http://news.linktv.org Link TV News Videos (Filtered by topics: WikiLeaks) en-us Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:43:00 -0700 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-march-23-2013?start=681 A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the US-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. We play extended excerpts of "James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq," which exposes the role the retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played in training Iraqi police commando units. "We spent maybe six months trying to track down young American soldiers who served in Samarra," says the film's executive producer, Maggie O'Kane, who notes the investigation was sparked by memos found in the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks. "But many were too frightened because of what happened to Bradley Manning." A Pentagon spokesman told The Guardian it had seen the reports and is looking into the situation. "As you know, the issue surrounding accusation of abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees is a complex one that is full of history and emotion," said Col. Jack Miller. "It will take time to work a thorough response." <br /> Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:43:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-march-23-2013 Maggie O'Kane, WikiLeaks, 2003 invasion of Iraq, Barack Obama, David Petraeus, Iraq War documents leak, Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Bradley Manning, Israeli settlement A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the US-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. We play extended excerpts of "James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq," which exposes the role the retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played in training Iraqi police commando units. "We spent maybe six months trying to track down young American soldiers who served in Samarra," says the film's executive producer, Maggie O'Kane, who notes the investigation was sparked by memos found in the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks. "But many were too frightened because of what happened to Bradley Manning." A Pentagon spokesman told The Guardian it had seen the reports and is looking into the situation. "As you know, the issue surrounding accusation of abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees is a complex one that is full of history and emotion," said Col. Jack Miller. "It will take time to work a thorough response." This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. As we continue to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, we turn today to a shocking new report by The Guardian newspaper and BBC Arabic detailing how the United States armed and trained Iraqi police commando units that ran torture centers and death squads. It's a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed involvement in Latin America to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. In a moment, we'll be joined by one of the chief reporters behind the investigation, but first I want to play an excerpt of the documentary that accompanies their report. First to fight for the right and to build the nation's might, and the Army goes rolling along. This is one of the great untold stories of the Iraq War, how just over a year after the invasion, the United States funded a sectarian police commando force that set up a network of torture centers to fight the insurgency. It was a decision that helped fuel a sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni that ripped the country apart. At its height, it was claiming 3,000 victims a month. This is also the story of James Steele, the veteran of America's dirty war in El Salvador. He was in charge of the U.S. advisers who trained notorious Salvadoran paramilitary units to fight left-wing guerrillas. In the course of that civil war, 75,000 people died, and over a million people became refugees. Steele was chosen by the Bush administration to work with General David Petraeus to organize these paramilitary police commandos. This is the only known Iraqi video footage of Steele, a shadowy figure, always in the background, observing, evaluating. The man on his left is his collaborator, Colonel James Coffman. He reported directly to General David Petraeus, who funded this police commando force from a multibillion-dollar fund. The thousands of commandos that Steele let loose came to be mostly made up of Shia militias, like the Badr Brigades, hungry to take revenge on the Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein. Steele oversaw the commandos, mostly made up of militias. They were torturing detainees for information on the insurgency. He hears the scream of the other guy who's being tortured, you know, as we speak. There's the blood stains on the corner of the desk in front of him. The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture—the ugliest sorts of torture I've ever seen. The U.S. was desperate for information on the insurgency. And Steele's expertise was turning that information obtained from thousands of detainees into actionable intelligence. Colonel Steele is one of the few people who understands how to conduct intelligence-driven operations against operational cells of an insurgency or terrorist organization. The Iraqi leader of these feared commandos was Adnan Thabit. In the city of Samarra, his commandos and their American advisers turned the main library into a detention center, where torture was routine occurrence. An excerpt from the Guardian/BBC Arabic documentary Searching for Steele. The investigation into the U.S.-backed commando units was sparked by memos found in the Iraq War logs leaked by Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. Joining us now in London from BBC headquarters is Maggie O'Kane. She's multimedia editor and director of investigations at The Guardian newspaper and executive producer of the new documentary, longtime reporter who's been named British journalist of the year and foreign correspondent of the year. Maggie, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about why you undertook this documentary, this investigation. Well, I think when the WikiLeaks documents came out in November 2011, I had a sense, and the team that I work with who have spent a lot of time covering the war in Iraq, that there was a deeper story here. And one of the things that made us very interested was there was a reference to a thing called "Frago 242," which was Fragmentary Order 242, which was a U.S. military order instructing U.S. soldiers to ignore Iraq-on-Iraqi torture. Now, this incidence, this Frago 242, came up over a thousand times in the documents as we looked at it, and we wondered why was this order issued and what was the story behind it. And there was also references in the WikiLeaks to a General Adnan Thabit, who was visiting the American embassy. So, it was a sense that there was a deeper story to tell here and that the WikiLeaks documents, because they were the actual documents and what the State Department was sending back to Washington about what was going on, that this was a real treasure trove that we should explore, rather than just become excited about the means of these documents being delivered. Let's talk about Jim Steele's time in Latin America, specifically El Salvador, and go back to a clip of Searching for Steele. Vietnam, the conflict in which over 58,000 U.S. soldiers died, is where James Steele was first introduced to counterinsurgency as an alternative way of combating a guerrilla uprising. Steele served in the Vietnam War in the Blackhorse Regiment from 1968 to 1969. He was described by General George Patton Jr. as the best troop commander in his regiment. But if Vietnam shaped his formative military career, it was in the war against left-wing insurgents in El Salvador that James Steele secured his reputation as the counterinsurgency specialist. Steele arrived in El Salvador in 1984 as the leader of the U.S. MilGroup, a group of U.S. military advisers to the El Salvadoran army. Todd Greentree got to know James Steele when he was working in the U.S. embassy in El Salvador at the time. Colonel Steele, as the MilGroup commander, was in charge of all of the special forces teams, the training teams that were out at the head—the brigade headquarters. The U.S. was trying to defeat a guerrilla insurgency, and American experts trained the Salvadoran security forces in the dark arts of counterinsurgency. Some of these Salvadoran paramilitary units were effectively death squads. Celerino Castillo was a U.S. drug enforcement agent who was involved in training these paramilitaries. He was widely acknowledged for his efforts. Castillo met James Steele in Salvador. A very military type, very disciplined. His decorations, medals and stuff that was given to him by the U.S. military and the Salvadoran military, were surrounding his office. So, I was very impressed with Colonel Steele. Dr. George Vickers got to know and like James Steele when he visited Salvador to write a Ph.D. thesis on U.S. military strategy in Central America. DR. GEORGE VICKERS: He was totally committed to defeating the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador. He used to discuss how he traveled around to the military bases where U.S. trainers were based. He talked about the importance of building human intelligence information as opposed to just technical information. I don't think he had any hesitations about obtaining information by very rough forms that were being carried out by the Salvadoran armed forces under the eyes of U.S. military trainers. Steele was the chief American counterinsurgency expert on the ground in El Salvador, a figure of enormous authority to the El Salvadoran military. He was the MilGroup commander in El Salvador. Nothing moves without his authority. And their objective was to eradicate the guerrilla movement. It's very well written, through history, that there were major massacres being conducted. We put these allegations to retired Colonel Steele and have received no reply. By the end of the civil war, at least 75,000 Salvadoran civilians had died, and one million refugees had fled the country. The Salvadoran military halted the advance of the guerrillas, leading some in Washington to believe the U.S. advisory role was a success, so much so that even David Petraeus, then an ambitious 33-year-old major, visited El Salvador to study this counterinsurgency campaign. The young Petraeus even reportedly stayed in Steele's house while there. The BBC Arabic/Guardian investigation called Searching for Steele. I wanted to turn right now, in January 2005, Newsweek magazine reporting the Pentagon considering using what it described as the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Shortly after the article's publication, investigative journalist Allan Nairn appeared on Democracy Now! His 1984 article in The Progressive magazine, titled "Behind the Death Squads," exposed the CIA's backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. ALLAN NAIRN: In El Salvador, and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General "Chele" Medrano, who was on the CIA payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said they targeted people who speak—and these are his words—"against Yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do? When they find them, they kill them." Actually, they didn't always kill them. Often they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army, and they tortured them for days. One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, René Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters, where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture. Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture. He said—these are his words: "You put wires on the prisoner's vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoner's teeth, on the penis, in the vagina. The prisoners feel it more if their feet are in the water, and they're seated on iron, so the blow is stronger. … When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade." These are the names of the Salvadoran death squads. I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran national police, the intelligence archives, and you could see they had files marked "union," "student," "religious." They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries. These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the CIA. The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development. ... Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the '70s. And the majority of these were targeted by these death-squad-type forces. So, one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed. These were not armed guerrillas. They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon, according to Newsweek, is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians. That was investigative journalist Allan Nairn. His 1984 article in The Progressive magazine was called "Behind the Death Squads." It exposed the CIA's backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Maggie O'Kane, before we go to break and then move into the Iraq part of this story, flesh out more for us Colonel James Steele, the bridge between Salvador and Iraq. Well, one of the things that just strikes me, listening to that, is the sort of extraordinary parallels that exist between Salvador and Iraq. One of the interesting things in the WikiLeaks documents is that General Adnan Thabit, who ran the special police commandos that were carrying out the torture, used the phrase "to fight terror with terror," which is exactly the same phrase that was used by General Montana phon. in El Salvador when they were operating what was called the "platforms," which were basically the torture and interrogation centers where the American advisers were present. And what you have seen is an almost exact parallel between the platforms in El Salvador, which were the regional torture centers, and the platforms in Iraq, which operated in the same way, which was bringing in hundreds of mostly Sunni men and boys and torturing them for information. Now, in between the Salvador operation, we find that James Steele was involved in Iran-Contra, was one of six key people, along with Oliver North, that was funneling arms to the Ilopango air base to Nicaragua, to the Contras there. He then went on and was appointed by Dick Cheney to go to Panama to set up the police force there after the overthrow of Noriega. And between that, he goes in and out of the energy business. He's employed by Enron. He works for various private military companies. And then he seems to be called back in at periods of crisis or at periods where they need his experience. So, in 2004, when the insurgency was gaining strength in Iraq, there is a call from Steele—to Steele directly from Donald Rumsfeld that he is to go to Iraq and to get involved in the training of the special police commandos. And this, we now understand, was to go to Iraq and set up a similar platform operation, which would involve regional torture centers, to get information on the insurgents. We're speaking with Maggie O'Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian. She's speaking to us from London, voted best foreign correspondent of the year, as well as British journalist of the year. When we come back, we go to the excerpt of Searching for Steele in Iraq. Stay with us. [break] As we turn back to the documentary Searching for Steele, we turn to the city of Samarra, where the U.S.-backed Iraqi special commandos took over the city's library and turned it into an interrogation center. This is another excerpt of the film. Samarra was the first place that the connection between James Steele and the activities of the police commandos was made known to the outside world. New York Times journalist Peter Maass convinced General Petraeus to allow him and photographer Gilles Peress to visit the commandos in Samarra. Their host was James Steele. What I heard is prisoners screaming all night long, you know, at which point you have the young U.S. captain telling his soldiers, "Don't come near this thing." Gilles Peress' stark black-and-white photographs capture how the commandos worked in Samarra. James Steele crops up in these photographs repeatedly. I was staying at the base in Samarra, an American base, and I overheard soldiers, American soldiers at this base, talking about having watched prisoners be kind of strung up like animals after a hunt over a bar, having watched prisoners be actually tortured. Adnan Thabit and the American military made the joint decision to set up the commando headquarters and interrogation center in the city's main library. We spoke to two men from Samarra who were imprisoned in the library. Still fearful, they asked us to conceal their identities. TORTURE SURVIVOR 1: [translated] We would be blindfolded and handcuffed behind our backs. Then they would beat us with shovels and pipes. We'd be tied to a spit, or we'd be hung from the ceiling by our hands, and our shoulders would be dislocated. TORTURE SURVIVOR 2: [translated] They electrocuted me. They hung me from the ceiling. They were pulling at my ears with pliers, stamping on my head, asking me about my wife, saying they would bring her here. The interrogation center was the only place in the kind of mini Green Zone in Samarra that I was not allowed to visit. However, one day, Jim Steele said to me, "Hey, they just captured a Saudi jihadi. Would you like to interview him?" Was Steele completely together to bring us into the library? Maybe not. Maass and Peress were about to get an unprecedented glimpse into this clandestine world. We kind of walk into the entrance area, and the first thing that I see is one of the Iraqi guards beating up one of the Iraqi prisoners. And then I'm taken not into the main area, kind of the main hall, although out the corner of my eye I could see there were a lot of prisoners in there with their hands tied behind their backs. I was taken to a side office where the Saudi was brought in, and there was actually blood dripping down the side of a desk in this office. We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele, and I'm looking around. I see blood everywhere, you know. And while this interview was going on, me and the Saudi, with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams. There was somebody shouting, "Allah! Allah! Allah!" But it wasn't, you know, kind of religious ecstasy or something like that; these were screams of pain and terror. We asked General Adnan why he thought the prisoners were screaming. Maybe sometimes when officers visit prisons, the prisoners do start shouting. They're a bit like whirling dervishes. They love to scream, "Allah! Allah!" They were so loud, and they were so disturbing, that Steele left the room to go find out, you know, what was going on, because it was breaking up our interview. And while he was gone, the screaming stopped, and then he came back into the room, and the interview continued. Although James Steele did not respond to our request for an interview about his activities in Samarra, he did tell The New York Times that he opposes human rights abuses. One American soldier in Samarra was deeply affected by what he saw. At the time, I just felt like everybody knew and nobody cared that there was torture going on. Army medic Neil Smith remembers just how frightened Iraqi civilians in Samarra were of the special police commandos. What was pretty widely known in our battalion, definitely in our platoon, was that they were pretty violent with their interrogations, that they would beat people, shock them with, you know, electrical shock, stab them. I don't know what all else—you know, sounds like pretty awful things. If you sent a guy there, he was going to get tortured and perhaps raped, or whatever, humiliated and brutalized by the special commandos in order whatever information they wanted. I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library's columns. And he was tied up with his legs above his head, tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten. Petraeus defended his record with the police commandos to PBS Frontline's Martin Smith. He says he was aware of individual militia members in the commandos, but not militia groups. I did not see militia groups in the special police during the time that I was there. Did you think about what you could have done differently, might have done differently, to have prevented the development of these militias that were effectively developing under your watch? Well, I, again, don't—I have not seen—you know, we kept hearing this all the time, Martin, that this or that. To find the absolute evidence of this has actually been quite difficult. But Jerry Burke, who was a senior adviser in police affairs to the Iraqi Interior Ministry says that Petraeus must have known that organized Shia militia were dominant in the police commandos. He had to have known. These things were discussed openly, whether it was at staff meetings or, you know, before or after various staff meetings in general conversation. Pretty much the whole world in Iraq knew that the police commandos were Badr Brigade. And he must have known about the death squad activities, and, again, it was common knowledge across Baghdad. Even Petraeus's own special adviser in the military chain of command, Colonel James Coffman, was, according to many witnesses, working side by side with James Steele in the detention centers where torture was taking place. Colonel Coffman declined to be interviewed by us. About General Petraeus's relationship with James Steele, the official speaking for the general said: "Steele was one of thousands of advisers to Iraqi units working in the area of the Iraqi police." Journalist Peter Maass, who interviewed Petraeus at the time, remembers the relationship being a lot closer than the Petraeus statement would indicate. It was very clear that they were very close to each other in terms of their command relationship and also in terms of their ideas and ideology about what needed to be done. Petraeus explicitly told me that he believed very, very strongly in the commandos, thought the commandos were successful, and wanted them to become bigger, stronger and even more prevalent in the fight against the insurgency. International humanitarian law imposes obligations on those engaged in armed conflict regarding the treatment of prisoners. Not only must prisoners not be abused, but those detaining prisoners also have an obligation to ensure respect, as well. It is not acceptable to turn a blind eye. It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. servicemember, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it. But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it. If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it. The publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of diplomatic cables show that by July 2005 the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was telling Washington about the abuse being committed by the commandos. We also learned that Adnan Thabit was a guest at the American embassy in Baghdad. He met the U.S. ambassador for counterterrorism and talked about his approach to policing. This is an extract from what he's reported to have said. CABLE EXTRACT: "Summary: Fight Terror with Terror. ... Major General Thabit, who created and commands the Special Police Forces, is a Sunni officer who served time in prison for attempting to overthrow the Saddam Regime. ... They expressed the view that it's necessary to fight terror with terror and that it is critical that their forces be respected and feared as this was what was required in Iraqi Society to command authority." We asked Ambassador Crumpton if he had been aware that Adnan Thabit's commandos were engaged in torturing detainees. AMB. HENRY CRUMPTON: Well, I assure you, if I knew there was torture going on at that time with the people I was talking to, I would have raised it and discussed it. You're implying that I didn't know that, and I resent that question, the way you phrased it, frankly. But there are indications that the U.S. government knew what the commandos were doing. CABLE EXTRACT: "...we remain troubled by the indications that at times units commanded by Thabit cross the line." Despite these concerns, Adnan Thabit remained officially in charge until the middle of 2006. He told us that the American officials he dealt with were aware of what his men were doing. Until I left, the Americans knew about everything I did. They knew what was going on in the interrogations, and they knew the detainees. And even some of the intelligence about the detainees came to us from them. They are lying. An excerpt from James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq , the BBC Arabic/Guardian investigation. We'll link to the complete film online. Our guest is the executive producer of the film, Maggie O'Kane, multimedia editor and director of investigations at The Guardian newspaper. We'll come back to her in a minute. [break] "Peace Train," by the British singer-songwriter Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens. In 2004, he was denied entry into the United States after mistakenly being placed on the Department of Homeland security watchlist. