life in our world they've infiltrated our academic institutions and they have you know obviously infiltrated our you know political structures and that's sort of thing now I know that you were you mentioned 9/11 before earlier in the discussion and that was a pivotal moment for you in your career now many people do speculate the truth of the official narrative that was you know disseminated to the public on that day is there a legitimate reason for
[22:29] people to perhaps question the validity of that narrative that's a tough one I'm not a 9/11 truther I was in the building that day I was I was working on those issues in the lead-up to 9/11 we knew an attack was coming we didn't know where we didn't know when we knew it was in the offing so I don't believe that it was the Saudi royal family the Bush family the Jews the space aliens I don't believe any of
[23:02] that stuff but I think the government has done an absolutely horrible job of explaining or really failing to explain for example why building seven went down there are a lot of unanswered questions that came even out of the official account and I think that the government's response has been just to remain silent all these years and hope that these questions just go away and instead what it's done is to weaken the official narrative to cause more and more Americans to question the
[23:34] government and the investigation of 9/11 and to make the situation worse so yeah I think the government owes the American people an explanation John I know you don't have much time left I I wanted to touch on an article you wrote recently in consortium news about the need for a Russian scalp out of this this whole two-and-a-half year complete [ __ ] show but if you want to kind of
[24:05] give us the rundown of that before you have to split please door oh sure I wrote a piece in consortium news about Marie abou Tina she is the she is the Russian grad student from American University who is now in a federal prison for failing to fill out a form let me correct myself for conspiring to fail to fill out a form literally so this was a prosecution under the fara Act the the foreign agent Registration Act and it's a 1938 law that essentially
[24:39] covers lobbyists and lobbying for foreign governments if you take money to act in Washington on behalf of a foreign government you have to go to the fara website and fill it out it takes five minutes you put your name you put the name of the country that you're representing and how much money they're paying you and I used as an example myself in this article 11 years ago the government of Abu Dhabi gave me a few thousand bucks to write for op eds in support of doing business in Abu Dhabi I
[25:10] filled out the form I said the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce gave me two grand to write these articles I wrote him I was done so that's all you do is you fill out a form well the government decided early on that Maria butanol was a Russian spy they accused her in the press repeatedly of being a Russian spy but they never accused her in court of being a Russian spy they just leaked it to the press let the court of public opinion take over they also ran an operation against
[25:42] her there was a guy named Steve burn it was it Steve burn what was his first name Patrick Byrne got it guy named Patrick Byrne he was the founder and CEO of overstock.com and and Patrick Byrne patriotic guy wants to help his country do the right thing it turns out he had been an FBI source on what we don't know but the FBI approached him and said hey we want you to get close to this
[26:13] this Russian grad student Maria booty naw we think she's a spy so he gets close to her and he reports back after several months she's not a spy she's just a grad student they said not good enough we need evidence that she's a spy we want you to have sex with her so he goes back reestablishes this relationship it becomes romantic he has sex with her at the direction of the FBI and then goes back and says she's really not a spy she's just a grad student well
[26:43] that didn't fit their narrative and then he felt guilty for what he did later on he went public when I say later on I mean two weeks ago he went public but what they did in time to ruin her was they leaked to the press that she had been trading sex for access to make sure I depend like Mitch McConnell and a bunch of other people do her like whoa was she was she having an affair with this guy she happened to be in the same ballroom with Mitch McConnell and 2,500
[27:14] other people at some reception at some point and so all this nonsense that they leaked at her that they leaked about her was either made-up or embellished to make it look like she was some kind of an espionage mastermind again she wasn't and when push came to shove not only did they have to withdraw the the accusation that she had traded sex for access the sex was with burn and it was at the FBI's insistence it wasn't her trading
[27:45] it they apologized for that but they never charged her with any crimes related to espionage or to spine they didn't even charge her for not registering they charged her with conspiring to not register now the federal guidelines for this so-called crime are zero to six months in in prison first time offenders get the zero she got triple the maximum they gave her
[28:17] 18 months in a woman's prison just to make an example just to have a scalp I say this all the time remember this is how these morons get promoted right you didn't get promoted by bringing charges against somebody and then losing and so they made her an example that's just and and you close that article with with with the quote that about your own case and you've told this story on my show before but for
[28:48] for the people that are watching you you got told by your defense attorney yeah your problem is you think this is about justice it's not about justice it's about mitigating damage yeah I was charged with five felonies I was facing 45 years in prison I hadn't committed espionage and they knew it but I was charged with three counts of espionage so they offered me 30 month deal I do 23
[29:19] or I could roll the dice knowing that the federal government wins ninety eight point two percent of its cases according to ProPublica do I roll those dice I had five kids you know and at the end of the day when when it was time to fish or cut bait you know best and final offer actually turned it down and I said once I get before a jury they're gonna realize how ridiculous this isn't I'm gonna be acquitted and that's when my attorney told me you know what your problem is you think this is about
[29:50] justice and it's not about justice it's about mitigating damage espionage I'm sorry the espionage charges I know they were eventually dropped correct that makes no sense to me because you essentially were giving information to a media entity not a foreign government in it as far as I'm concerned with espionage you have to actually leak the information to an adversarial government that's what my attorneys argued as well and my judge set a precedent in my case by saying that the Espionage Act should
[30:20] be read more broadly that a person should be guilty of espionage if he or she provides national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it never mind the fact that it is illegal in this country to classify a crime you are not allowed to classify information for the purpose of covering up a crime or preventing embarrassment and torture was a crime John Kerry aku any last thoughts statements that you want to make before
[30:51] you do head out anything you want to say about Julian Assange yeah I do thank you you know we got we've got to keep in the very front of our minds that this is all about Julian Sanj Julian is in for the fight of his life we thought that the last seven years were difficult being holed up in that in that Embassy where he got no exposure to direct sunlight no decent food no decent medical care it's worse now so we've got to pull together we have to remain firm and tough and United
[31:21] and we have to watch out for him because there's nobody else to do it John thank you so much for coming on and you are welcome back at any time we really appreciate your time so much it's a pleasure good to see all of you good to see you too thank you thank you