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Our guest is Maggie O'Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian, former foreign correspondent. Her past awards include British journalist of the year and foreign correspondent of the year. She is joining us from London. Maggie, I wanted to get your response to the Pentagon response. While the former Army Colonel Jim Steele and the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refused to talk to your newspaper, The Guardian, the Pentagon did issue a response after your report was published. Colonel Jack Miller, a Pentagon spokesman, told The Guardian, quote, "Obviously we have seen the reports and we are currently looking into the situation. As you know the issue surrounding accusation of abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees is a complex one that is full of history and emotion. It will take time to work a thorough response." Maggie O'Kane, your response to the Pentagon? Well, I mean, we're still waiting. And we know, unofficially, from sources within the Pentagon, that they're—to quote one high-ranking military officer, he said to us, "The difficulty is that those guys were wearing the same uniform that we're wearing now." So I think the Pentagon is in a very difficult position. And we await to hear what they've got to say. We have heard nothing from James Steele. We've heard nothing from Donald Rumsfeld. We also know that CENTCOM, immediately after the film was broadcast on BBC Arabic, set up a monitoring unit within CENTCOM to see what the response has been among the Arab population. We know also that there were public screenings of the film in Samarra, in which people came out onto a square to watch the film, which, in a sense, is a sort of acknowledgment of what happened to the male population of that time. But so far, the Pentagon has said nothing. I mean, one of the interesting things I find is that the interest in this in Europe, for example, is huge. I mean, 14 countries have—are showing the film over the next 10 days and have bought it. But actually, within the America mainstream television networks, there's been very little response, and also very little response from the American mainstream media. So I presume they're just going to try and ignore it. And except for what your program has done, and also Real TV, it seems to have been played down. So, you're saying that U.S. Central Command, they're monitoring reaction to this all over the world. And in the United States, the commercial networks, they did not option this film, this documentary, play it, especially at this time, on this 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Yeah, I mean, we have had very little response in the American mainstream media. It went out last night on ZDF in Germany, which is the German state channel. It went out on the Swedish state channel two nights ago. And it's going out in France tomorrow. So, one wonders, since this is about, you know, America's war in Iraq and the American special advisers, why is America not interested? A very important question. I wanted— Or why, indeed, does the Pentagon feel that they don't actually have to respond to these—to this investigation? Let me ask you about WikiLeaks, Maggie O'Kane. You spoke about this at the beginning of the broadcast, but the significance of the information, of the documents they released, as the foundation of this report and so many others? Well, Amy, it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the WikiLeaks document, because so many things are about deniability and distancing and not taking responsibility. And El Salvador is a classic example. You can push away with a distance, and you can put a layer of, you know, the local police forces in between your actions, and there's always been plausible deniability. What WikiLeaks gave us was a clear indication from the U.S. State Department that they knew what was—they knew what was going on. And it was that bedrock, and also the information from Frago 242 that officially there was an order to ignore torture, that, you know, give journalists like me and other investigative journalists the basis of something to work on, something that actually can't be denied, because it's there in black and white. And that is an extraordinarily valuable tool for an investigative journalism. And you wouldn't be seeing this film, we wouldn't be looking back at El Salvador, if it hadn't been for WikiLeaks. Maggie, I wanted to turn to another clip. The U.S.-backed police commandos are also accused of evolving into a Shia death squad targeting Sunnis. I want to return to your film. One man who survived Samarra and Nisoor Square says that the police commandos lied about the fate of some of his fellow detainees. TORTURE SURVIVOR 3: [translated] They started releasing some of the detainees. They were claiming that these detainees would return to their families. They were killing them and dumping their bodies on the streets of Baghdad. It became very obvious that this was criminal activity by the special commandos. They were eliminating their own opposition and terrorizing citizens from the Sunni community. We lost the support of a lot of Iraqi citizens who became very cynical and very anti-American. Even the ones who were friendly with us couldn't understand why we were allowing this to happen. Good afternoon, folks. Are you concerned over—and, in fact, is the United States looking into growing reports of uniformed deaths squads in Iraq perhaps assassinating and torturing hundreds of Sunnis? And if that's true, what would that say about stability in Iraq? I'm not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I have not seen reports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all. I'm not going to get into speculation like that. Well, sir, that's not a hypothetical, I don't believe. The Sunnis themselves are charging that hundreds have been assassinated, people shot in the head, found in alleys. What you're talking about are unverified, to my knowledge at least, unverified comments. I just don't have any data from the field that I could comment on in a specific way. But Donald Rumsfeld should have known about the death squad activities. James Steele had written to Rumsfeld six weeks earlier warning him that the police commandos, armed and financed by the U.S., were effectively a Shia militia engaged in death squad activities. MEMO TO DON RUMSFELD: "MEMO TO DON RUMSFELD “FROM JIM STEELE "...thugs like the commander of the Wolf Brigade who has been involved in death squad activities, extortion of detainees and a general pattern of corruption. ... Nearly all of the new recruits within the commandos are Shia. Many of them are Badr members." Maggie O'Kane, talk more about what you have found here. Well, I think what's very important to understand here is that there was a creation of the special police commandos, which began in 2004, and over the period of the next year, they developed into a force that was nearly 12,000 strong, which had been armed by the Americans, had been—was being advised by them, and included this network of torture platforms. Then you had another step, which was, in June 2005, you had a highly sectarian Shia minister taking over in the Ministry of the Interior. And basically this force now was handed over also to his control, and it began a full-scale war on the Sunni community, which involved large-scale death squad activity. Now, before this was—this was building up, Steele left in September 2004. Some of the other advisers stayed. And then, despite the warnings of many within the Iraqi political establishment, who said, "Do not hand this force over to the control of Jabr," it was allowed to happen. So, again, this brought the killing onto a new scale. Our information is that while Steele was organizing the platform of torture centers, there was not wide-scale death squad activity. That took place after 2005, when, effectively, the special police commandos were handed over to Jabr Solagh. And then hell broke out in Iraq. Through 2005 and 2006, there was a civil war, a sectarian civil war, in which as many as 3,000 bodies a month were turning up in the streets of Iraq. That's what—and that was precipitated and certainly aided by the formation of the special police commandos. A central figure in your investigation is a former Iraqi general who spoke out for the first time in your film about Army Colonel Jim Steele and the U.S.-backed torture program. General Muntadher al-Samari is a former general in the Iraqi army. After the invasion, he worked with the Americans to rebuild the police force. But Muntadher was very disturbed by the abuse and torture he witnessed being committed by the police commandos. He tried, on a number of occasions, to stop it. He has never spoken before about the part the U.S. played in running the special police commandos. The Ministry of Interior had 14 to 15 prisons. They were secret, never declared. But the American top brass and the Iraqi leadership knew all about these prisons, the things that went on there—drilling, murder, torture—the ugliest sorts of torture I've ever seen. General Muntadher alleges that James Steele had access to all of these prisons and that he visited one in Baghdad with him. Yes, that's James Steele. That's what he always used to wear: jeans and a leather jacket. I remember he always wore his gun here, on the right-hand side. An excerpt of the documentary Searching for Steele. Maggie O'Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian, talk more about the significance of what he said and also Steele's relationship with Petraeus, Maggie. Well, in terms of the relationship with Petraeus, the main link between Colonel Steele and General Petraeus was Colonel James Coffman, who was the direct link in the chain of command between Petraeus and special police commandos. Colonel Coffman was appointed as the special adviser to the special—to the police commandos, reporting directly to General Petraeus. He described himself in the Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, when he was interviewed, as General Petraeus's eyes and ears on the ground in Iraq. So, from our interviews with people who worked within the special police commandos who observed Steele and Coffman, one said to me, "Steele and Coffman were never apart. In the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centers, I never saw them separated. They came in separate cars every morning and left separately, but worked hand in hand." So there was clearly a close working relationship between Steele and Coffman, who was reporting to General Petraeus. But we understand that Steele was sent to Iraq by Donald Rumsfeld, and we understand that because Donald Rumsfeld actually writes to George Bush in September 2004 and tells him about sending James Steele to Iraq. What most surprised you by this investigation, Maggie, by what you found? I think the most surprising thing was the scale and the organization of the—of the torture, that it was sort of so well organized, that there were these platforms, that there were hundreds of people being lifted all of the time. And the other thing that surprised me about it is that somehow in the kind of fog of war, that we never, as journalists, never really seem to reach the—to report it in a way that people could really understand what was happening there. There were reports. It was called "The Way of the Commandos." There were reports that torture was going on, but somehow it never penetrated, or it was never sort of acknowledged that that's the way the war was being conducted. And I think one of the things, the great things, that I have learned from this is that we're very—we're very easy with words like "human intelligence," "counterinsurgency," and that we don't really understand that this is about systematic and brutal torture that has repercussions among the civilian population. And also that there was one man whose history goes back through so many of America's wars. And I think it's indicative of a very dysfunctional, brutal time, that I hope this film will be a legacy that actually says, if you want to go to war, this is what war means. It means 14-year-old boys being hung up and tortured. It means men being turned on spits. And that's called "counterinsurgency." So I just feel it's important that this information comes out, and I'm shocked, in a way, that we want to forget it. And as we wrap up, I wanted to turn to Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who has admitted to leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. I want to ask about the chilling effect his case has had among soldiers who may otherwise speak out against abuses. Let's go to just an excerpt of a leaked audio recording of Bradley Manning, first time we hear him speaking in his own words in custody. This is from his hearing last month. Listen very carefully. I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables, this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan. Bradley Manning says he released these documents to open up a debate. Very interesting, as he remains behind bars facing decades in prison. Maggie O'Kane, you were talking about the information that was released, on which you built your report, having so much difficulty getting into the United States corporate media, though you're getting it everywhere else all over the world. Yes, indeed. There hasn't been the response we expected in America. But I do want to go back to the point which I made before. Really, this would not be coming out, if it hadn't been for Bradley Manning. This information, the basic information, has been very key. And I'll tell you something else that's very, very chilling. We spent maybe six months trying to track down young American soldiers who served in Samarra. Many of them knew what was going on there. In the end, we found one guy, called Neil Smith, in Detroit, who was 21 when he was there, who spoke out. We have five seconds. He spoke out because, he said, "I'm a born-again—I'm born-again Christian." But many were too frightened because of what happened to Bradley Manning. http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-speaks-army-whistleblowers-court-testimony-leaked?start=0 A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower Bradley Manning delivered at his pre-trial hearing in military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." This is the first time Manning's voice has been heard publicly since he was arrested nearly three years ago. We air excerpts of his remarks, hearing Manning describe in his own voice the moment he decided to release the documents, and the outrage he felt at the "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq. <br /> Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:12:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-speaks-army-whistleblowers-court-testimony-leaked Bradley Manning, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, WikiLeaks, Afghanistan, Iraq, US Army, Afghanistan War, Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present, Military justice A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower Bradley Manning delivered at his pre-trial hearing in military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." This is the first time Manning's voice has been heard publicly since he was arrested nearly three years ago. We air excerpts of his remarks, hearing Manning describe in his own voice the moment he decided to release the documents, and the outrage he felt at the "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq. http://news.linktv.org/videos/is-whistleblowing-and-journalism-aiding-and-abetting-the-enemy?start=0 Military prosecutors have decided to bring the maximum charges against Manning after he admitted during a pre-trial hearing last week to the largest leak of state secrets in US history. In a bid to secure a reduced sentence, Manning acknowledged on the stand that he gave classified documents to WikiLeaks in order to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a debate about foreign policy." Manning pleaded guilty to reduced charges on 10 counts, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But instead of accepting that plea, military prosecutors announced Friday they will seek to imprison Manning for life without parole on charges that include aiding the enemy. Manning's court-martial is scheduled to begin in June. DNow! speaks with Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has long covered the case, about what this means for Manning, and its broader implications for whistleblowers and the journalists they often approach. <br /> Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:26:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/is-whistleblowing-and-journalism-aiding-and-abetting-the-enemy Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald, Life imprisonment, Plea, Classified information, Democracy Now! Military prosecutors have decided to bring the maximum charges against Manning after he admitted during a pre-trial hearing last week to the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history. In a bid to secure a reduced sentence, Manning acknowledged on the stand that he gave classified documents to WikiLeaks in order to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a debate about foreign policy." Manning pleaded guilty to reduced charges on 10 counts, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But instead of accepting that plea, military prosecutors announced Friday they will seek to imprison Manning for life without parole on charges that include aiding the enemy. Manning's court-martial is scheduled to begin in June. DNow! speaks with Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has long covered the case, about what this means for Manning, and its broader implications for whistleblowers and the journalists they often approach. http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-charge-in-wikileaks-case?start=0 Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking thousands of secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, has pleaded guilty to some of the lesser charges he faces at a military hearing in Washington DC. Washington Correspondent Matt Frei reports. Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:06:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-charge-in-wikileaks-case Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico (newspaper), Foreign policy of the United States, Military justice, Plea Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking thousands of secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, has pleaded guilty to some of the lesser charges he faces at a military hearing in Washington DC. Washington Correspondent Matt Frei reports. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-february-5-2013?start=2674 The Obama administration&rsquo;s internal legal justification for assassinating U.S. citizens without charge has been revealed for the first time. The Boy Scouts of America opened a three-day meeting on Monday in which the group&rsquo;s national board will consider lifting its controversial ban on openly gay members. A federal appeals court has ruled the government can continue to keep secret its efforts to pursue the private information of Internet users without a warrant. And a lawsuit challenging a law that gives the government the power to indefinitely detain US citizens is back in federal court this week. <br /> Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:19:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-february-5-2013 United States, American Civil Liberties Union, Barack Obama, Drone, Anwar al-Awlaki, Boy Scouts of America, Jacob Appelbaum, National Defense Authorization Act, Indefinite detention, Targeted killing A federal appeals court has ruled the government can continue to keep secret its efforts to pursue the private information of Internet users without a warrant as part of its probe into the WikiLeaks. The case involved three people connected to the whistleblowing website whose Twitter records were sought by the government, including computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir. The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the account holders, argued that the subpoena violated their privacy rights and they should know why the government wanted their information. A federal appeals court has ruled the government can continue to keep secret its efforts to pursue the private information of Internet users without a warrant as part of its probe into the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The case involved three people connected to WikiLeaks whose Twitter and email records were sought by the government, including computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir . The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the account holders, argued that the subpoena violated their privacy rights, and they should know why the government wanted their information. However, late last month, the court rejected a request to unseal all orders relating to the three individuals that may have been sent to companies other than Twitter. For more, we're joined by Jacob Appelbaum himself. He's a developer and advocate for the Tor Project system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. Jacob Appelbaum, welcome to Democracy Now! I'm glad we didn't have to subpoena you to get you here. Well, I imagine I would have to know about it in order to show up, so... Well, talk about this federal court ruling that came down two Fridays ago. Essentially, we—we lost, actually, quite some time ago about the data being revealed to the U.S. government—that is, metadata. And the government essentially argues that metadata is not the same as content, therefore they can issue an administrative subpoena, a so-called 2703(d) order, and this administrative subpoena has a much lower bar than, let's say, a search warrant. And it can also have a gag. In fact, most of them seem to have a gag. Twitter was able to unseal this so that we could begin to fight it. We lost. And it's quite sad. They received the data. But we appealed again about secrecy of docketing. That is to say that we believe that courts should have to keep accurate records of this type of an order and other orders like it. And we were hoping that we would be able to learn that there were other companies out there and that we would be able to challenge this fishing expedition. Explain what happened to you. Why did they get your account, all your information in Twitter? Well, I mean, many people from the government have said, during detainments and other times in which they have confronted me, that I should understand why this is happening. But the reality is that I don't understand why it's happening, in a legal sense—at least until now. Now the government argues that I should understand that this is the case, and it's this case because it's as secret as a grand jury proceeding. And there is, in fact, a WikiLeaks grand jury, where they have been pressuring people. In some cases, people have been threatened with, effectively, indefinite detention, if they don't comply, that, you know, they let people know there's really not— What does it mean to comply? Well, if they ask them a question, they'll either forcibly immunize them or they will—maybe they'll, you know, threaten them with just detaining them without really explaining what will happen. There's a lot of pressure coming from a lot of different angles. So, what the government is effectively saying with this ruling is that they want to have not just secret laws and secret interpretations, but no accountability. And this is something which I think is pretty scary, and I think we should have public laws, public interpretations and public accountability. And this is—what we see is more of the same. I mean, we see this with the targeted assassination, the indefinite detention in NDAA. And this is just the Internet version of that, where they've decided they don't even have to get a search warrant, and I have no right to resist it. So what do you think—what are the implications of this ruling for government surveillance, and what the limits are on government surveillance, if any? Well, I think in the United States the gloves are off. And when I was here with Bill Binney last, I think he pretty much explained that this is the case. The former NSA, National Security Agency— Yeah, I mean, the secret interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act seems to be that anything that the government wants is fair game without a warrant. And that's terrifying. And this seems to be the tip of the iceberg. You know, as we know from that video with the FBI woman that I met, she seemed to indicate that there was a national security letter. So I think these 2703(d) orders, they're important to be considered as the tip of an iceberg of an investigation, so there are probably other types of legal orders. And so, I think it's important to stress: Metadata in aggregate is content. If people are having trouble understanding you, metadata in aggregate is content. It's—yeah, absolutely. What that means is that if you look at one event, that I talk to you via email, in theory, that we talked is a piece of metadata. The content—that is, what I wrote in the email—that is, in theory, protected, and you need a search warrant for it. But if they know that I talk to you every single morning, that tells a story, maybe even, you know, a really important story. And maybe if they see that I talk to Dan or they see that I talk to other people, that also tells a story that is equal to content when it's viewed in an aggregate. And that's something that's quite terrifying, because the court doesn't seem to recognize that, nor do they recognize the location privacy issues with the Internet. And that is to say, they watch and see every place that I've been. They get this data, and then they have a tracking device, effectively. Now, in my case, I use the Tor network in order to protect my location anonymity needs, but most people don't, and they expect the rule of law to do that for them. So imagine their surprise when it doesn't. Well, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was awarded the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts in absentia this weekend. Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, fighting extradition to Sweden. In a ceremony at the Museum of Modern Art, artist and activist Yoko Ono paid tribute to Assange. YOKO ONO: This 2013 Courage Award for the Arts is presented to Julian Assange. With your courage, the truth was revealed to us—thank you—and gave us wisdom and power to heal the world. On behalf of the suffering world, I thank you. Yoko Ono Lennon. Thank you. That was Yoko Ono giving an award to Julian Assange in absentia. Jacob Appelbaum, could you comment— You were there. —on Assange's case? You were there. Yeah, I think Julian Assange is a—he's a hero. And, you know, he's a personal friend of mine, and I think that people should support him. And I believe that that award from Yoko Ono is quite an honor, and I'm really happy to see so many people supporting Julian. And I hope that the British government will grant him safe passage to Ecuador, as he is effectively a political prisoner in Her Majesty's surveillance state. In fact, at the Museum of Modern Art, the Ecuadorean foreign minister was also there to honor Julian Assange, as was Dan Ellsberg, who is sitting in our studio, as well. http://news.linktv.org/videos/assange-plans-wikileaks-party-aussie-senate-bid?start=0 Julian Assange has confirmed that he will seek a seat in Australia's Senate in elections this fall, running on a "WikiLeaks Party" ticket. Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy and WikiLeaks says a running mate will take his place if he wins but can't take his seat.<br /> Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:27:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/assange-plans-wikileaks-party-aussie-senate-bid Julian Assange, Australian Senate, WikiLeaks, Australia, Ecuador, London, Euronews Julian Assange has confirmed that he will seek a seat in Australia's Senate in elections this fall, running on a "WikiLeaks Party" ticket. Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy and WikiLeaks says a running mate will take his place if he wins but can't take his seat. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-january-14-2013?start=2167 Today Democracy Now! remembers the pioneering computer programmer and cyber activist Aaron Swartz, who took his own life Friday at the age of 26. As a teenager, Swartz helped develop RSS, revolutionizing how people use the Internet, going on to co-own Reddit, now one of the world's most popular sites. He was also a key architect of Creative Commons and an organizer of the grassroots movement to defeat the controversial House Internet censorship bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Swartz hanged himself just weeks before the start of a controversial trial. He was facing up to 35 years in prison for sneaking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading millions of articles provided by the subscription-based academic research service JSTOR. Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:44:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-january-14-2013 Aaron Swartz, Internet censorship, Stop Online Piracy Act , Protect IP act, Internet activism, Internet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, WikiLeaks, JSTOR Cyber activist and computer programmer Aaron Swartz took his life on Friday at the age of 26. We air an address of Swartz's from last May where he speaks about the battle to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA — a campaign he helped lead. "[SOPA] will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake: The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared," Swartz said. "Next time they might just win. Let's not let that happen." Professor Lessig, we want to end with the words of Aaron himself. And we're not going to go to our second break—I want to warn all our stations—because—in order to fit in this whole speech. This is a speech that Aaron Swartz gave, the cyber activist, computer programmer, who took his life on Friday, speaking last May about the battle to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. So, for me, it all started with a phone call. It was September—not last year, but the year before that, September 2010. And I got a phone call from my friend Peter. "Aaron," he said, "there's an amazing bill that you have to take a look at." "What is it?" I said. "It's called COICA, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeiting Act." "But, Peter," I said, "I don't care about copyright law. Maybe you're right. Maybe Hollywood is right. But either way, what's the big deal? I'm not going to waste my life fighting over a little issue like copyright. Healthcare, financial reform—those are the issues that I work on, not something obscure like copyright law." I could hear Peter grumbling in the background. "Look, I don't have time to argue with you," he said, "but it doesn't matter for right now, because this isn't a bill about copyright." "It's not?" "No," he said. "It's a bill about the freedom to connect." Now I was listening. Peter explained what you've all probably long since learned, that this bill would let the government devise a list of websites that Americans weren't allowed to visit. On the next day, I came up with lots of ways to try to explain this to people. I said it was a great firewall of America. I said it was an Internet black list. I said it was online censorship. But I think it's worth taking a step back, putting aside all the rhetoric and just thinking for a moment about how radical this bill really was. Sure, there are lots of times when the government makes rules about speech. If you slander a private figure, if you buy a television ad that lies to people, if you have a wild party that plays booming music all night, in all these cases, the government can come stop you. But this was something radically different. It wasn't the government went to people and asked them to take down particular material that was illegal; it shut down whole websites. Essentially, it stopped Americans from communicating entirely with certain groups. There's nothing really like it in U.S. law. If you play loud music all night, the government doesn't slap you with an order requiring you be mute for the next couple weeks. They don't say nobody can make any more noise inside your house. There's a specific complaint, which they ask you to specifically remedy, and then your life goes on. The closest example I could find was a case where the government was at war with an adult bookstore. The place kept selling pornography; the government kept getting the porn declared illegal. And then, frustrated, they decided to shut the whole bookstore down. But even that was eventually declared unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment. So, you might say, surely COICA would get declared unconstitutional, as well. But I knew that the Supreme Court had a blind spot around the First Amendment, more than anything else, more than slander or libel, more than pornography, more even than child pornography. Their blind spot was copyright. When it came to copyright, it was like the part of the justices' brains shut off, and they just totally forgot about the First Amendment. You got the sense that, deep down, they didn't even think the First Amendment applied when copyright was at issue, which means that if you did want to censor the Internet, if you wanted to come up with some way that the government could shut down access to particular websites, this bill might be the only way to do it. If it was about pornography, it probably would get overturned by courts, just like the adult bookstore case. But if you claimed it was about copyright, it might just sneak through. And that was especially terrifying, because, as you know, because copyright is everywhere. If you want to shut down WikiLeaks, it's a bit of a stretch to claim that you're doing it because they have too much pornography, but it's not hard at all to claim that WikiLeaks is violating copyright, because everything is copyrighted. This speech, you know, the thing I'm giving right now, these words are copyrighted. And it's so easy to accidentally copy something, so easy, in fact, that the leading Republican supporter of COICA, Orrin Hatch, had illegally copied a bunch of code into his own Senate website. So if even Orrin Hatch's Senate website was found to be violating copyright law, what's the chance that they wouldn't find something they could pin on any of us? There's a battle going on right now, a battle to define everything that happens on the Internet in terms of traditional things that the law understands. Is sharing a video on BitTorrent like shoplifting from a movie store? Or is it like loaning a videotape to a friend? Is reloading a webpage over and over again like a peaceful virtual sit-in or a violent smashing of shop windows? Is the freedom to connect like freedom of speech or like the freedom to murder? This bill would be a huge, potentially permanent, loss. If we lost the ability to communicate with each other over the Internet, it would be a change to the Bill of Rights. The freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution, the freedoms our country had been built on, would be suddenly deleted. New technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out fundamental rights we had always taken for granted. And I realized that day, talking to Peter, that I couldn't let that happen. But it was going to happen. The bill, COICA, was introduced on September 20th, 2010, a Monday, and in the press release heralding the introduction of this bill, way at the bottom, it was scheduled for a vote on September 23rd, just three days later. And while, of course, there had to be a vote—you can't pass a bill without a vote—the results of that vote were already a foregone conclusion, because if you looked at the introduction of the law, it wasn't just introduced by one rogue eccentric member of Congress; it was introduced by the chair of the Judiciary Committee and co-sponsored by nearly all the other members, Republicans and Democrats. So, yes, there'd be a vote, but it wouldn't be much of a surprise, because nearly everyone who was voting had signed their name to the bill before it was even introduced. Now, I can't stress how unusual this is. This is emphatically not how Congress works. I'm not talking about how Congress should work, the way you see on Schoolhouse Rock. I mean, this is not the way Congress actually works. I mean, I think we all know Congress is a dead zone of deadlock and dysfunction. There are months of debates and horse trading and hearings and stall tactics. I mean, you know, first you're supposed to announce that you're going to hold hearings on a problem, and then days of experts talking about the issue, and then you propose a possible solution, you bring the experts back for their thoughts on that, and then other members have different solutions, and they propose those, and you spend of bunch of time debating, and there's a bunch of trading, they get members over to your cause. And finally, you spend hours talking one on one with the different people in the debate, try and come back with some sort of compromise, which you hash out in endless backroom meetings. And then, when that's all done, you take that, and you go through it line by line in public to see if anyone has any objections or wants to make any changes. And then you have the vote. It's a painful, arduous process. You don't just introduce a bill on Monday and then pass it unanimously a couple days later. That just doesn't happen in Congress. But this time, it was going to happen. And it wasn't because there were no disagreements on the issue. There are always disagreements. Some senators thought the bill was much too weak and needed to be stronger: As it was introduced, the bill only allowed the government to shut down websites, and these senators, they wanted any company in the world to have the power to get a website shut down. Other senators thought it was a drop too strong. But somehow, in the kind of thing you never see in Washington, they had all managed to put their personal differences aside to come together and support one bill they were persuaded they could all live with: a bill that would censor the Internet. And when I saw this, I realized: Whoever was behind this was good. Now, the typical way you make good things happen in Washington is you find a bunch of wealthy companies who agree with you. Social Security didn't get passed because some brave politicians decided their good conscience couldn't possibly let old people die starving in the streets. I mean, are you kidding me? Social Security got passed because John D. Rockefeller was sick of having to take money out of his profits to pay for his workers' pension funds. Why do that, when you can just let the government take money from the workers? Now, my point is not that Social Security is a bad thing—I think it's fantastic. It's just that the way you get the government to do fantastic things is you find a big company willing to back them. The problem is, of course, that big companies aren't really huge fans of civil liberties. You know, it's not that they're against them; it's just there's not much money in it. Now, if you've been reading the press, you probably didn't hear this part of the story. As Hollywood has been telling it, the great, good copyright bill they were pushing was stopped by the evil Internet companies who make millions of dollars off of copyright infringement. But it just—it really wasn't true. I mean, I was in there, in the meetings with the Internet companies—actually probably all here today. And, you know, if all their profits depended on copyright infringement, they would have put a lot more money into changing copyright law. The fact is, the big Internet companies, they would do just fine if this bill passed. I mean, they wouldn't be thrilled about it, but I doubt they would even have a noticeable dip in their stock price. So they were against it, but they were against it, like the rest of us, on grounds primarily of principle. And principle doesn't have a lot of money in the budget to spend on lobbyists. So they were practical about it. "Look," they said, "this bill is going to pass. In fact, it's probably going to pass unanimously. As much as we try, this is not a train we're going to be able to stop. So, we're not going to support it—we couldn't support it. But in opposition, let's just try and make it better." So that was the strategy: lobby to make the bill better. They had lists of changes that would make the bill less obnoxious or less expensive for them, or whatever. But the fact remained at the end of the day, it was going to be a bill that was going to censor the Internet, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. So I did what you always do when you're a little guy facing a terrible future with long odds and little hope of success: I started an online petition. I called all my friends, and we stayed up all night setting up a website for this new group, Demand Progress, with an online petition opposing this noxious bill, and I sent it to a few friends. Now, I've done a few online petitions before. I've worked at some of the biggest groups in the world that do online petitions. I've written a ton of them and read even more. But I've never seen anything like this. Starting from literally nothing, we went to 10,000 signers, then 100,000 signers, and then 200,000 signers and 300,000 signers, in just a couple of weeks. And it wasn't just signing a name. We asked those people to call Congress, to call urgently. There was a vote coming up this week, in just a couple days, and we had to stop it. And at the same time, we told the press about it, about this incredible online petition that was taking off. And we met with the staff of members of Congress and pleaded with them to withdraw their support for the bill. I mean, it was amazing. It was huge. The power of the Internet rose up in force against this bill. And then it passed unanimously. Now, to be fair, several of the members gave nice speeches before casting their vote, and in their speeches they said their office had been overwhelmed with comments about the First Amendment concerns behind this bill, comments that had them very worried, so worried, in fact, they weren't sure that they still supported the bill. But even though they didn't support it, they were going to vote for it anyway, they said, because they needed to keep the process moving, and they were sure any problems that were had with it could be fixed later. So, I'm going to ask you, does this sound like Washington, D.C., to you? Since when do members of Congress vote for things that they oppose just to keep the process moving? I mean, whoever was behind this was good. And then, suddenly, the process stopped. Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon, put a hold on the bill. Giving a speech in which he called it a nuclear bunker-buster bomb aimed at the Internet, he announced he would not allow it to pass without changes. And as you may know, a single senator can't actually stop a bill by themselves, but they can delay it. By objecting to a bill, they can demand Congress spend a bunch of time debating it before getting it passed. And Senator Wyden did. He bought us time—a lot of time, as it turned out. His delay held all the way through the end of that session of Congress, so that when the bill came back, it had to start all over again. And since they were starting all over again, they figured, why not give it a new name? And that's when it began being called PIPA, and eventually SOPA. So there was probably a year or two of delay there. And in retrospect, we used that time to lay the groundwork for what came later. But that's not what it felt like at the time. At the time, it felt like we were going around telling people that these bills were awful, and in return, they told us that they thought we were crazy. I mean, we were kids wandering around waving our arms about how the government was going to censor the Internet. It does sound a little crazy. You can ask Larry tomorrow. I was constantly telling him what was going on, trying to get him involved, and I'm pretty sure he just thought I was exaggerating. Even I began to doubt myself. It was a rough period. But when the bill came back and started moving again, suddenly all the work we had done started coming together. All the folks we talked to about it suddenly began getting really involved and getting others involved. Everything started snowballing. It happened so fast. I remember there was one week where I was having dinner with a friend in the technology industry, and he asked what I worked on, and I told him about this bill. And he said, "Wow! You need to tell people about that." And I just groaned. And then, just a few weeks later, I remember I was chatting with this cute girl on the subway, and she wasn't in technology at all, but when she heard that I was, she turned to me very seriously and said, "You know, we have to stop 'SOAP.'" So, progress, right? But, you know, I think that story illustrates what happened during those couple weeks, because the reason we won wasn't because I was working on it or Reddit was working on it or Google was working on it or Tumblr or any other particular person. It was because there was this enormous mental shift in our industry. Everyone was thinking of ways they could help, often really clever, ingenious ways. People made videos. They made infographics. They started PACs. They designed ads. They bought billboards. They wrote news stories. They held meetings. Everybody saw it as their responsibility to help. I remember at one point during this period I held a meeting with a bunch of startups in New York, trying to encourage everyone to get involved, and I felt a bit like I was hosting one of these Clinton Global Initiative meetings, where I got to turn to every startup in the—every startup founder in the room and be like, "What are you going to do? And what are you going to do?" And everyone was trying to one-up each other. If there was one day the shift crystallized, I think it was the day of the hearings on SOPA in the House, the day we got that phrase, "It's no longer OK not to understand how the Internet works." There was just something about watching those clueless members of Congress debate the bill, watching them insist they could regulate the Internet and a bunch of nerds couldn't possibly stop them. They really brought it home for people that this was happening, that Congress was going to break the Internet, and it just didn't care. I remember when this moment first hit me. I was at an event, and I was talking, and I got introduced to a U.S. senator, one of the strongest proponents of the original COICA bill, in fact. And I asked him why, despite being such a progressive, despite giving a speech in favor of civil liberties, why he was supporting a bill that would censor the Internet. And, you know, that typical politician smile he had suddenly faded from his face, and his eyes started burning this fiery red. And he started shouting at me, said, "Those people on the Internet, they think they can get away with anything! They think they can just put anything up there, and there's nothing we can do to stop them! They put up everything! They put up our nuclear missiles, and they just laugh at us! Well, we're going to show them! There's got to be laws on the Internet! It's got to be under control!" Now, as far as I know, nobody has ever put up the U.S.'s nuclear missiles on the Internet. I mean, it's not something I've heard about. But that's sort of the point. He wasn't having a rational concern, right? It was this irrational fear that things were out of control. Here was this man, a United States senator, and those people on the Internet, they were just mocking him. They had to be brought under control. Things had to be under control. And I think that was the attitude of Congress. And just as seeing that fire in that senator's eyes scared me, I think those hearings scared a lot of people. They saw this wasn't the attitude of a thoughtful government trying to resolve trade-offs in order to best represent its citizens. This was more like the attitude of a tyrant. And so the citizens fought back. The wheels came off the bus pretty quickly after that hearing. First the Republican senators pulled out, and then the White House issued a statement opposing the bill, and then the Democrats, left all alone out there, announced they were putting the bill on hold so they could have a few further discussions before the official vote. And that was when, as hard as it was for me to believe, after all this, we had won. The thing that everyone said was impossible, that some of the biggest companies in the world had written off as kind of a pipe dream, had happened. We did it. We won. And then we started rubbing it in. You all know what happened next. Wikipedia went black. Reddit went black. Craigslist went black. The phone lines on Capitol Hill flat-out melted. Members of Congress started rushing to issue statements retracting their support for the bill that they were promoting just a couple days ago. And it was just ridiculous. I mean, there's a chart from the time that captures it pretty well. It says something like "January 14th" on one side and has this big, long list of names supporting the bill, and then just a few lonely people opposing it; and on the other side, it says "January 15th," and now it's totally reversed—everyone is opposing it, just a few lonely names still hanging on in support. I mean, this really was unprecedented. Don't take my word for it, but ask former Senator Chris Dodd, now the chief lobbyist for Hollywood. He admitted, after he lost, that he had masterminded the whole evil plan. And he told The New York Times he had never seen anything like it during his many years in Congress. And everyone I've spoken to agrees. The people rose up, and they caused a sea change in Washington—not the press, which refused to cover the story—just coincidentally, their parent companies all happened to be lobbying for the bill; not the politicians, who were pretty much unanimously in favor of it; and not the companies, who had all but given up trying to stop it and decided it was inevitable. It was really stopped by the people, the people themselves. They killed the bill dead, so dead that when members of Congress propose something now that even touches the Internet, they have to give a long speech beforehand about how it is definitely not like SOPA; so dead that when you ask congressional staffers about it, they groan and shake their heads like it's all a bad dream they're trying really hard to forget; so dead that it's kind of hard to believe this story, hard to remember how close it all came to actually passing, hard to remember how this could have gone any other way. But it wasn't a dream or a nightmare; it was all very real. And it will happen again. Sure, it will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake: The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians' eyes hasn't been put out. There are a lot of people, a lot of powerful people, who want to clamp down on the Internet. And to be honest, there aren't a whole lot who have a vested interest in protecting it from all of that. Even some of the biggest companies, some of the biggest Internet companies, to put it frankly, would benefit from a world in which their little competitors could get censored. We can't let that happen. Now, I've told this as a personal story, partly because I think big stories like this one are just more interesting at human scale. The director J.D. Walsh says good stories should be like the poster for Transformers. There's a huge evil robot on the left side of the poster and a huge, big army on the right side of the poster. And in the middle, at the bottom, there's just a small family trapped in the middle. Big stories need human stakes. But mostly, it's a personal story, because I didn't have time to research any of the other part of it. But that's kind of the point. We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do. They didn't stop to ask anyone for permission. You remember how Hacker News readers spontaneously organized this boycott of GoDaddy over their support of SOPA? Nobody told them they could do that. A few people even thought it was a bad idea. It didn't matter. The senators were right: The Internet really is out of control. But if we forget that, if we let Hollywood rewrite the story so it was just big company Google who stopped the bill, if we let them persuade us we didn't actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else's responsibility to do this work and it's our job just to go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well, then next time they might just win. Let's not let that happen. Cyber social justice activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide Friday. He was 26 years old. http://news.linktv.org/videos/the-other-bradley-manning-faces-life-sentence-for-intelligence-hack?start=0 Democracy Now! takes a detailed look at the case of Jeremy Hammond, an activist facing a potential life sentence for allegedly hacking global intelligence firm Stratfor's computers and giving WikiLeaks millions of emails. A federal judge with ties to Stratfor has refused to step down from the case.<br /> Fri, 28 Dec 2012 05:34:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/the-other-bradley-manning-faces-life-sentence-for-intelligence-hack Jeremy Hammond, WikiLeaks, Stratfor, Anonymous, Hacker (computer security), Julian Assange, United States, Bradley Manning, Center for Constitutional Rights, LulzSec Democracy Now! takes a detailed look at the case of Jeremy Hammond, an activist facing a potential life sentence for allegedly hacking global intelligence firm Stratfor's computers and giving WikiLeaks millions of emails. A federal judge with ties to Stratfor has refused to step down from the case. http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-in-xmas-speech-assange-vows-to-release-1m-new-documents?start=0 Julian Assange surfaced from the Ecuadorian embassy in London Thursday night to deliver a Christmas speech to supporters. The WikiLeaks editor, who has been holed up the embassy since June, praised Bradley Manning and said WikiLeaks would release more than a million documents affecting "every country in the world" in 2013.<br /> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:15:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-in-xmas-speech-assange-vows-to-release-1m-new-documents Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, London, Raw video, Ecuador, Embassy, Russia Today Julian Assange surfaced from the Ecuadorian embassy in London Thursday night to deliver a Christmas speech to supporters. The WikiLeaks editor, who has been holed up the embassy since June, praised Bradley Manning and said WikiLeaks would release more than a million documents affecting "every country in the world" in 2013. http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-whistleblower-bradley-manning-describes-torture?start=0 A military judge has approved the verbiage of Private First Class Bradley Manning's appeal where he would plead guilty to some charges of sharing sensitive information to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The judge has yet to approve the deal, but if agreed upon it could land Manning 16 years behind bars. On Thursday, Manning recalled his treatment while being detained in both Kuwait and Quantico, Virginia. Liz Wahl has more. <br /> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:51:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-whistleblower-bradley-manning-describes-torture Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, Military justice, Solitary confinement, Sleep deprivation, Plea bargain, Suicide watch, Torture A military judge has approved the verbiage of Private First Class Bradley Manning's appeal where he would plead guilty to some charges of sharing sensitive information to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The judge has yet to approve the deal, but if agreed upon it could land Manning 16 years behind bars. On Thursday, Manning recalled his treatment while being detained in both Kuwait and Quantico, Virginia. Liz Wahl has more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/exclusive-julian-assange-on-wikileaks-bradley-manning-surveillance-state?start=0 In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks to Democracy Now! from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union's anti-trust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks.<br /> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:09:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/exclusive-julian-assange-on-wikileaks-bradley-manning-surveillance-state Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, United States v. Bradley Manning, European Commission, United States, Cypherpunk, Whistleblower, European Union, Pentagon In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks to Democracy Now! from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union's anti-trust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks. "Since the blockade was erected in December 2010, WikiLeaks has lost 95 percent of donations that were attempted to be transferred to us over that period ... our rightful and natural growth, our ability to publish as much as we would like, our ability to defend ourselves and our sources has been diminished by that blockade." Assange also speaks about his new book, "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet." "The mass surveillance and mass interception that is occurring to all of us now who use the Internet is also a mass transfer of power from individuals into extremely sophisticated state and private intelligence organizations and their cronies," he says. Assange also discusses the United States' targeting of WikiLeaks. "The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently as an institution, that tells military and governmental whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege that we are criminal moving forward," Assange says. "Now the new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the government is trying to hammer into the legal system, and which the department of justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States." http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-offers-plea-on-wikileaks-charges?start=0 Accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is ready to plead guilty to some, but not all, of the charges against him, his lawyer says. Manning, who has been in jail since May 2010, is willing to admit providing classified information to WikiLeaks but will not plead guilty to espionage or aiding the enemy.<br /> Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:45:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-offers-plea-on-wikileaks-charges Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, US Army, Classified information, Democracy Now!, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, Military justice, Court-martial, United States Accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is ready to plead guilty to some, but not all, of the charges against him, his lawyer says. Manning, who has been in jail since May 2010, is willing to admit providing classified information to WikiLeaks but will not plead guilty to espionage or aiding the enemy. http://news.linktv.org/videos/ecuador-president-suicide-for-uk-to-enter-embassy-seize-assange?start=0 Ecuador's President Rafael Correa warns Britain would regret entering the Ecuadorian embassy to seize Julian Assange, while the US State Department argues the Wikileaks founder is trying to deflect attention from sexual assualt allegations in Sweden. Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:13:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/ecuador-president-suicide-for-uk-to-enter-embassy-seize-assange Julian Assange, Rafael Correa, Ecuador, Asylum, WikiLeaks, Extradition, Victoria Nuland, United Kingdom, Diplomatic immunity, Sweden Ecuador's President Rafael Correa warns Britain would regret entering the Ecuadorian embassy to seize Julian Assange, while the US State Department argues the Wikileaks founder is trying to deflect attention from sexual assualt allegations in Sweden. http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-julian-assange-addresses-worlds-media?start=0 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made his first public appearance in two months in London Sunday. In a speech from the Ecuadorian embassy, he said he had taken a "stand for justice," and called upon President Obama to end the FBI investigation against WikiLeaks. Sun, 19 Aug 2012 07:38:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-julian-assange-addresses-worlds-media Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Asylum, Ecuador, Embassy, Extradition, Rafael Correa, Barack Obama, Bradley Manning, Sweden WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made his first public appearance in two months from the Ecuadorian embassy in London Sunday. In a speech, he said he had taken a "stand for justice", and called upon US President Barack Obama to end the "witch-hunt" against WikiLeaks. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum on Thursday. http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-ecuador-says-assanges-fears-are-legitimate?start=0 Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Patiño confirms Julian Assange has been granted political asylum. In a strongly worded statement, he says Assange could face political persecution if his extradition was allowed to go ahead. Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:53:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-ecuador-says-assanges-fears-are-legitimate Julian Assange, Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, Asylum, Extradition, WikiLeaks, Quito, US-Ecuador relations, Sweden, United States Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Patiño confirms Julian Assange has been granted political asylum. In a strongly worded statement, he said Assange could face political persecution if his extradition was allowed to go ahead, and Sweden and the United States had failed to provided the reassurances Ecuador had sought over the case. http://news.linktv.org/videos/ecuador-grants-asylum-to-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange?start=0 Ecuador has announced it will grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum, but the practicalities of getting him from London to Quito remain in question. Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:53:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/ecuador-grants-asylum-to-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange Julian Assange, Ricardo Patiño, Ecuador, WikiLeaks, Extradition, Quito, Asylum, United Kingdom, London, Sweden Ecuador has announced it will grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum, but the practicalities of getting him from London to Quito remain in question. http://news.linktv.org/videos/uk-cannot-stop-assange-flight-to-ecuador-says-top-lawyer?start=0 A top Spanish lawyer acting for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Britain would have to allow Assange safe passage to Ecuador should the South American country offer him asylum. Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:36:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/uk-cannot-stop-assange-flight-to-ecuador-says-top-lawyer Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Ecuador, Asylum, Extradition, South America, Sweden, London, Embassy, Al Jazeera English A top Spanish lawyer acting for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Britain would have to allow Assange safe passage to Ecuador should the South American country offer him asylum. Assange, who faces extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations, has been in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for six weeks now. Al Jazeera's Emma Hayward reports. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-1-2012?start=98 A Japanese parliamentary inquiry has concluded last year's nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was "a profoundly man-made disaster." The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in the mountain region of Cajamarca where thousands have gathered in recent days to protest the expansion of a gold mine owned by US firm Newmont. A new expos&eacute; looks at secret U.S. operations in Africa and how the United States rendered, tortured and discarded an innocent man from Tanzania. And Amy Goodman reports from Spain on the 75th anniversary of the Guernica bombing. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:18:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-1-2012 United States, Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, Fukushima Dai-ichi, Sendai Earthquake of 2011, Japan, Syrian Civil War, Newmont Mining Corporation, Extraordinary rendition, Syria, Bombing of Guernica The United States and European Union are calling for new sanctions on Syria similar to those used against the Gaddafi regime ahead of the NATO attack on Libya. At an international "Friends of Syria" gathering in Paris, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invoked the threat of Chapter 7 under the U.N. Charter, which ranges from economic embargoes to military force. The news come as the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has apparently suffered its highest-level defection to date. On Thursday, opposition activists said Syrian General Manaf Tlas, a member of Assad's inner circle, had fled to Turkey, reportedly over his anger at the Syrian government's killing of civilians. WikiLeaks: Syria Files Will Embarrass Syria and Its Foes http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-wikileaks-announces-release-of-syria-files?start=0 Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks says it has begun publishing more than two million Syrian government emails dating from August 2006 to March 2012. Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:14:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-wikileaks-announces-release-of-syria-files WikiLeaks, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Julian Assange, Link TV Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks says it has begun publishing more than two million Syrian government emails. "Just now, at 11am BST (British Summer Time) on 5 July, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files - more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012. This extraordinary data set derives from 680 Syrian-related entities or domain names, including those of the ministries of presidential affairs, foreign affairs, finance, information, transport and culture." Footage courtesy of Reuters. LinkTV News: http://news.linktv.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/linktv Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/linktvnews http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-wikileaks-julian-assange-defies-police-remaining-at-ecuador-embassy?start=0 A member of the WikiLeaks founder's defence fund says Julian Assange is refusing a police summons and will not be leaving the Ecuador embassy in London until he hears about his asylum bid. Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:54:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-wikileaks-julian-assange-defies-police-remaining-at-ecuador-embassy Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Ecuador, Asylum, Extradition, Telegraph.co.uk A member of the WikiLeaks founder's defence fund says Julian Assange is refusing a police summons and will not be leaving the Ecuador embassy in London until he hears about his asylum bid. http://news.linktv.org/videos/a-sympathetic-interview-a-precursor-to-asylum?start=0 Was it during this interview that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange first got the idea of claiming asylum in Ecuador? In May 2012, he interviewed Ecuador's President Correa for his series, "The World Tomorrow." During the interview, the two men clearly struck up a relationship. Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:11:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/a-sympathetic-interview-a-precursor-to-asylum Julian Assange, Rafael Correa, Ecuador, World Tomorrow, WikiLeaks, US-Ecuador relations, Asylum, Extradition, Censorship In May 2012, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange interviewed President Correa of Ecuador for his series, "The World Tomorrow." During the interview, the two men struck up a relationship. Was it during this interview that Assange first got the idea of claiming asylum from a sympathetic Ecuador? http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-21-2012?start=99 On Wednesday, 17-year-old environmental activist Brittany Trilford of Wellington, New Zealand, addressed more than a hundred heads of state at the opening plenary of the Rio+20 UN Earth Summit. Democracy Now! also hears from Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria and chair of Friends of the Earth International, and Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who became known as "the girl who silenced the world for six minutes" after she addressed delegates in Rio de Janeiro as a 12-year-old in 1992. Plus headlines, and more. Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:17:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-21-2012 Rio+20, Earth Summit, United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio de Janeiro, United Nations, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Brittany Trilford, Nnimmo Bassey, Plenary session, Julian Assange WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could learn as early as today whether his request for asylum in Ecuador has been approved. Assange spent a second night at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Wednesday after seeking refuge in a last-ditch bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning on allegations of sexual assault. Ecuador's deputy foreign minister has said a decision is expected within 24 hours. In an interview with the news network TeleSUR, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said Assange has every right to seek asylum in a foreign country and rejected concerns that approving his bid would harm relations with the United States. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa: "If an asylum request affects the relationship with Great Britain, the relationship between the United States and Latin America should be very affected, because all the corrupt Ecuadorians — the bankers who bankrupted our country — asked for asylum in the United States. Journalists who defame go to the United States to ask for asylum. I think it's established in international law, and every country has the perfect right within its sovereignty to analyze the possibility of giving asylum." WikiLeaks Rep: Assange Fears Torture in U.S. Police in London have said Julian Assange could face arrest for violating the terms of his bail. Citing the case of Bradley Manning, a WikiLeaks spokesperson said Assange ultimately fears extradition to the United States. Kristinn Hrafnsson: "The big worry is an extradition to the United States. We all know what has happened to Bradley Manning there. He was held in a situation that is equal to torture. That is even — you can find in a statement by the United Nations rapporteur on torture. And so that is a true, true worry." http://news.linktv.org/videos/president-ecuador-analyzing-assange-asylum-request-in-serious-way?start=0 Ecuador's president says the WikiLeaks founder's bid for political asylum is being considered by his country: "We are analyzing Julian Assange's asylum request in a very serious and responsible way." Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:55:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/president-ecuador-analyzing-assange-asylum-request-in-serious-way Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Ecuador, Rafael Correa, Asylum, Extradition, London, United Kingdom, Sweden, United States Julian Assange's bid for political asylum is being considered by Ecuador, after the WikiLeaks founder took refuge in the country's embassy in London. In a television interview, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa said, "We are analyzing Julian Assange's asylum request in a very serious and responsible way." http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-20-2012?start=0 Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Egypt, where former President Hosni Mubarak is on life support, both candidates are claiming to have won last weekend's election, and the ruling military council has seized greater power. Plus headlines, and more. Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:54:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-20-2012 Egyptian presidential election, 2012, Hosni Mubarak, Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, Ahmed Shafiq, Coma, People's Assembly of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Life support Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Egypt, where former President Hosni Mubarak is on life support, both candidates are claiming to have won last weekend's election, and the ruling military council has seized greater power. WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and asked for asylum. And leaders from more than 100 countries are meeting today in Brazil for the start of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the largest United Nations conference ever. Plus headlines, and more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-20-2012?start=1828 Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Egypt, where former President Hosni Mubarak is on life support, both candidates are claiming to have won last weekend's election, and the ruling military council has seized greater power. WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and asked for asylum. And leaders from more than 100 countries are meeting today in Brazil for the start of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the largest United Nations conference ever. Plus headlines, and more. Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:54:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-20-2012 Egyptian presidential election, 2012, Hosni Mubarak, Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, Ahmed Shafiq, Coma, People's Assembly of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Life support WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and asked for asylum. Assange made the move Tuesday in a last-ditch bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations. Earlier today, police in London announced Assange is now subject to arrest because his decision to spend the night at the Ecuadorean embassy violated the conditions of his bail. Assange is seeking asylum because he fears extradition to Sweden may lead to his transfer to the United States where he could potentially face charges relating to Wikileaks. "In my view, it is a situation of political persecution of Julian Assange for his political activities," says Michael Ratner, a member of Assange's legal team. "It fits in the asylum application procedure under the Declaration of Human Rights." In an apparent reference to the United States, an Ecuadorean official said Assange fears being extradited "to a country where espionage and treason are punished with the death penalty." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and asked for asylum. Assange made the move Tuesday in a last-ditch bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations. Earlier today, police in London announced Assange is now subject to arrest because his decision to spend the night at the Ecuadorian embassy violated the conditions of his bail. Assange is seeking asylum because he fears extradition to Sweden may lead to his transfer to the United States, where he could potentially face charges relating to WikiLeaks. In an apparent reference to the United States, an Ecuadorian official said Assange fears being extradited, quote, "to a country where espionage and treason are punished with the death penalty." The Ecuadorian government says Assange can stay at the embassy for now as it reviews his request for asylum. In a statement, the Ecuadorian embassy said, quote: "As a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration for Human Rights, with an obligation to review all applications for asylum, we have immediately passed his application on to the relevant department in Quito." In 2010, Ecuador invited Assange to seek residency there but quickly backed away from the idea, accusing him of breaking U.S. laws. In a moment, we'll be joined by one of Julian Assange's lawyers. But first I want to turn to a recent episode of Julian Assange's TV show, The World Tomorrow, on RT, in which he interviewed Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. President Correa, why did you want us to release all the cables? Those who don't owe anything have nothing to fear. We have nothing to hide. Your WikiLeaks have made us stronger, as the main accusations made by the American embassy were due to our excessive nationalism and defense of the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian government. Indeed, we are nationalists. Indeed, we do defend the sovereignty of our country. On the other hand, WikiLeaks wrote a lot about the goals that the national media pursue, about the power groups who seek help and report to foreign embassies. We have absolutely nothing to fear. Let them publish everything they have about the Ecuadorian government. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange interviewing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on his show, The World Tomorrow, on RT. Well, for more on Julian Assange's decision to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy and in Ecuador, we're joined by Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, lawyer for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Michael, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this surprise move of Julian Assange. Well, I was completely surprised by it. In fact, I got a tweet from—or, no, a text message from you, Amy, that said, "Michael, Julian Assange has gone into the Ecuadorian embassy." So that really surprised me. On the other hand, if you look at what he was facing, I had—I've been really very upset and nervous for, really, since he lost the decision in the High Court of England on the 14th of June, because here's his situation. He's about to be extradited now to Sweden. Sweden does not have bail. Now, these are on allegations of sex charges—allegations, no charges—and they're to interrogate Julian Assange. But despite that, he would have been in prison in Sweden. At that point, our view is that there was a substantial chance that the U.S. would ask for his extradition to the United States. So here you have him walking the streets in London—sure, under bail conditions; going to a jail in Sweden, where he's in prison, almost an incommunicado prison; U.S. files extradition; he remains in prison; and the next thing that happens is whatever time it takes him to fight the extradition in Sweden, he's taken to the United States. There's no chance then to make political asylum application any longer. In addition, once he comes to the United States—we just hold up Bradley Manning as example one of what will happen to a underground cell, essentially abuse, torture, no ability to communicate with anybody, facing certainly good chance of a life sentence, with a possibility, of course, of one of these charges being a death penalty charge. So, he was in an impossible situation. And in my view, it was a—it is a situation of political persecution of Julian Assange for his political activities. And it does fit within the asylum—the asylum application procedure under the Declaration of Human Rights, which is what President Correa and/or at least what the embassy in London was mentioning. His choices were terrible—not that they're so great right now. I mean, now he's in the embassy in London. He's asked for political asylum. The Ecuadorians will decide whether to give him political asylum or not. Assuming they do, whatever time it takes, what happens then? He gets political asylum, how does he then leave the embassy? And that's a difficult question. He made need—the Ecuadorians could ask the British for a safe passage to get him out of London and into Ecuador. On the other hand, it's conceivable that the English could—the Britishers, the U.K., could arrest him if he tries to leave the embassy, even if it's in a diplomatic car. And while I think that might be illegal, it's taking a big chance. So now he is in the embassy and having to stay there indefinitely until the situation can resolve. But let me just say, the other situation was so terrible, in my view, the extradition to Sweden, which was really—it's not about the charges in Sweden. There's no charges. It's not about the allegations in Sweden or the interrogation. I think if the United States tomorrow said, "We will not be prosecuting WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, there will be no indictment of him, the grand jury is over," etc., etc., I don't think Julian Assange—I haven't spoken to him about this—I don't think he would have any issue about going to Sweden for interrogation on these charges. It's really—what this is about is the United States wanting to get their hands on him, put him into an underground cell with no communications, giving him life imprisonment. And, of course, people have already called for his death in the United States. And he was faced with really a terrible situation, considering—considering that he is the person who, as a publisher and journalist, has exposed massive U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and the WikiLeaks cables. His extradition proceedings were supposed to commence next week, June 28th. Do you have any idea how long an application for political asylum, such as the one that he's filed, normally takes—I mean, for Ecuador to make a decision? I'm not sure I understood, the extradition proceedings. He was— Sorry, sending him to Sweden, the decision to— Right, the decision to go to Sweden, he would have had to be in Sweden by July 7th. So it's very soon. You can—as people in the United States know, if you apply for political asylum, those political asylum applications can take a week, or they can drag on for two, three, four, five, six, seven years. So we don't know what Ecuador will do. We do know that, from what you played on President Correa, that he was sympathetic to WikiLeaks, even though—it's interesting—some of those cables skewered some of the current government in Ecuador. And in fact, the U.S. ambassador lost his job for calling some part of the Ecuadorian police corrupt. The U.S. ambassador was kicked out. So that even though some of those skewered some part of the Correa government, President Correa was willing to say, "I believe in what WikiLeaks is doing. We need transparency, and WikiLeaks is taking a very positive step." For people who aren't following this that closely, you talked about the—an indictment against—against Assange by the United States, a grand jury, a secret grand jury. What do you understand the U.S. wants with Assange? And why wouldn't they have moved on that while he was in Britain? I mean, he wasn't walking a free man, but he was able to walk around during the day. Right. And he was home at night. So they could have gotten him any time. Right. It would have—for the U.S. to move within Britain, of course, it would have complicated matters a great deal, because then he's facing a Swedish—a Swedish prosecution, and then the U.S. comes in. So what happens to the U.S.—to the U.S. indictment? And then, of course, Julian Assange gets notice that he's been indicted in the United States, and of course it makes his situation more precarious. And in addition, he would have probably been able to remain on the streets in London, whereas the U.S., really, I think, probably understood that as soon as he gets into Sweden, he's in prison, he may—those charges may not amount—not charges, those allegations may not amount to anything once he testifies, once he gives evidence, and then they can keep him in prison with this warrant. And I also think that, if you look at the situation, Sweden versus the U.K., the U.K. can take years to get someone extradited. I mean, we know of the case—I forgot his name, but the young man who supposedly hacked into the Pentagon computer to find out about UFOs—seven, eight years on his extradition. Incredible extradition lawyers in London. It's a big country. Sweden, whatever we think of Sweden, its justice system certainly seems to have some problems, because Julian Assange would be in jail without bail. And also, it's a smaller country and just can be knocked around more by the United States. And why the U.S. wants Julian Assange? Why the U.S. would prosecute him over WikiLeaks? This is nothing to do with the sex crimes charges. No, it's nothing, but it's the ultimate issue in this case. The allegations about sex crimes, as I said, I think will be disposed of quickly. I don't think those are the issues underlying. It has—it has really— And we should say—I shouldn't say "sex crimes charges" — Right. —because he wasn't charged. He wasn't— Allegations of sex crimes that—where he would be questioned in Sweden, and possibly let go. Oh, that's very conceivable. I mean, it's very conceivable. But when you say "possibly let go," it's important to understand, he's in prison while that proceeding is going on. The minute—the minute—there would be someone in court—assuming there's an indictment of Julian Assange, there would be someone in court—when they say, "We order you released," they would file the warrant at that moment, and Julian Assange would not be able to leave the court, would be back in prison, and would be in the United States, where only his lawyers will probably be able to communicate with him. And I probably wouldn't be able to say a word about what he ever said to me. But let's look at what he's facing. The claim would be that he's being investigated for espionage, essentially for transmitting, you know, quote, "secrets" of the U.S. government, that were classified, that could harm the United States in some way. And that's the espionage indictment. That's what Bradley Manning is being looked at for, under military law. And that's what they would want to look at Julian Assange for. And there's a grand jury that's been going on really since at least 2011. We have the Stratfor emails that says that—that say that there's a sealed indictment against Julian Assange. We have recently two people who have some association with WikiLeaks being questioned again by the FBI by—around what—about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Who is that? Zimmerman and McCarthy. One is from France, one is from Iceland. Again, questioned by the FBI about Julian Assange. This is an active investigation. We have, in Bradley Manning's case, what came out at the Article 32— The young U.S. private who is accused of releasing tens of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks. Right, and Bradley Manning is in a court-martial proceeding going on in Fort Meade. As part of that examination, as part of that court-martial proceeding, an FBI agent was asked about who else is being investigated here, and he said seven other civilians are being investigated with regard to—with regard to WikiLeaks. And who are they? He said—he didn't give the names, but he said these are — "Are these people who are managers or founders of WikiLeaks?" And he said, "Yes, they are." So we're talking about an active investigation, most probable an indictment already. This is what Julian Assange was facing: never to see the light of day again, in my view, had he gone to Sweden. And so, he's in not a great situation now, in the sense that, look at, he's sitting in an embassy in London. He has to get political asylum. And then, how does he get out of the embassy? But in response to some of these criticism, Swedish authorities have said that the European Court of Human Rights would intervene if Assange was to face the prospect of, quote, "inhuman or degrading treatment or an unfair trial" in the U.S. Well—well, first of all, wait a second, I'm not sure I understand that at all. The European Court of Human Rights only has jurisdiction over Europe. So, once he's in the United States, there's not much the European Court of Human Rights can do. In addition, the European Court of Human Rights recently came down with a major decision concerning four English Muslim men, and what they said was so negative and so outrageous, in my view, and such a denial of rights, that I would not depend on the European Court of Human Rights. They basically disregarded the fact that people spend years in solitary in the United States, that they get life sentences, that they have no way—that they have—they're in communications managements units where they can't speak to each other. And despite all of that evidence in the European Court of Human Rights, they just approved the extradition of four young—of four people from the United Kingdom. So I would not put anything on the European Court of Human Rights as positive for this case. Let's go to Julian Assange in November, after he lost his initial appeal. I have not been charged with any crime in any country. Despite this, the European arrest warrant is so restrictive that it prevents U.K. courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today. We will be considering our next step in the days ahead. The full judgment will be available on swedenversusassange.com. No doubt there will been many attempts made to try and spin these proceedings as they occur today, but they are merely technical. So please go to swedenversusassange.com if you want to know what's really going on in this case. Thank you. That was Julian Assange last November. Michael Ratner, your response? Well, he was talking about the restrictions on the arrest warrant and the case that actually he lost in Britain. His argument in Britain was that the Swedish prosecutor had asked for his extradition, and under the European arrest warrant, it needs to be a judge. A prosecutor has a bias, because the prosecutor wants to prosecute. And that had never really been considered by the British courts. It went all the way up to the highest court in Britain, which was a surprise, to begin with. And in the end, the highest court in Britain came down five-to-two against Julian Assange. But I think most people think—many of us think that was a political decision. What they didn't want to do was invalidate another European country's process for extraditing people under the European warrant. So he lost that case in what many people would say was a political—a political decision. And that's when he was ordered to surrender and go to Sweden—not go, he's picked up by the Swedish in Britain, he's put on an airplane, he's handcuffed, taken into Sweden, goes into a prison in Sweden. U.S. then, at some point, files their extradition warrant, and he, as I said, really never sees—never sees the light of day. On his show, The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange asked Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, about U.S. involvement in Latin America. Let's just go to that clip. What do Ecuadorian people think about the United States and its involvement in Latin America and in Ecuador? Well, as Evo Morales says, the only country that can be sure never to have a coup d'état is the United States, because it hasn't got a U.S. embassy. In any event, I'd like to say that one of the reasons that led to police discontent was the fact that we cut all the funding the U.S. embassy provided to the police. Before and even a year after we took office, we took a while to correct this. Before, there were whole police units, key units, fully funded by the U.S. embassy, whose officers in command were chosen by the U.S. ambassador and paid by the U.S. And so, we have increased considerably the police's pay. Michael Ratner, your response? Well, first of all, you have to remember, President Correa got rid of the U.S. military base in Ecuador. The WikiLeaks cable talked about the corruption of the police within Ecuador. And what you see President Correa says, well, they were being paid by the U.S. embassy. And, of course, his great line is that the only reason there's not a coup in the United States is there's no U.S. embassy, essentially, to plan it. So you're seeing—you're seeing a good part of this world understand the importance of what Bradley Manning allegedly did and understanding the importance of the publication by WikiLeaks of the diplomatic cables. Obviously not just in Ecuador—the secret war in Yemen, in cases that my office has been concerned with about prosecution of Rumsfeld and others in Spain—we see the U.S. interference all over. And the positive part, a strong positive of WikiLeaks, is they exposed to the world not just the war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but incredible hypocrisy in our own State Department. Finally, any precedent for people staying in embassies for years? Not such great ones, in the sense that they've been there for a long time. I mean, the one that comes mostly to mind—of course, the Chinese guy, he only stayed in the U.S. embassy for a couple of weeks, Chen, because then you had the U.S.—every diplomat in the world say, "Well, let's deal with the Chinese and get him out of the embassy and get him into the United States." We should only have that situation where the—where people are going to the Ecuadorian embassy and—or saying to the British, "Let's get him out and get him to Ecuador." I would love that. But the precedent that I think of, Amy, is Cardinal Mindszenty. Cardinal Mindszenty—most people are too young for the Cold War—he was a Catholic prelate in Poland, opposition to the Polish government, took refuge in the U.S. embassy in Warsaw, spent 13 years in the embassy in Warsaw. So, there's precedent for very long times in the embassy. I don't—look at, I want to see Julian Assange—I want to see no prosecution in the United States. I want to see him be able to go answer questions in Sweden without having the threat of immediate extradition to the United States, to deal with that and then to walk this world as a free person, having really done an incredible service to the peoples of the world. Michael Ratner, I want to thank you for being with us, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, lawyer for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-founder-seeks-refuge-in-ecuadorian-embassy?start=0 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has requested asylum in Ecuador after a UK court ruled he can be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:01:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-founder-seeks-refuge-in-ecuadorian-embassy Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Asylum, Ecuador, Extradition, United Kingdom, Sweden, Sexual assault, Embassy, United States WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has requested asylum in Ecuador after a UK court ruled he can be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012?start=0 Bradley Manning appears at a pretrial hearing in a military court ahead of his September trial, as a new book documents his trajectory from a difficult childhood to his current predicament. Plus "Five Broken Cameras," headlines, and more. Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:05:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012 Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, United States, Court-martial, Trial, Military justice, 2012 al-Qubair massacre, Bil'in Bradley Manning appears at a pretrial hearing in a military court ahead of his September trial, as a new book documents his trajectory from a difficult childhood to his current predicament. And more from the Democracy Now! interview with the filmmakers behind "Five Broken Cameras," a new documentary that tells the story of a West Bank village's resistance to the Israeli separation barrier. Plus headlines, and more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012?start=883 For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week at a pretrial hearing in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:05:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012 Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, United States, Court-martial, Trial, Military justice, 2012 al-Qubair massacre, Bil'in For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week at a pretrial hearing in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. The 24-year-old private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, including secret files on the Iraq and Afghan wars. Manning's attorneys are seeking the dismissal of 10 of the counts against Manning as well as the release of hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the alleged leak. We speak with Kevin Gosztola, a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake.com who has been attending Manning's pretrial hearing. For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week. His three-day pretrial hearing wraps up today before a military court at Fort Meade in Maryland. Manning faces 22 charges, including the capital offense of aiding the enemy, as well as violating the Espionage Act, computer fraud and theft of records. The 24-year-old private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, including secret files on the Iraq and Afghan wars. Manning's attorneys are seeking the dismissal of 10 of the counts against him. His defense team says the counts are either unlawfully vague or fall short of amounting to a prosecutable offense. Manning's military trial is scheduled for September. Earlier this week, his legal team submitted a motion calling for the U.S. government to release hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the alleged leak. The government is reportedly in possession of 250,000 pages of documents related to the case but has refused to turn them over to Manning's defense team. To find out more about the military trial, we're going to Washington, D.C., to talk to Kevin Gosztola, civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake. He's been attending Manning's pretrial hearing. He's co-author with Greg Mitchell of the ebook Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Kevin. Tell us what's happened so far in the pretrial hearing. Well, to sum it up, I would say that this proceeding has been all about discovery of evidence. David Coombs, who is Manning's defense lawyer, has been trying to get the government to provide him with documents that would show just how the government responded to the leaks that came from the WikiLeaks disclosures. Particularly, he's been interested in the U.S. embassy cables. So, a lot of the focus in the past couple months, at least going back to March, has been about getting the State Department damage assessment report. And that's how we saw State Department witnesses taking the stand yesterday during the proceeding. In addition to that, we've also seen, you know, they've litigated trying to get the dismissal of computer fraud charges and arguing that he could not have exceeded authorized access because he did in fact have clearance for his computer. We've had a discussion in the courtroom about getting access to an FBI law enforcement file. And so, the main focus of this proceeding has really been about forcing the discovery of evidence. And the effort by his attorney to get some of the charges dismissed—what's the difference between those that the attorneys are not trying to get dismissed at this point and those that they are? Well, going back to March, throughout all of these motion hearings, they have made some attempt to dismiss charges. For the record, they did try to get all charges dismissed, because they believe that the military prosecutors and government haven't been doing a due diligence search for information that would have to do with whether Bradley Manning is guilty or innocent, or it could be used to reduce his sentence if he is in fact convicted. And so, in this hearing in June, these charges have broken down to being espionage charges and also the two computer fraud charges. And this particular set has come up in the proceeding mainly because this is where Coombs is at as a lawyer. He's tried to get other charges dropped, and so far the judge has not been—has not entertained these motions and sided with the defense. Judge Denise Lind has ordered the U.S. government to hand over crucial documents, including the State Department's preliminary damage assessment of Manning's actions to the defense. Manning's lawyers are arguing the information is vital to Manning's defense. What is coming of this, Kevin? There's been a huge development in the last month with this assessment report, in that the defense is actually going to get this draft. Now, the government tried to, in May, argue that this draft only contains speculative information. And in court in June, the press and public heard that the judge was not going to buy this argument. That's not a legitimate reason for the defense to not get to see the contents. And so then what became the issue with this damage assessment report was Coombs has the document, but he wanted to know if it was the most up-to-date version of the report, because it stops on August 2011. And so, three witnesses were called yesterday. One of the witnesses, Rena Bitter, is actually the member of the operations center that oversaw the crisis response, who was in that center. She participated in that effort. And so, these people were there, and they were testifying about the contents and helping David Coombs to realize and understand exactly what was in the assessment, but this also became an effort to figure out what other records might the State Department have. And Kevin, what about Manning himself, his demeanor in the courtroom? He's rarely been seen throughout this whole several years now. Does he have any interaction with other people in the courtroom? How does he seem? He doesn't—he has very limited interaction with people who are in the audience. He's mostly unaware of what supporters are doing, as evidenced by the fact that he became—he became aware during this proceeding that there were in fact people in the audience that had "truth" shirts, and he smiled at this, that there were people here that were supporting him. During the proceeding, he's—sometimes he's tuned in, sometimes he's writing, sometimes he's scribbling. He pays attention. There's—sometimes when the proceeding gets very interesting, you can tell he's engaged, he's talking to his lawyer. And for the most part, you know, he's behaving like somebody who was 24 years old would if they were in a military proceeding where they were largely unfamiliar with the legalese that is being discussed. And Kevin, you, also Democracy Now! and other media organizations and journalists, filed a petition last month in attempt to grant the public and press access to more information about the court-martial of Manning. So far the military court has refused to make public the government's motion papers, the court's own orders and transcripts of the proceedings. Where is this going? Judge Lind announced at the opening of the proceeding that there was this petition before the court of appeals, the Army Criminal Court of Appeals, and that she did not think that there needed to be a stay of proceedings, so there wasn't any reason for the proceeding to be put on hold so that this could be decided. The key issue here is that, in the proceeding, as a reporter, I don't get to go look at these decisions, these motions, some of these orders in the aftermath. And that means that I'm listening to what is being said in real time. I'm basically trying to do my own transcript of the proceeding in order to put together reports for readers after the proceedings are concluded for the day. And this is very problematic because, in some ways, it's hard to confirm what is being said. I know, for an example, that you have misspellings of names. You have trouble with numbers and key details. And it's hard because you're putting all the burden on the military briefer to provide you with information. You're also trying to keep up with what is being read, and it just—it's totally unreasonable that there wouldn't be any sort of documentation provided to the press and public so that they could confirm the accuracy of the reporting. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012?start=1484 Bradley Manning appears at a pretrial hearing in a military court ahead of his September trial, as a new book documents his trajectory from a difficult childhood to his current predicament. And more from the Democracy Now! interview with the filmmakers behind "Five Broken Cameras," a new documentary that tells the story of a West Bank village's resistance to the Israeli separation barrier. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:05:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012 Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, United States, Court-martial, Trial, Military justice, 2012 al-Qubair massacre, Bil'in The new book, "Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History," tracks Manning's trajectory from growing up as a gay teen in small-town Oklahoma to joining the U.S. Army, where he found success as an intelligence analyst before being charged with the largest U.S. intelligence breach on record. We speak with the book's author, Denver Nicks. "In many ways Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era," Nicks says. "[His] life is sort of quintessentially American, in that he's gay at a time when gay rights goes mainstream. He joins the Army — and as an intelligence analyst, no less — at a time when the national security state really starts to metastasize into something that we have never seen before. ... We have more people with more access to more secret information than ever before, while we are living in the post-9/11 era of foreign policy conducted, as Dick Cheney said, in the shadows. We are more dependent than ever on leaks to know what our government is doing. Leaks are not only inevitable, but necessary. ... Bradley Manning had access to an extraordinary amount of classified information — more, in fact, than he leaked." In addition to Kevin Gosztola, we're joined by Denver Nicks, author of a new book on Bradley Manning called Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. He's also a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. Kevin Gosztola is a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake. Why did you decide to write this book? The Bradley Manning story is one of—easily one of the most important stories of the last decade, certainly. In many ways, Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era. Bradley Manning's life is sort of quintessentially American, in that he was—he's gay at a time when gay rights goes mainstream. He joins the Army—and as an intelligence analyst, no less—at a time when the national security state really starts to metastasize into something that we have never seen before. And, of course, his life intersects with this sort of out-of-control growth in the secrecy state that has existed since 9/11. It's a hugely important story, and I wanted to tell it from the beginning and get into Manning's life and who he is. And you focus quite a bit on his early life, his friendships and his development as a geek, before he even got into the military. And could you talk about that, his early life and his family? Yeah. I mean, I think that's an important part of the story that has been—I wouldn't say it's been overlooked. It's been covered. I mean, it's a part of his life that other figures in the media have talked about and looked into, but I didn't feel that it had been looked into with enough depth and honesty before. Brad, of course, grew up in Crescent, Oklahoma, not far from where I'm from. I come from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the circumstances of his early life were really humble. He grew up in a farmhouse outside of a small town. And as I said before, his life is sort of quintessentially American in that he becomes deeply interested in computers and sort of a computer whiz, as it were, at a time when the computer becomes the essential form of—the essential tool for communication. He's gay in a small conservative town in Oklahoma. And in short, due to the fact that he has this working-class background, he—and his family falls apart when he's about 13 years old, he has a pretty difficult youth. Bradley Manning joined the Army, like many, many young men and women do in this country, because it was a great opportunity for him, and, frankly, because it was a great opportunity for the Army. It's too often overlooked, I think, that Bradley Manning was very well positioned to be a successful intelligence analyst in the United States Army, and by all accounts, in many ways, was a successful intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army. Certainly had troubles along the way, but he was good at his job, and the Army saw that. One of the interesting aspects of the book is you sort of counterpose the early life of Julian Assange, as well, of him growing up in Australia and his run-ins, as a hacker, with the law in Australia. But then you point out the fact that both Assange and Bradley Manning were influenced by a Richard—the work of Richard Stallman, an advocate of free software and a more open internet. Could you talk about Stallman and how he influenced both of them? Right. Richard Stallman is sort of one of the guru figures in the hacker community, if you will. He's the primary proponent and the founder of what's called the Free Software Foundation, the primary proponent of the notion of free software, which is about, as Stallman would say, free as in freedom, not free beer. The idea basically is that the—is that information should be free. This is one of the places where this idea comes from, that the fundamental currency of politics and culture is information and that information should be free-flowing for a healthy society, for a healthy culture and healthy politics and, in Stallman's case, for a healthy computer. Julian Assange was part of this hacker culture in the '80s and early '90s, and continues to be, but he was at that time. And like many people who are involved in that scene, Assange gets involved in writing open-source software, software based on the premises that Richard Stallman founded, the sort of free software ideals. Bradley Manning, later in his life, becomes good friends with a fellow named Danny Clark, who worked for Richard Stallman at the Free Software Foundation, and to some degree, I think, became interested in Stallman's ideas and the notion that information should be free. So talk about his trajectory from a computer geek, young kid from Oklahoma—interestingly, right near Kerr-McGee and near where Karen Silkwood was killed— That's right. —one of the major whistleblowers of this country, anti-nuclear whistleblower. She was killed leaving a meeting from Crescent, Oklahoma. That's right. It's strange that Karen Silkwood comes from—that she died right outside of Crescent. It's a very, very small town. And, I mean, the odds that two of the world's most famous whistleblowers would come from this small town are tiny. And talk about how he goes from what he was doing in high school to the military. Right, his—so, Bradley goes to high school in the U.K., in Wales. And he goes back to Oklahoma to get out of a bad situation. He was living with his mom, who was dealing with some health problems and alcohol abuse problems. So he goes back to the United States, moves in with his father. And that situation becomes riddled with conflict pretty quickly. Basically, it comes to a point where he gets kicked out of the house, he's got to leave, and he's homeless in Tulsa for a while. Goes on a brief journey from Tulsa to Chicago, lands in Maryland, living with his aunt, and he's working at a Starbucks. Essentially, he's—Bradley Manning is a very ambitious and very bright, thoughtful kid. He knew that he was made for more than working at a pizza parlor in Tulsa or spending the rest of his life working at a Starbucks in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. And he, apparently, after prodding from his father and probably after interacting with people in the national security, in the government universe around in these D.C. suburbs, decides to join the Army, or to look into it, anyway. He made the decision without consulting with many people in his family, announced to his aunt, who he was living with at the time, that he had already joined. When he went to her and told her he was thinking about it, he had already signed his papers. It was the best option available to him, frankly, and a good option for him. One wishes that—you know, as I've said before, he joined the Army before the financial crisis hit in this country; however, if you are in the sort of bottom working-class rung of our socioeconomic structure, the financial crisis began in about 1980. And that's the financial crisis Bradley Manning was living in. That's why joining the Army was the best option available to him. He wanted to get a college education and didn't have a clear route to one. You also chart out that there were numerous indications throughout his life of some amount of anger management problems, emotional instability, that manifested itself in his early life as well as in the military. Right. Could you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, that's certainly true. There are—there are these moments in his life when he manifests emotional problems, emotional instability. It's important to note that if you take any life and put it under a microscope, you're likely to find instances in which a person appears to be crazy. I'm sure—I know that would be true of me. I assume it would be true of—well, I won't speak for the both of you— Never of Amy. Never of Amy. Certainly not Amy, but maybe Juan and I. So there's that fact, you know, that people have moments of emotional instability. Everybody does. However, it is clear that Bradley Manning—I mean, he had a rather difficult life. It's not that he had nothing to be upset about. And the moments of emotional instability manifest themselves throughout his young life and leading up to the Army. And there are indications that the Army, had systems been functioning as they are designed to function, should probably have revoked his security clearance before he—before he was arrested, certainly. There was even discussion about leaving him in the United States when his unit deployed to Iraq. Because? Because he had—because he had had these moments of outburst while he was a soldier at Fort Drum awaiting deployment, enough to cause concern with some of his superiors that maybe he wasn't in the right state of mind to deploy to Iraq. Ultimately, the exigencies of a protracted war won out in the calculus, and the Army needed bright, good intelligence analysts, and that's what Bradley Manning is—was—not an intelligence analyst anymore. But he's still—he's still a soldier in the Army. And so, very quickly, he goes to Iraq. Where is he? And what does he have access to? Talk about the Lady—what he is charged with in the Lady Gaga CDs. Right. Well, he's—so he goes to Iraq, and he had long had access to substantial amounts of information, more information—I mean, Bradley Manning and his peers had more access to state secrets than people in their position of any previous era, because we classify more information than ever and because we, at the same time, share information between agencies in an effort to bulk up our national security and help our intelligence agents do their work. So Bradley Manning had access to an extraordinary amount of classified information—more, in fact, than he leaked. He goes to Iraq, and he finds himself, as he says, troubled by some of the things he sees. On the other hand, I don't have the impression that Bradley Manning is a pacifist or was wholly against the war, certainly not when he arrived there. In fact, he talks in some of the chat logs that I quote in my book, chat logs with a friend of his—he talks about wanting to—about considering applying to West Point, about maybe working—about maybe reenlisting and working in the United States Cyber Command. So he has access to an extraordinary amount information, and he's accused of obviously using that access to download information onto—well, initially, apparently, onto CDs and transferring that from his work computer to his computer in his—what's called a CHU, in his room on base, which is—which was only possible, one should note, because it was a very common practice at FOB Hammer, and apparently in many places in Iraq, to burn information onto CDs, classified information onto unmarked discs, and transfer it out of the secure facility, primarily in order to share it with the Iraqi authorities. Denver, you focus a great deal in Private, the book about Bradley Manning, on his sexuality. Why? Yeah. Well, sexuality is an important part of all of our identities, for one thing. For Bradley Manning, it was an important part—it was an exceptionally important part of his identity socially and his identity politically. I think that much too much has been made of the notion that Bradley Manning lashed out at the Army because he was angry about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I have never seen any evidence to support that suggestion. And frankly, that comes—I think that comes from the right-wing blogosphere, and there's nothing to back it up. However, Brad was—he was very close friends with a fellow named Toby, who was and is a prominent gay rights activist and a politico in the D.C. area. Brad was deeply concerned personally about the fight for marriage equality. These are important driving factors for him ideologically. So that's why I focus on it. And, of course, his relationship is a hugely important part of his life, leading up to the point when he's arrested. You raise the issue of whether he should be called Breanna or Bradley. Uh-huh, right. I mean, that's a—that's a difficult issue. What Amy's referencing, of course, is the fact that, not long before he was arrested, Brad apparently created a sort of—I'm not sure what the proper terminology is, but he apparently created an alter ego for a transgendered self that he intended to become that he named Breanna. One asks—you know, one asks oneself if the proper thing to call Brad Manning is in fact Breanna. When Brad Manning indicates to the world that he is now Breanna Manning, I'll call him Breanna, certainly. I mean, I'll absolutely respect that. But as of right now, I don't think we have a clear indication of what exactly Manning prefers to be called. You also obviously point out the fact that, in this new metastasized national security state that we have with all of this emphasis on gathering of information, that the system itself becomes more vulnerable, because the more that it gathers so much information, centralizes it, shares it, the more that individuals like Bradley Manning, a mere private—he may have been very skilled, but he was just a private in the military—can have access, can get keys into this trove of intelligence. That's absolutely right. As I—I wrote in The Daily Beast just today about this instance in which, last week, the New York Times ran these two cover stories about insider information in the Obama administration, one about the origins of the Stuxnet virus and the other about the so-called kill list and the drone assassination program, both of which were widely believed to reflect well on the president for political electoral purposes. I'm not sure that both of those stories do reflect well on the president, but certainly they were interpreted to. Both of those—both of those stories quote high-level, confidential sources divulging classified information. Senator McCain has made a big deal about this, as others have, that there is apparently this flow of classified information emanating from—from the White House, but there doesn't seem to be a concerted effort on the part of the White House to crack down on those leaks. Legislators have announced the intention to introduce legislation to crack down on leaks even further, but that doesn't get at the source of the problem. The problem, as I say, is not that the ship is too leaky, it's that the ship is too full. We have more people with more access to more secret information than ever before, while we are living in the post-9/11 era of a foreign policy conducted, as Dick Cheney said, in the shadows. We are more dependent than ever on leaks to know what our government is doing. Leaks are not only inevitable, but necessary. So, as I say in the piece, if the administration is leaking information for political gain, it's reprehensible, but the least of our problems. Finally, what happened to Bradley Manning while in jail? We've just passed the two-year anniversary of him being imprisoned. That's right. And what we understand has taken place, what a number of human rights groups and leaders have called treatment that amounted to torture— That's right. —taken from Quantico—taken from Iraq to Kuwait, then held at Quantico—describe his treatment—and now moved on. And we shouldn't forget that this happened. I mean, it was a miscarriage of justice that I think every reasonable person recognizes was a miscarriage of justice at this point. After he was—Bradley Manning was moved to Kuwait initially after his arrest, and then he was taken from Kuwait to Quantico Marine Base, a brig that was not apparently designed as a pretrial confinement facility, though it served that purpose in this instance. Manning was deeply, deeply fraught when he was first arrested, as I certainly would be in that position. But shortly after he was moved to Quantico, the mental health specialists at Quantico determined that he didn't have to be—that he didn't need to be kept under suicide watch. Suicide watch is the—was the pretense for keeping him in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement. Bradley Manning's attorney, David Coombs, tried, from very early on, to get his client moved into lesser—to less harsh conditions. He was, for example— Stripped naked at night. He—early on, he was—he wasn't stripped naked at night exactly, but he was like not allowed writing utensils in his cell, allowed only one piece of reading material at a time, had to surrender all of his clothes but his underwear in the evening, had to respond verbally to guards to make sure that he was still living but could not converse with guards, and kept in his cell for like 23 hours a day, one hour a day allowed to walk figure eights in an empty gymnasium, essentially. Later, the situation gets much, much worse, and he is apparently—there's a moment that he talks about in a complaint that he filed, that is attorney posted on his website, in which the Marine guards, after a protest outside Quantico protesting his treatment, the Marine guards come to him and basically just start harassing him. You know, no answer is the right answer. They are yelling at him. More guards than usual are escorting him around. That situation becomes more aggravated, as he's stripped naked and is sort of forced to stand at attention naked, which one should note—forced to stand at ease, which is with the feet placed about shoulder width and the hands behind the back—not a good position to sort of modestly cover oneself in front of strangers. So that situation—that situation got totally out of control. It was, frankly, shameful, and at this point—and ultimately totally backfired on the government. I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, I think that Bradley Manning's treatment at Quantico, while deeply unfortunate and a terrible ordeal to go through, was ultimately a positive for him. He raised money, because of what the government did to him, for his legal defense, and was impressed, I think, more sympathetically than ever before on the public mindset. The government's overreaction in that case backfired on the government, made them look—made certain officials look ridiculous. The Quantico brig was ultimately closed. And Bradley Manning has been moved to Fort Leavenworth. Right. We're going to have to wrap it up there, but I want to thank you very much for being with us, Denver Nicks, author of Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012?start=0 In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. Wed, 30 May 2012 12:31:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012 WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Extradition, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Appeal, Bradley Manning, Houla massacre In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. With the global spotlight on the Assange case, WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning marks two years behind bars. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argues that Obama's secret "kill list" is "the most radical power a government can seize. And, after the United States and 11 other countries formally expel Syrian diplomats following a massacre of more than 100 people in the village of Houla, does this incident mark a tipping point in favor of foreign military intervention? Plus headlines, and more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012?start=93 In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. With the global spotlight on the Assange case, WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning marks two years behind bars. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argues that Obama's secret "kill list" is "the most radical power a government can seize. And, after the United States and 11 other countries formally expel Syrian diplomats following a massacre of more than 100 people in the village of Houla, does this incident mark a tipping point in favor of foreign military intervention? Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Wed, 30 May 2012 12:31:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012 WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Extradition, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Appeal, Bradley Manning, Houla massacre Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden after a more than year-long legal fight. Swedish authorities want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. He has been under house arrest in Britain since December 2010. Assange's lawyers had argued that the Swedish public prosecutor did not have the legal authority to issue the arrest warrant, but earlier today the British judges sided with Sweden in a 5-to-2 decision. Assange's supporters have voiced fears he will wind up in the hands of the United States should he be deported to Sweden. He has been given 14 days to leave Britain and return to Sweden. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012?start=567 In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. With the global spotlight on the Assange case, WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning marks two years behind bars. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argues that Obama's secret "kill list" is "the most radical power a government can seize. And, after the United States and 11 other countries formally expel Syrian diplomats following a massacre of more than 100 people in the village of Houla, does this incident mark a tipping point in favor of foreign military intervention? Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Wed, 30 May 2012 12:31:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012 WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Extradition, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Appeal, Bradley Manning, Houla massacre Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes. Assange's lawyers had argued that the Swedish public prosecutor did not have the legal authority to issue the arrest warrant, but the British justices disagreed in a 5-to-2 decision. Assange's attorneys will have 14 days to file a new appeal. We get reaction from Salon.com blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald. Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes. Swedish authorities want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. Assange has been under house arrest in Britain since December 2010. Assange's lawyers had argued the Swedish public prosecutor did not have the legal authority to issue the arrest warrant. Earlier this morning, the British Supreme Court handed down a split decision. Five judges supported extradition, two judges opposed it. Nicholas Phillips, the president of the Supreme Court, said the decision came down to the definition of "judicial authority" under the terms of the European Extradition Treaty. The point of law is simply, what do the words "judicial authority" mean? Mr. Assange has argued that they mean a court or judge. Sweden's request has been issued by a public prosecutor who is not a court or judge, so Mr. Assange's argument is that request is invalid and he doesn't have to go back to Sweden. The point of law is simple to state, but it has not been simple to resolve. Indeed, we have only reached our decision by a majority of 5-2. There was discussion in parliament about the words judicial authority when the bill which became the Extradition Act was being debated. The bill used the words "judicial authority" because those words were in the Framework Decision and the act was designed to give effect to the framework decision. It is clear that some members of parliament believe that the words "judicial authority" in the Framework Decision meant a court or a judge. Indeed, one minister specifically stated to a parliamentary committee that this was the case. But he was mistaken. Judicial authority is the English translation of the French words "autorité judicial." The Framework decision in both English and French, so it's necessary to have regard also to what the French phrase means. The French phrase has a wider meaning than the English phrase. In French, the words "judicial authority" can be used of a public prosecutor. For these reasons, the majority has concluded that the Swedish public prosecutor was a judicial authority within the meaning of both the Framework Decision and the Extradition Act. It follows that the request for Mr. Assange's extradition has been lawfully made and his appeal against extradition is accordingly dismissed. Nicholas Phillips, president of the British Supreme court. Moments later, Dinah Rose, an attorney for Julian Assange, addressed the court. There is one matter which causes us considerable concern on our initial reading of the decision, and that is that it would appear that a majority of the members of this court have decided the point either principally or solely on the basis of the interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a point with respect which was not argued during the appeal, and which we were given no opportunity to address. Now, obviously, this court will have in mind its recent decision in [a previous case] holding that Article 6 applies to extradition proceedings in the United kingdom. We are therefore currently considering our position on whether or not it will be necessary, with great regret, to make an application to this court that this matter should be reopened so we have an opportunity to argue this point. In response to the legal concerns raised, the Supreme Court gave Assange a stay of 14 days on the extradition order so that the ruling could be challenged. To talk more about the case, we're joined by two guests, Helena Kennedy is joining us from Oxford in England. She's a British attorney on the legal team representing Julian Assange. She will be joining us in a minute. And joining us by Democracy Now videostream, Glenn Greenwald, blogger for Salon.com, constitutional lawyer as well. He has been closely following the WikiLeaks story. Glenn, can you respond to the decision of the British High Court that Julian Assange will be extradited to Sweden? I think it's difficult to have expected any other outcome. Remember Julian Assange is one of the people most hated by Western governments because of the transparency that he brought, and typically, unfortunately, judicial branches in the United States and in the United Kingdom do the opposite of what they're intended to do, which is they protect institutional power and help to punish and deprive the rights of those who are most scorned. And so, I would have been most shocked had the court ruled in favor of Assange, even though as the two dissenting judges on the high court pointed out, the argument of Sweden and those advocating extradition is directly and anathetical to what the statute says. No one thinks that a prosecutor is a judicial authority. He has not been charged with a crime, and therefore, there is no court or judge seeking his extradition. It's purely a prosecutor. But the law in these cases typically is not what governs. What governs are political considerations and the views of the party. And so absence of some unexpected event—-highly unexpected event—-at some point in the near future, it is likely he will be extradited to Sweden. And apparently, Glenn, of course, the punishment that he is likely to face in Sweden, even if is charged, is much less than what he is likely to face if he is extradited to the U.S. where the punishment he faces for possible espionage and conspiracy charges will be much greater. Can you say a little about that? I think there's two issues of concern with being extradited to Sweden. One is that, although we don't think about Sweden this way, it is none the less the case that they have a very oppressive — I would even say borderline barbaric system — of pretrial detention where when somebody is charged with a crime, they are almost — especially in Assange's case where he's not a Swedish citizen — automatically, more or less, consigned to prison, not released on bail, even though he's proven over the course of the last two years that his appearances can be secured. And not only would he likely be imprisoned pending trial, but he would be imprisoned under very oppressive conditions, where he could be held incommunicato, denied all contact or communication with the outside world. The hearings , pretrial hearings in Sweden, are not public. They are entirely private. The media, the public has no idea what takes place within these hearings. And given how sensitive this case is, the idea that judicial decisions in Sweden will be made privately and secretly is very alarming. But, I think the broader concern is the one you just raised, which is clearly in the U.S. efforts underway, not just to investigate but to convene a grand jury, and there are reports that he had already been indicted with a sealed indictment. There are certainly efforts by the U.S. government to do so, and the real concern is that Sweden, which in the past has demonstrated subservience to the United States with rendition and other things, will hand him over without much of a fight and he will face life in prison under espionage statutes for doing nothing more than what newspapers do every day, which is publishing classified information in the public interest. Can you talk about the significance of Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, going to Sweden? It is the first time in a very long time that a U.S. Secretary of State is going to Sweden. First, it was announced the high court would be making its decision today, Glenn. Then, Sweden tweeted out that Hillary Clinton would be coming there on Sunday. Right. I mean, one of the causes for concern is that there has been a flurry of activity recently with FBI agents harassing people who are alleged to have communication or contact or association with WikiLeaks. A French citizen and an Icelandic citizen both in the past couple of weeks have been very aggressively accosted by FBI agents on foreign soil. And now you have what looks to be high-level meetings between the State Department, Secretary of State, and Swedish officials. There really is not much of a secret that the Obama administration is busting at the seams to punish Assange. Remember, this is an administration that has more aggressively than any prior president has punished people who are government employees who have been whistleblowers, and yet here is a someone who is not a government employee, has no duty to safeguard classified information, and yet it looks very much like the U.S. government is eager to get their hands on Julian Assange. That has been the concern all along going to Sweden. He has never been worried about facing these charges. He feels very confident that he will be ultimately vindicated, that there is nothing to them. I have no opinion one way or the other on that. He has always been willing to face these accusations. The issue has always been because he is not charged, there has been this extraordinary and unusual effort to get him onto Swedish soil. The fear has always been that is just a pretext for turning him over to the United States, something that Britain would have a very hard time doing for a variety of reasons, but that Sweden, as they have proven, can be coerced and bullied and pressured into doing it fairly easily. Once he's in the grip of the U.S., it is really hard to imagine how he will ever secure his freedom or liberty again, given what the U.S. has demonstrated it is willing to do in terms of flouting conventions of justice and other things when it comes to people accused of harming national security. Why is that though Glenn? Can you explain why would Sweden be more amenable to extradition to the U.S. and not the U.K., which is a very close ally of the U.S.? For one thing, just a matter of basic international relations it is much easier for a country like the U.S. to pressure and coerce smaller countries than it is larger countries. I think there would be a big outcry — [NO AUDIO] Glenn, you were finishing up saying? ...and where Sweden is a small country, much more susceptible to that pressure — and again they've demonstrated in the past to be willing — the U.N. Commission found they actually violated international law and prohibitions on oppressive treatment in the way that they allowed CIA agents to basically abduct Egyptian nationals on their soil and render them to Egypt. So, I think there's a real concern when you add on to that the secrecy behind these pre-trial proceedings that there's a much higher risk that Sweden will be complicit in turning over Assange to the United States. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012?start=1318 In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. With the global spotlight on the Assange case, WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning marks two years behind bars. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argues that Obama's secret "kill list" is "the most radical power a government can seize. And, after the United States and 11 other countries formally expel Syrian diplomats following a massacre of more than 100 people in the village of Houla, does this incident mark a tipping point in favor of foreign military intervention? Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Wed, 30 May 2012 12:31:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012 WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Extradition, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Appeal, Bradley Manning, Houla massacre Helena Kennedy, a member of Julian Assange's legal team and a prominent British civil liberties attorney, joins us from London to discuss the court ruling upholding Assange's extradition to Sweden. "The idea of a prosecutor demanding someone is brought by force to their country in order to be questioned — and [not] a judge or court — is alarming because we believe in judicial independence," Kennedy says. "[Assange] is concerned [that] once he is on Swedish soil, he becomes much more vulnerable to the intentions of the U.S. to have him extradited to stand trial on much more worrying charges." We are joined in Britain by one of the attorneys for Julian Assange, Helena Kennedy. When the judge announced the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Assange's extradition, he invoked the 1957 European Convention on extradition. I want to ask Helena Kennedy about the significance of that Convention and why it was put into effect. We're going to just go to a clip of the ruling first. This is Lord Nicholas Phillips, President of the Supreme Court in Britain. The Swedish public prosecutor has requested the extradition of Mr. Assange on charges of serious sexual offenses. That request has raised a point of law of general public importance. It is not a point in respect of which the particular facts of Mr. Assange's case have any relevance. This summary is about that point of law. It used to be the case this country would not extradite a person to another European country until a court here had considered the evidence against that person. The court would not approve extradition unless the evidence justified his being subjected to a criminal trial. All that changed in 2001 when we gave effect to the 1957 European Convention on extradition. That's Lord Nicholas Phillips, President of the Supreme Court in Britain, explaining the decision to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Sweden. Helena Kennedy, you're one of the members of Julian Assange's legal team. Can you respond to the decision that was just handed down hours before this broadcast? Well, I'm a consultant to the team, and extradition is one of the areas of law that I have some practice and knowledge of. It is right that it is comparatively recently that we have become much more closely involved in legal arrangements with the rest of Europe about the handing over of persons sought for questioning or for proceeding on to criminal trial. On a much more sort of familiar basis so that we do it with little examination of evidence and the idea is that we respect the legal systems of these other countries to be just and fair, even if they're different from ours. The problem about that is, or course, in other parts of Europe we don't have a common law system. In fact, the American system is much closer to the British system, and there's a civil law system, where the whole arrangements are rather different. And so, one of the concerns that was raised in this case was that a really important point of law, which was about this request having been made by prosecutor who wanted to question Assange. There is still an issue as to whether he would ever be charged. There is no doubt that if the old processes had been relied upon, the evidence would not have been enough to justify a prosecution here in Britain. But they were invoking the new arrangement. The new arrangement in this last decade or so has been that a Euro warrant can be issued and that it does not involve a close examination of evidence, and the request had been made by a judicial authority. That's how it has always been presented and that's how it was introduced into law in Britain. Two of the judges, interestingly, did not go along with this decision. It was a 5-2 majority decision. But another two of the five say that had parliament known the judicial authority might mean a prosecutor and not a judge, it may be that the arrangement would not have been accepted by parliament. But now that it has been and has been going on for the last years, this practice should be accepted as one that is respectful of other jurisdictions. Now, the concern that we all had, and I think that any democrat in Britain would have, is that the idea of a prosecutor demanding that someone is brought by force to their country in order to be questioned, and that that is not a decision being made by a judge or a court, is alarming to us because we believe in judicial independence. We believe that the state sometimes does things that have to be called into question, or certainly have oversight by an independent judge, and that hasn't happened here. And so, that is why this was a very important issue and went all the way to our Supreme court, and the court has, by a majority, come down saying that really they have to be respectful of the fact and other systems, this is what happens; that a prosecutor can make these decisions without judicial oversight. Well, I think that has left a lot of us feeling very unhappy about the arrangement we've entered into and as to whether it really complies with our respect for the rule of law and independence of the judiciary to overview what decisions are made by prosecutors, because it is not a happy situation that prosecutors can decide who they're going to have brought by warrant and by force back for questioning without any judicial intervention. Helena Kennedy, isn't it relevant at all that Julian Assange hasn't in fact been charged with any offense in Sweden yet? Doesn't that have any bearing on the European arrest warrant? Well, the European arrest warrant says that you can be arrested in order to be questioned, but it is interesting that Assange volunteered to be questioned here at the Swedish Embassy or at Scotland Yard. He didn't see why that it was required that he should go all the way to Sweden. And of course, what he suspects and is concerned about is that as soon as he sets foot on Swedish soil, that he becomes much more vulnerable to the perhaps intentions of the U.S. to have him extradited from there to the United States to stand trial on much more worrying charges, from his perspective, because he would face the sort of American sentences that go along with espionage. While Julian Assange didn't address the news media after today's Supreme Court decision, the news reports said he was caught in heavy traffic. I want to play for you what he said in November after he lost his initial appeal. JULIAN ASSANGE: I have not been charged with any crime in any country. Despite this, the European arrest warrants is so restrictive that it prevents U.K. courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today. We will be considering our next step in the days ahead. The full judgment will be available on swedenversusassange.com. No doubt, throw the many attempts made to try and spin these proceedings as they occurred today, but they are merely technical. So, please go to swedenversusassange.com if you really want to know what's going on in this case. That was Julian Assange, not this time, but in November after he lost his initial appeal. Speaking to us from Oxford, England is Helena Kennedy. She is a consultant to Assange's legal team. I'd like you to respond to that and also the decision of the judges when raised by his attorney Dinah Rose, that they allow her to argue on this point that she said that she hadn't gotten a chance to argue on, the decision that they had made that he can stay for another two weeks. What are the avenues that Assange has right now? What came up in court was the Vienna Convention was invoked by the judge's to say that, basically, the words — the French words — are the words which they looked at which is "judicial authority"–"autorité judicial," and that that has been translated into judicial authority which we the British common law listeners took to be a judge and a court and certainly that is what the British Parliament thought. Whereas, in fact, to Europeans who have a different system, it would be interpreted as being a prosecutor, and therefore in endorsing the Vienna Convention on extradition, then we committed ourselves to the French interpretation. So, I think, I know, that Dinah wants to be able to have a look at that and to see whether that is a proper interpretation, because she didn't have the opportunity of dealing with it; it wasn't raised by the other side at the original hearing. Now, I've spoken to Julian Assange since the — he is caught in traffic — and I spoke to him since his hearing of the judgment. We will all look at what this means and whether we think it is likely to make any difference. It is very rare for the Supreme Court to give an opportunity to revisit an argument. The last time I remember it was in the Pinochet case. But certainly one will have a look at this. But, it is — the sense one is getting is that even in this court, there was argument as to whether this is an acceptable thing within the common law tradition that you just hand somebody over on the say so over prosecutor, and there was definite unease in two of the judges. The sole woman we have and another judge both took a different position and therefore didn't go along with the majority. So there's serious argument that there should be on this — and may actually have to be revisited by parliament in the fulness of time, but It might not be good for Assange because the decision is going to be as it stands at the moment. So, it's a matter of serious concern. I listened to Glenn talking about the implications of this if he's returned to Sweden. Glenn Greenwald is right. Sweden does not let people out on bail. It is very, very rare that they would allow anybody, particularly someone who is a foreign national, to be in any position other than in custody and in secure custody. So, it means that he will be returning there, and even if a decision is made which is favorable to Assange in Sweden, one just wonders if he's going to be slapped with a warrant from the United States wanting him to be extradited to the U.S. And that has to be a matter of concern for us and for those who are advising him legally. If the legal team has to seek recourse with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which is apparently the last court of appeal, what is the likely outcome of that? Is it possible that the European Court could stay his extradition? You have to understand that the European Court isn't quite like a last court of appeal. It is an avenue that is open. If it's an issue which the European Court would think was a matter that needed to be resolved because it had implications for lots of other countries. It is very rare for a case like this on this kind of point to go to European court. But, obviously, we will take a look at that and we will put that argument in writing to the European court, and they can either say yea or nay and that will determine whether there is any further avenue left to us. So we're getting to the situation where there's going to be — the options are narrowing by the day, and so I think that we will probably have to make decisions over the next 48 hours as to what happens next. Finally, Helena Kennedy, you said you spoke to Julian Assange. He is caught in traffic. Usually does make a statement after a decision is handed down. What was his response to the high court ruling that he should be extradited to Sweden? Well, in many ways, Julian of course is skeptical about any kind of judicial decision making in this field, and he's very aware that Britain, of course, is part of Europe and has made agreements and has found a sort of modalities and arrangements for our different systems to work together. So there is a general unwillingness not to respond to a call from another country for somebody to be taken there on a warrant. So, it is right that this has political — with a small p — implications, if not even with a big P. But, I think that he was actually heartened that there was so much argument, clearly, between the judges and that two of the judges came to the view that this was not right that a prosecutor could call for somebody to be just handed over for questioning. And was also heartened by the fact that two of the judges who remained, who went along with the judgement, still had reservations about whether parliament would have agreed with this, but basically, ended up going with the majority decision on the basis it had been in practice now for a number of years and it was now inbedded. So, that is how they came to that majority opinion. So, he has been heartened by the fact that in many ways it points to just how complicated this whole issue is. Helena Kennedy, I want to thank you for being with us, joining us from Oxford, England. She is a consultant to the Assange legal team. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012?start=2177 In a divided decision, Britain's Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Assange's attorney says the ruling sets an alarming precedent for judicial independence in Europe. With the global spotlight on the Assange case, WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning marks two years behind bars. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argues that Obama's secret "kill list" is "the most radical power a government can seize. And, after the United States and 11 other countries formally expel Syrian diplomats following a massacre of more than 100 people in the village of Houla, does this incident mark a tipping point in favor of foreign military intervention? Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Wed, 30 May 2012 12:31:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-may-30-2012 WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Extradition, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Appeal, Bradley Manning, Houla massacre This week marks two years since U.S. Army private Bradley Manning was detained on allegations of leaking classified documents to the online whistleblower WikiLeaks. Manning faces up to life imprisonment in a MILITARY trial set to begin in September. "It's important to remember that what Bradley Manning is alleged to have done ... was an act of incredible mobility, bringing immense amounts of transparency to the U.S. government and its war actions, ones that are usually shrouded in complete secrecy," says Salon.com blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald who has been following the case closely. Glenn Greenwald, still on with us. Glenn, this week is the second anniversary, it would be two years ago yesterday that Bradley Manning, the young U.S. soldier in Iraq, was taken into custody. He has been charged with releasing the documents, getting a hold of and releasing the documents — millions of them — to WikiLeaks from Iraq, Afghanistan. Can you talk about the significance of this in light of what we're seeing develop with Julian Assange today, the WikiLeaks founder? I think it is so important to remember that what Bradley Manning is alleged to have done, what Wikileaks did, was an act of incredible nobility, bringing immense amounts of transparency to the U.S. government and its war actions, ones that are usually shrouded in complete secrecy — a real threat to democracy. In the course of doing so, there is no suggestion that they harming national security, but there are countless stories of great national and international importance that they enable to be written about what the U.S. government, other governments around the world, are doing. I think it's very important to keep in mind that there was a lot of support for WikiLeaks a couple of years ago, for Julian Assange, for Bradley Manning and what the U.S. government does in cases like this — when somebody poses a threat secrecy regime and to their power, and it's been going on for decades — is they try and engage in a campaign of personal destruction. It's what Richard Nixon tried to do with Daniel Ellsberg, breaking into his psychiatrists office just to discredit him; to make nobody want to have any thing to do with Daniel Ellsberg. That is what has been done to Julian Assange. His personality has been demonized. And I think it is really important to realize how grave of a threat it would be to press freedom and transparency if the Obama administration succeeds in indicting Julian Assange and extraditing him to the United States, forcing him to stand trial under espionage charges. And how it is incumbent upon everybody who believes in transparency and press freedoms to put aside whatever personal feelings you might have about Julian Assange and his personality or Bradley Manning and stand for this critical cause and not allow the Obama administration to do this. I think a lot of people have been warned away by the feeling that Julian Assange is just not somebody with whom I want to be associated. I think it is critical to keep an eye on the much, much larger issues at stake here. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-26-2012?start=1657 Critics of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) warn that it will increase domestic surveillance and violate privacy rights. Targeted hacker Jacob Appelbaum talks about CISPA, surveillance, and the "militarization of cyberspace." The Obama administration challenges Arizona's notorious anti-immigrant law while overseeing unprecedented mass deportations. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:21:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-26-2012 United States, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, Surveillance, National Security Agency, US Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Politics of the United States, Arizona SB 1070, Jacob Appelbaum, Anti-immigration Computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum argues the measures included in the proposed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would essentially legalize military surveillance of U.S. citizens. "When they want to dramatically expand their ability to do these things in a so-called legal manner, it's important to note what they're trying to do is to legalize what they have already been doing," Appelbaum says. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet, and has volunteered with WikiLeaks. Our guest, Jacob Appelbaum, is back with us from last Friday. He's a computer security researcher, developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a system that enables its users to communicate anonymously on the internet. He's going to be holding a public education seminar today in New York City for people to protect themselves online and using their phones, using their computers. But right now, this legislation. When SOPA was put forward, Jacob, the Stop Online Privacy Act, the Congress members, Republican and Democrat, thought it would sail through. And then there was just a wildfire on the internet, and they backed off. Michelle Richardson said she thinks it is possible it will pass tomorrow in the House, but the Obama administration has said it would veto it. They also said they'd veto the National Defense Authorization Act, and they ultimately didn't. But what are your thoughts? What kind of online activism is happening right now? Well, I think a lot of people are organizing around this. I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in particular, deserves a great deal of respect for the work that they've done and what they've written about this. For example, they show pretty clearly that this is a dramatic expansion of essentially powers of surveillance, not just in terms of the government, but in terms of corporations and their ability to be held liable. So there is this extremely scary part of the bill with a two-year statute of limitations. And the problem is that in the cases that the EFF has been fighting with the NSA, the government— That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Yeah. So they—essentially, the government has said that they invoke state secrets privilege, and so they've been in litigation for six years on some of their cases. So, a two-year statute of limitation, it's unlikely that we would even discover that our rights had been violated in that time frame. Additionally, FOIA exemptions would mean that companies wouldn't even be able, maybe, or would not disclose that information. So it's—the deck is essentially stacked against regular people. And this is basically what Bill Binney was talking about last week when he was talking about the warrantless wiretapping program. It's as if this week they decided to legalize all the stuff that Bill warned about and said that was already occurring. So that's a pretty scary prospect. I just want to correct one thing: I said the "Stop Online Privacy Act"; it's the Stop Online Piracy Act. Piracy Act, right. Juan? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about a recent report by the Brookings Institute, not exactly a liberal or progressive think tank. But they did a paper called "Recording Everything: Digital Stories as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments." And some of the quotes here are astonishing. They say, quote, "Plummeting digital storage costs will soon make it possible for authoritarian regimes to not only monitor known dissidents, but to also store the complete set of digital data associated with everyone within their borders." They go on to say, "When all of the telephone calls in an entire country can be captured and provided to voice recognition software programmed to extract key phrases, and when video footage from public spaces can be correlated, in real time, to the conversations, text messages and social media traffic associated with the people occupying those spaces, the arsenal of responses available to a regime facing dissent will expand. ... Pervasive monitoring will provide what amounts to a time machine allowing authoritarian governments to perform retrospective surveillance." This is where the United States is heading, where other authoritarian regimes, much more authoritarian regimes than ours, are heading around the world. And yet, the level of public opposition, especially among some young people, to this continued invasion of their privacy is not that—I mean, it's strong, it's growing, but it's not where it should be. It's pretty concerning. I think one thing that's important to note here is that it's not a theoretical thing. For example, the WikiLeaks "Spy Files" showed that this kind of dragnet surveillance of all the phone calls of a country is in fact a product that is often sold. I believe it was Libya that purchased some of this equipment from a company called Amesys in France. So, it seems to me that people will try to dismiss it and say, "Well, they'll never be able to analyze that kind of data." But that's the problem they've been working on for the last 20 years, but especially in the last 10 years. So it's not only that this data is being collected, but now they want to share it with the Department of Homeland Security, with the FBI and the NSA, essentially legalizing military surveillance over U.S. civilians—and the whole planet, frankly. So this has dramatic international implications in addition to national implications. And this is the same FBI that abuses the national security letters that have been given to them in the USA PATRIOT Act that abuses their authority on a regular basis. And they want to be without some kind of judicial oversight for all of their actions. Last week, Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, and you, Jacob Appelbaum, and the NSA former official, William Binney, were on the show, and we played that clip from the Open Society meeting that you attended two Mondays ago. Can you introduce this clip for us? Who is this? So, my understanding is that this is the deputy general counsel of the FBI. And you questioned her. I did. Are you including national security letters in your comment about believing that there is judicial oversight with the FBI's actions? National security letters and administrative subpoenas have the ability to have judicial oversight, yes. How many of those actually do have judicial oversight, in percentage? What do you mean by that? How many have— I mean, every time you get a national security letter, you have to go to a judge? Or— No, as you well know, national security letters, just like administrative subpoenas, you don't have to go to a judge. The statute does allow for the person on whom those are served to seek judicial review. And people have done so. And in the case of the third parties, such as, say, the 2703(d) orders that were served on my — according to the Wall Street Journal — my Gmail account, my Twitter account, and my internet service provider account, the third parties were prohibited from telling me about it, so how am I supposed to go to a judge, if the third party is gagged from telling me that I'm targeted by you? There are times when we have to have those things in place. So, at some point, obviously, you became aware. So at some point, the person does become aware. But yes, the statute does allow us to do that. The statute allows us. Now, again, that's the deputy general counsel for the FBI talking to you, who was just in the audience, Jacob Appelbaum. She said, "as you know," so she must know you sounded like you had a national security letter, one of, what, hundreds of thousands given by the FBI, and if you even reveal that you have one, you could face five years in jail. Have you been handed an NSL? So, to the best of my knowledge, no, though there's some speculation that perhaps she was hinting at the national security letter which Google is trying to unseal right now in the Fourth Circuit, I believe. So it could be that she just accidentally disclosed that there is a national security letter about me, and "as I well know" could be some kind of allusion to that, which, if that's the case, then I hope that they hold her accountable for that kind of disclosure, since that seems to be something like they like to do to lots of people. So we'll see if they hold their own accountable, if that's true. And otherwise, maybe she was just suggesting I know quite a lot about this. But then the content of what she said and how this fits in with this legislation? I mean, it sounds to me like they are trying to expand that power to include all facets of the government, including the military, over civilian life with regard to surveillance and essentially to make it impossible for anyone to resist or to have judicial oversight. And that is a serious problem, in my opinion. And how would legislation, for instance, that—like this House legislation, affect the work of your organization, the Tor Project, or would it, if it was enacted? Because you are set up to be able to protect the anonymity of people communicating over the internet. Well, I'd like to think that it would mean that we'd have a lot more people using Tor every day. But— That's T-O-R Project-dot-org? Yeah. I mean, the network is made up of people who care, right? So someone downloads it and says, "I want to help," and then the network gets bigger. We don't run the network like Google runs the network. So, different people make it up. The problem is that if the U.S. government was allowed to spy on everything, they can try to watch all of the network. And that's where it starts to break down. So one of the scary things here is that we're just not even sure how to exist in a complete—what's called "global passive adversary world," where they can watch the entire internet. And so, this is, I think, an existential threat to anonymity online, to privacy and to security of everyday people. I mean, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, basic privacy practices that EFF recommends, like using the anonymizing service of Tor or even encrypting your emails, could be considered an indicator of a threat, under the Senate bills. Yeah, I think that that's a really interesting tell about this. They suggest that people who protect themselves online, especially from the state, which is known to abuse its authority and power against innocent people on a regular basis—to suggest that that means that you're a threat is an absolute scary, scary prospect. Let's go to William Binney, who you were on with last week, the National Security Agency whistleblower who appeared on Democracy Now! We asked him about the NSA's practice of collecting and storing emails. Do you believe all emails, the government has copies of, in the United States? I would think—I believe they have most of them, yes. And you're speaking from a position where you would know, considering your position in the National Security Agency. Right. All they would have to do is put various Narus devices at various points along the network, at choke points or convergent points, where the network converges, and they could basically take down and have copies of most everything on the network. That, again, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney. He spent nearly 40 years at the agency but retired about a month after September 11, 2001, due to concerns over unchecked domestic surveillance. But after 9/11, all the wraps came off for NSA, and they decided to—between the White House and NSA and CIA, they decided to eliminate the protections on U.S. citizens and collect on domestically. So they started collecting from a commercial—the one commercial company that I know of that participated provided over 300—probably, on the average, about 320 million records of communication of a U.S. citizen to a U.S. citizen inside this country. What company? AT&T. It was long-distance communications. So they were providing billing data. At that point, I knew I could not stay, because it was a direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country. Plus it violated the pen register law and Stored Communications Act, the Electronic Privacy Act, the intelligence acts of 1947 and 1978. I mean, it was just this whole series of—plus all the laws covering federal communications governing telecoms. I mean, all those laws were being violated, including the Constitution. And that was a decision made that wasn't going to be reversed, so I could not stay there. I had to leave. That was NSA whistleblower William Binney. I mean, he's saying some explosive stuff. Six years later, in 2007, the FBI raided his home, pushing aside his son, his wife, held—he was in the shower. He also is a diabetic amputee. They put a gun to his head, the FBI. He was never charged with anything. This is a man who worked for the NSA for almost 40 years. Talk about the significance of what he's saying here, from Narus to reading all the email. Sure. I mean, basically what he's saying is that the government is lying about what they are doing and what they have done, and they have not been held accountable in the last 10 years. And so, when they want to dramatically expand their ability to do these things in a so-called legal manner, it's important to note what they're trying to do is to legalize what they have already been doing and to suggest that they will be held accountable in a system where they already are not held accountable when they're breaking the law. So if it were legal, it seems incredibly fishy that things would change and it would somehow improve, when in fact it seems to be just getting worse. So what Binney is saying here is amazing, because he spent 40 years at the NSA. To get a guy like that to come onto a show like this and to talk with us is an incredible thing. I mean, that says to me that he believes that it is a threat to national security in a way that everyone should be concerned about. We have to wrap up, but I want to go to the Whitney event you had, the Whitney Art Museum on Friday night, where a document was handed out listing the addresses of eight possible domestic NSA interception points. What are these points? What are they? Well, I think it's important for people to recognize the agency that they have every day in their life. And so, if the NSA is doing surveillance, as Mark Klein showed from AT&T's side, I thought it would be interesting to— He exposed AT&T spying on Americans' phone calls. With the NSA. So these addresses are addresses I believe are potential domestic NSA interception points, similar to the ones that Mark Klein exposed. And there's a website. IXmaps is the name of it, and it's a Canadian site. And they actually show when your internet traffic goes through potential NSA interception points, so you can actually test your internet connection. And that's the Internet Exchange Maps project. Where are they? They are all listed on that website now as a result of it being released at the Whitney thing. Do you know the cities? What the pamphlet said: St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Bridgeton, Missouri. Yeah. It would be great if people actually went and photographed these buildings and talked to the employees there and see if they're NSA people going in and out. They're not confirmed. This is something where people now have something that they can do. I mean, what they also need to do is visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website, eff.org, and actually take action against CISPA. We have to stop this legislation from passing. It is an incredible threat to our privacy, and it is a militarization of cyberspace. I want to point out one last thing, and that is that the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers—he's the former FBI agent—he made headlines in August of 2010 when he called for the execution of accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks. Rogers appeared on MSNBC. REP. MIKE ROGERS: Any of the operations of a soldier in the field that's released could lead to their death. That is an act of treason. And an act of treason is a capital offense, and it should be. That's my point. I argue that anyone that releases information of a classified nature to the enemy, to a third party that our enemy uses, is an act of treason. That is the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Republican Congress Member Mike Rogers of Michigan, who is the author of CISPA. Final comment, Jacob Appelbaum? Blowing the whistle on war crimes should not be a crime. We're going to leave it there. Jacob Appelbaum is doing a public security lesson today from 12:00 to 3:00 at 56 Walker Street in New York City. Jacob Appelbaum, computer security researcher, developer and advocate for the Tor Project—that's T-O-R Project-dot-org—which enables its users to communicate anonymously on the internet. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-23-2012?start=2158 Two years since the worst offshore oil spill in US history, Democracy Now! looks at its impact on the Gulf of Mexico's residents and wildlife, even as no BP officials have faced criminal prosecution for the disaster. And in part two of a national broadcast exclusive on growing domestic surveillance in the United States of dissident journalists, activists, and whisteblower, former NSA officer William Binney describes how the FBI raided his home and held him at gunpoint. Plus today's headlines, and more.<br /> Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:50:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-23-2012 BP, Oil spill, Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, National Security Agency, William Binney, Surveillance state, Environmental disaster, NSA electronic surveillance program, Jacob Appelbaum In part two of our national broadcast exclusive on the growing domestic surveillance state, we speak with National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney, and two targeted Americans: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras, and hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has volunteered for WikiLeaks and now works with Tor Project, a nonprofit organization that teaches about internet security. Binney left the NSA after the 9/11 attacks over his concerns about the agency's widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens. He describes how the FBI later raided his home and held him at gunpoint and notes there is still no effective way of monitoring how and what information the NSA is gathering on U.S. citizens, and how that data is being used. Click here to watch part one of our special report. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-20-2012?start=2265 In a special show, Democracy Now! examines growing domestic surveillance in the US, including an exclusive interview with National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney, who says the government intercepts and retains copies of almost all emails sent or received by people living in the US. And American filmmaker Laura Poitras and computer researcher Jacob Appelbaum discuss what it's like to be the target of widespread government surveillance, including being routinely detained and interrogated at US airports. Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:01:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-april-20-2012 National Security Agency, United States, William Binney, Surveillance, Jacob Appelbaum, Interrogation, NSA warrantless surveillance controversy, Detention, US Department of Homeland Security, NSA electronic surveillance program We speak with Jacob Appelbaum, a computer researcher who has faced a stream of interrogations and electronic surveillance since he volunteered with the whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks. He describes being detained more than a dozen times at the airport and interrogated by federal agents who asked about his political views and confiscated his cell phone and laptop. When asked why he cannot talk about what happened after he was questioned, Appelbaum says, "Because we do not live in a free country. If we did, I could tell you about it." A federal judge ordered Twitter to hand over information about Appelbaum's account. Meanwhile, he continues to work on the TOR project, an anonymity network that ensures every person has the right to browse the internet without restriction, and the right to speak freely. http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-to-launch-tv-talk-show?start=0 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has announced the launch of a new television talk show recorded from his home in Britain where he is under house arrest. Called "The World Tomorrow," it will be broadcast on Russia Today. Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:15:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-to-launch-tv-talk-show Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, World Tomorrow, Talk show, Television program, House arrest, Russia Today, Media, ABC News (Australia) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has announced he is launching a new television talk show recorded from his home in Britain where he is under house arrest. Called "The World Tomorrow," it will be broadcast on Russia Today, a global TV channel funded by the Russian government. http://news.linktv.org/videos/mosaic-news-022712?start=909 <p>Yemen's Saleh formally steps down after 33-year reign, Syria approves new constitution as main opposition body splits, tension escalates between Khartoum and Juba over key areas, and more.</p> Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/mosaic-news-022712 Israel, Iran, Tear gas, Yemen Uprising, Syrian Civil War, Nigerian Sharia conflict, Khartoum, Nuclear program of Iran, Vladimir Putin, Bahrain Uprising Presenter, Female #1 If you believe a report published today by WikiLeaks, Israeli commando forces, with the help of Kurdish rebels, have already destroyed all of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. The WikiLeaks information is based on e-mails stolen from the US-based Stratfor global security analysis company. The information was contained amongst some five million Stratfor e-mails, which are considered by some to be a shadow CIA group. The alleged attack on Iran could have taken place in November 2011, when a mysterious explosion near Tehran killed at least 17 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Stratfor quotes sources in Jerusalem, saying that comments by Israeli leaders about the danger of Iranian nuclearization are a diversion, because the Iranian facilities have already been destroyed. http://news.linktv.org/videos/hacktivist-groups-unite-against-common-targets?start=0 Anonymous and LulzSec release statements saying they are joining forces to take on governments, banks, and big corporations "for the public good." Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:48:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/hacktivist-groups-unite-against-common-targets LulzSec, Anonymous, Hacktivism, Cyber warfare, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Euronews Cyber war has been declared by Anonymous and LulzSec. The two established groups of hackers have released statements on their websites and issued messages on social network site Twitter saying they are joining forces to take on governments, banks and big corporations. Anonymous, who call themselves 'hacktivists' are supporters of WikiLeaks and its creator, Julian Assange. Along with LulzSec, their partners in this new campaign, their aim is to steal and leak any classified government information, claiming it is for the public good. http://news.linktv.org/videos/julian-assange-why-the-world-needs-wikileaks?start=0 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes his case before the 2010 TED conference. Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:59:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/julian-assange-why-the-world-needs-wikileaks WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, TED (conference), Chris Anderson The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and videos. Founder Julian Assange, who is reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished and what drives him.